Dinner Church

There is a simple reason Dinner Churches are catching on across the world. For the first 300 years of Christianity, the church functioned primarily around dinner tables. Dinner Churches also open opportunities to connect with the Neighborhoods We’ve Missed.

What is the vision and story of the Dinner Church model?

Dinner Church is an ancient way of doing church that seems to be effective in numbers of places. One Dinner Church leader writes, “When we first began Dinner Church, we were surprised how quickly it started to fill up with sinners and strangers and seculars—people whose lives, quite frankly, were not going all that well. Our Dinner Church began to see people we would never see that in a Sunday morning gathering.”

What does a typical Dinner Church gathering look like?

Dinner Church can happen in people’s homes or at a church building. One Dinner Church at a church building explains, “We host the dinners for about two hours, one evening a week. At 5:00 p.m., people begin to show up. The tables are set, worship musicians play some beautiful hymns and other songs, and artists perform visual art that connects with that evening’s message theme. Some people receive the meal, others mill around inviting people to sit with them, and there are tons of conversations, both in the serving line and at the tables. At 5:30 p.m., a second wave of people come from their day jobs, and around this time we do a brief message on a story of Jesus that ends with a generous prayer to match the generous meal and a generous Savior. The servers then receive their food and sit with others at the tables. From then until the end of the dinner, people engage in one-on-one conversations, discipleship, counseling, and prayer.”

Dinner Church has spread to the point that Christianity Today did an article entitled, “Why Are Some Churches Trading Pews for Dinner Tables?” Another article on Dinner Church was published in Faith & Leadership, entitled, “Simple Church blends dinner, worship and enterprise to create a new model.” If you are considering the launch of a new ministry or church-type mission, we encourage you to consider starting a Dinner Church! Jesus has promised, “…If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20).