Fosner, Verlon | Welcome to Dinner, Church

Welcome to Dinner, Church
Verlon Fosner

Paperback: Seedbed, 2017, 102pp.

Introduction 

In his book, Welcome to Dinner, Church, Verlon Fosner introduces the main concepts and practices of the dinner church movement. Fosner’s interest in dinner church was born from a pastoring church in Seattle that no longer reached non-Christians, and was also dying. After many failed experiments, Fosner and his church decided to try the dinner church model, and were soon reaching people they never thought possible. He realized that the problem for the church is not necessarily a spiritual one, but rather a sociological one. As they experimented with the dinner church model, he realized that people wanted to have conversations about Jesus, but not in the typical church service format. In order for the church to reach the growing percentage of people who consider themselves secular, Fosner suggests that we should return to the model that the church practiced in the apostolic age. In a nutshell, the dinner church seeks to “gather the saint and the sinner, eat together, talk about Jesus, and expect divine interventions to show up” (17).

Table Worship-Fellowship

The dinner church movement seeks to model what Jesus modeled for us, namely the centrality of the table. Fosner writes: “Jesus used the dinner table to reveal himself and embrace people into the kingdom of God. It is little wonder that the first versions of the church assumed the dinner table as the time and place to gather, because it was there that they expected Jesus to be with them in spirit in the same manner he had been with them in body during the years he walked the earth” (16). The dinner church seeks to return to a way of church that was prevalent in Jesus’s time and in the early church.

But the dinner church is not simply wanting to have dinner just for the sake of dinner; it is a gathering that communicates something very real about the nature of Jesus and his kingdom, namely, abundance. Fosner notes, “An abundant feast that is paid for by Christ reveals an abundant gospel” (43). Later he asks, “What if [dinner church] had nothing to do with trying to get someone to believe in Jesus but, instead, had everything to do with setting a big table for them to feel Jesus for themselves?” (81)

Radical Kinship

Part of the reason for demonstrating abundance is because of the people who often gather at dinner church. Fosner found that as they experimented with dinner church, poor and marginalized people were drawn to this sort of setting. It meets their sociological needs more adequately than what happens on a Sunday gathering. Reflecting on the parable of the great feast (Luke 14:15-24), Fosner writes, “The point of this parable is so simple most miss it: if your church is empty, drop down on the socioeconomic ladder and invite the poor and the broken until your ministry house is full” (33). For Fosner, the dinner church movement stands in solidarity with the poor, just as Jesus did. Within a few blocks of most churches in America is a struggling neighborhood, “whose residents would never consider going into a church building on Sunday morning, but they would welcome a dinner church in their neighborhood” (41). From this gathering and standing in solidarity with all peoples, “dinner churches change entire neighborhoods” (44).

Participatory Worship

One of the hallmarks of the dinner church is the “find-a-need-and-fill-it form of organization” (80), according to Fosner. Everyone helps, and everyone participates. There are specific roles that need to be filled, like cooks, buffet table service, musicians, artists, and preaching, but the most important and the one in which everyone participates is becoming the friend of strangers. “Everyone eats! This is not an event where ‘we’ serve ‘them’; rather, it is us welcoming them to eat at our tables with us and be our friends” (90-91).

Practicing Conversation

Another hallmark of the dinner church movement, and why their themes are so important for the church today is the practice of conversation. Eating together opens up space for meaningful conversations to occur naturally. But there is a key difference: instead of Christians guiding the conversation, telling guests what they “need” to know, the dinner church emphasizes letting visitors steer the conversation. Fosner writes, “Something most people will need to learn is to let lost people take the lead in the conversation and steer how deep they want to go” (52). Through many conversations, Fosner and his team noted that most of them followed a similar outline: life, limitations, and spirituality. This is not always easy for evangelicals because we want to rush them into salvation, instead of trusting the work of Jesus to guide them. But the reward is worth it. As Fosner observes: “It is great when Christians have learned to relax and enjoy the new friends that the Lord has given them. Then one day, without warming, they will find themselves talking comfortably about Jesus with a dinner friend. And, of course, it will be a comfortable conversation, because they were invited to be there” (57).

Even if a church is not ready to completely adopt the full dinner church model, the themes addressed by Fosner are worth exploring for any church– any group seeking to minister to a community and a culture that is becoming less and less likely to attend a traditional church service.