On Wednesday Night Church Suppers

by John V. Upton, Executive Director

You know it’s August when you are eating dinner at home on Wednesday nights. For many churches, summer is a time when we don’t have Wednesday night meals. I’m actually looking forward to September; we’ve forgotten how to fix meals on Wednesdays. Not only that, Deb and I just sit across the table and look at each other. It is the first time we actually focus on the other. Yet, I miss those church dinners. I like what the late Harry Golden said about these meals: “The first part of a church they build nowadays is the kitchen. Five hundred years from now, people will dig up these churches, find the steam table and wonder what kind of sacrifices we performed.”

Why this phenomenon called church suppers? We have them for many reasons, both major and minor. For one thing, church suppers provide many families and individuals with an alternative to two other eating options: eating at home or eating in a restaurant.

Eating at home bears the burden of excessive familiarity. The dishes are the same, the décor is the same, and every other night is leftovers. Dinner time is likely to be structured around a TV schedule, and somebody eventually has to do the dishes.

Eating in restaurants is expensive. It solves the leftover problem and the food is often good and usually arrives the same day the order is taken, but – like death and taxes – the check inevitably arrives.

Church suppers, however, have the benefits of the above without all their liabilities. The surrounding is different from home, the food is inexpensive, and the mood is casual. The real benefit, of course, is the quality of the fellowship. The dinner is intergenerational, a fancy name for little kids eating with adopted grandparents. An extended family is created where we share our napkin with somebody else’s chocolate-smeared toddler. The church supper provides authentic communion among persons who otherwise would be segregated from one another.

The calling for Christian fellowship is a high calling. Church suppers are only a part of it. Yet it is no coincidence that the book of Acts records the vitality of the early church by saying the Christians “shared their meals with unaffected joy, as they praised God and enjoyed the love of the whole people” (Acts 2: 46, 47).

A friendly, informal, inclusive Wednesday night church supper can demonstrate real caring and sharing. Wouldn’t it be grand, in fact, if those who attended our church suppers came away thinking, “Those Baptists – how they enjoy one another!”

Bon Appétit!