The Zone Gathering

This is Part 8 of our Spring Leadership Lesson Series: Radical Hospitality. As we lead our groups and ministries, we must strive to forcefully advance the Kingdom of God through strategic evangelism, exponential discipleship, and sacrificial service. Hospitality is on the front lines of such an advance.

Today, we will get very practical and talk about how to add shared meals to your small group environment.

I made a crazy decision this semester: “let’s have dinner at group every week.” What possessed me to do that? I’m not sure. Maybe it was the fear of never eating until 10pm on Thursdays. Maybe it was an impulse because I was feeling hungry at the first meeting. I’m sure it was a combination of things, but I hope that the primary reason was that I wanted to jump head first into radical hospitality for this group that might only be together for the 12 weeks of the semester. From everything I had read and studied and prayed in preparation for the group, I knew that sitting around a table chowing down would build community faster than our most ardent theological discussions.

Has it been chaotic? Absolutely. Has it added a new layer of complexity to the group? No question. Am I glad we did it? I can’t believe we don’t require it for every group at NCC.

Here are some ideas and guidelines for incorporating meals into your small group:

• Delegate. Put someone in charge of meals. A person with a gift of helps or administration can set up a schedule and get people to volunteer.

• Make it easy. This is not an Iron Chef competition! Try to make the main point about the fellowship and not about the food itself. Create an environment where everyone– whether they can cook or not– gets to participate. We are quite lucky in our group to have a number of very skilled and talented chefs (who all happen to be men), and the past three meetings have been amazing. But I’m planning to scale it back down several notches tonight. Here are some ideas for keeping it simple:
  • Ordering pizza is fine.
  • Think about having a breakfast night– serve pancakes. Have a cereal buffet (that’s what we are doing tonight!)
  • Have a deli bar or salad bar.
  • Our group even joked about bringing McDonald’s double cheeseburgers one night. Well, it started as a joke…then turned quite serious!

• Get everyone involved. Have everyone sign up for a night. Or go the potluck route. Consider having one night where everyone is assigned a different ingredient, and then cook the meal together at group.

• Be sensitive to time. The hardest part about doing meals at group is balancing the time. We decided to start our group 30 minutes earlier to allow people to eat. Then, we officially start the discussion, but latecomers can grab their meal and eat during the discussion time.

• Be sensitive to dietary preferences and allergic restrictions.

• Have fun and be creative. Consider having some theme nights. Open up your group to serve a meal to the homeless one night. Do a progressive dinner from home to home of various group members. Pick restaurant and move your group there for a week.

Remember- the most important thing is the community that develops- not the food itself. Find a way to incorporate a shared meal once a week, once a month, or once a semester.

Do you have dinner in your group? What works? What doesn’t work? Use the comment thread to share your own creative ideas and suggestions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Leadership Lessons, Radical Hospitality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.