Cathy Vitek
Children's & Family Ministry Pastor
Bethany UMC, Ellicott City, MD

Two years ago I was deeply impacted when I read Kendall Vanderslice’s We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God. In it she describes communities built on a “dinner church” model so that meal sharing is integrated with worship. This meal sharing is central to their life together in every aspect and is how they are known to people outside of the faith community. She reminds readers that Jesus gave us the Lord’s Supper in the context of a shared meal and describes the deep communion that meal sharing enables, especially when the Holy Spirit is present. 

Not too long after I read that book, I met with a mom whose family are members of Bethany UMC, where I serve as the Children’s & Family Ministry Pastor. She, her elementary aged son, and her husband travel every weekend to another state to help care for her mom. They have done this for years, and she was lamenting that her son was missing out on knowing Bethany as his church home.

I started wondering what it would be like to offer a completely new way of doing church that could be offered at a time when this family -- and all the people with ties to other Sunday morning activities -- might be more available to participate. I was clear that this alternative needed to include people of all ages and stages, it needed to feed the heart, soul, mind and bodies of people with the Word and a dinner meal, it needed to offer an opportunity for praise and thanksgiving to God, and it needed to intentionally create community among the worshipers. 

I didn’t know how to make all that happen, but that’s where GenOn’s LIFT (Living in Faith Together) comes in! Because the LIFT curriculum is already focused on intergenerational community building around Breaking Bread Together, Studying God’s Word Together, Playing Together and Praying Together, it was easy to envision using the themes, ideas and components in the LIFT curriculum, adding a few additional worship elements, and incorporating it all together to create a new dinner church! We are just one week in of a five-week trial, and it has been a wonderful experience already!

Cathy will be writing two more articles about using LIFT at her church. Stay tuned to hear their process and outcomes.