A conversation this morning brought to mind an interesting reality about churches. The conversation began with a friend telling me about a local restaurant that had a Coke and Jack Daniels frozen drink machine. Two things strike me:
First, It’s funny how we tend to be phenomenal evangelists for our favorite restaurants.
Second, it’s funny how the little things will bring you back to a restaurant. We frequent one place because it has free ice cream at the end of the meal. Everyone knows that it’s food and service that are the meat potatoes of the restaurant business, but it’s the little things that often bring you back.
At a former parish I served, a group of guys who like to cook out started a second Sunday breakfast. They just decided one Sunday to cook. They cooked bacon sausage, biscuits, eggs, grits and more. It was popular, to say the least. And it grew. They bought (or hunted) all the food and then gave the free will offering to charity. After a year we looked over our worship attendance numbers and chuckled to see that the second Sundays of the month were our highest attended Sundays. It wasn’t because of the preaching.
Sometimes it’s the little things, the unexpected things that make the difference. I don’t want to underplay the importance of food and fellowship. Eating together was a hallmark of Jesus’ ministry. Who he ate with got him in trouble. The kingdom of God is a banquet feast. All are invited. It’s a good thing for a church to have a free meal. Those who can pay do. Those who can’t can come and eat for free. So a meal is a very Christian thing to do.
It’s just, we started this not as an evangelism strategy, but out of the guys’ love of cooking. And hunting. Actually cooking what they had hunted. We ate lots of deer sausage. This didn’t emerge out of any council initiative. It grew organically. We had created an atmosphere in which people felt the freedom and permission to do what they felt led to do, to try new things, and so once in a while good things popped up here and there.
Today’s conversation, in the narthex, after church, about a restaurant, left me thinking, the little things matter, and this: create the right spirit, and trust that good things, unexpected things will happen.
“Renew a right spirit within me.”
—Psalm 51:10b
“Ho! You who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”
— Isaiah 55:1
