Liturgy
What is it?
Liturgy lays out the structure and script of a ritual or worship service. It involves not only intentional words and actions, but the timing and flow. A carefully crafted liturgy is attentive to the emotional arc of a worship service and the needs of the participants.
When designing the timing of worship elements and the worship service itself, it is important to be intentional so that your participants will be able to arrive fully and stay engaged.
Why is it important in a dinner church?
Dinner church is a worship service that is, by design, embodied, participatory, and intimate. It engages all of our senses and helps to foster community in ways that traditional services can’t. When we engage people’s whole bodies in worship, the messages sink in deeper and are better able to be practiced in the rest of their lives.
Because eating is an experience almost everyone can relate to, it breaks down barriers between people and genuine connection across difference is possible. In his book Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Norman Wirzba says,“Eating is more intimate than sex.” There is a deep communion that occurs when we take food into our body. By eating together, we show our vulnerability, our humanity. When we share food, our bodies process the nutrients and we biologically become more similar to one another. We embody the unity that makes us one on another level. Thus, we connect on a cellular and spiritual level. Because of the emotional potency, care must be taken when crafting the liturgy to build and maintain trust. (Consulted: Kendall Vanderslice, We Will Feast)
The meal is the worship service. The dinner church liturgy can bring intention to the entire meal experience: food preparation, setting the table, serving, meal blessing, eating, and cleaning up. These embodied, experiential practices can all be woven into the worship experience mindfully, with the central goal of connection to one another and a larger mystery.
Kendall Vanderslice, in her book We Will Feast, shares the power of dinner church to connect us to salvation in this life, through a Christian lens:
“When we understand the full meal together as communion, as worship, then we see that Christ is present in the most ordinary and mundane aspects of living. God is worshipped through the most basic of human functions, and the community and the food that sustain us grant us just a glimmer of the Kingdom of God on earth today.”
How do different dinner churches do it?
St Lydia’s (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) offers full liturgies online for their Dinner Church and Waffle Church services.
The Longmont Unitarian Universalist Presence offers a multigenerational dinner church. Here is the outline for a typical service.
Arrive and mingle
Welcome (and get food, when in person)
Mindful bite and Introduction to the theme
Intentional conversation and eating
Songs and centering
Theme-based activity (art, music, movement, meditation, reflection, writing)
Closing
(Pack leftovers, help clean up, or head home; when in person)
What now?
Nourish can help you craft a dinner church liturgy that is attentive to the emotional arc, engaging, spiritually nourishing and works for your community! Set up a call with us!