FYC Podcast Episode 002: The Church Valentine Banquet Story

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Podcast Episode Text Version

Welcome to the Finding Your Church podcast from FindingYourChurch.com. My name is Jeremy Phillips and my goal is to help you make it a challenge for people to live in your community without finding your Church.

I want to tell a quick story that happened a couple of years back when I was on a church staff.

One of my responsibilities was the website and maintaining the online presence for the church.

For whatever reason that year we decided to have an event that many churches have around February.

Our church had many, many, many food events and lunches and dinners and dessert auctions and banquets going on year round. I mean you can’t have fellowship without a food event right?

But normally we did not have a Valentine’s banquet, however that year we did. And for the most part it was couples only.

So my wife and I were seated at a table with another couple who were new to the church. Because obviously if you are on staff at a church, you have to sit with someone new.

A lot of times that does not happen at many churches especially at food focused events.

The reason for this is that, as you have probably experienced, fellowship food events can sometimes be chaotic.

Depending on the type of the event, kids can be running around everywhere and people are seating themselves wherever they want as they come in one family at a time.

So what happens is that after most people are seated, you look around and realize that there are three families sitting at tables by themselves. So at that point, you are already seated with a family and cannot get away to connect with them either.

So what was intended to be a connecting event can turn into a disconnecting event for some families who are not outgoing enough to sit with others.

Or even worse, you did not plan well enough and the tables can only facilitate one family at a time.

You cannot always help that either though. When I was growing up we had 7 total, so there really was no way for us to sit with anyone else ever. Now I have 4 kids so we have 6 and are nearly in the same situation.

We would talk a lot about how to make those fellowship events more meaningful and impactful for new people.

So that is not the point of the story about the Valentine’s banquet, but just a side note to encourage you to think through your meal and fellowship events to make sure guests and new people can get connected and feel included in the event.

Something my Pastor at the time did extremely well was connect with people at these types of events.

Instead of eating, he would go from table to table and talk with as many people he could to make sure they felt included and connected.

Besides that, our rule at the church was the Church Staff always ate last anyway to make sure there would be more than enough food.

Regardless, that has very little to do with the Valentine’s banquet story.

While my wife and I were talking to this new couple, I asked them how they heard about the church.

They said they searched online, found our church website and decided to make a first time visit.

Now obviously I knew that people find the church through the website. But when they said that in front of me I realized something.

Basically, through my investment of time and energy in the website… I actually had invited them to church.

Nobody else talked to them about our church except me.

Most of the time I never heard directly from people like that, and of course a lot of people are invited by someon...