12 Months of Incarnational Living – April – Supper Club

During the Christmas season, we encouraged our people to spend the next year building relationships for the purpose of sharing Jesus. The central message of the Scriptures is this, God coming to us by becoming one of us. Jesus came to open the way for us to be friends with God. For those who follow Jesus, one of the most important ways we can be like Him is to intentionally build relationships with those in our neighborhoods. Now, only Jesus is truly God with us. He is our only Savior, and the only one who can bring redemption and restoration. Still, when Christ saves us He puts the Holy Spirit within us, and sends us into the world. This means that in an entirely different way, we have the presence of God and are sent by Christ (John 20:21). This means we can live incarnationally, as people who take the presence of God into our neighborhoods and offer the opportunity for the people we know to meet the One True God.

What I have learned over the years, though, is that we need practical and applicable ideas to make this happen. So we plan to publish 12 ideas in 2018, simple ways to help us build relationships in our neighborhoods so we can be friends with people and share Jesus.

The idea for April is to start a Supper Club.  What if you found the adults in two or three other households and invited them to be part of a Supper Club?  As you think of who to invite, consider neighbors who may not know Christ, or who may have needs you could serve.  You might invite a single mom or someone who lives near you who holds beliefs or has a lifestyle that does not fit the idea of our faith.  The idea is that you would share three or four meals together (each home would host once). You could do this by meeting weekly, twice a month, or even once a month. Be the first to host, which means that you prepare the meal and have people to your home.  Make a good meal, and share food and drink with people in your neighborhood.  Then, see if the others would reciprocate.  Sharing three or four meals with a group of people will take you a long way toward deep relationship that can open the doors to further conversations or even invites to church.