A Different Way to Do Ministry: Outside the Walls of the Church

Now that classes are over and I await my grade for the semester, I can exhale and write my blog. I will miss creating 10-15 page essays that keep my mind sharp and healthy. But I also have time to participate in activities at our church. I have long advocated for breaking down the walls of the church that separate the people inside from the people outside, producing a feeling of difference. When anyone constructs differences, inevitably, there are accompanying feelings of superiority in one group and inferiority in the “others.”

But we are all sinners saved by the grace of God, and attending church doesn’t make us better than people who do not want to go to church. Yet, I believe that we all need a Savior who loves us; for me, that is Jesus Christ our Lord. I stress the word “our” because it denotes belonging, we-ness, that we are in this journey together, a oneness that denotes that we are all in the same boat, no one is better or more precious than the other person.

On July 18, our church hosted a Dinner Church, where we invited the community to come and eat with us. There were no sermons, but there was music. We talked at each table about Revelation 3:20, where Jesus stated that he stood at the door, knocking and waiting to be invited to eat with whoever would open the door. I hosted a table, and the six of us talked about how the pictures of the occasion do not show a doorknob on Jesus’s side of the door for Him to come in, whether invited or not.

Food united us and made us one people, especially hotdogs and hamburgers with baked beans and sweet tea. We laughed, talked, sang, and talked about our lives. We did not invite people to come to Jesus, but we told them of His goodness and His desire to know them. It was a different way to do church without a hierarchy of positions, just human beings eating and enjoying each other’s company. I loved it, and I am excited for the next one. It was a win for my pastor, who is such a gracious and kind woman who wanted the church to go outside the walls and simply let people see us as just like them.

Thirty people came, and along with 16 volunteers, including our pastor, we had a great time in the Lord. In these days of division in the Body of Christ, where people question if we truly are God’s people, we have to break down the doors of the church and find common ground to spread the Good News that Jesus lives and loves us. Open the doors of the church in different ways and let others come in and eat with Jesus until they are full and know that He is still knocking on the doors of people’s hearts everywhere.