What is the Dinner Church Movement?
What's the big deal about Dinner Church?
The dinner church movement is growing like wildfire across the country, and we thought we would try it in Owosso. It had originally been started by my predecessor Captain Jonathan Tamayo. And actually I talked with an officer who served here 30 years ago and they used to do a night service with a meal. So maybe it’s part of Owosso’s legacy! But when I got here we really ran with the model and tried different things to see if they would work. You would see a lot of people who were not comfortable walking into a chapel who felt like they could come to church when it was set up like dinner church is. But it was messy and challenging at first. Sometimes I could barely hear myself preaching over everyone talking at the same time. It definitely took time to help make the model stick and make it work.
We would get a lot of people who don’t know Jesus, or are estranged from God, and they felt comfortable coming to hear about God. It echoed back to times of the early ministry of William and Catherine Booth, when William would preach in bars, and get jeered at. There was numerous times at dinner church when I would be preaching and people would sneer or start arguing or make rude remarks. It was really hard at first, but I began to see it as just the kind of ministry The Salvation Army has always been involved with.
We do worship, times of prayer and testimonies, devotionals, and lots of food. Just like the early church did, around the table, meeting together, feasting and talking about Jesus. After the sermon we have an open response time when people can raise their hands to give feedback and input. Several who have started with dinner church have joined our morning services as well, and several have become soldiers. Which is amazing! I’m really grateful for dinner church it’s been a wonderful model to do church in a new way. We do it downstairs in our dining room. We put up fliers around town, invited everyone we could who came for daily meals. We post the messages on our Facebook page. And eventually word got around town and we’ve had 25-30 people every Sunday. After COVID our numbers have dropped, today it’s more like 12-20. But we’re holding strong thank to God’s grace. Truly Jesus is present when we gather around the dinner table to talk about Him!