Dear Editor,
Food has always figured largely in my life. I enjoy it! It occurred to me that many churches in Britain have church lunches for various reasons, often for fellowship. I have observed the same thing in Spain. Apart from the food on offer, one notable difference I have observed is the time spent on the exercise. My experience of British church meals is that they tend to be short affairs, with people concentrating on the food rather than on the fellowship, whereas the reverse is true in Spain. If the purpose of the meal is to get alongside people, then it seems a bit pointless to get it down as fast as possible and disappear, without talking to anyone other than family.
I recall a different scenario from some years back. We ran a series of evenings in our house which we called Just Desserts. At the time we were both self-employed. My wife cooked up a range of delicious sweets and we invited our clients and neighbours, trying to ensure that non-Christians outnumbered the Christians. We invited various speakers and though some of them more or less preached for about 20 minutes, they got a good listening and many people came again, though, to our knowledge, no one was saved. We deliberately kept the format simple and informal. So if you’re up for it, give it a go!
