Hospitality After Church
FROM THE RECTOR
As a church, one of our greatest strengths is hospitality. Our commitment to welcoming and caring for others drew me to St. Paul’s. We have the gift of receiving guests as if they were members of our family and, in so doing, making them part of our family. I have seen that spirit at work in Community Meals, Pride, our yoga ministry, Caring Friends, the 12-step groups that use our facility, and Vacation Bible School. It is manifest every week during Sunday-morning breakfast and Wednesday-night supper. I celebrate that we welcome everyone who walks through the doors as someone who belongs among us.
One of the cornerstones of our welcome is the Hospitality after Church ministry, which we offer following the 11:00 service on most Sundays. Other churches often call this gathering “coffee hour,” but, because we offer more than coffee and because hospitality is central to our identity, we call it “Hospitality after Church.” Whatever it is called, in many Episcopal congregations this weekly time for fellowship is known irreverently as the “eighth sacrament,” a designation that implies the importance, centrality, and necessity of the practice.
In churches like ours, which offer a full cooked breakfast every Sunday and which have multiple services, the after-church gathering is somewhat diluted by other opportunities for fellowship, but there is no substitute for Hospitality after Church. This is the best way that we can welcome newcomers into our community, and, for many established parishioners, it is the best way to catch up with each other.
Most first-time visitors come to the 11:00 service with no plans to eat breakfast or take part in a formation opportunity. Our style of worship, which emphasizes reverence before, during, and after the service, does not leave much opportunity for chit-chat in the pews. As a result, a visitor might come to church, participate in the service, and walk back out the door without any word of welcome except a brief handshake at the Peace, a general word of welcome during the announcements, and a perfunctory handshake on the way out. Some visitors like it that way, but others, who are looking for a connection with the community of faith, need more.
Long-time parishioners, too, crave social connection with each other. Since the beginning of the church, the Christian community has understood itself as a body comprised of inseparable members. What happens to one part of the body happens to the whole body. The Bible teaches us that, by caring for each other, we care for ourselves. In much smaller communities, those pastoral links are more easily discerned and maintained, but, in a church the size of St. Paul’s, we depend on moments like Hospitality after Church to live into our identity as the Body of Christ. I may resist the tendency to think of it as a sacramental rite, but I can think of no other weekly opportunity that provides that opportunity so richly.
We need your help! You may have noticed that, during the summer, we have suspended Hospitality after Church. That was to give our dedicated volunteers a much-deserved break and to give us the chance to regroup for the fall. Now it is time to bring it back. August is traditionally the month when churches see the most visitors, and we hope to resume Hospitality after Church on August 4. If this ministry is going to grow, we need to grow the number of volunteers who help out.
We currently have four or five committed volunteers, and we need to increase that number to twelve or more. Our plan is to divide volunteers up into four teams and to ask each team to serve one Sunday a month. On their Sunday, volunteers need to leave the 11:00 service after they have received Communion to set up for Hospitality after Church. We traditionally serve espresso drinks and sherry and sometimes offer baked goods and other treats. (We have a new espresso machine!) Volunteers need to stay afterward to help clean up.
If you are willing to help out once a month, please sign up here. Maybe you have experienced the warm welcome of our parish and want to share it with others. Maybe you know how important those pastoral connections have been for you and are willing to help other parishioners find them. Maybe you have a gift for providing hospitality and want to share that gift with the church.
I think that Hospitality after Church is a ministry that embodies who we are as a church when we are at our best. It allows us to live into our gifts as a congregation more fully. I hope that this ministry will grow in size and significance in the coming year, but that depends on our volunteers. If you are willing to help our church provide a heartfelt welcome on Sunday mornings, please sign up. If you have questions about this ministry, ask Sara or me.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner