How Wednesday Nights Build the Church (thanks meal teams!)

I didn’t start out engaging with Emmanuel on Sundays, like most people do. I had stopped attending entirely after a particularly difficult experience, and starting out at a worship service felt too dangerous. My friend Hannah invited me to a Women, Wine, & Holy Friendship event as a guest. When someone told me about compline – a quiet, small candlelit service on Wednesdays at 8pm – I knew that was something I might be able to go to and begin to heal.

After attending compline alone a few times, Beth & Tom told me about the additional programming – Dinner at 6 and classes at 7 – and that’s how the Basses began attending. We’d come for dinner, and stay for compline. Eventually, we started coming on Sundays too.. But Wednesday nights have a special place in my heart.

On Sundays, I worship. I pray. I am formed. On Wednesdays, I meet new people, make new friends; catch up with how people are doing, see who’s needing a little more help getting around nowadays, or whose family is growing (in a myriad of ways). For me, at least, Sundays are when I grow closer to God, and Wednesdays are when I grow closer to this community.

A big part of the magic of Wednesday nights is that we share a meal together that is prepared and served by fellow parishioners. Preparing food for each other and eating together is such an intimate, familial experience. It is also deeply rooted in the traditions of the early church as we see it in scripture. Eucharist is not the only transcendent meal we share. With every plate we eat with one another, we are mysteriously and invisibly woven together as the body of Christ.

Whether Wednesday night dinners during the school year, potlucks at Pool Church in the summer time, Porch House sack lunches Mon - Fri, BOB every 2nd Saturday, and even the food pantry… if you’ve gone here long at all, you’ve probably figured out that it is an integral part of our identity at this church; Emmanuel feeds people. 

As we are preparing to “come back” to our school-year Wednesday night programs, I wanted to make space to highlight the unspoken, thankless heroes of Emmanuel’s Wednesday nights – the Meal Teams – and shine a light on exactly how those Wednesday meals work that you might not know.

The special thing about Wednesday nights is that we specifically call this our Emmanuel Family dinner. It is intended for members of the church (or those searching for a church home) to share a meal together. And here’s the thing that really caught me off guard when I learned it: These meals are 100% volunteer funded and run.

What I mean by that is, these teams of parish members purchase the ingredients, prepare the food, serve the meals, and wash the dishes! This is no small feat, when sometimes we have as many as 100 for dinner on a Wednesday. Serving on a meal team is a labor of love. 

I hope to see you on Wednesdays this Fall, and hope that you will give our meal team volunteers a hearty thank you as you grab a plate. And, if you’d like to join a meal team and be a part of the magic, let Beth know! 

Meal Teams: 

• Team Potato Head

• Team Taco

• Sacred Supper Society (aka Sacred Spaghetti Society)

• Team Comfort

• A Team