Dinner Church Encounter: A Food to Faith Initiative

Have you ever considered the power of a shared meal?

Have you ever imagined how your church's food pantry could become a faith community?

Have you ever wondered how a dinner table could reconnect you to your neighborhood?

Leaders all across the country are rediscovering Jesus' dinner table theology that dominated the Apostolic Era. The present-day Dinner Church movement is giving leaders and churches a renewed ability to reach people who would never attend their Sunday morning gatherings.

A Dinner Church Encounter is a 1-day training event, beginning with the rich theological history of the dinner church vision, and progresses throughout the day toward more practical insights that would enable a leader or group to imagine hosting a Dinner Church in their own community.

Schedule of the Day

8:30am Registration / Coffee & Refreshments

9:00am Session #1 - “Declines & Rebirths”

10:15am Break

10:30am Session #2 - “The Historic Dinner Church”

11:30am Lunch - (Box Lunch Provided)

12:30pm Session #3 - “A Divine Invite”

1:15pm Break

1:30pm Session #4 - “The Front Lines of the Gospel”

2:15pm Break

2:30pm Concluding Session: Table Discussion & Prayer

Dr. Verlon Fosner leads an innovative network of Dinner Churches in Seattle Washington. In 2008, they opened up their first Dinner Church in a sore neighborhood and immediately the room began to fill up with more never-been-churched people than they had seen in years. Soon they were opening up one after another throughout Seattle neighborhoods on different nights of the week, and the results were the same as the first one. They now pour into numerous neighborhoods throughout their city each week with a simple idea – that Jesus still wants to have dinner with sinners and wants his church to set the table.

It soon became obvious that they were not the only ones who needed a new way of doing church. So in 2014, so they founded coaching network centered on Jesus’ dinner table theology (check out: DinnerChurch). Presently, Verlon offers more than half of his time to help leaders throughout the country look at their cities and neighborhoods with new eyes.

In 2016, Verlon joined the Fresh Expressions leadership team and began offering training and conference events:Encounters, Launch Cohorts, and even a graduate program; Dinner Church School of Leadership

Verlon has written several books: Story Priority, Dinner Church, Dinner Church Handbook, Welcome to Dinner, Church and Trowel & Sword (with Jon Davis) which reveals prayer-practices needed for the frontlines of evangelism. Verlon has been married to Melodee for 40 years, and together they have three adult children, seven grandchildren, a variant collection of grand-foster-kids, and two grand-dogs.

Host or Publisher Fresh Expressions US