Each month at Antioch, we host a church-wide fellowship meal after our first morning service. With our recent Fellowship Hall renovations completed, we are looking forward to reintroducing this joyous monthly event. Now that our space has changed (for the better), so too will the arrangements for our time together change (hopefully, for the better). Please read through the explanation of our arrangements below as you plan and prepare for the meal.
Due to our limited electrical outlets and lack of an oven, please consider bringing a dish that will not require powered warming during the worship service. However, we can get creative with the outlets that we do have available for your slow cookers and the like. We do not presently have a kitchen equipped to bake or cook anything.
This Lord’s Day, Jeff and Rebecca Danes will be “directing traffic” for both space arrangements and food service. When you arrive with your contributions to the meal, please bring your dish(es) directly to the Fellowship Hall, where Mrs. Danes will take your dish(es) from you. It is best that you enter the Fellowship Hall through the side door leading directly into the Fellowship Hall. Mrs. Danes will be “staging” the dishes for safe keeping in the Fellowship Hall before “setting” them on the buffet tables after the conclusion of our worship service. We are planning to have the Fellowship Hall available for use during the worship service.
Beginning this month, the buffet tables for putting together your plates will be positioned in the Worship Hall side room nearest to the Fellowship Hall (see graphic below, which includes arrows indicating the flow of traffic along both sides of the buffet tables). Other than accommodating the limitations of our new space, our aim is to enhance food service efficiency while minimizing traffic up and down the steps into the Fellowship Hall. Mr. Danes will direct volunteers in putting tables and chairs in place. As is our usual practice, children will wait at their tables for parents, older siblings, or other adult designees to prepare their plates. Young children are not to access the buffet tables.
Another major change in our arrangements is that families with children are to sit on folding chairs at tables in the Worship Hall. The Fellowship Hall will have limited seating for adults, but not for children. Of course, any adult can sit in the Worship Hall, where most attendees will be seated. We ask that attendees avoid sitting on fabric padded chairs during the meal, if possible. Children are not permitted to sit on fabric padded chairs. We have plenty of vinyl padded folding chairs that will be set in place for your use. We have a limited number of high-chairs and booster seats available, and parents are encouraged to bring seating from home, as desired.
Immediately following our morning service, Mr. Danes will lead the changeover from worship service arrangements to meal arrangements. He will direct children to present their sermon notes to Dr. Pipa, collect the communion cups, and move the hymnals to the back pew in the Worship Hall, as they like. Able-bodied men will be recruited to help stack fabric padded chairs into the last row (about seven high per stack), move buffet tables out from the wall in the side room, and set up vinyl folding chairs. Parents of small children will be asked to shepherd their little ones so that these set-up procedures run as smoothly as possible.
Following the meal, we will recruit able-bodied volunteers to help clean up and reset the room for evening worship. Again, parents of small children will be asked to shepherd their little ones to keep everyone safe as we reposition the furniture in the room.
Please note that while meal seating in the Fellowship Hall is restricted to adults only, the Fellowship Hall is certainly open to anyone that needs to avail themselves of the restrooms!
The order of food service will be: parents who will need to prepare plates for their children, any guests, our older saints, and then the rest of us. We are really looking forward to being back together for our monthly meal.
Later this month, the church’s elders and staff will be evaluating the relative success of the meal and these changes. If you have feedback, please do not hesitate to contact one of the elders. We hope this works, but if our facility is overwhelmed by a church-wide Lord’s Day fellowship meal, we are prepared to come up with plans for future fellowship events that are more doable. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the church office at info@antiochpca.com.
Thank you for your attention to this lengthy explanation, and we look forward to seeing you on the Lord’s Day!
