Food can act as a real draw for people. Even more so when the food acts a catalyst for the kind of Christian community that ought to be appealing to people. In the early church, as people saw the Christian community, they found it attractive. Food can have that same community building, evangelistic pull today.

I know from a short little fat man like me, this one probably comes across as one of those, ‘of course you’d think that!’ kind of posts. And, of course, I do think that, because I’m saying it. But I’m not saying it because I am fat and clearly enjoy God’s good provision perhaps more than the next man, I am saying it because I think there is something really important about eating together and sharing meals together.

In our church, we have food together after some (but not all) our Sunday services. We always eat together at our community groups. We make sure we have food whenever we hold our Muslim-Christian Dialogue evenings. It’s more unusual for us not to have food than to have it because we think it matters. So, here are a few reasons why you might want to think about trying to build food into more of what you do.

Jesus did it

You can hardly read the gospel without being struck by just how often Jesus seemed to be sitting down and eating with people. A number of people have commented before, ‘Jesus ate his way through the gospels.’ Jesus ate with Pharisees, he ate with the sinners the Pharisees didn’t like, he invited himself Zacchaeus’ house and he made the apostles go out and prepare rooms for them to have a slap up meal.

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