A few weeks ago I was in Dallas at the Leadership Network as a part of their Innovation Lab for Family Ministry. I’ll post more about that soon, but I wanted to share an Orange idea I had while I was there. We were doing an exercise of thinking about how we serve families in non-conventional ways. Our group really began focusing on ways we could be Orange outside the walls of the church. Here was an idea that I shared that I’d really love to try at some point.

Family Dinners

So, one way we can help families be more red is by helping them have family time together, one of the most significant being time around the dinner table. Unfortunately, today most families shared hurried meals in restaurants or drive throughs. So, what if we could create a family experience at a local family favorite.

The idea would be to partner with a local restaurant where volunteers from your ministry would help get the crowd there but also provide the “curriculum.”

Just like many restaurants offer great deals on slow days to get families in to eat, this restaurant would need to follow suit to really target families (like kids eat free). The church could promote it to their families just to make sure a crowd was going to show up. So for the 2-3 hours of family night, families would have stuff to do at their table. There would be a tent card at the table that would prompt discussion questions as well as volunteers who would stop by, give them additional questions to ask or even give them ideas for a simple game or activity. In addition, volunteers would get refills and such so the families didn’t have to leave the table for anything.

The goal would be to a fun, family focused time where parents and kids have ample opportunity to talk, maybe even from the heart. Although the crowd my be a lot of church people to begin with, people from the community would experience this as well and hopefully reap the benefits of a family-focused meal together.