The Bridge’s secret weapon

Posted by Josh Howerton on Apr 14, 2010 | 3 comments

Licking people as a sign of spiritual affection.

Kidding.  This is Mitch Comstock.  For the last couple months Mitch and his (awesome) wife Misti have been cooking enough food for 4 families every Sunday not knowing who will be eating it.  Why?  Almost every Sunday Mitch and Misti invite one family from their small group, one Bridge family they want to get to know, and one family who’s just started visiting our worship gatherings.

I thought this was so cool, I email-interviewed Mitch about it:

Describe what you and Misti have been doing for the last 3-4 months?

We’ve been inviting people to our house for lunch or dinner after church on Sunday afternoons. The basic idea is to find people to come hang out and eat with us and play with our kids. I think this would fit into the Relational and Missional wings of the Bridges ministry focus.

What made you guys start this ministry?

Well we’ve always prayed to have our home a place of refuge and rest for others and Misti truly has been blessed with the gift of hospitality, but this is about something different.

We have found it hard to connect with people at churches in the past and would try to invite people over so we could get to know them or go out to a restaurant when we knew others were going out. We found it hard to socialize at restaurants with our kids running around and we found it harder in this economy to think about eating out every weekend just to get to know people better.

So after having a discussion in small group about how important it is to be more inclusive and intentional in reaching out to others, Misti and I decided to try something simple, but different. Not every week, but about 3 out of 5 weeks we have people over for a mini-potluck. Misti usually cooks a main course and then has other families bring dessert or sides.

There are no real rules to it, but we’ve been trying to get to know new people and people who’ve been at the church for a while. So we invite a family that’s brand new to the church, a family from another small group and then usually a family from our own small group. We don’t get offended if someone says no, but keep them on the list to keep inviting back and we try to keep inviting others until we have enough yes’es to have a good time. We try not to invite more people than we have chairs, but have also had a couple weeks where we found having the kids play while the parents eat was much easier and then let us have a bit more room too.

How has it effected the people you’ve connected with?

That is hard for us to say, we think they’d say they’ve enjoyed good company and good food and that they’ve connected with people they might not have otherwise. Hopefully somehow they’re something spiritual in that too.

What has been fun about it for your family?

Everything, except the saying goodbyes. My kids are always a good bit more tired when people leave (this makes for good naps and/or early bedtimes. and a bit sadder too.

What would you say to someone who’s thinking about trying something like this themselves?

Just do it. It’s easy and if anyone breaks your furniture I think that comes out of Josh’s salary. Don’t let anything slow you down, love other’s like we’ve been loved and enjoy the ride.