WHAT IS COFFEE HOUR FELLOWSHIP?

Coffee hour is where the Church becomes a family. After we’ve gathered together in prayer through the Divine Liturgy, after we’ve received Holy Communion, we gather to eat and talk and welcome one another, greet one another, gather together in fellowship with one another. It’s how we live out what just happened in The Divine Liturgy.

The early Christians called their shared meals “agape feasts”, love feasts. They’d gather after worship to eat together, pray together, care for the poor among them. Over the centuries the shape changed, but the heart didn’t. We still need to break bread together. We still need to see each other’s faces and learn each other’s names and make sure nobody leaves hungry or alone.

Here’s something practical. Most of us fast before Communion. We don’t eat or drink anything that morning until we’ve received the Eucharist. So coffee hour isn’t just fellowship, it’s the first meal we share after receiving Christ. That matters. The food we eat together extends what began at the chalice.

For people new to Orthodoxy, coffee hour can be the difference between staying and leaving. A parish that takes coffee hour seriously is a parish that takes hospitality seriously. And hospitality isn’t optional for Christians. It’s how we recognize Christ in the persons around us.

Coffee hour also does something Liturgy can’t. During the service we’re focused on God, on worship, on the prayers and the Eucharist. We’re not chatting about our week or asking how someone’s surgery went or introducing ourselves to visitors. Coffee hour is when pastoral care happens. It’s when the older parishioners teach the younger ones, when someone mentions they’re struggling and three people offer help, when the parish council recruits volunteers, when children and adults make friends who’ll keep them connected to the Church through their lifetime.

Hosting coffee hour is itself a ministry. It’s an act of service, a way of saying “this parish is your home, and we’re glad you’re here.”

Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote about how the Eucharist makes us into the Church, how we become Christ’s Body by receiving His Body. Coffee hour is where we practice being that Body. We serve each other. We listen to each other. We make room at the table for whoever walks through the door. It’s just Christians doing what Christians have always done, eating together, caring for each other, staying connected between Sundays.

We don’t gather on Sundays just to pray and leave. We gather to become the Church, and that takes more than an hour and a half. It takes coffee and conversation and someone asking if you need anything and someone else offering to help. It takes showing up, week after week, and letting this group of people become your people, become your family.

To sign up for hosting Coffee Hour Fellowship on a particular Sunday, please click on the link below which will take us to our sign-up page:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/508044BAFAA2DA6FB6-62228227-stgeorge

As part of our continued outreach ministry, let us look into our hearts and see how we can give back to God a portion of the blessings He has graciously bestowed upon us by volunteering to clean our Parish Fellowship Hall in preparation for our Sunday Coffee Hour Fellowship following The Divine Liturgy.

To learn more about what is involved with volunteering, please click on the link below which will take us to our sign-up page:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/508044BAFAA2DA6FB6-62216397-stgeorge

*Be on the look out for other volunteer/stewardship opportunities in the near future (yard work, maintenance, etc)*