13 Sundays
91 pizzas
171 people
A whole new family!
We have just wrapped up our Pizza with the Pastor that we began in November, a month after we arrived at Hinton Alliance Church, where Kevin took over the role of Senior Pastor of a group of the most amazing people!
When we arrived in October, we were looking for a way to get to know people in smaller settings - it's a daunting task to learn the names and stories of 150+ people as quickly as possible! Since we'd moved into a small rental house while our house was being built, we knew that having people over wasn't the best option.
As Kevin and I tried to come up with a way to get to know our new church family, I remembered how the Principal at the school I taught at in New Zealand, would have termly 'Pizza with the Principal' for chosen students. We thought this would be a great way to get to know our church family. Kevin brought the proposal to the elders' board who gladly, and thankfully, got on board, and authorized the expense. Next Kevin and I went to two local pizza places to get the best deal. One was a chain branch of mass produced bland pizza, the other was a local restaurant with a good reputation for amazing pizza. It was close to our church and we hoped his price would be comparable because then: 1) we would serve delicious pizza every week and 2) more importantly, we could build relationship within the community and close to our church. Thankfully the small business owner was willing to sell us his pizzas for the price of the chain store and would have them ready for us every Sunday night at 5pm. Win-win!!! As you can see in the picture, it truly is delicious pizza!!! And Kevin and Gus have become good friends!
Next we spoke with the lovely office ladies in our church office who willingly and very kindly created our weekly guest lists, contacting people and keeping track of who could make it. We tried to create groups of people who may not know each other, so as well as Kevin and I getting acquainted with our church family, others would get to know about each other too. We also included one elder and his wife each week.
To create some conversation at our dinner and as a way to get to know each other, we had every guest anonymously write one or two sentences about themselves. After dinner, while we had a simple dessert of cupcakes or chocolates, I read the sentences and we all had to guess whose story it was. Then the person would tell us some more about that story and others could interact with it. What a great way to find out so many interesting things about each other!
We have thoroughly enjoyed our Sunday evenings getting to know our new church family. We feel truly blessed to be at Hinton Alliance Church. .......and we may just need to pop by Gus' on the occasional Sunday night so we don't go through pizza withdrawal!
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