Set up:
Long table banqueting style down centre of church. Table with white cloth/roll is bare. Light shining on table - grace logo
People arrive in Polygon through church, tunes playing, warm atmosphere
1. Aperetif – drink and menu given out to read.
Small drinks table set up with wine bottles labels and instructions for people to create wine labels to attach to bottles – what do you bring to the table?
Invite people to go to the table and to take the bottles with labels (and their glass), collect cutlery and plate on way
2. Welcome to the table - intro and prayer
3. Amuse Bouche – 5 different types of dip and bread. Dips to be different flavours – reflect/examen type thing using flavours – spicy, sweet, bitter, sour, hot.
4. Entrée – salad. Ingredients brought to table. Each group/person makes a salad. An item on its own is not so great but together make something better – picture of grace. Thanks for community and all ingredients.
5. Plat Principal – Add crackers to table. Cards in crackers with ethos words on - exchange cards to select one which you have done in the last year and one challenge for the year ahead. Talk over the meal.
6. Pause - a pause after the tables are cleared to listen to a couple of readings and pray.
reading 1 Gal 5:22 Fruit of the Spirit plus poem from Listings
reading 2 from book Sanctuary on community
Prayer - we hang our lives on your mercy and then invite people to write or draw prayers on the table cloth
7. Dessert – make cookies adding decoration – then taken to be baked. Be a gift for someone else in the community.
8. Toast and blessing – refill glasses, toast others round table.
Hot towels brought round and a prayer of blessing
9 Coffee and cookies back in Polygon with more tunes.
AMUSE BOUCHE
[The platters of dips are placed down the table along with baskets of bread]
Introduction
Time to wake up your taste buds and reflect on the past few months.
Asian cooking works around five major tastes:
• Sweet
• Sour
• Salt
• Hot
• Bitter
The perfect meal consists of a blend of all five – without one that essential something is missing.
Take some time to read the quotations.
Take some bread and taste each of the flavours in turn:
• Sweet – honeyed cheese dip
• Sour - lemons
• Salt – crisps
• Hot – chilli hummus
• Bitter - rocket
Reflect on the events of the past few months that each flavour brings to mind.
You might want to share your thoughts with your neighbours around the bowl.
[Copies of the verses and instructions were scattered along the table]
SWEET
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Psalm 119:103
Think of the good times of the past few months.
SOUR
Whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge.
Jeremiah 31:30
Reflect on those times when something has not turned out as well as you had hoped.
SALT
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
Matthew 5:13
Remember a time when you made a difference however big or small
HOT
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!
Revelation 3:15
Remember those things you are enthusiastic about
BITTER
That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.
Exodus 12:8
Remember times of sadness