Turkey Dinner

My first real job was working at McDonalds. Back then, as still today, McDonalds didn't sell turkey. In fact, aside from apple & cherry pies we didn't produce anything even loosely associated with the Thanksgiving holiday. But one thing we did was customer service.

My main job at McDonalds was working grill – cooking the food. I usually opened, so half the day was breakfast, then at 10:30 we changed over to burgers. As a teenager, I assumed that what I saw – food – was what we were about. Over the years, however, I learned that the food was secondary. We were there for people. We were there to provide them food, yes, but to give them quality food in a relationship of respect. After all, we wanted them to come back to our store for more food later.

Turkey Dinner has a long tradition at Hardy. It's an event that requires the whole church to come together. Some are doing the food preparation. It's a week's long effort to prepare food for the hundreds of people we serve. Turkey Dinner can be described as a "fundraiser" – and it is. Turkey Dinner can be described as "feeding people" – and we do that. But more than either, Turkey Dinner is about coming together to bless our community.  We want people to go away thinking something like, "Those Hardy people sure have warm hearts. They've shared their creativity and labor with us. They've treated us as if we were part of their family. Not only was the food tasty, but the people we met acted like they cared about us and our experience."

You see how this requires a "whole church" effort, don't you? Beyond the "business" aspects – the selling tickets and preparation of food – there's all the work that goes into hospitality. We greet people as they arrive on our property and enter the building. We engage them in conversation. We're even prepared to pray with them as the occasion calls for.

There's just as much going on behind the scenes. There's the physical labor of setting up the tables and chairs (and then taking them down afterward). There's the attentiveness to food quality and quick and accurate service that our guests deserve. And there's the prayer. Since it looks like we're only feeding people, we might imagine that there's no role for God. That imagination would be wrong. We pray for our people who are working. We pray for our guests. We pray for each other as we work through the stress of work and any conflicts that arise. And as prayerful people, we trust God to act in powerful ways among us.

1 Corinthians 15:58
Rev. Richard Heyduck