Serving those spending Christmas alone
How can churches serve people who might be spending Christmas Day on their own? The Ark Church in Huddersfield walked us through how they run their Christmas lunch.
Every year The Ark Church in Huddersfield opens their doors on Christmas Day for a fantastic Christmas lunch open to anyone in the community who want to share Christmas Day with others. People of all different situations come along and enjoy delicious food together.
This is a great way to not only make sure no-one in your church spends Christmas alone, but also shows the community that your church is there for them! We spoke to them about how they do it…
How to do Christmas Lunch, from The Ark Church, Huddersfield
The Ark Church Christmas Lunch
How do you invite people?
We advertise the event as widely as we can and now that we have been doing it for a few years word gets round. We put it on as many neighbourhood social media groups in the area and also produce flyers to put through some local doors.
Who is invited?
It is open to anyone who would like to come who might be on their own or might be struggling to be able to have a good Christmas Day. We don't ask people why they have booked in.
Do people book in advance?
We do ask people to book in advance but we are always there if someone turns up on the day without letting us know as we always have plenty of food. Some people do book in early but there are others who we may only hear about a few days before. We try and be as flexible as we can.
Who makes the food?
The meal is provided by a local cafe who we have known for a number of years as they were next door to where we used to meet as a church on a Sunday. They saw us operating a food back to the local community and as a result offered to do us a Christmas Day lunch for as many as we could invite. They ask their customers for a donation in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Apart from setting up the hall and laying the tables we don't do anything else as they come over on the day itself with their own ovens and what they can't do in advance they use the kitchen at church on the day to prepare the rest of the meal.
How do you afford it?
We try and get a couple of small grants and also have a budget from the church to buy things like table decorations and Christmas crackers and we either try and organise lifts or get a taxi for anyone who needs transport.
How does the event run?
As we do not have a service on Christmas day we open doors around 12noon and serve lunch soon after 12:30pm. We have hot drinks or a non alcoholic punch when people arrive. After lunch we sing Christmas songs and carols and maybe a game or two of bingo! We end with a short 5 minute Christmas talk/testimony. At around 3:30pm we finish and all the guests are given a small gift bag from the church to take away with them and also the cafe buy presents from any money they have left over from customer donations.
Who runs the event?
As well as the cafe team who cook all the food, all those on the team are volunteers mostly from the church but as word has got around we are increasingly finding people contacting us asking if they can come and serve. The volunteers are there to set up the hall, mingle with guests and then do all the washing up.
We think this is a fantastic event and way to serve those on their own at church or in the community. However, we know this may not be something that every church can do, so here are a few ideas for other ways to make sure no-one in church spends Christmas alone:
More ideas for connecting people on Christmas Day:
Cook a simple meal in the church kitchen
If your church has a kitchen, could you cook a simple meal for those who would otherwise be spending Christmas alone after the service? It doesn’t have to be turkey and all the trimmings - it could be jacket potatoes and toppings! The point is to have a meal together at Christmas so people aren’t going to an empty home alone.
Hire a food van
If your church doesn’t have a kitchen - or the capacity to cook for lots of people, could you hire a food truck to come and provide meals at your church? Again, it doesn’t have to be a Christmas meal - but this would be a real treat for those who would otherwise be cooking for themselves.
Organise lunch out
If your church doesn’t have kitchen facilities - could you book a table or some tables at your local pub? Many pubs are open for lunch on Christmas Day so this is an easy way to organise a meal together for anyone who would be on their own and anyone else who doesn’t fancy cooking Christmas lunch!
Match people up for Christmas
In the run up to Christmas you could ask people in the church if they are looking for somewhere to spend Christmas Day or if they could host someone for Christmas Day. Use these two lists to match people up. Be aware that public transport will not be running that day so ideally people need to live close to each other or have transport.
Does your church run anything like this? We’d love to hear how you do it! Please get in touch
“Services that simply focus on the beauty of what Christmas actually means, without an over-focus on children and nuclear family, can have such a simple but profound impact. After all, it’s the very-inclusive, rejoice-with-those-who-rejoice, mourn-with-those-who-mourn Gospel.”