Remember when a church Christmas program meant an hour of carols sung by a choir wearing robes and holding candles? Those days are gone.
Today’s Christmas programs feature special lighting, drama, dance, video, elaborate sets and even food.
That’s right — food.
A growing trend in church holiday productions is the dinner theater, which provides a play or musical drama along with a full-course meal.
“Many churches have done this through the years, and it has been an effective outreach tool,” said Keith Hibbs, director of the office of worship leadership and church music of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “I am always glad to see it happening because of the outreach and because it takes a drama and music ministry to a new depth of development and discipleship.”
The Church at Ross Station is one such church that believes in the outreach value of doing a dinner theater.
The church presented “If Christ Had Not Come” Dec. 9 in a dinner theater setting at Bumpus Middle School in Hoover. Ross Station, which meets weekly at the school, is a 15-month-old Bessemer Baptist Association church plant in a rapidly growing area of Hoover.
“We plan on this becoming a Christmas tradition for our new church,” said Pastor Randy Norris, noting 175 people attended the first dinner theater production.
“If Christ Had Not Come” is an original two-act play written by Ross Station’s Worship Leader Dwayne Moore and his wife, Sonia.
Dwayne Moore said the play tells the story of a woman and her son who have become homeless at Christmas. The family’s desperate dilemma is shown in a world as it would be had Jesus Christ never been born and a world with the love of Christ.
The evangelical message was not lost on the audience. Norris said four salvation decisions were made following the production.
It was marketed to the unchurched with posters around the community, ads on television and in newspapers and church members canvassing area neighborhoods with door hangers, advertising the dinner theater and other December activities at Ross Station.
The dinner theater meal was catered by a local restaurant with the cost covered by the ticket price, but Moore credited church volunteers with the serving and speedy cleanup following the event.
“Since our play was at Bumpus Middle School, we had to have everything cleaned up and back as it was for school the next morning,” he said.
And it is teamwork and many volunteers that are vital to producing events like the dinner theater, according to Terra Demerchant, who, along with husband Lance, serves as worship leader at Iron City Baptist Church, Anniston, in Calhoun Baptist Association.
The Demerchants coordinated Iron City Baptist’s second Christmas dinner theater Dec. 13–16.
The production involved more than 100 volunteers acting, singing, serving on technical teams, cooking, cleaning, building sets and more.
The dinner theater included home-cooked meals prepared by church members. Each night featured a different menu of turkey, ham or chicken with vegetables and a variety of desserts.
Church members also volunteered to host tables for the event, providing a Christmas tablescape with tableware and decorations as well as cleaning up after each night’s performance.
Angie Robinson co-leads Iron City’s drama ministry and played the female lead in the dinner theater production of “The Gift,” a musical drama based on O. Henry’s classic Christmas love story “The Gift of the Magi.”
Robinson, who co-directed last year’s dinner theater production of “One Bethlehem Night,” said that the expansion of the drama ministry over the past year made a big difference in this year’s production.
She noted, “Iron City has improved and expanded our drama and worship ministries into several teams that were able to work together to get the job done more efficiently this year.”
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