Guide to Services: Hospitality Ministry)

Includes: Welcome Stewards, Refreshments Team, Kid Zone Hosts, Settling In Team

Purpose: To offer welcome, refreshment and connection in a way that reflects the value God places on hospitality. God is a huge fan of hospitality, and of encountering people through food and drink! Across the words of the Bible and the life of Jesus there are abundant pictures of welcome, encounter, friendship, deepening, challenge and blessing flowing through the situations where people are made welcome or offered food and drink. The Hospitality Ministry we offer is an expression of the character of God, and love God has for people, and it is integral to the worship and fellowship of Sunday Services.

Helpful People to ask for more info: Louise, Sue, Mike, Marion

Practical Info about Specific Roles and Responsibilities

Welcome Stewards

Essential Tasks

1. Welcome all who come through the door at a service, with a smile and appropriate words.

2. Count the adults and children at a service, and enter the information into the Blue Book

3. If Mustard Seeds is happening, go and tell them when communion is starting.

4. Guide people up to receive communion or a blessing[GU1]

5. Ensure the collection plate is brought to service leader in the final hymn

Helpful Detail

• As the people who minister on the threshold of the church, you express that everyone who comes through the door is seen and valuable through the welcome they receive and the way they are guided through the service.

• Arrive in good time for the service (ideally around 9.30) to ensure service sheets, booklets and any other resource is ready to be distributed. There is some value in checking the pews in case any objects have been left and which can be recovered before the congregation begins to arrive. There is normally a prayer time at 0930 which you too are welcome to join.

• Other members of the congregation will be setting up for coffee, music, PA, or the Communion table, so you will not be alone.

• Normally there will be two people welcoming, especially if there is a ‘special’ nature, such as a baptism, so you may find it will be possible to have the outer and inner glass doors of the church covered to assist people into the church. This would be especially important if the visitor is disabled, in a wheelchair or an adult with a number of children with them and require help through the doors and into the church.

• Welcoming styles differ, but there should be continuity is ensuring the attender knows they have been welcomed and their attendance is valued. Of course, it is recognised some people just want to go into the church uninterrupted. If you identify a new person it is important you do welcome them and point or guide to a pew. You will find some Sunday Lunch Project clients may come in to say a prayer and leave, do not take it personally !

• Monitoring the door during the service allows for an element of safeguarding,[pl2] it ensures for example, a child cannot leave the building unaccompanied by a parent or trusted friend. If there are two of you welcoming, you could each do this for part of the service.

• At the point of communion you are asked to guide communicates towards the dais (stage) ready for communion. if there are two of you welcoming then one can guide at the front pew, and the other move down the aisle.

• During the last song ensure the offering plate (irrespective of the presence of money) is brought to the service leader. It is often some of the children who carry the plate, they just need you to remind the.

• Before the end of service, make sure you have entered the information into the Blue Book about the date and time of the service, the preacher and presider and the number of adults and children.

Refreshment Team

Essential Tasks:

1. Before the service: starting and monitoring the urns (coffee & hot water), setting up the mugs, cups, jugs, cutlery, tea pot & preparing the food and drink including: milk, oat milk, biscuits, water, juice, sugar.

2. Towards the end of the service: being prepared to serve the drinks

3. After refreshment time: cleaning the tables, and collecting and rinsing cups and mugs.

4. Maintaining good hygiene standards throughout

Helpful Detail:

• Aim to arrive at 9.15,

• Set up coffee urn first.  Frequent checks to see if it is percolating properly.

• Check water in urn for making tea.

• Collect milk, oat milk and tea pot from kitchen

• Fill 3 x sugar bowls, 3 x milk jugs and 3 x glasses with teaspoons and place on table.

• Place plastic cups, juice and jug of water on table. 

• Set out mugs.  Put cake/biscuits on 3 x plates. 

• Immediately after last hymn move to refreshment area and prepare tea.  

• After finishing make sure all mugs collected and table cleared.  

• Milk to return to fridge.  #

• Ask Sue or Marion if machinery goes wrong or if you need more supplies

Kid Zone Hosts

Essential Task

1. Be a welcoming presence at the service,

2. Get alongside kids and parents at the Big Table and in the Sofa Area & help them use the resources (puzzles, games, crafts) that are provided. 

Helpful Detail:

• Resources will be provided, often by Sera or Paul.

• You are not to replace the parent/carer, but to support them and get alongside them with the kids.

• If noise levels are rising, encourage families to move into the Den

Settling In Team

More information coming soon.