Getting your Supper Club off to a great start — Advice for leaders

Before the first meeting

Scheduling the first meeting as soon as possible is one of the most important things a leader does. Here are some steps to take before the first meeting:

Find a date for the first meeting:
- Ask the host when they can host the group in the next 3-4 weeks. Compare those dates with your own schedule. Try to find at least 3 dates that work for the hosts and leaders. Propose those dates to the rest of the group. Usually nearly everyone in the group will be available on one of those dates. If not, go back to the hosts to find more days they are available.
- If this proves difficult, widen the parameters of acceptable dates. Try dinner on a weeknight, lunch after church, dinner on a weekend, or Saturday morning brunch.
Contacting everyone:
- Some people are easiest to contact by email and others by phone. As an leader you need to get to know your group and scheduling the first meeting is the time to learn how best to reach people.
- One idea: send an email to everyone proposing dates for the first meeting. Two days later, call anyone who has not responded to your email.
- If someone is impossible to reach through phone and email, check with Regina that their contact info is correct. If it is correct and you still can't contact them, look for them at church and find out the best way to reach them.
- If none of these methods work, schedule the first meeting with everyone else in the group. Keep working to include the difficult-to-reach person, but don't let one person prevent the rest of the group from meeting.
Planning the meal for the first meeting:
- See the discussion about meal planning in the section below.
- If your group is responsive, you could ask everyone to sign up to bring a dish for a small potluck. Someone signs up for the main dish and can bring any main dish they want, etc. The leader might bring the main dish to the first meeting. That ensures there will be something substantial to eat, even if others have to cancel at the last minute.
- If it is difficult to coordinate the first meeting, you could suggest that everyone bring a few dollars for pizza. Have the pizza delivered to the host's after everyone has arrived and put in their money.
- If people in your group have dietary restrictions, a brown-bag meal might be appropriate to simplify planning the first meeting.
- Ask people to bring their calendars to the first meeting.
- On the day before the first meeting, email or call the group again to remind them about the meeting.

During the first meeting

The first meeting is the time to show to the rest of the group how this group will operate. Things you can do to make things comfortable and smooth:

Dress casually
Be outgoing
Listen to people. Ask questions, allow an occasional silence to ripen, draw people out who seem shy. If someone is interrupted while telling a story, bring the conversation back around to their story so they can finish.
Bring simple food — people in your group may be intimidated about bringing food to future meetings if the leader brings a really complicated or expensive main dish.
Schedule all of the future meetings for the group. This is very important — it is much simpler than planning over phone and email.
Between dinner and dessert, leaders should explain that in Supper Clubs we tell each other our stories. Leaders should lead by example and tell their own stories at the first meeting. This will show the other members of the group approximately how long and how personal story should be. People should understand that their story can be their Christian testimony, a chronological narrative of their life, or just sharing some important things that have happened in their lives recently. While we want to get to know one another and get beyond small talk, sharing our stories is not a therapy session.
- If you are leading for the first time or you don't have very much experience with Supper Club, you could ask the host family to tell their story at the first meeting. It is best to arrange this in advance.
- People usually tell their stories over dessert. The stories tend to last about 20-40 minutes and people in the group often do ask questions about important points along the way.
- After telling your story, take a few minutes to coordinate together and prepare for the next meeting (who will tell their story, and the meal plan).
Close the meeting by praying together.

Ongoing

At the end of each meeting, you should initiate a conversation about the next meeting. Plan together who will give their story, what we will eat, remind everyone of the date and time of the next meeting.
About a week before the next meeting, contact everyone to remind them what they signed up to bring to the next meeting.
About 24 hours before the next meeting, contact everyone again to remind them that the Supper Club meeting is the next day.
Often the first meeting or two feel a bit strained and uncomfortable. By the third or fourth meeting, people should be opening up more and feeling more comfortable together. If this is not happening by the third meeting, feel free to talk with the Supper Club coordinator to try to determine what is holding your group back from opening up. There may be a simple way to improve the group in the time remaining.

Meal planning

Here are some easy ways to coordinate a meal:

Potluck

Email your group a week before a meeting. Ask them to sign up for a type of dish. Make a category list like this:

Main dish:
Side dish 1:
Side dish 2:
Bread and salad:
Dessert:

Use as many categories as there are family units in your group. After everyone has signed up, you can fill in whatever dish was not yet claimed. You could ask the person bringing the main dish to tell you what they plan to bring, so you can inform the rest of the group. This helps people choose side dishes that will complement the main dish.

If someone is not sure if they can make it to the next meeting, you could assign them to bring a dish that is less essential to the meal, like the second side dish or the salad.

Fajitas

Divide up ingredients: Tortillas, chicken and/or beef, chips and salsa/guacamole, sour cream, diced tomatoes, onions, etc.

Mexican stackup

Divide up ingredients: ground beef, shredded lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, salsa, tortilla chips, etc. Assemble in layers once everyone has arrived and dig in. Ask one person to bring dessert instead of an ingredient for the stackup.

Breakfast for dinner

Ask people to bring their favorite breakfast food. If the host is open to some food preparation at their house, the group could agree together to make pancakes or scrambled eggs as the main dish. Otherwise, one person could bring a pre-cooked breakfast casserole as the main dish. Everyone else brings something to go with it — fresh fruit, biscuits or toast, jam, etc.

Baked potatoes

This is the way one Supper Club divided up the assignments:

Host: Drinks, plates, etc.
Leader: Large baked Potatoes
Family 1: Salad
Family 2: Dessert
Family 3: Toppings-Butter, Sour Cream, Shredded Cheese
Family 4: Toppings-Bacon Bits, Chopped green onions, Chili

Barbecue

One family picks up BBQ on the way to the host's house and other people bring side dishes, salad and dessert.

Frito Pie

One family brings the Fritos and chili and other people bring side dishes, salad and dessert.

Fried Chicken

One family picks up Bush's fried chicken on the way (so it is fresh) while everyone else brings the usual pattern of side dishes, etc.

Order pizza

Ask everyone to bring a few dollars. You could discuss together what kind of pizza to order at the previous meeting or before ordering it on the day of the meeting. Have the pizza delivered, or pick it up on the way to dinner.

Burgers on the grill

One person brings the meat, someone else brings the buns, other people bring toppings or dessert.

Soup, salad and bread

Two different families could bring soup and the rest could bring salad, bread, and dessert.

Just dessert

Everyone brings a different dessert. People eat a light dinner at home before the meeting.

Improving the chance that your group will meet

Schedule the first meeting promptly
Ask everyone to bring their calendars to the first meeting and work together to schedule all the future meetings. These may need to change in the future, but now is the time when peoples' schedules are relatively open.
Don't allow one person with a tight schedule to prevent your group from meeting. If someone is only available on the weekends, try to schedule weekend meetings. If someone is constantly out of town and can't commit to any meetings, the group should encourage them to attend but must move ahead with meetings. If your group has completely incompatible schedules, contact the Supper Club coordinator. The group's composition may need to be adjusted.

Common challenges and some ways to overcome them

One or two people are never available:
- It is not unusual for groups to contain one or two people who are not able to make it to many of the meetings. This tends to be less disruptive to groups that have scheduled their meetings in advance.
- If someone cancels at the last minute, carry on without them and encourage them to come to the next meeting.
- If people are frequently unavailable, try to work with their schedule. However, the group may need to occasionally meet without them, so that it can meet each month.
- If someone is unresponsive, it's possible your contact information for them is incorrect. Try to find them at church and verify their contact info.
Dueling dietary restrictions
- Sometimes a group includes people with dietary restrictions that make it difficult to plan meals. We can show our Supper Club members that we care about them by bringing food that they can eat.
- Discuss dietary restrictions as a group so everyone knows what kinds of food are dangerous for their fellow members.
- If the dietary restrictions in the group make it too difficult to plan a meal together, you could plan a potluck so everyone has at least one dish they can eat, or plan brown-bag meals where everyone brings their own meal, or plan for the person with the restriction to always bring at least one dish for themselves that they can safely eat.
Host family has a health problem or family emergency that makes it impossible for them to host for a few weeks.
- The group could reschedule the next meeting to a time a week or two later that will be more convenient for the host. If this is not possible, the group could plan to meet without the host once:
  - meet at the park for a picnic
  - meet at someone else's home one time
  - meet at a modestly priced restaurant once
- If the host is no longer able to host at all and there are multiple meetings remaining for the group, contact the Supper Club coordinator. It may be possible to recruit a new host for your group.