A Banquet, Supper, or Dinner?

Weekly reflections on religion and what's going on in the world.

A Banquet, Supper, Or Dinner?

Last week, some members of the Bryn Athyn Church staff spent (perhaps, an inordinate amount of) time discussing what to call our evening event at the end of this month. In the past it was called “The Swedenborg Banquet.” This year we’re calling it “Dinner and Program.” I thought it might be valuable for you to know why we decided to change the name.

First, we removed the word “Swedenborg” from the title because we think the presentations at these events don’t have to be explicitly about Swedenborg to be valuable. This year’s program is a great example. Glenn Bostock, founder and CEO of SnapCab, will be speaking about how New Church values impact how he runs his business. That’s a great way to celebrate the impact of what was revealed by the Lord through his servant, Emanuel Swedenborg, even though Glenn’s talk won’t be explicitly about Swedenborg. It’s likely that, in the future, we will still have presentations that are explicitly about Swedenborg at this event, just not every year.

Then we come to the word “banquet.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines a banquet as “1. An elaborate, sumptuous repast 2. A ceremonial dinner honoring a particular guest or occasion.” Maybe you could really go for a little “sumptuous repast,” but that’s more formal and expensive than we’re aiming for these days. We’d rather offer a dinner that is nice but also affordable.

Another thing about the word “banquet” is that it, perhaps, implies an event for people who are already members of something. There is a real value to inward-facing events. Not every event needs to be for the general public. It’s sometimes nice to get to hang out with a room full of people who are also all about the teachings of a not-very-well-known 18th century theologian. However, we also do want to have events where people who aren’t already part of Team Swedenborg feel welcome. This year’s speaker and topic feels like a great one for inviting anyone who might be interested in learning some practical principles for making their workplaces better.

We have also used the term “Community Supper.” We plan on continuing to use that term in the future but only for events where we are expecting people to bring their own food. We discussed making this event in January a bring-your-own-food Community Supper, but our current thinking is that it’s valuable to have a nicer, catered, sit-down meal once a year. This is how we arrived at the word “dinner” in “Dinner and Program.” It’s not a banquet; it’s not a supper; it’s a dinner!

The other thing that (we hope) “Dinner and Program” does is that it reinforces the idea that you can come to just the program, if that’s all you can manage. We hope that you’ll come for both, but we welcome you to come for whatever fits in this year. We also hope that you’ll invite your friends. Find more details about this year’s dinner and program, and buy your dinner tickets at brynathynchurch.org/dinner

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