Community Supper

Overview

Find information on this page about Community Suppers in general and specific details about the next upcoming supper.

Community Supper, Friday, February 21, 2025

Topic: "Connections Through Conversation: A Community Supper with Interactive Games"

Speakers: Nina Dewees, Amy Glenn, Christine McDonald, Jahnna Henderson

Join us for an evening of connection and conversation with friends and neighbors. Enjoy a meal while participating in interactive games that offer fresh insights into different perspectives. This event will be facilitated by Nina Dewees from Bryn Athyn Church and Amy Glenn, Christine McDonald, and Jahnna Henderson from Glencairn Museum.

Glencairn Museum aims to create experiences that spark curiosity, foster exploration, and inspire reflection on spiritual beliefs and practices. The Museum encourages visitors to recognize common spiritual values, respect different ways of understanding life's big questions, and practice empathy by engaging with new perspectives. These games are one way of doing that.

In the spirit of Swedenborg’s words, we are called to support and connect meaningfully. Join us in a relaxed, fun setting as we engage, explore, and reflect on what empathy means to each of us.

About the Speakers

Nina Dewees

Nina is the Support and Engagement Coordinator for Bryn Athyn Church.  She loves her job of working for and with a huge variety of people, participating in activities and uses that they love.  The support aspects of her work especially require empathy to really understand and feel what people are going through, in order to best support them in ways that serve. For fun, exercise and peace, Nina loves to be outside either on her feet or her bicycle with people she loves.

Amy Glenn

Amy is the Director of Education and Tours at Glencairn Museum. Her work at Glencairn includes creating and delivering programming to school students, homeschoolers, families, educators, and adults. Outside of the Museum her interests include painting and illustration, hiking, and travel. Her background is in early childhood education, and prior to her joining the Glencairn team, she taught third and fourth grades in a traditional classroom setting and educated in nature-based spaces in Australia. In line with Glencairn's mission to stimulate reflection, build understanding, and foster empathy, Amy's work is actively and passionately looking for new ways to bring empathy-based design into the museum education and tours world.

Christine McDonald

Christine McDonald is a freelance producer, writer, editor, educator, and content designer who has worked for over 25 years with artists and organizations creating content and experiences for transformational impact and positive change. Her projects have included creating and producing content for programming, marketing, and educational outlets, including environmental organizations, museums, humanitarian groups, and international businesses. Christine has been an active member of the internationally represented ONE: Organization of Networks for Empathy since it’s inception in 2018, and has collaborated with founder Dr. Elif Gökçiğdem, PhD. on producing research development workshops and creating follow-up videos for conferences, websites, and promotional purposes. The organization focuses on designing immersive empathy-building experiences across disciplines and cultures.

Jahnna Henderson

Jahnna is the Marketing and PR Manager at Glencairn Museum. Her responsibilities include creating innovative strategies to increase museum attendance, improving visitor accessibility through new programs, and coordinating annual events.  Her background is in business and economics, and she has found it fascinating to see the similarities and differences between the business and museum sectors. She is passionate about Glencairn's mission of nurturing reflection, understanding, and empathy and sharing that mission with Museum visitors. Outside of the Museum, she enjoys spending time with her family, the outdoors, and playing pickleball.

Food

Supper - Bring Your Own

Bring your own food from home or takeout from a local restaurant.

If you would enjoy bringing some supper to share with others around you, that’s great but it’s not expected or required.

Potluck Dessert

We provide desserts, beverages (coffee and water), and paper goods. We are also hoping people will bring desserts to share. This is not required. This is just an invitation for those who would enjoy bringing a dessert to share.

Alcohol:

BYOB

Room Layout

There will be long, rectangular tables, running from the back of Heilman Hall up to the stage. This means that everyone can sit with the people they came with and also be together at the same table with a larger group.

Childcare - No Childcare Provided But Babysitting Subsidy Available

We have not provided childcare for past Community Suppers. We would love to have as many parents attend as possible. We are happy to contribute $20 towards babysitting costs; please let us know if you would like help with that. In the future, we may be able to provide childcare for certain age groups. We might have one of the Community Suppers in a year be an all-ages supper. Stay tuned and let us know what you would like or, even better, let us know what you would like to be part of helping to make happen.

7th Grade and Up Invited

We invite people in 7th Grade and up to attend. Teenagers will be expected to stay with their parents for the duration of the evening (not eat quickly and then go outside to hang out with their friends). We don't want unsupervised teenagers wandering around the property. The point is for teenagers to come and be part of the Community Supper, from the beginning to the end. We will leave it to parents to determine whether their teenagers would enjoy coming to this event and being part of conversations with adults or not.

Program for the Evening

Here's the rough schedule of how things will go:

  • 5:30 pm - Doors open
  • 6:00 pm - Welcome, blessing, eating supper
  • 6:30 pm - Presentation Begins
  • 7:00 pm - Break for Dessert
  • 7:15 pm -Presentation Continues
  • 8:00 pm - End of the formal program
  • After 8:00 pm - Plenty of time for jolly, informal hanging out for those that choose to linger.

All of these times are approximate.

RSVP - Not Required

You do not have to RSVP to come to the Community Supper. You can decide at the last minute to come, even if you haven't told anyone that you were planning to come.

Recorded But Not Live-streamed

We record the video and audio of the program portion of the Community Suppers. We then make those recordings available to people, a few days after the event, on our YouTube channel (youtube.com/BrynAthynChurch). We do not live-stream these events.

Recent Community Supper:
"Swedenborg as Memento Mori: Using the Seer to See Ourselves" with Rev. Christopher Barber

On Friday, January 31, Bryn Athyn Church hosted a Swedenborg Birthday Community Supper in Heilman Hall. The topic of the evening was “Swedenborg as Memento Mori: Using the Seer to See Ourselves” with guest speaker Rev. Christopher Barber. Rev. Chris Barber guided guests through a selection of sights, sounds, and stories of Swedenborg’s life, exploring how his natural world experiences prepared him for spiritual insights.

As you watch, discover how the moments of your daily existence are woven into the fabric of eternity, serving as both history and a foundation for your spiritual journey. Download a handout with all of Chris's questions for reflection here.

Here are links to the videos Rev. Barber included excerpts of in this talk:    • Emmanuel Swedenborg - The Man Who Had...   and    • Splendors of the Spirit: Swedenborg's...   Please visit www.brynathynchurch.org/communitysupper to learn more about this event and past and future Community Supper events.

The Rev. Chris Barber has been a religion teacher at the Academy of the New Church Secondary Schools since 2013 and has been a part of the Academy system without interruption since 2006. He has a wide range of interests including watching films, collecting books, exploring and writing on matters of doctrine, current events, and New Church history. He is currently the Vice President of the Swedenborg Foundation and wrote a new introduction and epilogue to the recently republished The New Church in the New World by Marguerite Beck Block.

 

Past Community Suppers

The Vision for Community Suppers (from when they started in 2023)

We’re wanting to build community—to take a “big tent” approach to congregational life by laying aside our differences so that we may gather together for purposes bigger than our individual wants and needs. As a church community, we need each other more than ever. We’re living in an increasingly fractured, polarized world that too often pits us against each other unnecessarily. The church has a unique role in serving as a safe haven, a sanctuary, to gather people together under the banner of the Lord in His second coming and it is our hope, our prayer, that these new Community Suppers serve that end.

In True Christianity 433 the Lord describes "feasts of charity" that happened in the early days of the Christian Church that "were instituted to lift and unite Christians' hearts and spirits." The passage goes on to say that "While they were at the table, they would have conversations on various subjects—both domestic and civic issues. In particular, they would discuss topics related to the church. .... The spiritual atmosphere that prevailed during these feasts was an atmosphere of love for the Lord and for their neighbor. This atmosphere would lift their individual minds, soften their tones of voice, and allow a celebratory feeling from deep in their hearts to fill their senses." We pray that the Lord will bless our Community Suppers with that same atmosphere of charity.

Upcoming Community Supper Dates

Feedback

If you have thoughts, questions, or suggestions about any of this, please email derek.elphick@brynathynchurch.org.