Luncheons following Sunday morning worship are huge at our church. We pick a Sunday in the Spring/Summer months and plan a huge birthday party. We decorate our fellowship hall to look like a 5 year olds birthday party with streamers, balloons, banners, party hats and lots of party favors. I even have one parent that makes balloon sculptures as table decorations.
Then I recruit 12 great bakers in our church to make a different cake, one for each month of the year. We have one huge dessert table with all 12 cakes on it and we also serve ice cream! We also serve summer type foods – bake chicken, salad, a veggie and some sort of bread.
We announce the event in our monthly newsletter and then the week prior I send out personal invitations to everyone at church. This is a great time to celebrate everyone’s birthday in one huge party and I even have the youth go around and put “happy birthday” stickers on everyone and thank them for supporting our youth mission trip. We don’t charge for this meal but accept donations, we very rarely charge for our events because we bring in hundreds more in donations. Our suggestion for donation is $1 for every year you are born (i.e. $25 if you are 25 years old) or on the day you were born (i.e. July 19 would be $19). People get creative and have a great time. We have a small church and usually have around 80-100 each year at this dinner but we’ve raised over $2,000!