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In most every church I've ever attended, there was no apres-service coffee/fellowship hour. Rather, the scene at the close of the worship service more closely resembled something like this...

United Methodists are big time into coffee hours. We have coffee both before and after the morning service. Methodists joke it is the third sacrament.

At Friends Memorial Church, being Quaker, they didn't do "communion" or "the Eucharist" or "the Lord's Supper", but they did recite the "as often as ye eat thus together, remember me" passage at coffee hour and saw it as fulfilling the ordinance (which they didn't call it).

I was a member of a church once that had worship at 10:15 for the sole purpose of beating the Methodists to the local cafeteria.

I think coffee hour (or half hour) is a great time. I miss that time of mixing (I don’t drink coffee but there were donuts as well).

My current church does serve coffee but there is no explicit time for mixing before SS, or between SS and church (which we only have 10 minutes) or after church. That is a shame.

This has led to a certain cliqueness where sets of people who eat out together wait at a designated spot for all to congregate and decide where to eat. We have a group of 6 couples. I try to change that in our group by asking other couples to join when we are light, but it has only stuck a couple of times.

Apparently the coffee time at my new church is called HeBrews.

"This has led to a certain cliqueness where sets of people who eat out together wait at a designated spot for all to congregate and decide where to eat. We have a group of 6 couples. I try to change that in our group by asking other couples to join when we are light, but it has only stuck a couple of times."

Thats the kind of behavior that has left me lonely and broken hearted a couple times when I was single and trying to get back on my feet again after a painful divorce. Alone in a new town, with a new job that paid just enough for me to get a cheap apartment and a few items from the dollar store to make it look more like "home", I was hoping to find a new church home and make some new friends like I had at my last church a couple states away. I opened up my new phone book and found a church just a couple blocks away in a denomination I was familiar with and walked over there one Sunday. People seemed pleasant enough, the music was uplifting, the sermon was interesting, with the pastor telling a few jokes on himself to illustrate the topic and I was starting to feel right at home. Then the benediction and a few "I hope you come back next week" remarks---- the next thing I knew everyone had raced out of the parking lot with me alone in a cloud of dust and gravel. There are a lot of people who are hungry for a lot more than a piece of Sister Whistlestop's chocolate cake and a cup of coffee, its knowing that there are people who care about you and getting to know other people's triumphs and troubles are an important part of keeping a church strong and a "Fellowship Hour" is building relationships between people.

Amen to what my wife said.

Well said Mrs. Haruo!

Agreed. Churches can sometimes be the most cliquish and exclusive places.

There must be intentionality to the welcome a church gives. Too many people have been swallowed or ignored by the cliques.

At Church of the Chimes (Disciples of Christ) in Fontana, CA, we have fellowship after every service. Every 5th Sunday we go out full Baptist style and do potlucks and it ties in to the old joke that you might be Baptist if you're expected to bring a covered dish to heaven. We offer a variety of drinks ranging from coffee to lemonade. Our offerings are a nice mixture of Chinese food meets pasta, fruit and of course the familiar favorites of cakes, cookies, and all things sinfully decadent.