No such thing as a free lunch...

Channel 4 have a new comedy drama about the lives of students living together for the first time called "Fresh Meat". In the first episode Joe Thomas' character Kingsley meets a girl in a pub, and thinks that things are leading somewhere. But it turns out that she is part of a weird religious group, and only interested in saving him, rather than anything else.

As Students head off to Universities, many will be enticed by the offers of free lunches that churches are laying on. Many will enjoy the free lunch and move on. These serve two purposes though the first is to enable students of all backgrounds to come into the church and perhaps come to know Jesus though it, but crucially the second is to find those existing students who may be looking for a church and get them to come along to that church rather than another church.

It could be said to be a very cynical ploy to get students both Christian and not-yet Christian to become part of that particular church.However it is labelled there is an agenda.

I have just spent the morning doing a free breakfast for the homeless in Bedminster. Food is offered and prayer and counselling is always available, but there is not an intention to get people into church. The idea is simply that through the provision of food people may have their "daily bread", go away full and warm, if they talk about faith (which they often do) then we will listen and engage, but the primary aim is not to make converts.

Is there a difference I wonder, is an agenda free lunch  better than one that comes with an agenda?  Can a free meal ever be truly free of an agenda?

In Matthew 25 we are told that the sheep and the goats are divided and the basis of that division is how they treated the poor, because that is how they have treated Jesus. So Jesus says "when you saw me hungry and fed me". Students for all their needs are not hungry, certainly not in the first few weeks of term, they may think they are, but they will at that point have enough money for a meal. I wonder if, and this is me wondering aloud, more energy should be spent feeding those who are truly hungry? Whether all the food purchased and passed out among students to entice them into the church should be better spent on feeding those who may not eat at all today?

What do we teach our young people about the church, if we say that the offer of free meals come with an agenda? You may say that they are spiritually hungry, and could argue that physical food is the path to spiritual food, but I don't see that in Matthew 25.

Would it not be better if we encouraged students rather than to take free food that is on offer, but to give food, to share food with those who really do not have enough food for the day? I do not have the answer to this, as I said I am wondering aloud, all comments welcome.