If you’re a church pastor or leader, how often do you meet your parishioners for lunch?
If you’re like me, the answer is not nearly enough. Part of that is the size of the church, part of that is our busy schedules, and part of that is the ease of setting lunch dates up to begin with.
I can’t do much about the first two of those problems for you, but here’s something that might help the third.
A new app built using the LinkedIn api, called LunchMeet, seeks to make it easy for you to set up lunch meetings with your professional contacts. The best part is it’s free!
Lunchmeet
Setting up the app is really easy. After downloading it free from the Apple App store, setup takes about 30 seconds. The entire app consists of 4 simple steps:
- Sign-in with your LinkedInTM account (necessary)
- Let the app know when you will be available to meet and where
- Search for other professionals in your area who are also available within the same timeslot
- Invite them to a LunchMeet!
I followed the steps and had it up and running in no time. You can let people know whether you are available to meet at a specific restaurant, or anywhere in a certain area (such as X distance around a restaurant or a city). Clicking the appropriate button simply publishes a status update on LinkedIn telling the world (or at least your contacts) you would like to have lunch. Alternatively, you can invite specific people to lunch, or search your area for others who are using the app and are available.
While I’d be careful publishing your whereabouts for the world to see online, making yourself available for people to contact you on LinkedIn seems to carry a lot of benefits. I will probably use this app to let people know I’m available if they want to contact me on LinkedIn (or more traditional means), but not to tell the world where I’m always eating lunch at any given moment.
But I want to hear from you.
Would you use an app like this to connect with parishioners?
How would you use it, or how are you already using it, in your ministry?
Learn more on the LunchMeet website and download it, for free, from the Apple App store.
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