Clear Branch Baptist Church invites anyone with an interest in the outdoors, wildlife and hunting to attend its Wildlife Dinner on Thursday.

The dinner will be held at the Lincoln Civic Center from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and a free meal will be provided. Clear Branch members will be roasting a whole hog and cooking biscuits and gravy for the event.

PJ Weeks’ Rain Down Ministries will speak on the correlation between the gospel and wildlife.

Clear Branch Youth Director Crystal Stringer said Rain Down Ministries will walk guests through their ministry and discuss the gospel in ways that hunters will understand.

“He mostly tells his stories about growing up and hunting and his love for the outdoors, and then at the end he talks about where we get that love from,” Stringer said.

“We do a lot of community outreach through our church,” Stringer said. “We like to offer free activities for the community and this was an extension of that heartbeat. We wanted to reach out to that group — men, hunters, that whole group of people.”

Stringer said an event like the Wildlife Dinner is essential because there are a lot of hunters and fisherman in the area.

“I know some churches do things with men’s ministries, but there seems to be a lack of it at times. It’s an easy event to invite a non-church person to because you’ve got that built in — it’s not like, ‘Come to my church,’ it’s like, ‘Come hear about something you already love.’ It makes it easy to invite friends to for sure. It takes some of that pressure off. It’s a good activity for fathers and sons also. A lot of them go hunting and stuff together, but it’s hard to make that a spiritual thing so it adds that element to it.”

In addition to the speaker, booths pertaining to hunting will be set up for visitors to enjoy and door prizes will be given away.

“We do door prizes, lots of door prizes,” Stringer said. “We will be giving away at least one gun, gift cards to all kinds of restaurants and stores, deer and turkey calls, T-shirts, Yeti cups and lots more. We do different booths, like a conservationist, forestry people and Weeks Ministry will have a booth set up.”