There’s a roast beef dinner starting at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Scotia United Methodist Church.

I know this because it was one of the many messages I received after my column called “Looking for God in Schenectady” was published and posted online on Monday. If you missed it, it's here.

Lots of readers kindly offered suggestions and invitations in response to my saying I planned to go church shopping. In all, about 30 of you got in touch by phone or in e-mails. I appreciate all the recommendations you took the time to pass along.

Because I jokingly said I was looking for a house of worship that offered a coffee hour and good cookies, many of you worked that into the conversation. “We have really good cookies,” wrote one.

St. Vincent De Paul Church on Madison Avenue in Albany has a “Chocolate Sunday.” How bad could that be?

I wrote that I’d enjoy helping out in the church kitchen, but don’t ask me to teach Sunday school on my first visit. A Unitarian responded: “If you cook, you don’t have to teach.”

Music matters to me. One e-mailer said his church’s choir is “frankly, the best in the Capital Region.”

I said I liked congregations that are welcoming and inclusive. A reader said her congregation has tremendous diversity, “everything from atheists to pagans to humanists with a few Christians thrown in the mix.”

Another, also on the topic of diversity, wrote, “You will see some people in their ‘Sunday best.’ You will also see people with Harley tattoos, jeans and pony tails.”

A Lutheran pastor told me he’d be away from his church this Sunday, “but God will be there.”

Another writer admonished me: “Your title was ‘Looking for God in Schenectady,’ but God is all around and closer than you realize.”

Guess I’d better get my Sunday best dusted off.

Irv Dean is the Gazette's city editor. E-mail him at dean@dailygazette.com.