by Joe Steinke

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You prepare a table before me

    in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

    my cup overflows.

______________________

Resetting the Table as the Centerpiece of Ministry

An Appeal to my Fellow Leaders in this Current Cultural Moment

Friends, we’re living in a divisive time. Imagine a table where enemies become brothers, where wounds are healed, and where the presence of God is palpable. That table exists. Are we willing to set it?  The table can be set in many different ways and contexts.  Here are four critical scenarios in which perhaps the only way forward is at a table.

The Table of Discussion and Discernment 

I was sitting with a group of twenty ministry leaders around a large long table, plates filled with food and glasses filled with wine, pausing to receive the grace of God by sharing the Lord’s Table together. We had just concluded two full days of discussions hosted by a facilitator who was helping us distill our thoughts and discern our position on a major matter for our global movement. With gentle finesse, she guided moments of personal storytelling, prayerful listening to God and one another, honesty about our sense of consolation and desolation ¹regarding this issue – an issue that had the potential to create a seismic rift among us, not only in the room, but in our global ministry community. We were seeking to be held together by our unity in the Spirit among some diverse perspectives and strongly held positions. 

Jill Weber, our facilitator, describes her experience of this marker moment with our leadership community.  

Please watch these two clips back to back:

PART 1 (60 seconds)

PART 2 (60 Seconds)

Refined Transcript

Part 1

We had a discernment meeting about a very complex, very difficult issue and it was amazing. Somebody had done a lot of preparation beforehand. They’d done all the research, they’d submitted papers for us to read over well in advance, and pray over. 

We met at the beginning, in small groups, just to check our own heart response. How am I feeling around this issue? Am I feeling anxious or afraid? . . . and we just checked in with one another, about our hearts and where we were at, and then having done that, we prayed.  We’re like;  God, we need wisdom, we need help, help us! Help us! 

And then, once we’d done that, we just got into the discussion and people were so honest, and they said the hard things with each other, there was a bit of feisty discussion in the midst of it and at one point, one person in the meeting got really, really vulnerable, in a good way, and it just it just took us into this deep place with each other.  

Part 2

Anyway,  just lots of deep listening to one another and at the very end, we actually took communion together. And while we took communion we prayed for all those individuals who are going to be impacted by the decisions that we made, and many of us wept while we prayed, and it was a beautiful discernment process. 

It was probably at that moment that I’m like; I am in the right organization, you know, and so I think for me too, it just really tapped on my heart-longing, the things that I really. . . the kind of leaders that I wanted to surround myself with, the kind of process that I wanted to surround myself with. I longed for spiritual friendships, I longed for safe places where I could speak my mind and I would be deeply listened to. I longed for a type of leadership community that is deep and real, substantive and authentic. I longed for those things. I longed for healthy and God-honoring patterns of communication. These were the things I longed for. 

Jill’s account shows us how holding this kind of space for open, honest discussion and praying together can help us decide tough things. 
Now, how does this make you feel?

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Personal Reflection

Watch the videos again and follow along with the transcript, this time paying attention to words or phrases you find resonance with. 

Why these words or phrases? 

What is it about these words that gives me a sense of consolation? 

Are there any that give you a sense of desolation? 

What is it about these words or phrases that have dissonance in my soul? 

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As we sat together in this sacred moment, I remember holding up my glass, naming a beloved person who would feel the sting of this decision personally,  as everyone quietly whispered the only prayer we could pray – Lord, have mercy. As each person in turn lifted their glass, named their person, and we reprised this prayer together, it seemed as though we were being leveled, held face to the ground by our own confession. I’ve only been in a few other meetings with this weight of gravity around a decision before, yet the table, the Lord’s Table, was never a centerpiece of the way we held space for everyone and everything to be absorbed into the person and presence of Jesus, the Son of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It was holy, and marked me deeply. 

The Table of Communion and Care 

In this same season of ministry, I was invited to be on a regular rotation of teachers for a Sunday gathering at a local church we were attending. The quality of this teaching team was stellar and I was reluctant to try to step into that space and bring another zinger of a message that might ring the room. So I proposed that we take my dates and host – Table Sundays. 

Table Sundays became the monthly gathering where we reset the room with round tables of 6-8 people hosted by one or two mature and trusted pastoral types. We center-pieced the tables with fresh charcuterie, bread, and wine. ( No worries, we did have juice as well ). We opened the gathering with a song or two, I would give a brief overview of the flow of the service, and invite the Holy Spirit to be amongst our fellowship and communion. The table hosts had a set of simple questions that invited people to share with one another something personal that would be a prompt for prayer for them. It always turned into a ruckus of table talk and prayer ministry that we could hardly pull them back from as we concluded the service with a corporate liturgy sharing the Lord’s Table together. 

This was a feature we implemented after some conversation together as a leadership team regarding the way we were imprinting the expectations of the good people gathering as members of the congregation. We asked questions like – Could we imagine hosting something different than another teaching from the Bible every week? How do we stage the Lord’s Table as a centerpiece of our community’s communion with God in fellowship with one another? How might we imprint an experience that could be easily replicated in homes around their tables? 

Of course, this is what the rest of the Church has been doing for centuries, but we Protestants shifted the focal point from the Table to the Pulpit in the great split of the Reformation. The preaching of the Word got elevated, literally, above the Lord’s Table. Now we just use mics and speakers on platforms instead of a raised lectern. And on the occasional Sunday, we line people down the aisle or pass a pre-packaged thimble of juice and a cracker in neatly stacked distribution plates. Every time I’m in a setting where this is how the Lord’s Table is served, I cringe and ask myself – Is this the kind of supper Jesus was instituting when he said – Do this in remembrance of me?  ²

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Personal Reflection

Changing our church gatherings can make us feel more connected. 

However, it asks us to consider doing things a different way. 

How can you make your gatherings more meaningful?

How might you reimagine and design setting the Table as a focal point of your ministry? 

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The Table of Hospitality and Reconciliation 

I was sitting in a room of prayer leaders who had gathered to hear an address from J.T. Thomas, a winsome firebrand of a black man, who has stood in the gap for many years in the places of pain in his city, Ferguson, Missouri. J.T. speaks like a prophet, as if he’s harnessing the deep magic of the spiritual realm, summoning the authority of heaven, acting like a lightning rod, where you sense at any given moment – This room is about to get lit up! 

Well, the room we were in – it got lit up! J.T. started to speak of how he would stand in the streets of racial riots, where a spirit of violence was afoot, announcing to the powers and principalities of the air that the love and forgiveness of Jesus and His invitation to heal the wound of injustice that had bled the ground with historical trauma was here now! The room got electric with the tangible presence of God as J.T. continued to summon the winds of the Spirit to blow through the land and bring about a new Civil Righteousness.³ We all joined in and added our voices to these prayers, naming and claiming our cities as places of reconciliation and healing. 

Among the various reconciliation ministry offerings that J.T. and his team offer is called – The Table. Here’s his description; 

Jesus’ final act on earth with his disciples was to break bread with them around a table. He said to do this as often as possible in order to remember his finished work. This glorious work disarmed the powers of darkness which separate us and created a global multiethnic family. Furthermore, it made even our enemies our brothers.

The communion table is the family table. The Father is inviting us as sons and daughters to come and reason together in humility at what Dr. King referred to as “the table of Brotherhood.”

In Acts 2:42-47 we read about the young church who devoted themselves to teaching, prayer, fellowship… and the breaking of bread. As they met in homes and praised God for His goodness God added to their number daily. Around the table, they encountered the irrefutable love and faithfulness of God. The table has always been a place to meet with one another, with God, and also with our enemies through His divine presence.⁴

I first heard of this idea when I was with J.T. at a dinner around a friend’s table. He told of how they wanted to stage an audacious act of community hospitality, a true welcome-the-stranger-event, by setting up wedding reception long tables in a parking lot in his neighborhood, hosting a feast that everyone from the neighborhood was invited to, and embedding hosts scattered throughout the tables to strike and ignite conversations. Everyone would be informed with the ground rules for being courteous and curious listeners as people told their stories to one another. 

Well, they pulled this divine experiment off with great style and success. It was soon being featured as a way to bring together diverse people into a dialogue and begin to build some empathy and common ground with one another. Since then, they’ve created a resource – The Table⁵ – to guide others in this beautiful act of Christian hospitality and participate in Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation. It is a centerpiece practice in their new ministry space – The Garden Studio Cafe where they host Table Tuesday. 

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Personal Reflection

Sharing meals can help people connect and heal. 

What is inspiring and brings joy to your heart about this practice of Christian hospitality? 

Consider what worries you about inviting different people to your table.

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The Table of Collaboration and Transformation 

Jon Peterson is a quirky friend of mine whose life story is like a good piece of historical fiction, mostly factual but filled with some unbelievable characters and dramatic incidents that leave you questioning – Could this really have happened? With charming wit and a bit of old-school sass, Jon has written his story, offering a pair of books⁶, where he shares insights as a seasoned and wise master builder of the kingdom of God. But that’s not the reason I’m featuring him here. Jon’s passion is city transformation, and he along with another good friend, Ken Janke, have schemed up a way to bring together church, civic, commerce and culture leaders to do what they call – Kingdom mischief. CityTable is their organization, and it is brilliant. 

In their words – The table is where civic leaders, cultural influencers, the church and marketplace leaders gather together to rediscover God’s plan for our cities, re-unify to become “one in Christ” and rebuild our cities. We hear Nehemiah’s declaration to “arise and build.” The City Table is where we discover God’s heart and power to transform our cities.

At its core, a city is an ecosystem of relationships. Jesus has much to teach us in the 21st century about healing the interactive ecosystem that exists between government, culture, church, and marketplace leaders. We believe it starts with our own personal transformation, flows into our community of family and friends, and spreads into our workplace and neighborhoods. We need to have a Jesus Movement Mentality, where we see every area of life as an opportunity to display Jesus’ kingdom, His words, His works, and His way.

Jon and Ken have pioneered a new ecosystem of relationships in several cities around tables that have attracted a colorful cast of characters from these quadrants of society, inviting them into the danger of discipleship with Jesus. They are learning how to be a spiritual family first, discovering the designs of the Kingdom of God, and then discerning how to bring transformation to their cities as agents of change.

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So, I suppose my appeal to you, my fellow ministry leaders, is this; 

We might just be in that part of the story where we need an inciting incident to change the plot from a clash of culture wars to a common communion table.  

Could the Table, in all these sacred and creative forms, become the centerpiece of our ministry and give new meaning to the poetry of the Psalmist in our day? 

______________________

You prepare a table before me

    in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

    my cup overflows.

______________________

Good Shepherd, Master of the House

Thank you for preparing a table of abundance before us 

Where we can welcome friends and enemies alike

Anoint our heads with oil that flows down

And softens the hardness of our hearts

Fill us with your grace, your love, your mercy

Until it overflows with gratitude

And offers a blessing to everyone, everywhere

Amen

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Perhaps you’d like to consider how a spiritual director might be a trusted guide who could accompany you on your journey of faith. If you’d like to have a conversation with us to explore what this might look like, please contact us and we will follow up with you. 

1.  Consolation and Desolation are terms used to help get in touch with our sense of ease or dis-ease with something that is felt in our body, a gut response to the good of a thing or the bad of a thing, a sense of resonance or dissonance with a matter or an experience. Ignatian prayer practice often employs these two opposing internal responses as helpful guides in personal and corporate discernment processes. ↩︎
2.  Ok, now I’m really showing my hand here. However, I’m in my 60’s now and have developed a strong opinion about this, having helped design expressions of the church over the past 4 decades. The things we do create the culture we live in and shape the people in our care. So, whatever the centerpiece of our gatherings are, does matter. ↩︎
3.  This is the name of the ministry J.T. leads. Check it out here: civilrighteousness.org ↩︎
4.  The Table –.civilrighteousness.org/the-table ↩︎
5. The Table –.civilrighteousness.org/the-table ↩︎
6. Find them here Unravelled & Unveiled ↩︎