Table
Part 1 of 5 — The TABLE Series
This is Part 1 of five posts on TABLE — a simple rhythm for living the way Jesus lived, built around people already in your life. It’s rooted in what Ellen White called “Christ’s method alone” for reaching people: He mingled with them, sympathized with them, ministered to their needs, won their confidence, and only then said, “Follow Me” (Ministry of Healing, p. 143 — please verify wording). Each post covers one letter — Table (eat), Abide (pray), Bless (serve), Listen (notice), Encounter (be ready) — and you can read them in any order.
Ellen White put it in one line: “Christ’s method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Savior mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, ‘Follow Me’” (Ministry of Healing, p. 143).
Mingle first. Not teach first. Not correct first. And the oldest, easiest way to mingle with someone is to eat with them.
You already do this three times a day — twenty-one meals a week, whether you’re thinking about mission or not. TABLE isn’t one more thing on your calendar. It’s three of those twenty-one meals, done on purpose, with at least one person who isn’t already sitting next to you on Sabbath.
That’s the whole instruction. Eat with three people a week. At least one from outside the church.
Eat with three people a week. Simple as that — they can be from church, but at least one of them should be someone not connected to the church. In my context, in the northern United States, that’s a harder idea than it sounds. Americans are more individualistic than Latinos, and find it harder to open their homes and offer their table. But I’ve seen more and more that as they practice these divine actions, people open up and show that human beings were made for relationship — especially if there’s food involved! In my own experience with my neighbors and with community members in general (who are Americans), we’ve had success including these people in our lives through dinners, snacks, parties, or any kind of social gathering.
The goal isn’t to add more activity to your already-full calendar. It’s to use something you already do — eat — for God’s mission. All of us eat, most of us at least three times a day. That’s twenty-one meals a week. We’re not suggesting you do anything beyond what you’re already doing, only that you become intentional about using three of those meals for God’s mission. What comes up at the table depends on the relationship. Don’t force any subject — remember, the goal is to get close and to relate. Once you’ve won people’s friendship and trust, they’ll give you the opportunity to witness of Christ at some point. Don’t run ahead of the Holy Spirit’s schedule.
As I said, my wife and I have dinner regularly with neighbors and friends we’ve made in the community. We’ve made it a rhythm in our life. They come to our house, and we go to theirs. Sometimes we invite friends from church too, and end up with three or four couples over — a little party. That’s good, because our neighbors connect with other friends, and even if we move away someday, they’ll have a bigger circle of friends than when we met them. If we have two neighbor couples with kids, we invite church friends who also have kids. If they don’t have kids, we invite friends who don’t either. Connecting these people with each other, we see something added to their lives — they see they’re not alone anymore.
We often get the chance to talk about Jesus, but we wait for the opportunity to come from them. Our friends from church are well-trained in this. You can choose to host these little parties or open your home for dinners once a month, or more — some people do it weekly.
One of our neighbors, Kevin, is agnostic and likes to teach me about evolution. Right now he’s not interested in hearing anything about God, so what do I do? Nothing. I keep being his friend, and we keep going to each other’s houses to eat. One of the last times we were at his place for dinner, he called us over to also show off a new toy he’d bought — a hoverboard. It looks like a skateboard but with a motor, and you can ride it inside the house (with a good chance of breaking all the furniture). He had two, and insisted I ride with him. We rode around with it for hours after dinner, racing each other and playing tag.
He’s forty and an extremely successful professional, but in those moments he seemed like a kid. At the end of the night, saying goodbye, he hugged me and said, “I love you, brother. It’s so good to have a friend to share life with.” That’s the language of someone who knows God, not an agnostic. He’s being drawn in by the Kingdom of God and reached by His love, and he doesn’t even know it yet. But he’ll know soon, at the right time.
The truth is, we have to make ourselves more available. If you have to turn down dinner with your neighbors, or can’t spend time with them because you’re working too much, then you’re simply working too much. If you’re too busy to live the life of Christ in your context, too busy to spend time with people regularly, then you’re too busy.
If we live too rushed to show God’s love by giving our time and friendship to the people He sent us to, then we’re too rushed. “Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is exactly what hurried people don’t have” (John Ortberg).
I also try to meet people during the week for a drink or a snack. I’ve made it an essential rhythm in my life, since Jesus did this constantly — and we’ve seen beautiful results for the Kingdom because of it. Sometimes you’re used to eating in front of a computer at work or school — make the effort to join someone instead. Even if you don’t drink coffee, inviting someone to grab one while you have water or juice is an easy way to practice this.
Next: Abide — the rhythm underneath all the others, the one that makes the rest of TABLE possible.