A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community

"A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, Hopeful Spiritual Community asks if organized Christianity can find a new way of faithfully continuing the work Jesus began two thousand years ago, where everyone gets a seat." from the publisher

Today I saw a Facebook discussion on a meme that stated if your theology does not teach you to love more, you have the wrong theology. A person queried what 'love' is, noting it isn't 'comforting people in their sin,' and went on to justify the judgment of sinners. Comments were bandied back and forth, justifying this and that, until someone said, "why don't we just do it"--just love more.

As our society has become divided, so have our churches. We not only don't talk to each other, we don't even want to be associated with each other.

I may not talk about it directly, but my experience shows up now and then in my reviews. I am talking about my 38 years as a minister's wife. My husband served twelve churches between 1972 and 2014, in the inner city and the suburbs and in small towns and resort towns.

The nature of the church changed hugely during these years, and not for the better. As churches competed for a limited number of church-goers, the press was for more 'warm bodies,' flashier worship, and expanded facilities. Generational differences created hard feelings over worship styles, hymns, and projected order of worship over bulletins.

The worst experience we had was at a church that actually divided. Members who had come from another faith background decided the denomination's social principles were incompatible with their personal theology. They wrecked as much damage to the congregation and pastor as possible before leaving to start their own church.

I discovered John Pavlovitz when a Facebook friend shared his posts. I started reading his thoughts and found a kindred spirit. He wrote about how the contemporary Christian church had become politicized and was focused more on who was 'out' than on ministering to all our neighbors. He said it was alright if we have given up on organized religion.

Pavlovitz's book A Bigger Table is the story of his faith journey. And it is about hospitality, welcoming everyone to the feast, the people we are uncomfortable with, the people we don't always agree with, the people we have been told to avoid, and those condemned and cast into the outer darkness. By telling his story, Pavlovitz models spiritual growth. By telling stories of the people he met on his faith journey, he shows us that a bigger table may rock the boat, but better reflects the model of Jesus' life.

Pavlovitz's experience is not so different from mine. He grew up in a nice family. He was taught to avoid certain people. He went to art school in downtown Philadelphia and his experiences in the city, living among and working with a diversity of people, changed his life. As Philadelphia changed my life when we moved there in 1974. Like John, I found the experience was thrilling. I loved being around people who were different in their religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

When Pavlovitz and his fiance wanted to be married, they found a United Methodist pastor who welcomed them. His spiritual life blossomed in that church and the pastor invited him to be a youth worker. I also loved working with youth myself! I loved their questioning, their openness, their desire to change the world.

Pavlovitz was called into ministry and he became involved with a megachurch until he was fired for not fitting in. He says it was the best thing to happen to him because he was freed from expectations. Pastors who want stability and a good salary don't rock the boat. But to follow Jesus, we will rock the boat.

He was "emancipated from organized American Christianity" and freed to follow Jesus' example of hospitality and inclusion, of listening to people instead of pontificating, of acceptance and not judgment.

Redemptive community, Pavlovitz writes, "means we endure the tension of creating peace for another while experiencing discomfort ourselves."

I thought about a church whose sanctuary redecoration came to a grinding halt because the older folk wanted a "comfortable" bland space while the younger folk--who were doing the work--had presented a carefully considered decorating scheme in more vivid colors. It is just a small example of decisions made every day to protect our comfort over supporting visions for change.

Pavlovitz writes, "In fact, most of us who have experienced some disconnection with organized religion would name this as one of our core frustrations: we see Christians making little difference in the world, or making a difference that feels more like harm."

We need to throw over results-based Christianity with the secular goals we have been embracing, Pavlovitz says, to concentrate on building community and supporting authenticity and staying in for the long haul.

Today, all around Metro Detroit churches are adopting radical hospitality, becoming reconciling churches to welcome LGBT, providing sanctuary for immigrants targeted by ICE, supporting the Muslim community, building tiny homes or providing free meals or hosting the homeless and food banks.

It gives me hope.

I received an ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community
by John Pavlovitz
Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN 9780664262679, 0664262678
Paperback |  188 pages
$16.00 USD

Christmas, Community, and Changed Lives

This month I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg for my book clubs. Carol has been a favorite story of mine since I was Martha in our third grade play. I memorized everyone's lines during rehearsal!

The Christmas Carol play presented by my third grade class!

I grew up watching all of the televised movie versions. In Junior Great books I read the story for the first time. My husband and I used to read it aloud during Christmas time and watch all the movie versions. What new could I learn? Turns out plenty.

I encountered Fannie Flagg when her Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe was made into a movie. I read the book at least twice. A Redbird Christmas was not my favorite read. I found the characterization thin, the relationships sometimes unconvincing, but most readers will enjoy the upbeat, positive message of a small town coming together to change the life of an unloved and abandoned girl. I've lived in a small town, albeit not a Southern one, and the part of the story that I saw most real was the grudges that divided people on opposite sides of one river. Flagg's story finds ways to bridge that gap.

Redbird is about a Chicago man on a self-destructive road to early death who takes the advice of a doctor to winter in the south. He ends up renting a room in a dinky town, making friends and creating new and healthy habits. The townspeople have two pets: an injured Cardinal that lives in the General Store doing tricks and pecking open packages, and an impoverished and crippled girl who is unwanted and unloved. The bird becomes the girl's best friend, and the town adopts her and helps her to family and wholeness. Meantime our Chicagoan finds not only health but purpose and community. A Christmas 'miracle' wraps up the story.

We all know about Dickens's Scrooge, that money-grubbing, cold hearted man. He had a sad childhood, worked his way to wealth, and cut himself off from everyone and everything to nurse his grudges in dimly lit and hardly heated rooms. His business partner Marley returns from the dead with a warning to alter his life before it is too late.

Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past  who shows him that he was loved by his sister Fran and Mr and Mrs Fezziwig and his betrothed Beth. It was Scrooge's choice to alienated everyone by putting capitalistic gain and security over friendship and love.

Christmas Present takes him into the homes of loving families and shows that even the most abject poor and isolated men celebrate Christmas with their fellow men.

And Christmas Future shows Scrooge what the outcome of being separated from humanity brings. The wealthy and successful man of business dies alone and uncared for, while the poor crippled child Tiny Tim leaves a legacy of love behind.

What is Christmas about then? One lesson is that we are to live in community, to share each others burdens and bridge the gaps that divide us. That without relationships with others our lives are nil. That it is only through love that we reach our full humanity, and it is only the legacy of love we leave behind that remains after we have departed.

God bless us, everyone!

*****

A book club member told us about The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford. The book is a little gem. In a few hundred pages we learn about Dickens's life, his career, influences on the book, influences of the book, and the pirating of creative property before copyright laws.

Dickens's comfortable childhood ended when his father's indebtedness landed him in prison and Charles in a humiliating and job. The experience haunted him all his life.

Shortly before writing Carol, along with Disraeli, Dickens appeared before the government to argue for support of the financially failing Manchester Athenaeum. The free institution housed a library and offered classes, lectures, music, and exercise facilities. Dickens had toured Manchester and saw abject poverty, houses unfit for beasts, and streets mired in refuse and ordure. It was a "hellhole". Fifty-five percent of children born in working class families died before age five. Dickens said the children in the free school displayed "profound ignorance and perfect barbarism," were filthy, and resorted to thievery or prostitution to survive.

Dickens was eloquent about education as a way for workers to rise out of poverty and become better citizens. "He proclaimed his belief that with the pursuit and accumulation of knowledge, man had the capacity to change himself and his lot in life," the author tells us. "The more a man learns, Dickens said, "The better, gentler, kinder man he must become." And more tolerant.

Dickens's career was floundering and bankruptcy was a real possibility.  He considered a career change. Instead he worked incessantly and in six weeks wrote the ghost story known as The Christmas Carol. Its influence was huge. Peter Ackroyd credits Dickens for creating the Modern Christmas. Standiford says at least Dickens reinvented it.

For centuries, conservative Christianity had rejected Christmas revelries as pagan. It was a minor holiday at best. Prince Albert brought German traditions that were making their impact, like the lighted tree in the illustration at the beginning of this post. Victorians imitated all the 'Christmas' trimmings described in the tale. Turkey was in, goose was out, for Christmas dinner.

The book is a nice introduction to Dickens through his most well known story.