Worship @ The Welcome Table

As we move toward our first Welcome Table worship gathering, here's a reprise of last year's blog post about the name, The Welcome Table...

On Sunday, June 3, from 5:00-7:00, we’ll gather at the Winthrop Wesley Center for our first Welcome Table worship gathering.

The earliest Christians framed worship, Communion, and their community life together around the table. Their gatherings happened in homes, where sharing food, building community, and growing in faith happened simultaneously. Acts 2 tells us that "the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the community, to shared meals, and to their prayers."

Jesus used the image of the Great Banquet to teach his followers about God’s unfolding kingdom. The bountiful table, with room for whoever may come, paints a picture of God’s lavish grace, God’s boundless love for us. The welcome table is the heavenly banquet where God’s people will gather in eternity and at the same time it is each and every simple table around which God’s people gather on earth to fellowship, worship, and serve.

African-American slaves sang with expectation: “I’m gonna sit at the welcome table… I’m gonna sit at the welcome table, one of these days.” Jesus taught us to pray that kingdom would "come on earth as it is in heaven.”

The communion table provides a central gathering place for Christian worship. We gather around the table to remember the sacrificial love of Jesus, to be nourished by our connection with Christ, to proclaim that Christ's table extends to welcome his people in all places and at all times, and to be sent out into God's world to be agents of grace.

When we gather around the table, with all our imperfections and with all our our brokenness, with all our wishful thinking and bone-weary longing, we anticipate the kingdom of God that is already beginning to break into our world. We catch glimpses of the great redemption project that God is already working out for us and for all of creation.

If you are a seeker, a doubter, a do-gooder, or a backslider, you are welcome at Jesus’ table. If you are an outcast, a misfit, or a loner, you are welcome at Jesus’ table. If you are struggling or stable, anxious or ecstatic. If you are stuck in a rut or living on the edge, you are welcome at Jesus’ table. No matter where you are from, what you are going through, or how you feel about yourself, you are welcome at Jesus’ table.

And you are invited to our table - to The Welcome Table - Sunday, June 3. Worship will begin at 5:00pm and a short organizational meeting will follow. So, come, pull up a chair... There's a place at the Table for you!

Surprised by Resurrection

We weren’t living in this house last year at this time. We owned the house, but were in the midst of renovations and were still living in an apartment.

A few weeks ago - around Holy Week - with recent rains and unseasonably warm weather, lots of green things began poking their heads up out of the ground around here. By the big oak tree, thirty daffodils sprouted in unison, overnight it seemed. The first green leaves of iris emerged from the pine needles in front of the house. Will their flowers be white, purple, yellow? (They turned out to be a beautiful peach I’d never seen before.) Of course, the white blossoms of those infernal Bradford pears had also appeared, and with them the smell…


We had watched as things died back last fall. We saw grasses and brambles in the fields brown and harden and return to the ground. We watched as leaves flashed brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges, before littering the yard and filling the gutters. We put the lawn mower into hibernation in the barn. As days grew shorter and temperatures colder, we looked out over silent, barren fields.

We had watched as things died, as things went undercover, dormant for a season. But we hadn’t yet experienced the new life of spring.

In Romans 6:5, Paul writes:

“For if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

In the midst of death and despair, anxiety and loneliness, monotony and madness, may we be surprised by resurrection. May we experience the creative presence of God pushing new life up to the surface from places we imagined only to be dead.

Where do you see (or desperately want to see) signs of new life in yourself, your relationships, your family? In your church or community or workplace? In the wider world?