Everyone has a Seat at the Table

My ideal for the institutional church is this:  Live, love, and grow as an inclusive community that offers everyone a seat at the table.  

To live together is to accept the humanness of the “other” and to not judge them for it.  To love together means genuine community is formed with Christ-likeness at the center.  To grow together suggests there is movement, momentum, education and discipleship taking place.  All three of these actions are vital to my ideal of what Christian community looks like.  Unfortunately, though, my ideal, crafted and tested in school, is getting punctured in a world where churches are in fact fractured. 

I hear stories every day of how churches fail to live and love together – stories of congregations splitting over issues that, otherwise, could be resolved.  And I argue a reason for the dissension is that the congregation no longer grows together, for growth happens when people learn to live and to love together.   

So how do fractured churches begin to live, love, and grow together? 

My ideals tell me that a church grows when it opens its mission to providing a seat at the table for anyone and everyone who walks through the door.  I dream of a banquet table in which the disenfranchised, the outcast, the Sunday school teacher, the widowed, the lawyer, the sex addict, the financial secretary, and the Pharisee can all eat.  I dream of a community where people embrace the divinity found in themselves as well as the “other.”  I dream of a church that sees the “other” as human – broken, flawed yet redeemed. 

Churches that welcome the stranger as well as involve the elite have a unique advantage when it comes to kingdom work.  Their mission becomes larger than any one person or agenda.  Their identity expands to include instead of exclude.  More voices are heard and fewer voices are left out.  I believe opening your doors, committees, tables and ministries to include instead of exclude is the key to growing as a community of grace. 

But is this even practical? 

I’m not sure churches feel called to minister to the disenfranchised.  Not every church feels compelled to be inclusive.  Not every church practices polity with equality in mind.  And maybe for good reason.  We can’t be all things to all people.  Plus it’s hard to live in community with people who oppose our lens on life.  So most churches just go about the business of catering to the decision-makers and the busy-bodies instead of the poor and disenfranchised – or vise versa. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  Communities can be and do more.  But how?

It may sound strange but I think inclusiveness happens when churches learn to agree to disagree as well as talk openly about the issues.   Churches that openly discuss and discern God’s will (and land on different sides of the coin) stand a better chance of growing because they’re starting from a place of honesty, humility, and hope. 

The kingdom of God is wider than any one person’s conviction or comfort level.  Churches who understand this reality are the ones that are okay with people thinking differently on issues. 

When you’re okay with others thinking differently, you learn how to sit across the table from them.  When you sit across the table from them, you learn how to live with them.  When you live together, eventually you learn to love each other.  When you love each other (even though you think differently), growth happens.  It happens in your heart, in your church, and for the kingdom of God. 

It may be idealistic, but I believe churches grow by offering everyone a seat at the table to talk about how they see God and the world.