Sunday, September 5th

We’ve been expecting for about twelve months now, and this Sunday will be the official birth day of the Table.

In September 2009 we started as group of familiar strangers sitting in a few pews in the sanctuary of Church of Our Lord, wondering if this idea was just crazy enough that it might actually work. Today as we sat looking at each other in those church pews, we realized that not only had it worked but that in the process these strangers had become a family. The faces wearing kooky grins and few bleary eyes have become as familiar as sisters and brothers. Some faces are newer, as sign that our family is still growing and expanding. We’ve gone through a year of the beautiful mess of community. Yes, we would say it has worked.

We went around and reflected on what The Table has been in the last year. “Family” was a word that kept coming up. Community. Belonging. The body of Christ. Then: a chubby baby. What?

Rachel, one of our newest family members, said that the church reminds her of a chubby, healthy baby that’s just learning to walk/crawl.

We as the church are the body of Christ, and even Christ himself began as a baby. So it’s fitting that we are launching our church with a Christmas party. We’re celebrating God becoming a human in a smelly stable 2000 years ago, as well as the birth of this baby church in Victoria.

Christmas in September? Sounds about as odd as New Years in February (see blog archives for February 2010). That’s how we roll. We’re just a bit odd. We’re also familiar. Familiar as the smell of gingerbread and turkey stuffing in your Granny’s kitchen.

Familiar yet Odd. That’s our theme for our launch Christmas party, on Sunday September 12th. We’re kicking off with a big homestyle Christmas dinner at 4pm in the hall and a service themed The God Who Wore Sweatpants on Christmas at 5pm in the sanctuary of Church of Our Lord.

And if you really want to dive into the Christmas spirit, come join our cooking/baking/decorating/movie-watching extravaganza on Saturday night. Sept 11. 6-10 pm. Don’t forget your favourite reindeer Christmas sweater you’re been dying to wear.

This launch means the end of what has been the Launch Team. It’s just the beginning of this family. As Christ said his last words to his disciples before going up in the clouds he told them to continue to do what he had taught them to do. Make disciples. Eat, pray, talk and live together. Love God and each another. As we begin with the baby steps of our new church we’ll be extending the conversation that we’ve begun this past year, to show Jesus to our neighbours.

This Sunday we chopped up pomegranates and made some observations. Generally it was found that Pomegranates are : juicy, messy, full of seeds, tough/tedious to break apart and quite tasty. Some tables’ pomegranates appeared chaotic while others seemed to have some order to the design of the seeds. (check out flickr or facebook for full juicy details)

This messy and tasty experiment served as a metaphor for what we The Table are trying to become/have become. We are messy. We are juicy. We are full of organized chaos. We are many and we are one. Maybe you don’t appreciate our fruit metaphors, but this idea is pretty ‘core’ to who we are. Even our logo, among other symbols, kind of represents how many individual parts make up the one entity that is The Table.

The Table: What’s in a Name?

When Andy and Josh were brainstorming names for the church plant, they got some ideas from Abraham. When God showed Abe the land that would belong to his descendants, Abe went around the land, staking out the territory and building altars out of rocks wherever he stopped.

Altars were symbols of the way the Jewish people had communion and relationship with God, through sacrifice. Then Jesus came and gave himself as the ultimate sacrifice. When he explained it to his friends he was sitting around a dinner table, explaining it by breaking a loaf of bread and passing around the wine. So the Altar way of communing with God was replaced by a dinner table where God in bodily form sat and ate with his disciples.

Ergo, tables, food and community are the superglue of this church community.

The Table might seem chaotic and unorganized, but there is method to the madness. Andy showed us the projected plan that he and Josh made up before we started meeting in September. With some cartoon graphics and slides it illustrated how the plan will work and has already started to work. Believe it or not we are already somewhere near phase four.

The Table community started with a couple girls and a couple guys meeting for bible studies. Now it’s already multiplied to all of us, only a year later. We are excited to keep it growing!

There are only so many people that can reasonably fit around a dinner table, and it’s impossible for us to build a deep relationship with each and every person in Victoria. (This is where the Giant Honeymushroom church-blob comes in, of previous post fame). We can reach the whole city, one little group of people at a time.

Once our Tuesday night group grew from around a dozen to about forty regulars we multiplied into several groups. Now we have many Pom-seeds/Tables meeting around Victoria, but we are still part of this one big juicy pomegranate.

There are already several Pom-groups:
Langford
Saanich
Fairfield/Cook St. (The Convent House)
Mid-Vic/Fernwood

These groups are in no way disconnected from each other.To keep us connected we still come together for corporate worship and hanging-out time. The team leaders and facilitators of the groups are mentored and guided by Andy. Meanwhile, Josh is continuing to dream up new groups, which will keep sprouting up until this pomegranate eats Victoria.

So what’s your role?

None of this scheme would work at all without each person being involved and having a role to play. When we talked about the “ideal community” last week, this point came up a lot. As members of the launch team and small groups, we each can find our own groove. Like maybe you’re awesome at hosting tea-cosy-crocheting-parties, or organizing outdoor hiking adventures, or maybe you like to play the tuba, or maybe you just like showing up on Sundays with a big grin on your face. All of those are legit “titles”, and ideally each of us will have one.

So far we have a couple people that are on our Table squad that have defined roles, and they all go introduced this Sunday, just in case you’re wondering where the money goes, who picks the music, or why that person is always taking pictures of you while you eat.

Josh= lead planter. (big dreamer)
Andy=support planter. (discipler)
Kate=admin. (behind the scenes important stuff!)
Mark=$$$ (its not his cash, he just make sure it gets to the right place)

“Team Leaders”/ Interns
Madeleine= Prayer (full timer who prays a lot and encourages others to as well)
Kristin=Good-doer (organizes community outreach)
Caitlin=Artiste (painter- you may see her work on our website!)
Dominique=Social atmosphere police (makes sure we’re not freaking people out)
Joshua=Music (plays the guitar and sings real nice)
Sarah=Communications (picture-snapper, blogger and publicist)
Jonathan=Artizo (pastoral-in-training)

Our last Conversation Night (for now…) was a Potluck of food and topics. We had some lasagne, pizza, cheese dip, fruit and pumpkin pie, and selected from a hodge podge of topics to talk about.

To get us in the mood Josh and Camden serenaded us with some beats while Jonathan slammed some ‘Bible poetry’. Sound kind of corny-youth-group-ish? Once we all snickered a bit we actually quite enjoyed it. He was slammin from the conclusion of Jesus’ speech on the mountain in which he said not to be religious hypocrites if we want to avoid getting BBQed, among other uncomfortable statements.  Given the word go, each table group took off in a totally different direction with the topic. There was some friendly antagonism. There was hoots of laughter from one table. Another had some heart to heart bonding.

In the last 3.5 months we’ve all enjoyed getting to know one another through sharing our opinions, however they may differ. We are sad it’s over, but stay tuned for a new series in the fall.

But…

The fun isn’t over yet!

Starting next week (May 18) we will be ‘multiplying’ into small house groups. This is a chance for you to get up close and personal with a group of 6 to 12 people.

Each of the three groups will be a little different, but it will be the same  Table essentials : food , talking, cool people. Who knows, we may even throw in some singing. Over the summer we are going to be reading people’s mail. Namely this letter to a group of people living in Ephesus written by a guy named Paul. Sound boring? We promise its not.

We really want you to check out one of the house groups! There’s one for each general area of Victoria.

Lower Victoria- Downtown/Fairfield/Cook St. Village area: Convent House (it’s not a nunnery)

Central Victoria-Fernwood/Cedar Hill Area: Alternating the Ross and Saucy Residences

Upper Victoria- Mackenzie/Quadra area, near UVic: Century House

More details on the houses and their locations are on The Table facebook group, or drop us an email.

Thanks for making this Conversation series so fun! We look forward to doing it again.

“Beauty fades, dumb is forever.”- Judge Judy

Here is one lady you who’s wrong side you want to avoid. She has been executing swift judgement (peppered with the odd insult) during the eight-televised minutes of her show for 13 years. At the end of it someone goes to jail and those of us watching television at one in the afternoon are slightly less bored than we were before.  She calls it “A show where justice is dispensed at the speed of light”.

This is someone who has a pretty firm belief in their ability to judge people correctly. And she’s not interested in your opinion on it. “The only attitude I tolerate around here is my own! You speak, then I rule, and after that you shut up. Do you understand?”

Nobody likes being around someone that judgmental. Unfortunately, Christians get some of the worst flak for judging. Which is kind of backwards, because according to the passage we looked at this week, if you’re an honest-to-God follower of Jesus you shouldn’t be judging anyone. This is the quote from Jesus: “Do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Jesus was a carpenter by profession, so he made a neat little illustration using wood lingo. He says to deal with the 2X4 sticking out of your eye socket before you go pointing out flakes of sawdust in your friend’s eye. Josh paraphrased this accurately by saying “To all you grumblers and cynics out there, check yourself before you riggity-wreck yourself.”

Okay, fair enough. If you’re a criticizing jerk, people will be criticizing jerks to you. All this said, we are not saying that we should be so ‘non-judging’ that we let people get away with murder. Literally. There must be such a thing as ‘correct judgement’.

As much as we might not like Judy, we like the fact that certain criminals get penalties for their actions. So some judgement is good. Without it our world would fall apart. But Correct and Fair judgement relies on their being a correct and fair Judge. Judy thinks she’s up for the job: “Of course I’m right; I’m always right. I’m like a truth machine.”

Most of us, most of the time are going to have an inaccurate judgement of others and their actions. This is what Jesus is egging at: Don’t judge but external appearances. It says elsewhere in the Bible that humans look at the outside, while God looks at the heart.

Assuming that you can’t read someone’s soul, play it safe and don’t judge people. Unless you’re Judy who apparently is so smart that “If you live to be a hundred, you will never be as smart as me. On your Best day, you’re not as smart as *I* am on my Worst day.”

Church is not a spectator sport.

If you think that you can watch others on the field from your the couch with the popcorn, then you’re probably under one of these misconceptions ( and most of us are ):
1. Problems? What problems? There is nothing wrong with me, you, or the world in general. It’s all peachy keen.
2.  The problems of the world can only be fixed by superheroes.

Church is not for spectators or superheroes.

Paul wrote a challenging (yet kind) letter to the church in Ephesus. Taking cues from this letter, Andy also challenged us kindly this past Sunday at Table Launch team. We have been looking at the core values of The Table and church (hence: The Table- What the Heck?)

Wake up and smell the asphalt: our world is a mess.

We are in a war. You can see this war reflected in everything from the movies we watch, to natural disasters, to the way kids play on the jungle gym. There is this cosmic and historical battle going on between good and evil. This story is in us. The hero will beat insurmountable odds, will fight a terrifying enemy, come within a hair of defeat and when it seems all is lost, the hero with triumph. Good will be restored to the world and we shall all ride off into the sunset. That’s how it goes, right?

So are we still waiting for rescue from a superhero? The great thing is that as Christians we are in on the biggest secret in history: The War Has Already Been Won. Death and evil were defeated when a Jewish carpenter was executed on a cross. It seemed all hope was lost, but death couldn’t hold this hero down.

If the war was already won, then why are we still here in this mess? We are still waiting for rescue. Scripture says “the whole of creation groans for rescue”. It’s not just humanity that is waiting.

When God made the earth he said everything was good. But there was only one thing he chose on earth to bear his image. And that was us. (Question: how many humans does it take to reveal the Image of God?* )

Paul suggests that all of creation, all of the cosmos, is waiting for something. “For the sons and daughters of God to be revealed.”

This is where the spoils of war come in. We got something when the war was won. The battle continues but we have been given the ability to become sons and daughters of God. We were all adopted into this big crazy family. This was the inheritance we lost in the garden, but have now regained. We were all given different abilities and gifts , or “superpowers”. Like any hero or anti-hero, you can use those powers for good or evil. It’s your choice.

There’s no Plan B. No one is getting off this earth alive. The choice you have is whether to fight or spectate. This dream we are fighting for truly is impossible, by our own strength. Humanity is a story of failure after failure, often because we have tried to strike out like the lone ranger and tried to prove ourselves.

Jesus hasn’t come back for the final rescue yet because he’s waiting for us. The happy ending of this story is a wedding. Between the ‘bride’ of the unified church and her savior. But until she stands up to fight in unity, creation will keep waiting.

Sound hopeless? If we had to do this on our own strength, it truly would be. But there is a greater power working within us. Each part of the church community is not just benefitial, its essential.

*Answer to earlier question: It take every person on earth to reveal God’s image. One day God will be revealed to all of creation through us, the sons and daughters.

Most of us have tried prayer at some point, or at least have formed opinions about what it is. Maybe it’s what you do when you really want the Canucks to win the playoffs. Or when you want to boost your chances at winning the lottery. Or maybe it would be a last resort when the treatments fail and the diagnosis does not look good.

Some think that ‘prayer’ is a good way to clear your head of stress, and switch off your brains you can do some gravity defying yoga stretch. Or maybe you think any kind of psychic communication with other beings is just for religious weirdos who shave their heads, live in caves and have no grounding in reality.

And really, who can prove that they have the corner on the ‘right way to pray’. No one else can peer into your brain to see if those brainwaves of communication are coming from a higher being or if its just the manifestation of that spicy taco you had for lunch.

Whether or not you believe in higher beings and our ability to communicate with them, the facts are that a lot of people claim that prayer not only makes them feel better and solve their problems, but that it actually changes the outcome of situations. So what, you may say. Some people believe in aliens. Let them believe it, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Culturally it’s not correct for anyone to say that what they believe applies to other people.

Back in the day, 2000 years ago, praying made you look pretty cool. The religious leaders in Israel used to pray on street corners in loud voices and this made them feel really good about themselves. (Nowadays this would have the opposite effect on your popularity, but that’s besides the point).

Then Jesus came along and messed up their party. (He did this a lot. Hence, they had him murdered.) He said “Don’t be like hypocrites who like to be seen praying in the synagogue and on the street corners, they have another thing coming.” Then he told his listeners that when they pray they should lock themselves in their closet and talk to their Daddy Who Is Unseen. Praying in a closet where no one else can see or hear you does not benefit you in any way, or even promote your religion, unless perhaps this God who you are talking to is real.

Jesus then said “Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  Not many religions will tell you to pray in secret, because it doesn’t give any glory to you or to the religion. But what Jesus was probing at was that God wants a one-on-one relationship with us, like a Daddy with his kid. A lot of people when they pray drivel on endlessly and probably make God’s ear sore, and anyone else’s ear who might be nearby. But this Invisible Daddy God can also read your mind and knows what you need before you even open your mouth.

This is when Jesus gave an example prayer which had become known as the Lord’s Prayer, which covers all the basics of conversation with God without getting too wordy. This prayer is not some kind of magic formula. God isn’t some kind of cosmic vending machine that we can use to get rich and make people fall in love with us. In fact the Lord’s prayer doesn’t have a line that says “give me every inkling little whimsical desire of my heart”. It does say “give us our daily bread”. Or, give us what we need to stay alive so we can keep serving you. Which is much more humbling. Just like saying “your will be done” to a big powerful God means that we relinquish our need to try to armwrestle God into doing things the way we want it. It also talks about an uncomfortable thing called forgiveness which seems sort of an unremovable part of this relationship that God wants to have with us.

None of us has had the same experience of prayer. Some on Tuesday said they had experienced amazing coincidences in their lives which they owe to prayer. Others think that while it’s all fine and dandy for some people, talking to an invisible mind-reader in their closet isn’t their cup of tea. Nonetheless, we all had some tea and blueberry pie and made some new friends.

What do you do?

Option 1: Fling down the gummy bears and run for the nearest tree.

Option 2: Bust out your lightsaber and defend your gummy bears, risking life and limb. This may  not end well.

Option 3: Say “Sure DV. And hey, while you’re at it, I have this box of delicious truffles. Perhaps you would like those as well?”

You’d have to be crazy, or maybe just a saint like Ghandi to do that last one. If you’re already being robbed why would you want to give up something even better as well? For most of us, this would not be our first reaction.

Ready for Radical Statements of Jesus number 3? “You have heard the term ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you this: don’t resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them your left cheek as well. If someone steals your value village sweater, give them your lulu lemon jacket as well. If someone makes you walk a mile, walk another mile with them. Give to the one who asks you, and don’t turn down the one who wants to borrow from you.”

This sounds like Jesus wants his followers to be total pushovers. He doesn’t seem too concerned about people’s individual rights.

If someone comes and slaps us in our face, most of us would at least want to give that person death-glares, egg their car, or put laxatives in their coffee, if not give them a full out roundhouse kick to the face. But no. Apparently if you follow Jesus he wants you to stand there and take it, and let them have another free shot at you.

This could easier get you criticized for being a wuss, or just stupid. But this goes along with the theory that strength is defined by how intimidating and aggressive you are. Jesus might be pointing out that real strength is in the not retaliating.

We think that there are cases where letting yourself be abused is not a good thing, and we don’t think that’s what Jesus wanted. But part of the cost of following him means giving up our right to take revenge when everything in our nature is telling us to.

So here’s another little example.

Christoffersson is enjoying the spring air sitting on a park bench, minding his own business. A dubious character sneakily approaches.

The thief snatches Christofferson’s backpack. “Mwahaha!” she says.

Christofferson faces a dilemma. He liked his backpack. It held many of his prized possessions, which are now in the clutches of a thief.

Christofferson remembers what we talked about on Tuesday night at the Table. Although it is not easy for him, he decides to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile…

He hands over his prized knit sweater. The villainous thief pauses. “What the heck?” she says. Christofferson smiles, knowing he has done the right thing. And who knows, maybe his altruistic gesture will inspire her to give up her thieving ways and be a better person in the future.

This week’s revelation was that we (the Table, the church, this group of people sitting around the sanctuary on Sunday afternoon) are like a humongous honeymushroom. If you’re like most of us who don’t know what that is, it’s the biggest living organism on earth, that grows the size of about 2200 acres. (The author of this post has an aversion to fungi and is absolutely terrified that such a mushroom exists). Why haven’t you seen any of these suckers in grocery stores or chilling out in fields before? They are mostly underground, and only sprout up a few little mushrooms here and there.

So the church is like a honeymushroom. We are all part of this one massive body. ( Are you rolling your eyes yet?) So in theory, if one part of the body/mushroom gets hacked off then the rest of the body goes “ow”. Just like you probably would want to prevent your arm falling off, as the church community we have to stick together and watch out for each other.

This is not very convenient for any of us. The honeymoon phase will inevitably end and our blemishes will start to show. As the novelty wears off we become less forgiving and more peevish, we also become more painfully aware that others are seeing past our sugar side. They might be getting annoyed at us too. One option at this point is to ditch and run, becoming the romantic vagabond who doesn’t need nobody. This scenario will probably end with you being lonely and depressed, possibly in a cabin in the Yukon talking to a horse. But this messy, beautiful thing called community doesn’t work like that.

God wouldn’t ask us to be in community with each other without setting the example. God the Father hangs out with the Son and the Spirit in eternal community and love, exemplifying what God wants for us humans.

A lot of people say “I don’t want to burden you.”  But guess what. You are a burden. None of us is a summer peach. But what if you knew that there was a group of people who would stick it out with you, on your good days and bad days? Church fellowship isn’t about cookies and tea after the service. It’s hard, messy work. And we certainly can’t do it on our own.

The letter Paul wrote the Ephesian church has a lot of good advice about this. Their church was the only one in town back then, and they might not have been much bigger than our group at The Table. They didn’t have the luxury of switching to a more “comfortable” church. They had to slog it out with each other the hard way. Paul gave them some good advice: “walk with your hands.”

Most of us have a hard time walking on our hands. It’s about as hard as loving people when they tick you off. But here’s an easy way to remember it.

The hand has five fingers:

Pinky: the weakest finger represents humility. Putting others before yourself. There’s no room for superiority. There’s no cool kid’s table at church.

Ring: obvious. The wedding ring represents love. Not just romantic love, but the kind of agape love that is faithful and forgiving and endures hard times.

Middle: this is the finger you might be tempted to use to exhibit your frustration in traffic. But patience prevents us from using it, and from enduring even when we have been wronged by others.

Index: you can poke someone in the chest or point the finger and exert your power over someone else, but gentleness restrains emotion and chooses not to use force.

Thumb: you’re pretty useless without your thumb. You need it to work tools, and you need tools to maintain the unity of the church.

So this all sounds terrific. And really fluffy. Having a cute little analogy is great and all, but if these things are actually lived out the result is truly radical.

For us at The Table we are still sort of in a glowing honeymoon phase, but it won’t last forever. That’s where the commitment really comes in. We are not only committed to God but to each other. This has to hit home for each of us on an individual level. So when the effluent hits the cooling system of life we’ll stay rooted and live with humility, patience, gentleness and love.

So embrace the awkwardness of love and community.

These lilies are better dressed than any runway model. For real. Jesus said ” consider the lilies of the field. They do not sew clothes or go shopping, but even Solomon wasn’t at well dressed as they are.” Understand, Solomon was a major stud.  Possibly the richest guy who ever lived with more wives than he knew what to do with. He wrote some wise sayings you can find in the book of Proverbs. But he can’t even compare to lilies?

During his famous speech on a mountain, Jesus also went on to talk about food.  Summed up it went something like this. “Look at the birds of the air. They do not farm or keep kraft dinner in their cupboards, and yet they are fed with the leftovers of trailer park lunches and thrown out fast food.”

The big theme of this speech was WHY WORRY? If birds survive and flowers look hot, why are you spending so much time worrying about what you eat and wear?

This idea seems totally backwards in our culture where we are defined by our work, and by how much we can buy with the money we work for.

Jesus generally made a lot of rich people uncomfortable by telling them to sell all their stuff or give it to the poor. You can be sure it did not boost his popularity, but for some reason this did not worry him so much.

He told a story about a rich guy who farmed and farmed and got so much grain that he kept buliding bigger and bigger barns to keep it all in. The guy thought he was pretty cool, but one night he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. His wealth could not keep him from death, and all his big barns full of grain went to the birds.

So what’s Jesus saying? Quit your job, wear flower petals and eat out of dumpsters? We don’t think he’s telling us to give up our common sense. There is a lot of good that comes from planning for the future to ensure the survival of ourselves and others. But maybe he’s challenging our cultural world view that is work focused. So many people live to work. It becomes the definition of who we are so that when we have nothing to do we start to go a little mental.

It seems he’s probing at something deeper– that the meaning of life goes much deeper than what we do externally. He said “Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing?”

Jesus says that God knows what we need and he provides it. But some challenge this and say that there’s plenty of birds and people out there dying of hunger. What about them?

It’s a big question, and one that was discussed a lot last Tuesday. Maybe we are supposed to be part of the solution. Ghandi said, “There is enough for every man’s need but not every man’s greed.” Maybe some of us taking too much has been what has caused this imbalance.

When Jesus got up on the mountain and started talking, he started off by saying “Blessed are the poor”. What’s blessed about being poor? Maybe he was getting at the truth that when you aren’t consumed with getting all this stuff that you don’t really need, and you have to rely on a higher power to get the basic necessities of life, then maybe you get to find out what life is about beyond the external.

Who knew digging up dirt, giant worms and weeds could be so much fun? Throw together some April sunshine, a BBQ master and a bunch of enthusiastic Tablers and you have yourself a fun Sunday afternoon. After grilling up some steaks and delicious veggies patties we spent a couple hours digging up the Wilton’s backyard. To pass the hours we sung songs, told embarrassing stories and tried to see who could find the biggest, grossest worm.  It was a pleasant afternoon, and hopefully the first of many to follow !  The veggies will go into the ground soon and may make later appearances at Table dinners throughout the year.