LONG TABLES

Here’s an early church practice that needs to be brought back: frequent opportunities for the congregation to eat together.

This simple but intimate act could well be what our ailing culture is missing.

“We live in an era of burgeoning social isolation that harms the mental and spiritual wellbeing of individuals and undermines the harmonious functioning of institutions.”

So says author Antone Martinho-Truswell, who points to one solution that you’ll already find in many a church’s fellowship hall: The Long Table.

He says sharing a meal all together at a long table, rather than scattered across square or round ones restaurant-style, provides a sense of community too often missing from our present day lives.

And just to really drill down on interaction among people, Truswell recommends the “Club House Rule”:

“When you arrive at informal dinner, you have precisely no choice where or with whom you sit. Instead, you take your plate, head to the first of the long tables, and sit in the westmost open seat. Over the course of the service, the table fills up from west to east, and any gaps fill as previous diners finish and depart. No one sits at the second table unless the first is completely full. Finally, if you see anyone sitting alone at a different table, it is the responsibility of every member of the house to trot right over and sit opposite them with a beatific smile, and either eat there or drag them over to the communal table.”

How awesome would it be to institute the Club House Rule at every potluck dinner, youth group gathering, and fellowship hour!

(And can you imagine filling the Sunday morning pews in this way? Talk about a shake up!)

Read the whole article, “Take a Seat: The Long Table is an Antidote to Loneliness”, and you’ll find yourself yearning for an intimate meal with strangers.

Let's put our fellowship halls and their long tables to more frequent use!

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Acts 2:46-47

"They were eating their meals together with joy and generous hearts, praising God continually, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord kept adding to their number daily those who were being saved.”