I was a “normal” pastor for many years, but in the summer of 2006 I moved with my wife and 3 teenagers to a city I wasn’t from, to ministry I didn’t know how to do, with people I didn’t know how to meet. Very long story cut very short, God has given us connections
with a lot of people, many of whom are artists and poor, some homeless or nearly so, a few highly successful in their chosen professions. Nearly all of them are spiritual cynics, particularly when it comes to Christianity and the Church, although nearly all of them are very aware of their own spiritual natures.
We do ministry with folks in a highly organic and relational way, building relationships that encompass all of life including, but not limited to, spirituality. Two years ago we started hosting these friends for a dinner in our home once a month. It has become the one night a month that I look forward to most, and has become the single greatest catalyst for deepening relationships that provide a powerful context for spiritual inquiry, teaching and growth. Some previouly disconnected from Christian faith have found their way all the way home. Others have simply begun to believe that there may be some validity to a Gospel they see before it is explained. Others may
never come to grips with a living faith in Christ and remain deeply
cynical, yet they seem to trust my life.
These dinners are a ministry of hospitality with no strings, and the
trust born of them has become a vehicle for God’s presence in the lives of people who are largely disconnected otherwise. And I get to be the pastor to many whose only church is this meal of hospitality,
and in which we all find grace.

I worked for two years at a ministry called the Dale House Project in Colorado Springs. The Dale House is residential treatment facility for older teenagers, most of whom came to us from the division of youth corrections. We had kids living with us who had been in for gang banging, aggravated assault, grand theft auto, burglary, sex offenses, you name it. We had teen moms, teen dads, orphans, meth heads, alcoholics, angry, sad, depressed, bipolar kids, kids that didn’t know how to fold their clothes, but could survive for months being homeless. Kids that might run away tomorrow after months of being there. All the kids nobody wanted to deal with we got.
The staff cooked dinner every night. Home cooked meals for twenty kids every night of the year. Brussel sprouts, spaghetti, pork chops, hamburgers, tater tots, lima beans, the works. Desert too.
6:00pm, dinner is served, and here come the kids who were home from working at the car wash or McDonald’s. The staff and the kids all sat around a big table – I think we could cram 18 people on the benches – and served each other dinner. One of the staff, every once in awhile one of the kids, would pray. The kids would gripe and complain sometimes and sometimes they wouldn’t – Mexican again? Sometimes a kid decided that the dinner table was the best time to go ballistic on a staff or another resident and then be asked to leave and go for a walk. It felt like a Shel Silverstein poem some nights. And then there were the dishes and mopping.
But here is what I saw and experienced rubbing elbows with these kids, kids who had never eaten a home cooked meal and sat at a table with a family. The Kingdom of God was breaking through the veil at that table every time we sat down and shared a meal with those kids. When Scot wrote in Jesus Creed that tables can create societies, that they can be instruments of restoration, he nailed it on the head. I watched it happen. Any number of different backgrounds, staff and kids, that could have been dividing walls were abolished at our table.
The kids knew it too because they would write or call, a lot of times after ending up back in jail, and dinner time was always one of the memories they talked about. They knew intuitively that something was going on that they hadn’t really experienced much in life. Past residents were frequent visitors and would often stay for dinner. They came back to experience some of the community that was created at the table. And Thanksgiving – boy howdy!