Reviving Community: The Transformative Power of the Jesus Table

Well, welcome to the podcast, Berlin and Melody. It's so great to have you. How are you today?

Yeah, doing great. Good to see you, GD.

Yeah, this is super exciting for me. You guys have been so instrumental in my dinner church journey, and I know this podcast is really about me retracing some of my steps and recording some conversations that were crucial to me, or conversations I wish I could have had, and conversations I had with you guys right there in that living room, actually, at some point. They were so, so crucial to my journey, so it's a joy to be able to just sit down and talk about this. I wish we could be having it over a couple of Seattle coffees; that would be amazing right now. But thank goodness for technology in this.

So for those of our listeners who don't know you all and your story, could you give us a brief sort of like two-minute overview of who you are and how you came to dinner church? I know that you've written whole books about this story and done all kinds of trainings, but to bring people up to speed who maybe haven't heard your story, could you share a little bit?

Yeah, well, we've been pastoring for what, 40 some years? Is that right?

Yeah, 40 years plus. I haven't taken a moment to add it up, right? But in 1999, we became the pastors of this church here in Seattle, and it went really well up until it didn't. It started to decline. The secularization rate of the city was really demonstrating how out of step our way of doing church was.

So in the midst of that, a number of soul surgeries and beyond, we felt the Spirit begin to lead us to go back and consider that historic way of church—the Agape, the new Passover, if you will—that Jesus pitched on that first Holy Week to his disciples: "Do this in remembrance of me," and all of that.

So we reached out, started to make that adjustment with our church, and we were really surprised how quickly we regained traction. The secular people were very fascinated to do church that way.

So fast forward, we're still the pastors of this church now. It's 23 years in. The church just celebrated its 100th birthday two weeks ago, and the church has become completely reformed and reframed as a church through the city rather than a church on a corner, using all of these Agape Jesus tables—15 and counting now—as how many of them through the city that we have grown into, and we continually see so many more places.

Wow, the Jesus table would just really change that neighborhood. When are we going to get there, Lord? And on and on. But that's just a quick snapshot of our story.

I think 2016 was when it became pretty obvious there was also a call to reach out to the rest of the nation as well, and this wasn't just a Seattle storyline like we thought it was. So that's when the Fresh Expressions relationship started. We started traveling a lot more, started telling our story near and far, and as it turns out, a lot of other leaders were feeling that same angst and frustration as we were and had been. This dinner church, Agape, a new Passover, Jesus table sociology of church really started to be huge for them as well. So it's been interesting to watch them grow across the nation.

Melody, I remember reading the book and really resonating with that holy desperation of like, it's very clear. I think in the book you even say we had a date that we put on the calendar where the way we're doing things now will end just because it can't continue. How was your experience in the midst of that holy desperation and then turning towards this new way of doing church, this Agape Feast, this Jesus table in the neighborhood? What was that journey like for you?

Well, for me, to take it very personally at that point in our ministry, there was a desperation because we were going through a lot. I had gone through a lot as a pastor's wife, and I was in a really burned out, broken place right before we started this turn.

So my desperation was do it or I'm done, to be very honest. So when we started the Agape Feast, dinner church vision, for me, my greatest healing really began because I was mom to these people, and I was walking as if I'm walking people into my home. This role that I had played for so many years as a pastor's wife really shifted to who I was created to be—just a mom—whether they were, you know, twice my age or so much younger. It was just mom, and I thrived in my healing. My healing came.

That's awesome. One of the things that has brought me a lot of joy in hearing more and more dinner church stories is the kindness of God to meet people in those moments of like, "Something has to change about the way we're doing ministry or my ministry." And God's kindness is to offer them dinner church—a new way of relating, a more authentic way of relating around the table that totally can rejuvenate someone who's like burnt out on religion.

Yeah, some unforced rhythms of grace. Yes, please! How about an Agape Feast, Jesus table?

Yeah, instrumental forms and roles are a little awkward sometimes, and dinner churches are anything but institutional. They're familial, they're organic, they operate in such a relational manner that the awkward roles that had been very thickly associated with ministry just kind of are no more. Something really, really changed. Your identity as a Christian leader really goes through a significant change.

Yeah, well, you filled pages and many podcasts with really key insights, both of you, with dinner church. I'm going to do my best with the rest of the time we have here just to offer some questions to get some minds rolling wherever people are at with dinner church.

The first question I want to ask, continuing with the theme of coffee for either you, Melody, or Verlin, is if you were to take your ten-years-ago self—so a decade ago you—out to coffee in Seattle today, what would you tell that person ten years ago about the journey of dinner church, the journey you guys have been on? What would you say, "Hey, you're going to need to know about this," or "This doesn't matter as much as you think it does right now"? What would you say to them?

You want me to go first?

Get ready to have your mind blown and deconstructed.

Yeah, and hearts wide open for an unexpected God. Because it is not what we thought we were going to be walking into. It was far better. God had a far better plan.

Yeah, very true. This Reformation era hasn't necessarily been as kind to Christianity as we think it has. It's forced us to a very logical, rational way of functioning, whereas the faith is a lot more adventuresome and explosive than that.

And when you get out of that, like what a dinner church will do, it takes you right to the front lines of the Gospel in a very relational, socio pattern. And when you get into that spot, what starts to pour out of heaven, what starts to flow through us, it's just so profoundly different.

I think if I was talking to myself ten years ago, I would have used the word "relax" a lot.

Christopher Walk, because I was bringing a whole bunch of "What about bait and switch? What about this?" I mean, the whole systematized, programmatized approach to Christian leadership made you have all of these bullet points that you had to click and check off, and you better get it right because if you don't hold it just perfect, it's not going to work, and everyone's going to reject you, and on and on and on.

When truthfully, the dinner church is going back to the sweet spot of historic Christianity. This is where we are naturally at our best. So to just relax on all of those other flash points and just take that simple journey back to the Jesus table, where Christianity makes the most sense to the already's and the not-yet's, this is a lot more about naturalness than coerciveness.

And I realized how almost everything I had done in ministry had been strategic and on the edge. Of course, if that's a good Christian best practice, coercing, you'd be really good at it, you know, and all of that. And yet now we're moving back into the natural expression. So just relax and just kind of, you know, you're going to deconstruct a lot. You're not actually going to reconstruct much of anything; you're just going to deconstruct a lot, and most of it is this programmatic urgency in bullet points and church planting methodologies and a lot of those things. So "relax" would be my big word.

It's good. I can remember a moment early on in our exploration of dinner church where I just kind of looked around with a smile on my face and had two thoughts: "Man, this is fun," and the second thought was, "The last time I was smiling this big was in my church plant."

Now, there were some pretty big things going on, like a global pandemic and things like that, but it just is like—that's the emotional—that's what "relax" meant for me. When I was able to let down all of the performance-driven, like, "Gotta be perfect," when I brought the expectation of excellence or all of the nuance of how do we present ourselves in this space and just let myself be pastor in the space, let myself be neighbor across the table, that's where the smile came from.

And so I resonate with what you're saying: "Relax."

Go ahead.

I was going to say, on a little bit of the flip side of that, after we—I don't know, two or three years in, maybe not that far, I'm not even sure—I went to lunch with a pastor's wife, a friend, and just sharing with her what we were doing. I started sharing about a couple of gals in that particular dinner church and what they were going through.

In that moment with my friend, I just started weeping. We were in a restaurant; I couldn't even contain myself at these women's brokenness that I had never really come up against before. Finally, when I got my composure, she said to me, "Melody, I don't even know the last time I sat across from a pastor's wife where she broke, where she cried over the women in her church."

Wow, and that marked me.

Yeah, because I needed to be broken. I needed that happiness for the broken that God had sent our way.

The other thought that I had is that when was the last time I had come back from a day of ministry and not be absolutely exhausted and depleted? And yet dinner church, I always come home refreshed and recharged.

And sometimes, like, healed.

Wow. Well, that night, sick and come home. Well, I've had that happen many times, having the almost ever the flu. I probably should stay home, but that's where the healer is. So you can't go work at a Jesus table with the healer functioning the way that Jesus functions and it not really get on you too.

Yeah, but we've really noticed people after a night of working at dinner church, they go home recharged, rested, having a hard time sleeping because it was just so electrifying and invigorating.

Wow. So you all, I mean, 15 dinner churches now is just evidence that you've spent a lot of intentional time with leaders, and you've developed people to grow into their God-given calling as dinner church pastors. You've walked alongside them as maybe even spiritual parents, mentors, but coaches as well.

I'm curious, if someone's listening to this starting out on that journey, what are some of the biggest celebrations and challenges that they're going to face along the way that you've seen in coaching your leaders there in Seattle or anywhere around the country?

Well, I think a starting point is to have a fresh Macedonian-type experience at some point in time during a prayer walk. It's usually the best place for this to happen. The Holy Spirit needs to come upon someone like what happened with Paul and said, "No, not Asia, but you know Macedonia."

In that case, you know, Asia was pretty electrifying with all that was coming down the Silk Road. It was a very fascinating possibility, whereas Macedonia was kind of where the mongrels and nomads lived. So I was like, "Really? That's where I'm going?"

But in some kind of way, we need to have the Holy Spirit really select a neighborhood and a place for us and say, "I want you there next to open up a table there." Because after you get that going, there probably is going to be another next, and there's like this divine strategy that is unfolding that is not us finding the strategy but okay, hearing the strategy, hearing some sort of a deep spiritual experience.

So if a leader feels like this is at the edge of their strategy and they are the innovator, then they're going to go in carrying an awful lot of human pressure, which is actually on par for the traditional church. We're used to that.

Yeah, that's not what these are. These are a very sent thing. "I want you to go set up one of my tables right over there, and I'm going to start sending a bunch of folk to you, and I want you to shape them in my likeness. This is my doing, and it is good."

And there's something really powerful about that Macedonian experience that just naturally gets us on a lot more of a Spirit-led foot rather than a strategic foot.

Boy, we've done a lot of strategic stuff, and some has worked a little, and a lot has not worked at all. And yet we're still all things strategy in this rational age.

But to really feel sent by Jesus to go to that particular neighborhood and open up a table because He told you to—that's a different experience.

So that starts to set up a number of really powerful wins and really powerful things flowing out of heaven, quite frankly, that I think most people are not expecting. We're not wired for that much of a divine dump to come into a room. We're just not used to it.

We've been meeting in rooms filled with the already. Basically, everything we're doing is preaching to the choir. Now we're in a room that is filled mostly with the not-yet, but they want to be with Jesus. They don't want to be around the institutional church, but they want Jesus. Let's talk about Jesus and being around Jesus's people if they were willing to be there in that setting. That's not a problem.

So I think that is probably one of the biggest wins immediately: the shock that actually, you know, Christianity is not the problem; churchianity was the problem. It was a sociological problem.

And to really follow the Lord back to a Jesus table, we can have significant voice and influence with the lost of our cities, even in the highly secularized environments.

So, someone gets this Macedonian call; they walk by a neighborhood community center or something like that, and they're like, "Man, like you said earlier in the podcast, Berlin, there needs to be a Jesus table there."

As you've watched Jesus tables emerge around the country, what do you two perceive that people need on that journey? What are the essential things they need, whether they be human in a team or tangible resources, in order to respond to that Macedonian call?

Well, we've heard you loud and clear say a trust in the Holy Spirit's voice, relaxing and letting go of some of the frames of mind that you're walking in with. But what have you noticed has been really helpful for leaders in that journey? What maybe do they need to leave behind, and what do they maybe need to pick up for this journey of starting a new dinner church?

There's a massive amount of reformation structuring that really is not helpful in the dinner church setting. So there is a real significant need for just training—lots of training—spending time being pickled in the sauce, so to speak.

A cucumber doesn't become a pickle because it says, "I'm a pickle." And a dinner church pastor is not going to become a dinner church pastor because they say, "I'm going to open a dinner church."

There's this stewing in the sauce a bit. It just takes time with other leaders to realize, "Oh wow, I don't need that leadership idea, and I don't need that one, and that one doesn't matter, and that one doesn't matter."

So there's just a lot that has to fall off, and that's why we set up such progressive trainings—day conferences and another one that follows, and yet another one that follows—to create time for the cucumber to change.

And to where we begin to think a lot more Apostolic era and a lot less Reformation era. We had one guy over in the UK; he said, "We are so Reformation-minded. We are so much sons and daughters of the reformers that we know not how to be sons and daughters of the apostles."

And that takes some real time. We're talking about an Apostolic era sociology of church here.

But I think in more practical forms, we have fabulous opportunities where we have traditional churches that have an isolated neighborhood within the shadow of their steeple, one way or another.

If they open up a Jesus table church or a dinner church in a community space right over there or right over there or right over there, that place is going to fill up very, very quickly.

And they're going to likely be doing the majority of their evangelism in that room, not their Sunday room. In fact, almost all of their conversions are going to be happening because dinner churches really are on the front lines of the Gospel, where our traditional churches primarily live on the supply line.

And there is a very big difference there.

So that is one thing: a relationship with an existing church that can provide not only the resources, but they can send a team to you, and you can end up with a team of four or five or six people that would be trained really deeply to pastor that room and shape that room in the likeness of Christ, much like a pastor would feel the responsibility of a Sunday church.

Someone's got to feel that same thing for that Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night church—that dinner church.

And so that pastoral role has got to be carried by a few. And then, you know, to have 15 or 20 Christ followers in the room that are sitting at the tables and eating and practicing that new Passover together—who actually know that this is a new Passover and this really is a divine thing—and, "Lord, use me tonight. Use me to heal. Use me to breathe, you know, Jesus stories and faith and life into all of these new friends that I'm making that are becoming really good friends that I even cry over."

And week after week, these friendships are growing, and soon they're getting close to our deepest friend, which is Jesus. You know, and you hang around someone, you hang around their friends too.

Well, that's where the actual translation moment or salvation moment occurs. It's set in the middle of the relational happening, the relational bond that's being built. And before long, they're observing, "I think this Christian thing is real," you know, and people have been hanging around you in this environment.

Yeah, Wendy was one. You want to tell that part about her when she—what she said to Luke?

Well, I was going to say to this point too, you have to be patient with people. It's a slower process than maybe they're wanting it to be.

And real fast, we had a gal named Wendy that came to all of our churches. She very much declared verbally out loud to everybody, "I'm an atheist. This is ridiculous." But she kept coming and stayed for the Christ story.

I told her once before, "You don't have to stay. You can leave," because she would complain about it. But she stayed and complained.

So three years into this, after having many conversations, eating with her, and imparting things into her life that I felt as the Lord led and others as well, here we are three years. We are turning a particular church over to a new pastor, and Luke was going to introduce him that night.

I'm standing next to him in this serving line. I've got the salad; he's got the entree, and Pastor—the other pastor—yeah, I'm sorry, the new pastor, Luke is his name.

And I explained to Wendy, "Luke's the new pastor of this Fremont Church. She'll be taking this over." And she gets in front of him and puts her finger up in his face. I'm going, "Oh dear Jesus," because she was a verb.

And she said, "Luke, you're going to love it here," she said, "because of her," pointing at me, "and him," pointing at Berlin. "I call myself a Christian today."

Three years of walking with her, three years, and never an altar call, no coming down and kneeling before the pastor, whatever. This woman, little by little, found the love of Christ in our dinner churches because she came to many of them.

And there's more to that story, but that is the point. You know, don't disregard because God really is faithful at His job.

Yeah, He really is the Savior.