It isn’t anything super formal.  We gather in the evening time each week, and begin by sharing a meal.  We share, laugh, pass the potatoes, and catch up on each other’s lives and missions.  It feels like a family reunion of sorts.

And then, before finishing up our meal and moving on to a time of prayer and worship, someone shares a specific question at the table that helps guide the conversation into a time of discovery, worship and common reflection.

Table Questions are something you can do in your missional communities, house churches, small groups, or simply your family’s dinner each evening.  It is reminiscent of Jewish practices, where a question is asked at table and there is dialogue and learning – both for the children and adults.  This is where family learning happens!

The table is a place of safety, a place of unity, a place for partaking in food and each other.

To be honest, Table Questions, not carefully thought through before asking them, can lead to disaster.  Allow the potentially divisive question to wait for another time - Table Questions draws people out, it doesn’t recoil them into hiding.  It offers a simple starting place for each person to contribute no matter their faith maturity or intelligence, which will help them find their voice later in the evening as you all share in a “worship potluck” (1 Cor 14:26).

Pass around the responsibility of Table Questions to new leaders in your community.  Give lots of people the chance of fascilitating meaningful conversation.  Even non-believers in your gatherings can lead this!  It gives all a sense of ownership, and helps the group cultivate new leaders for new churches not-yet-planted around other kitchen tables!

How to ask a Table Question that leads to life:

• Understandable. Think about the specific words to use.  Say the question once, and say it succinctly.  Make it easy to understand, and folks will be happy to answer.
• Perspectives. Ask questions that point not to hard truths, but to one’s experience.  For example, don’t ask a question starting with, “Is it right to…” but instead, try, “When have you ever experienced…”
• Value-Driven. Draw on questions that might lead to values your community holds.  For instance, ask, “What does love look like in your life?”
• Collaborative Questions. Avoid trial matters.  Avoid doctrinal matters.  Avoid political positions.  Again, these things can wait for another time, perhaps later in the evening, or at another gathering all-together.  The aim here is to cultivate collaboration, not competition.
• Have Fun. Give people opportunities to tell their own story.  Ask them to share favorite memories, challenging circumstances, and more from their own life.  Keep a playful spirit about you.  And always give people the chance to ‘pass.’

Great ways to start a Table Question:

• “When have you ever…”
• “How might we…”
• “In your experience, what does ______ look like?”
• “If you could say one thing to someone else in the room that would build them up, what would you say?”

The table is a sacred space for humans.  It is where our LORD waits for us – a great banquet table.  I am sure there will be many questions asked at that table (mostly, us asking God all those BIG questions we have for him…), imagine your Table Questions as an echo to that banquet feast coming soon in Heaven!

If you attended Christian college, or if you were awake for even a few of your pastor’s sermon series – you’d be forgiven if you thought that “change the world” were the very words of Jesus Christ.  But nothing could be farther from the truth.

In fact, it might be said that every chance the Church has taken to “change the world” has ended in utter disaster – and yet even current Christian churches and organizations (political and otherwise) are making “change the world” evolve into their raison d’etre.

We’re seeing a backlash from the culture in the Christian attempts at changing the world into a Christian world.  To sculpt our picture of heaven as it is on earth. Could it be that Jesus is calling us to something else besides political campaigns, protests, and all forms of effective ministry?  Could it be that even efforts like serving the homeless, caring for widows and orphans, and bringing hope to the hopeless is merely another form of “changing the world” that has nothing to do with the mission of the Church?  Whether you are James Dobson or Shane Claiborne, your “change the world” project is actually counter to Jesus’ desire for his Church…

…That’s the premise of James Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. He states that the Church in our day, or in Jesus’ day for that matter – was never to change anything.  Only God can change a human heart, or a human world bent on its own destruction.

The only thing the Church is called to do is to live as a “faithful presence” in the world – to be a consistent and intentional “picture of Jesus” before the the broken world.  To be an icon of grace – to be the “2nd incarnation of Jesus,” but not to try to change the world – because you can’t change anything, not even your own life – only God can.

I don’t agree with Hunter.  I DO see his point.  I see the abuses of many of us in the Church putting our own desires for worldly influence to wash out the call of Jesus Christ to renounce power and become a slave to the world.  I see his point that whether its the politics of the Christian Right or the Christian Left, the conversion tactics of the Evangelicals or the social justice of the Ne0-Monastics, “changing the world” can potentially be about changing the world to look more like ME – not more like God or his Kingdom.

Even still, I believe that the dream of a brand new world made possible in this one is central to what Jesus invites us to as his followers.  ”Making disciples of all nations” is a call to change the systems built by the Evil One.  That we are to be a “city on a hill,” “salt” and “light.”

I do love Hunter’s impulse – let’s live incarnationally; and humbly ask God to change the world for his sake, rather than feeling as if the change needed will come from ourselves.  Live in proximity to the people you feel called to – and God will do the changing in the lives and neighborhoods you are investing in – only he can change us, only God can save us…