Generativity

52. Food Ministry: what do other Churches do?

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

As I introduced in Post #51, I set about to interview several churches to determine some common denominators of typical church food ministry, and if any of them “fit” the definition of the Christian practice of a shared meal. It was revealing to study the people involved in the food ministries, most easily categorized as lay/volunteer vs. professionalized. These factors regarding who is planning and implementing each program, who is serving and sharing meals, how the programming is funded, the number of person-hours required, and the ownership and sustainability of such endeavors are complex and all overlap, as the following diagram illustrates.

Screen Shot 2017-04-04 at 11.34.58 AM

As you can see, Christians engage in a multitude of food-related programs that are all motivated by a sincere desire to help others and their community. Let me emphasize that these are all good things born out of our love and compassion for our neighbors. Each type of food program has a common set of characteristics that include type of program, its ownership, delivery, general acceptance and sustainability within the congregation, and its basic organization, either as specifically Christian, a plurality of faiths, or a partnership with secular organizations in which Christianity is not the primary driving motive of the service.

According to the interviews, food-related ministries can be codified into one of four basic types: served (SV), shared (SH), a combination of served and shared (S&S), or other (O). The following table illustrates what I found.

                                                                                                                                   

     SH

       SV

    S&S

       O
Food Pantry, Food Truck, Freezer Ministry– food is distributed on site to take home           x    
Meal Ministry-a hot meal on site         x         x        x  
Food Delivery– a meal, sack lunch, or grocery bag is delivered               x    
Gift Cards for Food           x    
On Site Garden or Urban Farm or CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)              x
On Site Farmers’ Market              x
After School and Summer Child Nutrition           x    
On Site Food-related Education/Job Training              x
Small Group Meals Ministry         x      

Many churches I visited had multiple food ministry activities going on. An in-church potluck or picnic, and meals amongst the small groups formed out of the membership (e.g. a small group or Bible study) were common. But, it was rare to find a church in which members and strangers actually sat down and shared a meal on a regular and frequent basis.       

Most of the programs I studied began with one person’s vision. As programming is wont to do, a visionary sees a need and has an idea, then seeks support, both in human and capital resources, and, before you know it, a program is born! After initial growth and success, sustainability is threatened if the original stakeholder fails to organize and nurture reliable and committed human resources (i.e., if there is insufficient buy-in and ownership amongst a majority of the church’s members), if the vision becomes stagnant, if the need declines, if the original visionary burns out or leaves, or if the financial means of the originating church body declines.

At this juncture, I observed two different paths most churches take. In the more successfully sustained programs, there was a natural evolution from volunteer visionary, to paid part-time oversight, to the creation of a full time paid director, a difference I labeled as lay-volunteer vs. professional-paid oversight. We have all witnessed the other path in which the visionary leaves or burns out, and the program is left withering on the vine without a champion.

In Post #53, I will begin to describe some of the churches I interviewed along the way. Stay tuned!

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

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51. Reaching In, Reaching Out: Meals, Food, and Church

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

I have taken a long hiatus from the blog to relax, rewind, refresh, and rest in Scripture this winter.  Thanks for sticking with me!  Here is the beginning of the final chapter of this e-book about shared meals as a Christian practice.  This, and the following weekly posts can help nudge you to think about the food ministry at your own church.

There are multiple approaches to food and hunger through food ministries in the North American Church. All do good things. Some give out food from a pantry or a cash gift card to a grocery store. Others prepare or organize a meal to feed new parents, the ill, the grieving, or the aged. Still others use a meal for evangelical purposes, always letting participants hear that God loves them. And some intentionally create a formal atmosphere more similar to the original practice of marrying the meal with worship and teaching. Some churches work alone, others together, often in partnership with local secular organizations.

I interviewed stakeholders from multiple and different ministries in an attempt to describe the scope of mission and vision where meal ministry is concerned, and to get a sense of how that is working out in practice.[1] Certainly, feeding the hungry is an action believers are called to do, no strings attached. But my visits were predicated on the desire to know if feeding someone a meal rather than sharing one around the table together were practices with different motives, possibilities, and results.

Going in, my intuition said that feeding people can become a community’s collaborative way of loving neighbor without necessarily bringing Jesus and the kingdom of heaven into the shared conversation. And this phrase shared conversation is critical. If the shared meal as a distinctive Christian practice was and is always about being around the table together in God’s presence, and giving voice and assent to that presence, then programs in which one can stop in to pick up some food (no shared meal), or come in and be seated and served by church members (a meal served but not shared between visitors and believers) is fundamentally different from the shared meals of the first century church.   The people providing the meal go away feeling good about themselves, about having met the physical needs of their neighbors, but with little to no acknowledgment that we are all hungry and in need of God’s grace-filled presence and provision, no different than my experience in Seattle with the unnamed and hungry homeless woman. (see post #18)

In essence, it is a fulfillment of the second commandment that may give little or no regard to the first, and as a practice it is not distinctively Christian because it misses this point: we should know the names of the hungry and share with them a meal and Jesus’ favorite mealtime teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We must remember that a Christian practice is only a practice when it is done together, regularly, and with a focus on the presence of God and his kingdom. The meal, then, is meant to be an intimate shared practice, one which most of us must admit is an uncomfortable proposition because adding strangers into the mix intrudes on our personal space and plays on our insecurities.

It might be easy to become defensive at this point and insist that the shared meal of the first century church was shared among believers. But scholars contend that although the early church did meet for worship and teaching and the breaking of bread together, all were welcome to eat and hear and see God’s goodness, believers and unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles alike. These meals did feed the hungry, but they were not focused first and foremost on that goal. The emphasis was (and still should be today) on Christ and the kingdom.

Moreover, the distinctive Christian practice of hospitality is at play in the shared meal. The four components of hospitality outlined by Amy Oden elegantly describe how these meals should proceed. First, the greeting and welcome. Second, nourishment and dwelling together (food and Word). Third, a challenge to know God and live a life which pleases him (this is a most important component of the practice that is usually missing when a meal is not shared). Fourth, the sending back into the world fortified with Word and prayer as well as a full stomach. And so I set out to do this research because I wanted to find out what people and programs are doing and why.

Over the course of two years, I met with stakeholders, visionaries, pastors, and lay members of various churches-inner city, rural ones with membership challenges, and suburban ones with lots of resources. Several overlapping program characteristics emerged from these interviews, including the type of program and individuals carrying out the programming, as well as the ownership, faith basis, and sustainability of each program. My main goal was to try and identify the commonalities and substantive differences across programs, and see if the shared meal-as a Christian practice- was an ingredient in the recipe of various church food ministries.

In Post 52, we will begin to survey the themes that arose from these interviews. Stay tuned!  As always, your comments are helpful as I continue editing the book.  Use the LEAVE A REPLY box below!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] As part of the formal research process, interviewees were required to give written consent to be interviewed in exchange for guaranteed confidentiality.

50. Too busy to eat, pray or love?

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

When we become overwhelmed by the way life can steal our sense of peace, give some thought and prayer to ways you can reign in the overcommitment, and gather nightly as a family around a nutritious meal.  When we are just hanging on all the time, the REAL needs of our souls are ignored, which is the twin necessity for relationship and food.  It is all symptomatic of the SAME problem.

Relationships take time.  How are you doing in your daily relationship with God?  With your spouse?  Kids?  Neighbors?   What about food, both physical AND spiritual?  How’s it going getting healthy food in the lunch boxes and on the dinner table every day?   Are you feeding regularly on God’s Word?  Is your prayer life nutritious?

Don’t beat yourself up.  Instead, think.  Perhaps what are you doing now is just crazy.  Does your battle with the clock rob your family of together time?  Keep you away from church too often? Running through the fast food drive-through out of desperation?

DECIDE.  Begin to PLAN how this COULD all go BETTER if you made even a couple of small changes.  Enlist the family’s help.  Start small and work your way up.  And take pleasure in the results!

Discussion Questions

  1. Who is responsible for the food in your home?
  2. What are some of the food challenges you face on a daily basis?   (e.g., budget limitations, picky eaters, food allergies, wacky schedules).
  3. What are some ways your family meets the disparate food demands of the group?
  4. Who decides what to eat? Where to eat? When to eat?
  5. Where does the food in the house come from?
  6. Who prepares the table, the food, and the menus?
  7. What kind of lunch do family members eat on weekdays?
  8. How often do you eat out? Is eating out usually at a fast food place?
  9. What are your table rules?
  10. How is your lack of time related to your prayer life?  Your love life?  Your family life?  Are these issues really, at heart, just one problem?
  11. Let’s say that being organized is not your strength.  How DOES a family meal happen without good planning?  What could you do differently?
  12. Let’s say you are a hyper-organized agenda maker.  Does your attitude sometimes feel like tyranny to the rest of the family?  Is there a way to plan and be organized without acting like an Army drill sergeant?
  13. Make a table and put each family member’s name in a column across the top.  In the rows, list out meal planning and prep issues that need to occur, and place an X in each column if that issue is age-appropriate.  For example, you may place an X under Joe’s name for helping cut up veggies for lunches, because Joe is 14 and capable of safely using a knife.  You might place an X under Carlie’s name in the table setting row, because she is 6 years old, and this is an age-appropriate practice.  We KNOW you are BUSY, and that it often feels as if doing these things will go faster if you just do them yourself.  But, making a list, and posting it on the fridge can be a reminder that you are actually helping family member contribute to meals in wonderful ways.  Let them develop their talents as they help out!

 

A MEAL PRACTICE TO CONSIDER AND DISCUSS

  1. Set aside four days, on average, per week when every family member is expected to be present for an evening meal. Try to meet at the same time for each meal.

 

Shared Table Blessings posts will be on holiday hiatus until early 2017. Please use this time to enjoy your shared meals at home and with others!  Thanks for reading.

Blessings,

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

48. Lettuce & Ketchup Sandwiches

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

In this post, we continue the list of table/meal rules we began in post 47.  Once you have read them, write down the meal rules you followed as a child, and the ones you have instituted in your own family over the years.  Are there some that you would like to re-visit?  Begin to incorporate?

  • No talking with your mouth full or chewing with your mouth open.
  • No seconds of a particular food until what was served is eaten (or tried in the case of the ‘one-bite’ rule)
  • No trading foods at the table, or eating off another person’s plate, or sneaking food to the dog under the table.
  • No raised voices at the table.
  • Proper use of cutlery is expected (the knife is not a light saber).
  • Keep your hands to yourself and sit up properly in your seat.
  • Pre-determine who will sit where to avoid fights; a rotating seating chart is helpful, as is keeping track of who sits in mom or dad’s chair when a parent is out of town.
  • Everyone is expected to thank the cook(s) after every meal.
  • If you incorporate prayer and/or the reading of Scripture at a meal, decide ahead of time who will be responsible on a given evening.
  • No use of ugly words, inappropriate stories, gossip, or disrespectful tones at the table. Ugly words are just that, words which inflame, belittle, or create a vision of something too unpleasant to be considered acceptable at the table. In our family, this list includes words like hate, stupid, moron, pee and poop.
  • Involve all family members in the “making” of a meal, from menu planning, grocery shopping (and unpacking and putting away at home), meal preparation, table preparation, table service, saying grace, reading Scripture or devotions, and cleaning up afterwards. Encourage children to be in the kitchen- even small children can help put together a salad or stir the soup. Be ready for surprises like spills, cuts, or unusual menu items. The first meal our daughter, age six, proudly prepared for us, after shooing us out of the kitchen, was lettuce and ketchup sandwiches. We were compelled to pronounce every bite delicious!
  • Consider creating a useful rubric, or set of questions for guiding family meal conversation; here are just a few ideas:
    • Where did you meet God today?
    • Who did something nice for someone else today?
    • What’s the neatest thing you learned today?
    • Who knows why it’s good for us to eat this broccoli tonight?
    • If you could invite one other person, living or dead, to share this meal, who would it be?
    • If you could have a different first name, what would it be? Why?
    • What was in the news today? What should we pray about?
    • Did anything happen today that was unexpected or hard for you to handle?
    • Who remembers something from last Sunday’s sermon?
    • What two foods would you have to have with you on a deserted island?
    • What does it mean to be hungry?
    • What did Jesus eat? When he was a boy, do you think there was any food his mother Mary served that he didn’t like?
    • God gave the Israelites manna in the desert. What is that? Does God give us manna today?
    • With just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, Jesus fed over 5,000 people. What do you think it was like to be there and see that happen?
    • Where does hamburger come from? What about ham?
    • Why do lots of people decide not to eat meat? Dairy? Eggs? Fish? Poultry?
    • What are some foods we grow right here in our own state?
    • What makes a Happy Meal so happy?
    • If you made dinner for the family next Saturday, what would you cook?
    • Is there anybody at church, or school, or work you think we should invite over for a meal sometime soon?
    • If a total stranger rang the doorbell right now, should we invite him/her in for dinner?

47. Screen-Free Meals. Or How to Build Real Face2Face Relationships at Home.

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

Posts 47 and 48 will consider some rules you can create and adhere to for a flourishing family meal time.  Because the table is an important training ground, children and adults both need to understand that certain table behaviors and attitudes are expected at every meal. The shared food is really only a small part of the power of the table. It is more important than you might realize that your family table be a place of nurturing, acceptance, and predictability.

At a family meeting, make a list of table rules. Your rules should stipulate that family, as a unit, always comes first. Perhaps some useful rules might include: (you will need to determine the consequences should a rule be violated)

  • All meals take place around a shared table set aside specifically for that purpose on set days at set times. While flexibility is a hallmark of good hospitality, the more consistent you can be in this area, the happier your family meals will be.
  • No one eats until all are served and thanks to God has been prayed.
  • Determine how grace is said, either corporately or by an individual; memorized grace said in unison is an important means for training children in the rhythm of gratefulness and family concord, while a free-flowing prayer by one individual allows for the influence of the Holy Spirit and for practicing the skill of “public” prayer.
  • Everyone eats the same foods. After teaching college nutrition for fifteen years, I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of not giving in to the power struggles food can cause between parents and children. I have shared meals with a host of adult students who still remove the crust from a piece of bread, who won’t touch a vegetable, and think cereal is an adequate substitute for a meal. A child’s taste buds do take time to mature, and some foods which are delicious to you are bitter, or have a ‘yucky’ texture to your child. You must learn to acknowledge that although they won’t like some foods, they still need to try each food presented. As taste buds mature, more and more foods become acceptable, and multiple attempts to “try it, you’ll like it” have been proven to create palatability over time. It is unrealistic, counterproductive, and servile to prepare separate food items for a family meal based on what each individual member likes and will eat. This is exhausting, and does not adequately prepare a child to view God’s great variety of foods with joyful expectation, respect, or thankfulness. Food aversion is natural, but yielding on a consistent basis to a picky eater can hamstring a child for a lifetime. Obviously, a child with a food allergy or food intolerance is a far different matter. If you have one family member with, say, a peanut allergy, it is important that peanut products are kept out of the home altogether, an adaptation each family member willingly makes out of love and concern for the affected individual.
  • Everyone must try at least one normal-sized bite of each food at the meal without theatrics or whining. If you serve something you know will meet with disapproval, a “one and done” rule can save a mountain of unpleasant confrontation.
  • Everyone is expected to help before and after the meal in age-appropriate ways. This can be an assigned service (don’t call it a chore) or a rotating one. ‘Everyone’ means all adults and children in the home.
  • No one leaves the table until everyone is finished- this is family time. Allowing children, especially, to leave the table early fractures the family dynamic, and means that an untended child is off doing his/her own thing with no adult supervision. Young children do have trouble sitting still over long, protracted meals. But, they should learn to sit through and participate in a normal family meal. They must also understand that once they do leave the table, they are officially done eating. A child who wanders away after a few bites, then returns to the table only to leave again is disruptive. You will have a hungry child on your hands by 8:00 p.m., but you need to stand firm. The table is where we eat, and meal time is when we eat. Period.
  • No electronics during dinner. This rule applies to all family members. Do not allow cell phones or other personal communication devices, computers, or headphones at the table. Do not answer a ringing phone. Do not eat on trays in front of the television.[1]

We will continue looking at some more rules in post 48.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] My husband and I were seated recently next to a large, three-generation family at a nice restaurant. To our amazement, the father pulled out a laptop device and started a loud, intrusive (to us) movie for the children at one end of the table so the parents and grandparents could ‘enjoy’ conversation at the other. This is no way to build intergenerational relationships or significant family ties, and it is rude to other diners in a restaurant.

46. Pitching In, Licking Clean: Meals Take a Team

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

For a regular shared dinner, teamwork is essential, because meal-making cannot simply all fall on one person’s shoulders. Our daughter was nine when I went back to work full time. She was already setting the table each night before dinner, and my husband was helping with kitchen clean-up after dinner, so it was only natural to build on that involvement. When I got home from work and readied dinner, our daughter set the table as before. As she got older, she often undertook age-appropriate preparation tasks with me in the kitchen. After the meal, I was formally excused from any further work. I like to think of it as the 5-D plan: dad, daughter, and dog doing dishes. Dad rinsed the dishes, our daughter put them in the dishwasher, and our black lab joyfully licked them each for good measure. Over the years, this time of shared father-daughter kitchen duty helped them build a vibrant, laughter-filled (most times at my expense), and wonderfully joy-filled relationship. They shared music, jokes, and news of the day. They teased. They snuck extra dessert. It provided this father-daughter duo the opportunity to work together and create a sense of collusion in “mom’s” kitchen that gave them glee. It also helped our daughter begin to learn the value of saving leftovers by having to sort them into containers, prep them for lunches the following day, and creatively think about other ways the food could be combined and prepared for additional meals. It was good practice, and today she is a marvelously creative young cook who entertains on a shoestring budget, having learned early that sharing food- its preparation, consumption, and clean-up- is a rich and happy exercise in what it means to be fully human.

This post is intentionally short.  At this point, I encourage you to really think and pray about ways to MAKE a nightly family meal happen…without stress.  This usually involves INTENTION.  PLANNING.  MENU-MAKING.  It is a WHOLE-FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY.  This week, write down some ways you and your family can come together around a nutritious and comforting meal most nights of the week.

Post 47 will begin to lay out some ground rules!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

 

 

44. Tricky Balance:Food Idolatry vs Quick, We Need to Eat!

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

Actually, food preparation is an important concept to think about. We are currently experiencing a rash of new writings about food- what constitutes real food, why fast food threatens our health and way of life, why we should consider eating only locally grown foods, and why the planet cannot sustain food production for the anticipated population of nearly nine billion people worldwide by 2050. The latter chapters of this book attempt to address our individual connection and ease of access to food in the United States with issues of food and water scarcity in much of the rest of the world. For now, suffice it to say that our present national attention to food is, perhaps, overindulgent, and a fascinating study in human nature. On the one hand, we idolize food and nearly make food practice a religion. Food critics, cable cooking shows, and internet bloggers remind us that the world of food has its own language and rules, where food takes on godlike characteristics. On the other hand, such obsession-compulsion and misplaced fidelity is contradicted by a post-modern and relatively mainstream insistence that food be characterized, above all else, by convenience. We don’t have time to fuss over food, and we just want something to mollify our hunger. Somewhere in this dilemma, most of us find ourselves having to work very hard to find middle ground. We want to provide healthy food for ourselves and our families, and wish we could enjoy it together more often.

Unless you have hired help, procuring, storing, and preparing food is a necessity that someone in the home must meet on a consistent basis. Because nutritional needs across the age span can only be met by regular consumption of a variety of healthy foods, we need to understand the importance of the roles of planning menus, buying food, keeping ingredients on hand, and making time and space for preparing food in ways that are appetizing, wholesome, and, yes, even convenient. What’s more, most of us need to do this on a tight budget.

More often than not, this obligation falls to the adult women of a household, but more and more, men are taking an active role in a family’s food needs. One of my colleagues is a single father with two elementary school-aged daughters. The three of them have a routine for the four nightly meals they share each week. On Mondays after school, they go together to the grocery store. Each girl plans the menu for one meal and dad plans two. They walk and talk themselves through the store, picking out the ingredients they need for their planned meals. Once home, they work together in the kitchen to put foods away and begin the evening meal prep. It is not unusual for some of the girls’ friends to stay for a meal with this little family. Each meal begins with prayer, and dad intentionally guides the conversation around biblical stories and themes while having the girls replay the day’s events. My colleague says that this activity of planning, shopping for, making and sharing meals has bonded the three of them together like nothing else they do. In the process, the girls are learning to shop and compare prices, consider substitutes, store and prepare food, and entertain friends in their home over a shared meal.

No matter who sees to the food provision in your home, that person must be well-versed in the age-appropriate nutritional needs, within budgetary limits, of all of the family members being fed. And, if time is tight, it is a job that requires planning, discipline and creative thinking. In Post #45 we will begin to address where to start.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Photo credit:  K. Luymes

43. Table or Trough? Does Your Family Dine or Feed?

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever stopped to wonder if the shared meal is less about food and eating as it is about the time set aside (meaning sacred) for coming together? In this way, the shared meal sets us apart from the animals. Animals feed, eating whatever they find on their sorties, and as their appetite dictates. Humans, on the other hand, dine- a process of planned menu and shared dishes and, in families, companionship (com meaning with, pan meaning bread). When eating at home is degraded to each family member grabbing food whenever it suits them, we lose much of what it means to be both human and family.

For those with children still at home, you might, at this point, be tempted to say that although this all sounds great, it would never work in your family. Your table is messy and noisy, and people are distracted. Your mealtimes are more like boxing matches or a three-ring circus, with fights over food, over who sits where (or won’t stay seated at all), over who manipulates the conversation and hijacks attention. The hour is not settling but restless. I have a friend whose three children argued constantly over who got to sit in between both parents at their round table. With one more child than parent, it always turned out that at least two of the siblings had to sit next to one another each night without a parent on both sides. The poking wars, verbal as well as physical, were endless. I know of another family whose table was always in such constant motion that the mother began reading children’s adventure stories during the meal as a way to keep the children seated throughout the meal’s entirety.

Despite the chaos, it is good to remember that the table is probably the best place in the home for teaching children about respect, manners, and service and sensitivity to the needs of others. It is at the table we learn firsthand what it means to work for the common good. This helps fortify the notion that each child is indeed a member of the family, this tight little community called “us.” At the table a sense of belonging, of kinship is born and nurtured. Will there be times of conflict, of petulant teenage resentment, of childish behavior?   Most certainly. Just remember, there will also be times of shared joy where drama and comedy play out around the table every night as food is shared. If you want to build family, share the table.

There are, of course, other barriers to regularly sharing meals at home. Often, children are so hungry when they get home from school they fill up on snacks then aren’t hungry for dinner. For some children with attention disorders, medication has begun to wear off toward evening making this a frustrating time for parent and child alike.[1] What’s more, it is not unusual for a family with two or more children to have something scheduled for every night of the week. It is also typical for one adult in the family to bear the lion’s share of food-related acquisition and preparation; let’s face it, somebody has to be in charge of the food, a responsibility that is difficult to sustain in very busy families.

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Are you NEW to Shared Table Blessings?  WELCOME!  I invite you to join a growing number of people interested in the importance of the shared meal amongst family, friends, and strangers. Each post is numbered that you may follow the book I have written about the Christian Practice of Shared Meals.  For the best understanding, start reading posts in order, and send comments or questions my way using the LEAVE A COMMENT box found at the bottom of every post.  ~JAPW

[1]Families with children with attention disorders may experience evening mealtime challenges related to both behavior and medication side effects like appetite suppression and insomnia. When the last dose occurs at noon, a behavioral rebound effect (in particular hyperactivity) around late afternoon is probable, and if a subsequent medication dose is taken, appetite for the evening meal will be blunted, and the child more likely to have trouble sleeping at bedtime. Sometimes, a lower dose at 4:00 p.m. is helpful. In these cases, it is often advisable to delay the evening meal so that appetite is less negatively affected. Working closely with a pediatrician is highly recommended.

41. Be GENERATIVE. Sit. Eat. With. Your. Kids.

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

You must make it happen. There is NO OTHER WAY.  The evening family meal is restorative; it provides time, space, food, and companionship for soothing the rough patches created by the demands of both this day, and of the day anticipated tomorrow. It helps cement people together and organize the family as a team. Table time as a family is for discovery too. We share our experiences and the things we’ve learned, and can discuss whether our responses to particular situations were the right ones.

When our daughter began fourth grade at a new school she encountered her first bully. Week after week, we spent time as a family, almost always at the dinner table, discussing what the bully said today, how she acted on the bus, and what we, as a family should do about it. We prayed together. My husband and I advised our daughter to adopt a “kill the situation with kindness” attitude, but not because we wanted to teach her non-confrontation.[1] On the contrary, we felt that intentionally-responsive smiles and kind words on our daughter’s part comprised precisely the type of loving confrontation Jesus would have practiced. At first, our daughter’s responses only infuriated this bully to grander displays of meanness (all verbal), but, to give her credit, our daughter persevered and trusted that this decision, made as a family at the dinner table, was the right course of action. We also counseled our daughter to try her hardest to imagine what could make another little girl so angry and mean, and to pray for her to experience the joy of a changed heart. Was this bully unloved at home? Was she sad? Did she really just need a friend and not know, socially, how to make one? Our daughter prayed for this girl for many weeks. Eventually, the bullying stopped. Our daughter learned that responding in kind is never as good as responding with kindness. She learned that some people are unloved and unloving. She learned to pray for an enemy, and to ask for prayer. And, she learned that, as a family, we took her problem seriously and were concerned for the outcome. All in the intimacy of the family table.

This helps demonstrate how a shared family meal is powerfully generative, meaning that it has the power to produce, or generate a way of thinking, acting, and responding to circumstances. In particular, children learn from the adults at the table not only civilized table manners and social customs, but about life and death, good and evil, right and wrong. In short, the table is a place for a child to observe what it means to be an adult. For believers, this becomes even more significant, because this is our shared practice for learning what it means to be a man, woman, child, and family of God.

It is also deep mystery how shared table time as a routine practice helps children develop a healthy attitude toward ritual and tradition. It has a potent and lifelong carryover effect on their sense of family and belief, acting as a liturgy of sorts for creating that daily rhythm of how a flourishing family life should flow. And, in this day and age, when culture kidnaps our children at younger and younger ages, this table time protects them. The physical food they eat with us is a symbol of God’s ever-present provision, help and sustenance. This family table is the place we can teach our children what we know of God, and where they can watch us live that love out.

[1] This particular eight year-old girl was not a physical threat, nor did she act as part of a larger group of bullies picking on our daughter, and this happened before social networking made e-bullying a reality. This little girl was just miserably mean. One reason we monitored the situation so closely each night at the supper table was to discern if adult intervention was called for.  But, we also wanted our daughter to learn to positively handle life’s challenges on her own with God’s help and wisdom.

Until next time!

Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.