In Search of a Round Table

Concerning the why and how and what and who of ministry, one image keeps surfacing: a table that is round.

It will take some sawing to be roundtabled, some redefining, and redesigning,

Such redoing and rebirthing of narrow long churching can painful be for people and tables.

However, so was the cross, a painful too table of giving and yes.

And from such death comes life, from such dying come rising, in search of roundtabling.

And what would roundtable churching mean? It would mean no separating and throning, but for one king is there, and he was a foot washer, at table no less.

But the times and the tables are changing and rearranging.

And what of narrowlong table ministers, when they confront a roundtable people, after years of working up the table (as in “up the ladder”) to finally sit at its head, only to discover that the table has turned round?

They must be loved into roundness, where apart is spelled a part and the call is to the gathering.

For God has called a People, not "them and us.” "Them and us" are unable to gather round, for at a roundtable, there are no sides and ALL are invited to wholeness and to food.

At one time, our narrowlong churches were built to resemble the Cross, but it does no good for buildings to do so, if lives do not.

Roundtabling means no preferred seating, no first and last, no better, and no corners for the "least of these.”

Roundtabling means being with, a part of, together, and one.

It means room for the Spirit and gifts and disturbing profound peace for all.

It is no magic bread we are baking, for the dough we are dealing with must and will take its dying-in-order-to-rise-again-in-time.

And it is we in the present who are mixing and kneading the dough for the future. We can no longer prepare for the past.

We are called to be Church, and if He calls for other than round tables, we are bound to follow.

Leaving behind the sawdust, chips, designs, and redesigns. In search of and in the presence of The Kingdom that is His and not ours. Amen

(from a Gentle Presence by Chuck Lathrop)