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| Justin Fast/Courtesy of Justin Fast |
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You’re the lead pastor of Samara Church in Lansing, MI. which has a
form of gathering based upon a shared meal called ‘dinner church.’ Could you
explain the concept?
The dinner church concept is a modern take on ancient communal
meals known as Symposia that were the norm throughout the Mediterranean
world and served as Christians’ primary gathering for at least the first two
centuries of the fledgling faith. Symposia featured multi-course dining,
unstructured social interaction, oration or teaching, structured dialogue, songs
and prayers, all of which, together, constituted worship. Importantly,
communion (the Eucharist) and care for the poor were crucial
parts of each meal. Participants broke class, gender, racial, and political
barriers together, as well as bread, and raised a glass in remembrance of – and
in allegiance to – Jesus (instead of the Roman Emperor, as would have been the
norm). Churches also used the Symposia to practice reciprocity within
(and outside of) the community by sharing food and other belongings as needs
arose.
What’s old is new again. Dinner church is simply the church gathered
around the dinner table instead of in the pews (often, but not always, in members’
homes) - in much the same ways as our Symposia
nearly 2,000 years ago. Jesus, the stories, the saints, and the
sacraments, are all the same – but today, as then, much else changes within and
across each gathering to meet the needs and reflect the unique contributions of
specific locations and participants.
It does seem, at its root, the ‘dinner church’ idea harkens back
to the beginnings of what followers of Jesus did shortly after he left the
earth. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to be an early
follower, and why the church (at least according to the Gospels) spread so
quickly. What caught your attention about the ‘dinner church’ concept?
Jesus, in his wisdom, repurposed a ritual meal as his central act of
commemoration and instructed his followers to do the same. So gathering around
a meal is faithful to the example of Jesus’ own life, ministry, and teaching. Dinner
church is also relatively simple, inexpensive, and multifunctional compared to
other forms of corporate worship or church programming – meeting many
spiritual, physical, and communal needs at once. As a bivocational pastor who
has worked for the emergency food bank network, in nutrition education
programming, and as a sustainable food systems consultant, it connected all the
dots – it just made sense. Our community could see that dinner churches had
thrived in the past and were growing and replicating elsewhere in the present.
All these factors caught our attention.
We had been planning and praying for three years or so before friends
plainly asked us to regularly “have dinner together and share stories about
Jesus with the kids.” Needless to say, that felt like answered prayer. We said
“ok!”
What it must have been like to follow Jesus in person or after his
death and resurrection really is a captivating thought! But it’s not purely a
thought experiment. Christian sacred
writings and secular historians have much to say on the subject, including how
Christians ate together.
Theologian and professor Dr. Hal Taussig stresses that Christian
meal gatherings have long been living laboratories for social
experimentation:
“The
ritual meal … reproduced in a safe environment and in coded manner intimidating
social issues so that they could be thought about (reflected), made better in
the meal setting than in the society at large (perfected), or addressed
obliquely in the society itself (deployed). By and large, the meals’ ritual
component provided perspective and social intelligence for the longer-term
address of an intractable social issue.”
Symposia were a primary context
for practicing radical hospitality among the poor and powerless, from whom
Christianity naturally drew many of its members. Christians had been feeding
the hungry through our Symposia long before the first formal church
building was erected in 231 A.D. and nearly two thousand years before the
development of the modern charitable food bank network. By 250 A.D., Christians
in Rome were feeding nearly 1,500 struggling residents each day. This focus on
tangible love for the poor (love is often translated caritas in Latin,
or charity in old English) is so central to Jesus’s teachings that the
Apostle Paul reprimanded wealthy Corinthian Christians who began their meal
gatherings before the poor arrived (1 Cor. 11:17–22).
On a more
mundane level, preparation for, and participation in, the Symposia also oriented the life and service of the church, displaying the
church’s values to the broader community, and welcoming “outsiders” into the
fold. In essence, the meals functioned as “third spaces” for diverse and
countercultural worship, organizing, resource allocation, and service – as both
a context and a method to equip an unlikely family into a growing social
movement (Christianity) that spread rapidly and grew dramatically as a result.
Christian scripture adds one all-important and encouraging credit
statement to this, saying “the Lord [my emphasis] added to their number
daily those who were being saved.” Secular research confirms that the Church spread
and grew from an estimated 25,000 people by A.D. 100 to many millions of people
by A.D. 300. We credit the work of the Holy Spirit for this transformation in
communities worldwide.
In one of your sermons, you mentioned that one-in-five churchgoers
isn’t sure where their next meal is coming from. Why is this important to you?
Fast Family/Courtesy Justin Fast
Most
simply, it’s important to us that anyone is going hungry (churchgoers or not) because
it’s important to God, who satisfies those who hunger with good things, both
spiritual and material. Jesus inaugurated his earthly ministry by stating that
he had come to proclaim good news to the poor. He initiated and embodied the
Jubilee – a right-setting of systems and structures that oppressed the poor in
Jewish society.
It
should come as no surprise, then, that Jesus also said we would always have the
poor among us. Many spin this verse in order to dismiss programs and
initiatives intended to benefit low-income families. Yet at Samara, we see Jesus’
statement as a matter-of-fact – an identity statement. If we are living as Jesus did and taught, and
as the Holy Spirit empowers us to do today, we will be in community with the
poor, the orphan, the outcast, and the widow – with those who hunger. There will
always be hungry people in our midst. But in Christian community, we witness
time and again that God satisfies their hungers.
This
is a given. The rest is not. So answering the “Who, what, how, where, and
when?” questions about our meal gatherings are always new and exciting.
On that last point, Samara Church’s website says dinner church
includes: sustainability-sourced meals, no cost to participants (who are
encouraged to contribute to the meal), communion (optional), and a scripture
reading which is facilitated and discussed. Also, kids are welcome. Would you
like to comment on any or all of these ingredients?
I love your
reference to “ingredients” here. Most Christians are comfortable with the
scriptural image of the Church as a body with many parts – none more or less
important than another and all inseparably contributing to the life of the whole
body. Nonetheless, we’ve separated the parts or “ingredients” of our gatherings
in ways that do not always reflect this belief. The image of the Church’s
gatherings as a multi-course meal with many ingredients is a really helpful one
in this context. The sum (the dish) is more than the parts (the ingredients).
The ingredients are crucial to the resulting dish, but the two are not one and
the same.
Communion, charity, and daily meals were seminally related in the
early Church’s communal meal gatherings. But like many other social movements,
as Christians (the Church) and the Christian social movement (Christianity)
institutionalized, we also began to specialize, separating into component parts
what had once been holistic gatherings that met multiple ends (both sacred and
mundane).
·
The Symposia’s
commemoration of Jesus’ sacrificial death became the highly stylized communion
or eucharistic ritual administered by ordained clergy.
·
Routine provision of food to the
hungry eventually shifted out of church members’ homes (or even away from the
Church) to institutionalized emergency food relief, distributed periodically by
lay volunteers.
·
And the everyday meals of most
Christians lost their religious function entirely, except for a prayer of
thanksgiving that typically precedes them.
Over time we lost the synergy – the combined social, economic,
ecological, and spiritual benefits of shared Christian table fellowship over
specific place-based cuisines.
Dinner church puts these “ingredients” back together in the form
of Christian commensality that meets both spiritual and physical needs,
establishes community bonds, embodies alternative practices that heal harmful
cultural norms, and spreads the surface area of the Christian social movement
once more.
Our local dinner church is fond of saying that
we are ordinary people sharing extraordinary conversations at dinner tables
throughout Greater Lansing. Samara
Church provides a place at the table unlike any other most of us have
experienced – a network of families bringing faith to life through cooperative
living and Christian discipleship over delicious, sustainably-sourced meals
made with indigenous Mid-Michigan ingredients (or takeout, on days like that).
All meals are free to participants, who are encouraged to contribute to the
meal in some way. We share communion (optional) during or after the meal,
followed by a scripture reading and facilitated discussion to apply the reading
to daily life. Jesus said “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For
the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” We plan
our gatherings with them in mind. No childcare required - they dine and worship
with us.
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| Justin Fast & Son/Courtesy Justin Fast |
We sometimes call ourselves spaghetti church – not just because we eat it, but because it feels like we have had to throw it at the wall and see what sticks! From the start, we committed to discipling each other in the way of Jesus as our primary end – and not confusing this end with the means. The end stays the same. The means can change. In relatively small dinner church gatherings, there is a genuine incentive for the Church to focus on lived discipleship – learning by doing – and applying Jesus’s teachings together. It’s a helpful context for experimenting and adapting. These gatherings unleash an enormous amount of creativity, goodwill, honest questions, and respectful dialogue in a context that’s just downright enjoyable – even and especially when we’re being real with each other about tough issues we all care (and often disagree) about deeply. Who doesn’t love a family picnic, a neighborhood block party, or a royal feast? As the Church, we just need to keep welcoming new family members, answering the question “who’s my neighbor?” in both very literal and ever-broadening ways (like Jesus did), and sending out those VIP invitations. Evangelism (sharing Good News) takes on a whole new meaning when you’re seeing and celebrating its full extent regularly – and especially if there’s an “extra” (empty) chair at the table when after communion we ask “have all been served?”
I don’t want to downplay the importance of commitment and follow-through in any way – God demonstrates that covenant relationship, belonging, and obedience are crucial to the life of faith in Jesus Christ. But pastoring a church plant like this has given me a new perspective of what these ideas mean and why they are important. The more we gather in this way and the more we ask and answer “Who is our neighbor?” – the harder it becomes for us to answer “Who are our members?” That’s okay. As Shane Claiborne puts it, “When someone asks us if we are Christians, I think the best answer is to tell them to ask the poor, the incarcerated, the immigrants and refugees, the widows and the orphans, the least of these. They will tell you who the Christians are.” My prayer for Samara Church is nothing less than that.
It's interesting that you’ve chosen Samara Church as the name of
your church. On your website, you explain that samara is the name for “the tiny
winged seeds of sugar maple trees, that took root and spread throughout mid-Michigan
after the last Ice Age… Even great forests have small beginnings, after all.”
Yes!
The samara is an odd symbol for a church. And it’s worth noting that most Christian
symbols are. We’ve long coopted the cross as our primary symbol – a Roman form of
capital punishment and a gruesome symbol of imperial power – but we’ve also
identified ourselves by numerous others, including a dove, fish (icthus),
anchor, lamb (living or slain), and shepherds’ crook.
We
feel the samara is similarly symbolic of our Christian faith, conveying a sense
of place, promise, and purpose in at least four ways:
First, the samara is a nod to Jesus, who was fond of telling relatable stories
with everyday metaphors to teach his listeners deeper truths. He often used seed imagery in this way – e.g.,
“the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed” or “unless a grain of wheat
falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much
fruit” or “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his
field” and so forth. As a seed, the samara is an apt metaphor for many elements
of Christian life, not least new life and growth from death-to-self.
Second, the samara is a symbol of Mid-Michigan, the specific place we
are called to steward as followers of a God who created and sustains all things
and that – in spite of its current brokenness and decay – God has promised to
restore; presently (and imperfectly!) through the Church and directly, in the
future, when Jesus returns.
The
Genesis creation story shared by Christians and Jews alike takes place in a
forested garden where two trees (not just two people) play central roles. For
Christians, that story (history) culminates in Heaven come to earth – a
beautiful riparian garden descending from the throne of God, in which vast
numbers of trees grow for the healing of the nations. The Old Testament prophet
Isaiah captured this image beautifully, saying “the trees of the field will
clap their hands” (a standing ovation of sorts) in praise of their Creator. Theologian
Howard Snyder states it even more plainly: “salvation means creation healed.”
Against
this backdrop, it’s easy to be captivated by the thought of hundreds of
thousands of acres of lush beech-maple forest rustling in the wind, right here
in mid-Michigan, whose sap the Anishinaabeg (Native Americans) used as food and
medicine for centuries prior to white settlement. White settlers (many of them
self-professed Christians) forcibly removed or murdered these Anishinaabe neighbors
outright, slashing and burning the forests to plant annual row-crops. While
this stark and contradictory past is often obscured or invisible to today’s
residents of settler descent, the sugar maple trees are not. They remain easily recognizable markers of
our bioregion and – for anyone who knows the biblical story or the history of
colonialism in this place – a poignant reminder that many wounds have yet to be
healed here.
Moreover,
much like in Anishinaabe practices and the biblical vision of Heaven just
shared, the trees play a key role in the healing. Highly biodiverse mixed
agroforestry systems are tremendous triple-bottom-line investments. And robust
scientific evidence suggests they contribute significantly to human and
planetary health, as well as their stewards’ profits. At Samara Church, we
source much of what we consume at our dinners from this type of agricultural
system, for exactly these reasons. The meal itself becomes a means of healing
creation. It not only “does no harm,” but does good – contributing to
reconciliation between people, God, and the rest of creation – through its
sourcing and preparation.
It's
simpler and more tangible than it sounds.
For example, one beautiful day we gathered on the back deck for public
reading of scripture that proclaimed these truths. Then the kids of Samara Church planted a pawpaw
grove (originally brought here and curated by the Anishinaabe) that will one
day nourish the Church and our broader community.
Third, the samara captures our desire to see the church replicate and
spread as similar churches spring to life throughout Mid-Michigan. Once you see
a samara, you will see literally millions of them, everywhere you look, come
spring. The seed itself is small, unassuming, and very mobile – easily
overlooked. But the results – the great
swaths of pristine beech-maple forest that took a receding glacier’s place
throughout Mid-Michigan – are hard to deny. In our area, the sugar maple is part
of a climax forest community that, once established, provides stability and
habitat, moderates the climate, and purifies the air, among other “ecosystem
services.” We believe that the life of
faith – living in allegiance to Jesus – is similar in many ways. Once you begin
to see God at work in the community, including in and through the church – you
will begin seeing him everywhere. He will
be hard to miss. This is true both of those departing our gatherings to live
out Jesus’ teachings and of our church replicating and “spinning-off” daughter
churches in other neighborhoods nearby. The Holy Spirit moves, the Church
spreads, and healing follows.
Fourth and finally, samaras are a little goofy. We like that – So
are we. And so is the life of faith.
Many of us have fond memories of playing with these “helicopters” or
“whirligigs” as kids – throwing them in the air and watching them twirl back to
the ground. Jesus said that to be a part of his Kingdom was to have childlike
faith – and he never let the grownups tell the children to go away, but
welcomed them as individuals for whom he cared deeply; students who asked good
questions; and role models for the adults who had forgotten how to live in both
the freedom and the obedience of a child whose father loves and looks out for
them. We worship with our children – and with our children in mind. We do goofy
things to help teach our kids about faith and hope and love and justice and
mercy – and we have a lot of fun in the process. It’s weird. It’s tough. It’s
often messy and imperfect (like we are).
But our community is better for it.
I’m really curious and eager to know how Samara Church is doing!
Can you offer us an update?
We
have always tried to practice everyday discipleship and radical Christian
hospitality in faithfulness to Jesus’ example and teachings. Jesus said “go,” not “grow,” so we have
focused on spiritual growth and community development for the last three years,
trusting that numeric growth is a natural byproduct of living in the type of
community people crave and long to belong to. This has proven true time and
time again. We began samara church with five people (our immediate family and
one guest) and no marketing, entering more than two years of COVID-19 and
related social and economic upheaval less than two years after our fledgling church
began meeting. Because of this (not in spite of it), we have become more like
an extended family, supporting one another as each member matures in faith and
deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit. We’ve also grown fourfold, with over
twenty people now joining us for dinner at our home as public health guidelines
allow. It’s now time to seed new churches in the Samara network because, much
like healthy maple trees, that’s what healthy churches do and have always done.
We
are a racially diverse church (Black, White, and Arab) and are both challenged
and sustained by this diversity. Much like our individual and collective
weaknesses provide opportunities to exemplify God’s strengths, our community’s
diversity brings multiple strengths, perspectives, joys, and burdens to the
community that any one of us individually would likely never hear or see or
feel. Together we bear each other’s burdens, support each other’s growth
(including loving correction when needed), and celebrate each other’s
successes. Together, we’ve thanked God for his love, his promises, and for each
other as we processed George Floyd’s murder and ensuing protests; the COVID-19
pandemic; violence in Ukraine and in our schools, and findings unearthed in the
U.S. Interior Department’s Boarding School Initiative report. And we’ve
strategized and acted to respond accordingly to each.
Together
we are also doing the difficult work of learning and reflecting on many of our
own families’ contributions to colonization and indigenous genocide in
Mid-Michigan. As Christians, we believe that we are “ministers of
reconciliation” between people, between God, and the rest of creation and that
“the truth sets us free.” So as a local
church, a body of Christians whose broader membership spans time and place, we
must also wrestle with the notion that corporate sin requires corporate
confession and that repentance does not have a statute of limitations. Indigenous peoples and African Americans, in
particular – whom God made in his own image and deeply loves – are still
suffering as a result of the ever-present history we have shaped. Neither love
nor justice can turn a blind eye to this fact. So Samara Church is working to
understand what love demands of us in response and to build the interpersonal
relationships necessary to pursue justice and healing.
The
meal remains an important, multifunctional, and challenging practice for our
community. Church members produce much of the food we eat, with a focus on wild
and cultivated food crops indigenous to mid-Michigan. What the church does not consume in our
gatherings, we give to those struggling to make ends meet, both inside and
outside of the church. As an act of repentance and a good-faith step toward
truth and reconciliation with our Anishinaabe neighbors, we are growing out
numerous culturally-important indigenous fruits and vegetables and repatriating
the seeds with members of the Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwe (Chippewa), and Bodéwadmi
(Potawatomi) tribes, to whom these seeds (and the land in which they are grown)
rightfully belong.
As
our community grows, so too do our meals and our menu. In Spring 2022 we received a land donation to
expand current stewardship efforts into a network of small-to-midsized farms
(everything from edible landscaping in the suburbs to rural farm acreage) that
will supply our growing community’s meals, charity, and rematriation work. The agroecological
practices we employ, while highly productive, are also ecologically
sustainable, providing our neighborhoods tangible opportunities to participate
in the healing of creation.
Lastly,
our goal is always to equip and encourage each other to be disciples and
disciple others every day – not simply to passively learn something from a church
service once a week, but to apply whatever we do understand daily. Many in our
church have young children, which provides a natural context for this
discipleship. Because literacy
(including biblical literacy) begins with storytime, and because we could not
gather together as a church during COVID lockdowns, we began curating and
sharing a growing collection of books that contain, contextualize, or reinforce
biblical teachings to help parents disciple their children on a daily basis.
Books are categorized according to the Christian liturgical calendar, including
major holidays; focus on applying scripture stories or teaching (e.g., the story
of Jonah, Jesus’ teachings on prayer and enemy love, planting a tree, or
sharing your food with someone who is hungry); and feature strong African
American, Native American, and other representation (e.g., people with
disabilities). We are currently exploring how best to make this collection
available to other local churches and the broader public.
We
are excited to be entering a season of celebrations, with new babies, multiple
baptisms and dedications, and a wedding. Our playlists and grills are ready.
Our homes are open. And the parties are about to begin. There’s room at the table for you and you are
always welcome to join us for the feasting!
Would you have any words of wisdom for anyone who might be interested in being part of the ‘dinner church’ movement?
It’s
simpler than we sometimes make it. You don’t need to replicate the elements of
a brick-and-mortar “church service” to be the church in your neighborhood.
Jesus
told us to make disciples (invite others to join us as we put his teachings
into practice in our daily lives), baptizing them and teaching them to obey
what Jesus himself taught. He promises us that wherever two or more people are
gathered in his name, he is with us, and he told us to remember him as often as
we gather. To do this, he gave us a holy meal and an invitation – not just to
join the feast (although he did that too), but to give our lives for our
neighbors – just like he did.
You are his Church – so don’t be afraid to act like it. Take one step
and invite someone to dinner.
I
challenge you to join us in a little thought experiment that has changed our
community’s culture from within. Whenever you see a “church,” call it a “church
building.” Over time, you will begin to internalize the reality that “Church” is
a particular and peculiar community of people, not the building in which we gather.
We
have been practicing this with each other, and especially with our children,
for several years now. It’s remarkable to see how acculturated we are at a very
early age to view the Church primarily as an institution, and not as a
community. Our speech signifies and reinforces this belief. By changing our speech, we have come to
change our reality. We often visit our
church, but we never “go to church.”
We’re far more likely to invite the church over for dinner; tell our
church a story, or ask our church to pray for us. See the difference? #PeopleNotSteeples
#ChurchIsNotABuilding #ChurchHasLeftTheBuilding
Those
wishing to learn more or participate in the dinner church movement are welcome
to join us to experience it firsthand (https://www.samara.church/rsvp) . Also check out the following resources:
·
https://www.facebook.com/Dinner.Church/
· We
Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God by Kendall Vanderslice
·
From
Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World by Dennis Smith
· In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation & Early Christian Identity by Hal Taussig
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