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 refining and designing.

Some redoing and rebirthing of narrowlong Churching can painful be for people and tables.

It would mean no daising and throning, for but one king is there, and he was a

footwasher, at table no less.

And what of narrowlong ministers when they confront a roundtable people, after years of working up the table to finally sit at its head, only to discover that the table has been turned round?

They must be loved into roundness, 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, not 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.

We can no longer prepare for the past.

We will and must and are called to be Church,

And if He calls for other than roundtable we are bound to follow.

Leaving the sawdust and chips, designs and redesigns behind,
in search of and in the presence of the kingdom that is His and not ours

– by Chuck Lathrop

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Luke 14:1,7–14

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”