Intergenerational Church and Food

I'm currently involved in planning and taking part in a series of workshops exploring Intergenerational Church with the North West Baptist Association. Last time we talked about Intergenerational Church and food.... here is a slightly shortened version of what I said... 

Sitting around the Boxing Day Buffet with my family - fourteen humans (three generations) ranging in ages from 2 to older, four dogs (one a puppy) wander around under the table. An abundance of food. The hands reach out and fill the plates. My oldest nephew gets up and walks round to the other side of the table so he can reach the cheese board. The vegetarian sausage rolls are divided up between me and my sisters before a meat eater mistakes them for the real stuff. My brother reaches for the homemade pickled onions and we watch as his eyebrows raise with the sharpness of the vinegar and the strength of the onions. My youngest niece begins the inevitable climb onto her mum's lap and the food she knocks off the table is quickly eaten by the one dog we though was sleeping. As the food gets consumed and the movement around the table gets more chaotic, the conversation flows. We listen and we learn. We laugh and we argue. We might even throw things. 


Family life - in all its beauty and chaos - around the table all of our uniqueness is lived out.

A couple of years ago I visited Tatton Park and there was an exhibition on called ‘Guardian Angels’ by the artist Cristina Rodrigues. I blogged about it more here.

As I walked into the kitchens  - one of the installations really struck me.

The description of the piece explained how it is reflecting on the fact that we now spend less time gathered round the table which stood at the heart of our homes. The red ribbons are like blood – energy lines that bring life and tell a story. The ceramic hearts connected by the ribbons show how we connect to one another. The table being in the kitchen was also significant because the kitchen was the heart of the house, making the house a home.

It inspired my thinking around church, around church family and how we gather as a family, and it inspired my MA dissertation on the role of food in building faith community. People think I’m obsessed with food – I’m not, honestly. 

When we think about intergenerational church, it's perhaps a bit like my boxing day family. Gathering as intergenerational church round the table is like when the whole family - when weird Aunties and trantruming toddlers, grumpy Granddads and 'I'm just coming in from cutting down a tree' brothers gather together on boxing day for tea. That moment of gathering cannot expect to be controlled. It's going to be messy and chaotic but it can do some much for the family - for the community it is worth doing. 

In my research I’ve been comparing how the early church, beginning with the church in Acts, met together and have been contrasting that with projects that meet in that way today. The projects I have researched have included a number of things, but one of the things that has been key around the table in these projects is that all of them have had some kind of intergenerational element to the way they gather – some were intentionally intergenerational, but some have become so because it is easy to include all the generations as we gather around food. At my own church we have developed our all age service to become cafe worship – a kind of all age, all circumstances messy church where gathering around tea and cake has meant that conversation has flowed and families have learned to worship together – I believe it has been key to a change in outlook and growth in faith as a church. 

In Acts 2 we see the early church gathering together each day and eating together. They did this in the context of worship and as the table brought the people together, they were brought together with God, but just as eating has become less important in family homes, it has become less important in churches over time. As the early church grew from that time in the early accounts in Acts, they grew too big for their homes, or too big to recline around the dinner table, so they began to meet in separate rooms, or in community buildings and then food became less important and churches lost something of their identity.

At the time of Acts, eating together was a normal thing to do – it was how people gathered – it wouldn’t have been strange to invite people round to your home to eat and then have a philosophical discussion together. However, the church was also countercultural in the way it met, and as we read through the early church letters and the accounts in Acts we see some of the opportunities it brought and some of the problems it caused.

Although that society ate together, it was normal to have a strict rule of hierarchy at the table – the one with the highest status would recline at the top table and get the best food. Slaves, women and children would rarely make it to the table, and those at the bottom of the guest list would get little food. In 1 Corinthians 11 we see that some people were getting more food than others because the early church was living up to the expectations of society. Paul challenges this and tells everyone that they need to make sure that food is distributed equally.

What linked the diners in early Christian communities was faith, which transcended above social structures and social and ethnic differences. Acts tells us they shared everything – their food, their possessions, their money… making sure that no one was left without. This was countercultural, radical, kingdom living. It meant building a new kind of community – one that centred on Christ as it put everyone on an equal footing. Eating together forces us to take those things we are convicted about from being abstract concepts and means we need to work them out with the people we gather round the table with. 

The table is a place of sharing, a place of conversation, a place where we can learn. Gathering around the table helps us to grow in faith. As we make time to spend with people who have different insights in faith or are much more mature in faith than we are, we put ourselves on an equal footing with them - we are able to learn from them what it means to follow Jesus. 

When we invite someone to eat with us, we send them a message – that we want a closer relationship with them and we want to open up and have intimacy. If we make time to sit around the table; all generations together, then for those who are not involved in normal decision making, for those who think their voice doesn’t matter, for those who we don’t normally listen to, it sends that message – that they matter. This is key particularly when we are trying to include children’s voices in the mix, but also for much of the church community. Does my voice really matter? Yes it does, and I’m going to sit and eat with you as we share our stories together. Round the table we learn to trust one another, where we all have a role and a purpose, where we can learn to just be together with no agenda but eating.

Of course there are issues when it comes to eating together and the mess is just one of them. Eating together (particularly with all generations together) is countercultural, and to include it as part of normal church life is difficult and sometimes controversial, but I believe it is worth the effort. Long standing church attendees find it difficult; food is an aside, not a central part of meeting together – in some people’s eyes it is seen as ungodly. Feasting is countercultural to church culture; when the ‘feast’ of bread and wine that unites us is less of a feast and more of a taster (and not a good one at that), when we don’t enable all generations to participate in the feast in some way (that opens a whole can of worms) then how can we demonstrate the abundance of God within our communities?

We could question whether eating together is actually that important - I believe it is.... If we are to enable bonds and relationships to be built, if we are to create a culture of learning and inclusion in our intergenerational churches, we need to make sure that all generations are involved in the preparation, the serving and the eating of food.

Church doesn’t work if we don’t talk to one another. Our physical body needs a neurosystem so that the different parts can communicate together. Perhaps the table, in its ability to enable conversation, is the facilitator of the neurosystem that makes up the body of the church – to work, the different parts need to make space to talk together, and a meal is a great place for that.

What if the eye never sat down with the ear and told the ear what it could see. What if the foot never sat down with the hand and told the hand where it would be going. What if the brain stopped sending messages to the hands and feet and nothing got done…..? As we gather round the table, as relationships and trust are built, we see the body of Christ work together much more effectively than if we just sat next to one another in the corridor. It’s a perfect central point for intergenerational church, because whoever we are, whatever age we are, however messy and eater we are, whether we like plain food or the hottest curry imaginable, whether we are a food snob or a McDonalds fanatic.... we all have to eat.... so in our contexts, however we do it, to grow an effective intergenerational church culture, I believe gathering around the table has to be part of that.

My table is too full

I love my dining table. When I bought my first (and only) house, it was almost the first piece of furniture I bought. It's actually a desk, but too beautiful to be covered in paper. It's glass and it has a black design on it with flowers and butterflies. When I bought it I got everything else in my dining room to match - from pictures to chairs it matches. I bought lights to put under it so that when the main lights were dim, the lights would project the flowers and the butterflies onto the ceiling.... but they're long gone now because the batteries leaked and I couldn't find a screwdriver to get them out. 

I enjoy inviting people round to sit at my dining table (impractically small though it is, and despite the green carpet in my current house which really doesn't go....). I enjoy cooking for people and eating with people and talking to people and sharing with people and generally being round the table. 

But right now my dining table looks like this.....

And that's not unusual.

It's an easy dumping ground for washing before I get round to folding it and putting it away and despite the promising chopping board in the middle that is calling out for beautiful crusty bread to be dipped in homemade soup, it doesn't seem like a dining table anymore. My table is full, but not with food to feed others - it's lost its purpose, its focus, its meaning. 

I can't have anyone round to eat now. The table is too full.

A huge barrier to building community - which we can do so beautifully by sharing with others round the table - is when our tables are too full, or we don't make space for a table at all. 

Our busy lives mean that a quick bite is all we can manage and the less people around for the quick bite the better. 

Our schedules mean that we don't get to the room with the table at the same time, so we eat alone, or just with those whose schedules match ours. 

Our aim for perfection means that nobody can come round until we're tidy and we've got the time to cook our best food, otherwise they'll judge us, holding up Come Dine with Me score cards that shame us to never invite anyone again. 

We worry that we won't like the food and our hosts would be offended if we brought our own. 

We fill our lives with stuff so we don't have to do the things that are of most value. 

But why? 

I passionately believe that's not how it should be. Community is built through trust. Community is built when we learn to live and eat alongside one another whether we have tidied up or not. 

Jesus regularly ate with all sorts of people. He invited himself to Zacchaeus' for tea (I wonder if Zacchaeus panicked about all the piles of money on his dinner table). He went to Mary and Martha's, and Martha tidied and fussed so she didn't have time to sit at Jesus feet (her own pride and expectations piled up on the table).  

And after he was raised from the dead he sat and cooked breakfast on the beach for the dirty, smelly, tired fishermen who were his closest friends (I suspect they didn't even wash their hands).

If we're serious about being part of a community where trust and friendship that is like family comes naturally, where we learn how to live in a way that reflects our faith and values and where people can be welcomed whoever they are, then we need to clear all that stuff off our tables. 

And eat.

And talk. 

And laugh.

And let go. 

Because when we eat together, good things happen. 

(and just to note - my table will be cleared next week, and even before its clear, if you drop in, I'll feed you and if it has to be on the living room floor, then I'll give you my best cushion to sit on).