Episode 24 - A Seat at the Table

Pastor Dan and Director of Discipleship Mandy Stevens talk about the early church, fellowship, and what it looks like to be a follower of The Way in the church today 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Hey everybody, it's Pastor Dan here at St. Mark's United Methodist Church, and I am joined today by Mandy Stevens, our director of discipleship. How are you today? I'm doing wonderful. We're talking like this, like we haven't just been meeting for an hour. I know, right? We're good at pretending our guest. Yes, we're pretending we're pretending she just showed up and we're doing a podcast together now. Um, but uh I thought you'd be the the most appropriate person to talk about this uh today because we are talking about where we belong in the church. And that's a part of what you do is help people to figure out where they belong. We're gonna be doing a ministry fair and all sorts of Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah, although we're not gonna call it a ministry fair to pan. We're gonna we just decided we have some working titles like a find your place or find where you fit, something like that fair. Yeah, we're gonna help you find where you fit.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

We're still working it out right now. That's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Feel free to let us know what we should call it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Um we're we're talking about kind of like your seat at the table, like where you where you fit and all those things in the church. Um, our scripture this week is in Acts chapter two. It's this famous passage, uh, Acts 2, 42 through 47. It's right after Pentecost. 3,000 people are baptized and joined the church. And it's this little paragraph or the fancy theological word is pericope.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

What? I know pericope. Oh that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

It's it's on my it was on my word of the day toilet paper.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Oh my gosh, um nice, very nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Um a pericopey. It's just like this short section uh of uh scripture, but it it it's one that talks about what did it look like when the early church started? What did they do? How did they form? What did they what did they spend their time doing? And it's just these few little verses that talk about that, and um, and it says something about how they were together every day and they met in each other's homes and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and breaking of bread and prayer, and the Lord was adding to their number every day, and they were eating food in each other's homes, and they were uh in the temple together every day, like every day they're just kind of spending life together. Yeah, um, it's what they did.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Such a beautiful picture of community. I just love reading this.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

Yeah. You were talking a little bit before, like, well, why don't we just always do this?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

I know, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Like, why isn't this just what church generally looks like?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah. I think that we've become such an independent society, and that, you know, and we pride ourselves on independence and not needing anybody else. And, you know, so we come to church thinking it's a place to come, and then we go home and we forget that we need other people and that like God gave us other people, you know, so we can support and be supported. And it's just a way of life that I don't know, I think we've gotten away from. It's kind of sad.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah, it's it was not like uh I'm this is a part of my schedule. I will do church at this time. It was just well, they called it the way. Yeah, it was just the way you live, it's how I'm living my life. We're um we're gonna get, we're gonna do dinner together. Like, if you ever had that group of people, there there have been periods of times in our lives where it's like it was unspoken, they were out, they were kind of outside of our family, but it was like unspoken, like, well, it's you know, Sunday night, we're hanging out together. Or yeah, like they're just coming over. They don't have to. I've got a I still have a few people in my life where we don't knock, like you just walk in.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah. Like I was telling you earlier, a friend of mine came to pick up her kid from she was hanging out with Ella, and she was like saying to Ben, doesn't your wife have a meeting with Dan in a little bit? My husband's like, I don't know, good thing you're keeping track of our schedule.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Glad somebody else knows what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

We need those people in our lives. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

Yeah. But yeah, just people that are like, you do life with these people. It's it's just what it is. And that's that really seems to be kind of how they they started off is this community. I've seen some really cool versions of this. Um, and there have been people who have very intentionally tried to make church feel different um and be more communal in some way. I'll never forget when I was in seminary, there was this guy that it was in one of my classes. I and I I think this was in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was doing this. But um his ministry, what he was doing was they bought this old apartment complex, and they like everybody that was in it, like it was like, this is our community, this is our church, they did dinner together every night, they did most of their meals together, and at every meal they were at, they would just whatever they were eating, those were their communion elements. Yeah, so if you had waffles for breakfast, like this is the waffle of Christ, broken for you. Like it was, it was which is what Jesus did. He took the ordinary elements that were in front of him and A broke it, and he's like, Hey, we're just doing this together, we're remembering this together. Yeah, I always thought that was such a cool idea. Yeah, I don't know if I'd I don't know if it'd be my cup of tea.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Um, but I love the concept behind it. Uh-huh. This idea of like, yeah, we live and do this life, this Christianity thing together.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, I think it's so beautiful, but I think it's also so hard because we're used to having things the way we like them. You know, it's even hard to like vacation with other people because you're like, well, man, I don't normally eat at that time they eat at or whatever, you know, like sort of live life fully together. Yeah. I mean, you just you have to put a lot of your own desires and and wants aside, yeah, and be willing to sacrifice and live for the common good. Yeah, you know, and that's what it's showing that they're doing here. But yeah, man, that's hard.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

Yeah, I mean, there's a part of this scripture, and it's not gonna be a main part of what we're talking about this week, but there's part of scripture that says like everybody sold everything they had and just gave to each other as they had need, which I think we have a hard time, especially in in like a capitalist like consumer society, like the idea of doing that is really uh we're like that sounds like communism. Like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with that, but it's it it was just they stopped thinking about this is mine and started thinking about what do you need? How can I help? Exactly, which I think is a part of what they knew that Jesus had called them to, and they were just going out trying to live the they were trying to figure out for the first time how do I live in the way that Jesus talked about for the last three years in his ministry, yeah. All these things that he said to us, the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule, all those were lovely ideas that he was teaching them, and now he's like, All right, now go live it. Yeah, and they were trying to figure out what that looked like. And this is a part of this was their first their first go at it, figuring out how do we live this way, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And it's I mean, it's just really cool to think about like being so willing to sacrifice and yeah, just live together in community. I don't know. I I would love it, I think. In theory, in theory, yeah. I mean it sounds really good in theory, but then when you actually get there, like it would be easy to be like, well, the possessions thing, you know. I don't I don't want to give uh what I have for that person because they're not doing with it the way I would, you know, like it's where it's where those selfish desires and motives come in. I think you really have to be like sold out for Christ, I think to be able to be in community in that way.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

But there's this really uh interesting book called The Lost Letters of Pergamum. Um it's uh historical fiction book, but the idea behind it is it's as if somebody has found these lost letters between Luke, the gospel writer, and this guy who lived in a city, which is a real city called Pergamum, um, that was in uh ancient uh Holy Landish area. I forget exactly where it's it's located, but um it it's kind of these letters about this guy trying to figure out what was it looked like for me to join one of these like newly formed house churches, and some of them were getting it right and some of them weren't, and some of them like there's still this hierarchy from the outside, like, oh I'm an important person kind of thing, and yeah, and it's hard to do church in that way. And then and some it was like it doesn't matter who you are, yeah, you have a seat at the table, and um it's a it's a really beautiful book. If you're into historical fiction and early church stuff, you'll dig it.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

There's very few of us, but um I was gonna say, I don't know that most of your listeners are, but maybe I'm one of them.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Yeah, uh, I I love it. It's what it's it was uh one of my favorite uh books as I was I read it in seminary, it's really, really good. All that to say, uh, we're gonna be talking a little bit about all right. So, what's it look like for us? How does this look for us 2,000 years later? Yeah, the church was evolved. Um we do a lot on Sunday mornings, but you know, we were talking about before this that that doesn't mean that this that everything that's part of this like house church early church model has fully gone away. I think we still do some of the things that they said that they devoted themselves to. Yeah. Um it says in the the first verse in uh 242 that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. And so this Sunday we'll kind of walk through what those four things kind of look like for us now. I think the apostles' teaching part was really about like telling the family story. It was a lot of the apostles saying, like, hey, let me tell you this thing that we did with Jesus. This was really awesome. Caught a gaggle of fish, you know. Yeah, remember that time somebody dug a hole in Peter's roof and dropped a guy down. That was awesome. Like Peter's like, not awesome, had a hole in my roof, not great, didn't love it. Um but you know, like they're kind of telling those famous family stories. I think every family has those family stories that are probably like this is who we are. Like this is these are our defining stories, and people were having to learn what those stories were.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah, because there was nothing written down, they couldn't just go read it.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

No, I mean the New Testament was still happening, it was it was happening as they were as they were going along. Um, fellowship, which I think is still really important for for us. I think sometimes we reduce fellowship to just saying a hi and like here's a cup of coffee, and like that's good enough.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Or one event per quarter. Like I have this amazing event planning team that is phenomenal and they plan events like once a quarter, and that's great. I'm so glad that they're willing to use their time in that way, and it's great to see everybody get together. Like we had Summerfest a few weeks ago, and you know, we consider that a fellowship event, but it's not enough.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

No, I see those as like on ramps to fellowship. Yeah, yeah, that's like that's like a beginning. Yeah, I hope at that event you meet some people and form relationships and that's the goal, yeah, and then start doing more things together, yeah, finding those people in the church um or in your faith community in some way that that help to build you up and spur you on. And um I think you've gotta form those authentic kinds of relationships to be able to do some of the things that we need to do, yeah. Um to grow in our faith, things like confessing our sins or you know, bearing each other's burdens and all like I don't want to bear the burdens of a stranger necessarily every day. But for somebody that I know and I care about, like, yeah, I'm gonna absolutely I want to be.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah, I'm all in with this, yeah. Yeah. Uh but yeah, it's just why is it so hard for adults to connect with other adults? Like it's scary for some reason. I watch kids and they're like, Oh, hey, you have a pink shirt on, I like pink, let's be best friends. And they're literally best friends sharing their entire lives. Like, but for some reason it's so hard for us as adults to connect.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

Yeah, and I I think I think you're hitting on something though, that like you connect around a thing. We connect, we there's always like this extra thing that that connects us, whatever that might be. And um, yeah, for kids, as something uh something as simple as like we're both wearing a pink shirt, yeah, like that can be a thing to bond over. And then you get to know it, then you get to know each other, and it and it grows a little bit deeper. I think adults still do the same things. Um uh our kids are our our two youngest daughters are both in volleyball. And a lot of the people we end up connecting with, we connect with it's the same parents at every game.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

And so we connect over how the game's going, how busy we feel, having to run our kids everywhere, how uncomfortable the bleachers are, how bad the refs are, whatever it might be. Like that's what we end up connecting over. Yeah, which is fine, but we don't you don't form like a deep relationship around.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

And it I think it's the same in different ways. You don't form like super super deep relationships over just smaller things like that. You might really get to know somebody, and and maybe it continues on. Maybe you develop a really good friendship with the person, but I've not found something outside of the church, outside of like this common faith, this common um uh set of moral values, uh uh perspective on life, whatever you want to call it. There's nothing there's nothing else like that. Yeah, and when you can bond and form relationships around that, that changes everything. I mean those those are the real those are the real relationships.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Because it's the core of who you are, is like connecting with the core who somebody else's, you know what I mean? It's not just like oh we both like pizza, like yeah, it's just it goes deep down into who you are as a person. And so I want to connect with people who are you know like-minded in those things. Yeah, it's easier.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

And yeah, and so I think sometimes we as adults will we'll keep these superficial relationships and like, but like that's as deep as we let it go. I don't and maybe it's a little bit of what we talked about last week, like the reasons that we that we sometimes don't let ourselves form those kinds of relationships are either because uh we feel like they're better, like I I can be independent, I don't need anybody else, I'm just gonna handle this myself. It's harder to do it with somebody else, or I don't want to let anybody in and see how messy I am. Yeah, it's sometimes you know, it's that isolation piece that we talked about. Like I don't want anybody to see all of them.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Certainly, everyone else has it together.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Of course, yeah, but I mean, and and that's why you know if you can bond over this Christianity thing and who Jesus really says you are, and and a part of what you bond over is this idea of forgiveness and grace and kindness and love and compassion and the broken being made whole. If you bond over your shared appreciation of that, it becomes a lot easier to share some of those things that are really difficult in your life because you know the person that you're talking to also believes that grace matters and forgiveness is okay, and that it's okay to be broken. And um, I think that's why it's maybe you know, in a little bit of a different way. You hear a lot of people talk about the relationships they form at things like AA meetings or something like that, where you're able to be open and raw and real with the yeah, I think we're supposed to be that as Christians.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, and you can't do that sitting on the bleachers at a volleyball game. No, I mean you can, but like who's gonna do that, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Um, yeah, you have to have that more intimate setting and yeah, and and the next part of that verse is the is to the breaking of bread. You know, they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread, and you were telling me earlier, you know, just uh the conversations that can happen over a shared meal, yeah, and what a difference that makes.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

You know, and you know, breaking breaking bread together has become like synonymous with uh forming relationship with each other. It's like, hey, let's you know, we're going to do this, it's gonna be a real thing. It's it's if we're gonna share that kind of meal together, it's gonna be it's gonna be a little bit intimate. It's gonna be a little bit of hey, how are you really? Um we one of the things we do in our family, and I know we've talked about it before here, is like we're always doing our highs and lows with each other. What's your high for the day? What's your low for the day? What's you know, tell me something real about yourself that happened today, something that I can celebrate with you, and something I can sympathize with you. And we walk through that stuff together. Yeah, and we, you know, we lift each other up with it. We do have one rule in our house is that uh the low for the day can't be another person sitting at the table. Oh, that's a great rule.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

It was a so smart, it was a necessary rule. Yeah, it was learned after it happened, one of those.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

Yeah, got it. So it I think it becomes really important. It's just yeah, finding these ways to yeah, oh all the things Jesus did over meals with other people, it was his way of saying, Hey, you're in. Yeah, I'm gonna eat with the tax collectors and sinners, I'm gonna eat with everybody, I'm gonna sit and have a meal with you. And it was an intimate and important thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Um, beautiful, yeah. I think it's a really beautiful thing. And then, yeah, prayer at the end of it, like it's always pointing back to the Father. It's always about kind of last week we talked about the court of three strands. You know, it's always you, the other person, and God. And so whatever they were doing, they were involving God in the conversation, but they were involving God and what they were doing and talking about. It wasn't just about them, which makes it more than just any other regular relationship.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

True, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

It's uh it's a relationship, it's a yeah, a chord of three strands.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Yeah, they're connected because God connects them. And I think just the community aspect that can change too when you're praying for each other, you know, like maybe you don't always get along with somebody in that like church family, but then you're praying for them and changes your perspective.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

It's hard to fight with a person that you're praying for.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yes, exactly. So I have a feeling that was part of it. Like, yeah, not just to connect to God, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:28

But to absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Would you pray for me? Like, I don't even like you, but yeah, sure, God tells me you need to. And and then the last thing we'll we'll get to on Sunday, and and I don't want to uh say too much about it right now, but um is this idea, like as as that community was growing, as the early church was growing, they never got to a point where they're like, all right, now we're full. There was always room for there was always room for the Lord was adding to the number every day, those who are being saved. There was always room to to add another seat at the table. And um, and not just as like a casual observer, you get to come watch us be the church, like no, you're adopted in, come be a part of this. Here's a seat, you're part of the family. Yeah, and um, and that's really what we're gonna talk about this Sunday. I think it's gonna be it's gonna be a different kind of you're gonna want to be there, it's gonna be a different kind of sermon than what I normally do.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

And I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

Yeah, it's gonna be a little bit a little bit different, and uh so I hope you'll be there and join us for for that. And I hope this week you find a way to um uh just form some community with some people and um and really try to find ways to go a little bit deeper in fellowship with one another, find find something real and um and have those those real authentic conversations. Uh the church can be a great place for that. So I would love to have you with us. And um yeah, so thanks, Mandy.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, thanks for having me, Dan.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

All right, and we'll see you next time on another Sermon Prep Podcast.