Room at the Table
A welcoming posture for ministry in today’s world
Since its beginning, one of the strengths of Community of the Savior has been its commitment to cultivating a culture of caring, open dialogue regarding the many polarizing issues in the world today. This strength grows out of CoS’s foundational commitments to the centrality of Christ and the priority of worship. Tethered around the Lordship of Christ and the worship of God, Community of the Savior has been able to hold together a richly diverse community of varying perspectives.[1]
Now, with the rapid growth of polarization in North American culture,[2] the time has come for this distinctive charism to be more formally articulated as a constitutive feature of the kind of community CoS seeks to be: a place of welcome for all people. Using “Room at the Table” as an organizing metaphor, CoS seeks to welcome, make room, and stay at the table with all who are drawn to its mission and ministry.
Welcoming All to the Table.
On the deep foundation of the central teachings of the historic church and its rootedness in the Free Methodist Church USA, CoS joyfully pursues a posture of welcome for all people. This means that the ethos of Community of the Savior is to care first for people. Matters of self-understanding, personal identity, differences of theological perspective, or divergences of biblical interpretation among those in the community are secondary to CoS’s mission of meeting people where they are in a welcoming, caring atmosphere.[3]
Making Room at the Table.
CoS’s posture of welcome has important implications for the ways it seeks to practice ministry. First and foremost, CoS is committed to a genuinely relational ministry that is Christ-focused rather than issue-focused. Affirming that Christian discipleship is a lifelong process for all followers of Christ, CoS seeks wholeheartedly to meet people wherever they are on their spiritual journey and welcome them as companions in our common pursuit of wholeness in Christ. Making room at the table, therefore, means a commitment to relational authenticity in the context of a supportive, caring community. CoS seeks to be a gracious and safe place where all people may experience the freedom of honesty, vulnerability, searching, and doubt without fear of judgment or rejection.[4]
Staying at the Table.
CoS’s posture of welcoming and making room also involves a commitment to staying at the table. It does not seek or expect “quick fixes” to life’s complex questions—whether in one’s own life or the life of another—but rather takes a long view of the formational work of God’s grace in the context of a community in which followers of Christ learn from one another. CoS seeks to create a community in which people give themselves to one another for the long haul of the journey of faith.[5]
CoS’s posture of Room at the Table is an intentional way of being and relating in the midst of the many pressing concerns of our diverse and pluralistic world. With unwavering commitment to a Wesleyan model of discipleship and practice as expressed in the teachings of Free Methodist Church, CoS humbly recognizes the rich diversity of perspective, opinion, and experience in today’s culture. In this context, and as a matter of its own faithfulness as a part of the Body of Christ, CoS is committed to a posture of love, care, and respect for all who participate in its communal life. Amid the plethora of voices in North American culture today, this welcoming posture is particularly applicable to differences of perspective and experience in matters of human sexuality, immigration, and political alignment, to name a few. At CoS, on these matters, and many more, there is room at the table for all.
[1] For an overview of CoS’s foundational commitments, see “CoS Core Affirmations” (cosmthope.com/about), “The Statements of Belief for the Free Methodist Church USA” (fmcusa.org/webelieve), and “Position Papers of the FMCUSA,” (fmcusa.org/resources/position-papers).
[2] See, for example, “U.S. is Polarizing Faster than Other Democracies, Study Finds” (brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization) and “What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?” (carnegieendowment.org/2022/01/18/what-happens-when-democracies-become-perniciously-polarized-pub-86190).
[3]A posture of welcome and hospitality is a definitive mark of the people of God in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Grounded in God’s own hospitality on behalf of all creation, the church is called to share the welcome of God with all people. See, for example, Leviticus 19:17-18; 33-34; Deuteronomy 28:43-45; Matthew 15:21-28; 22:37-39; Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-37; 14:12-24; 19:1-10.
[4]Human beings were created to flourish in contexts of community and mutual dependence. From humanity’s creation in the plurality of the divine image, to the biblical declaration that it is “not good” for a human to be alone, to the formation of “a holy people,” to Jesus’s prioritization of communities of people bound together by the centrality of their faith, the Bible unequivocally affirms the salvific significance of mutuality and formative community. See, for example, Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18-20; 12:1-3; Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 7:6; 14:2; Leviticus 19:2; Matthew 12:46-50; Mark 10:28-30; Acts 2:41-47; Acts 10:1-48; Ephesians 3:1-12; and Revelation 2:1-3:22; 7:9-10; 21:1-4.
[5]The communal process of discipleship, or the lifelong formational outworking of God’s transforming grace in the context of community, along with its corollary of justice for the marginalized, is echoed throughout Scripture, especially in the Hebrew prophets and the letters of the New Testament. This includes carefully attending to our actions and practices in a modeling context so that our lives do not become stumbling-blocks for others. See, for example, Isaiah 1:16-20; 58:1-14; Amos 5:14-15, 21-24; Micah 6:8; Matthew 18:6-16; 25:31-46; John 8:2-11; Romans 14:13-23; Galatians 5:13-26; 6:1-10; Ephesians 4:1-5; 14-16; Philippians 2:1-13; Colossians 2:6-7; 3:1-17; and 1 Peter 2:11-13.