The Temple, the Home, and the Power of the Table.

Our story

When Georgie and I got off the plane from Australia to plant a church in New York City, our first thought was simple. How do we start? We didn’t come with a team. We didn’t come with a lot of resources. And if I’m honest, it felt overwhelming. We had a big vision, but we couldn’t start with a Sunday service without a team of people.

Then God gave us this vision for a Dinner Party. Dinner parties, of course, are a universal concept. But using one as the starting place for a church, as the primary way to build small groups, as the DNA of the whole thing, that was something different. And that is what has built our church for over a decade now.

So from that God idea, we thought, why don’t we just host a Dinner Party? Why don’t we get some of our contacts and friends together, sit around a table, and start building the church the way Jesus did? That first Dinner Party was just five people. But it was the start of a movement. And we have been having a Dinner Party in our church every week since.

We found that people were hungry for more than food, although that was a great start. People were hungry for community. For real relationship. At one point we had almost sixty people crammed into our apartment. In fact, our Sunday gatherings were launched from those Dinner Parties. So at the heart of it all, we’ve always been a Dinner Party church. A church that gathers around the table.

As our church has grown over the years, we’ve been able to stay healthy and stay feeling small, even with growth and size, because of our focus on Dinner Parties. It’s like taking a microscope to a cell. You can see the health of the whole body based on one singular cell. It’s God’s gift to us to have small groups. To keep the body healthy, each cell has to be healthy and thriving.

The temple and the home

We thought, how can we reach New York City and meet people where they are? Dinner Parties. Even the name is something people can resonate with. If you think about the church that’s in God’s heart, there’s no stadium that could fit it. But there are enough apartments and homes and dinner tables to bring together an entire city. That’s why our vision is to have a Dinner Party on every block. To reach a city, build community, and have lighthouses in every neighborhood shining bright with hope.

See, small groups aren’t the side dish and Sundays aren’t the main course. When we started the church, I realized we were looking at church models to prepare for the plant, rather than looking at the Bible and the life of Jesus. That’s where the Lord brought us to Acts 2 and this idea around the table.

We have built around this rhythm. This routine. The temple and the home. God gave the church a blueprint for how to disciple people to look more like Jesus. It wasn’t just hearing a message and responding. It was about living it out, in the temple and in the home.

The last thing Jesus did before the garden and the cross was share a meal. And one of the first things He did after the resurrection was have a meal again. There seems to be a blueprint for how to change the world in the before and after of the cross. It’s not more ministries and activities. It’s the table. The table is what will change the world.

That’s why we believe we’re called to put the same priority and excellence into our small groups that we put into our Sundays. Small groups are not just a means to produce something else. They are the goal. That people would be in community. God made a way through Jesus, giving us access to Him, and we now have a seat at the table through Him. Here on earth, we bring heaven down when we make room for others, when we give people a seat at the table, just as Jesus has done for us.

Communion and consistency

The power of the table is where we see true freedom and transformation in people’s lives. And what gives the table its power comes down to two things. Communion and consistency.

Communion. This is how Jesus spread the gospel, loved and welcomed people. The word communion appears first in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and later in Corinthians. We read about Jesus breaking bread and sharing wine with His disciples in remembrance of His death on the cross. But it’s more than a moment of reflection. The word communion is a common union. It means the sharing of intimate thoughts, feelings, and stories in a relationship. It’s this communion that we’ve been invited into by gathering around the table. People want a seat to share a meal and get to know one another. It’s culturally what we do.

Dinner Parties allow people to connect, grow, and know one another on a real level. And the best part is that no one is excluded. In the modern western church, we’ve sometimes lost the celebration of breaking bread. The festivity. The feast. Let’s make the table the center of the church again. Let’s reclaim the table of the Lord. Jesus painted this picture for us. He told us the Kingdom of heaven looks like a feast. A banquet. Matthew 22, Luke 14, Revelation 19, all of these passages show us a Kingdom wedding feast. Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine, a picture of the celebration and the table He’s preparing for us. So while we look to that heavenly table, we know we’re also commissioned to bring heaven to earth. To have our table on earth be a reflection of heaven.

Consistency. The second factor. Consistency is the heartbeat of Dinner Parties. With consistency, we build momentum. I’ve seen gatherings fail when it isn’t clear. People don’t know when, where, or what time. That’s why we commit to being consistent. There is power in consistency. Power in doing the mundane really well. Blessing follows obedience. It is a beautiful thing to give one night a week to God, to provide a table and build community. This consistency gives people something they can rely on every single week in a world of so much change.

Growing up in church, I noticed something about small groups. Leaders are notorious for canceling. Most groups were led by one leader and maybe an assistant, and it was so easy for a group to cancel or dwindle out. But the consistency of the group determines the health of the individual. There will be people in your group hanging on by a thread in their relationship with Jesus, and the consistency of gathering is what keeps them. Or what could reconnect them. When that breaks, it can easily pull someone off the rhythm of church and the rhythm of a relationship with Jesus altogether.

Imagine if we treated our small groups the way we treat Sunday. If the pastor didn’t feel it one week and just canceled church. That would fully disrupt a church. So why do we think in a small group setting we could do the same? The disruption may be for a few people, but the few actually impact the whole. So the power of consistent gathering has to be the foundation of any healthy small group system.