What is Table Talk, Anyway?

I would not have preachers torment their hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching, for the delight of hearing vanishes therewith, and the preachers hurt themselves.

-Martin Luther

At one of my first Friday evenings with Southside Abbey last July, I overheard a conversation between a Friday regular and a gentleman from the neighborhood who was joining us for worship and dinner for the very first time.  After the initial introductions and welcoming sentiments, the SA regular described our worship and our work and our relationships in the community.

            “Well, I’m looking for a church to join,” the gentleman said.

            “Every Friday evening,” she explained, “we gather here at the hArt Gallery around 6:11 for fellowship and prayer and dinner.”

            “So, this is a church?”

            “Yeah – we’re a worshiping community.”

            “Like a real church . . . with preaching?”

For this gentleman, a mark of a real worshiping community is preaching.  And he wasn’t wrong about that.  The proclamation of the good news about Jesus and his peaceable kingdom has always been present when and where followers of Jesus have gathered for worship, fellowship, and a shared meal.  But this proclamation – sometimes called preaching – has taken as many different forms as the worship and fellowship of the many different communities of Jesus followers. 

In some worshiping communities, the preaching is a forty-five minute sermon delivered by the pastor as the central piece of the worship. 

In some worshiping communities, the preaching is a ten-to-twelve minute homily that is more of a meditative reflection as only one part of the first half of the worship.

In our worshiping community at Southside Abbey, the preaching is a little different than in other worshiping communities . . . .

One of the distinguishing marks of our worship is that we look to the Holy Spirit’s movement among each and every one of us gathered in leading our common prayers.  I call this the one-and-all principle of worship.  The Spirit may and does call on anyone gathered to lead the different prayers of common worship . . . or on all gathered to pray together.  So also, we try to remain open to the Spirit in our proclamation by applying the one-and-all principle to our preaching at Southside Abbey.  Therefore, we ask everyone gathered, as we eat our common meal (nestled within the prayers of our worship), to reflect on the Good News in conversation with one another.  We believe that it is in the relationships we cultivate and in the conversations we share that we hear what the Spirit is saying to us through each other’s words and lives.

Because our preaching takes the form of discussions around the dinner table – (usually wrapped up with a short summation of the themes uncovered through our conversation) – we have taken to calling it “table talk.”  History buffs - especially church history buffs - might recognize this name that we’ve affectionately given to the preaching at Southside Abbey.  The sixteenth-century Jesus follower and church reformer, Martin Luther was known for his lively discussions at the dinner table in his home.  Students, travelers, and other guests in his home often jotted down Luther’s conversations and witticisms, and these notes were eventually collected after his death and published as Table Talk.  Luther’s guests felt the need to take note of his words because they heard the proclamation of the good news of Jesus and his peaceable kingdom in Luther’s dinner table discussions.  Similarly, because we at Southside Abbey hear the proclamation of the good news of Jesus and his peaceable kingdom in our own preaching as one-and-all discussion at the dinner table of our Friday evening worship, we are now noting, collecting, and posting those conversations as our own Table Talk.  Like a real church . . . with preaching.