On The Table

The Weekly Announcement of Common Table Church

Thursday, March 31, 2011

March 28 through April 3

Dear Church--

A few weeks ago, we had a chance to introduce a grassroots organization that has a lot of resonance with Common Table: The Relational Tithe. Jackie and Mike Stav shared from their experience as RT participants, and got a lot of us thinking and asking some great questions about how Common Table can continue to develop in the area of relational giving. This week, we'll have a special treat: Darin Peterson, one of the co-founders of Relational Tithe (and Developer of Consp!re Magazine and Executive Director of The Simple Way in Philadelphia) will be in town with his family to see the cherry blossoms. We've invited him to pull up a chair at the Common Table, with our own Pete Bulanow acting as interlocutor and facilitator, to help us continue to listen and learn and give us a chance to ask some probing questions. Please join us at 10am at Jammin' Java prepared to be provoked and to think afresh about how we can become an even bigger blessing to our friends and neighbors.

But there is much more to CT than just Sunday morning. Behold the wonder:

- We'll be gathering at The Lamb Center for Karaoke from 6:30 - 8pm on Friday.

- There is a pilgrimage to Woodbridge on Saturday night to see the red-hot cover band Hot-Sin-a-Men, the hottest and most sinny of which is our own Matt Maisel.

- 9:30am Club will be gathering on Sunday before the service to sing some praises-- bring your voice, your instrument, your poem, or just your ears to listen in.

- Oh! And it's the first Sunday of the month, so we could do our book swap! (This will require at least one person bringing at least one book.)

- And if anyone wants to host a simple Lenten meal this week or next, please speak up. If you can host it, you're off the hook for food.

Okay? Okay! Okay,

Mike Stavlund

posted by Mike Stavlund # 2:36 PM 0 Comments

Friday, March 25, 2011

March 21st through 27th

Hi church,

Well, it's an off week. There were hints and scents of possible service-worship or fellowship opportunities, but nothing has come together, as far as I know. But we're definitely NOT gathering at Jammin' Java on Sunday morning, because it's a fourth Sunday. If you've got any ideas, send them along to the Core List or contact us.

Our friends at New Hope Fellowship will be gathering at 10:40am on Sunday at the Greenbriar Community Center, with musical worship led by some familiar faces and voices, so that's one excellent and Spirit-filled option. And get ready for next Friday (April 1st), when pizza and karaoke with our friends at the Lamb Center will start back up for the season!

Peace,

Mike Croghan

posted by Mike Croghan # 8:24 AM 0 Comments

Thursday, March 17, 2011

March 14-20

Welcome, Spring!

The daffodils blooming in my yard this week were a welcome sight along with the warmer weather which allows for opening up the windows and airing the house out. I hope you are enjoying this week's signs of Spring as much as I am!

This week we we be meeting at Jammin' Java as usual at 10 a.m. and we are looking forward to a special treat this week - an All-Ages service. Our All-Ages services are just that: a service for everyone. So it won't be an 'adult' service that is dumbed-down to communicate abstract ideas to the kiddies, it will be a fully-orbed, custom-made, age-appropriate kid's experience that everyone will be invited into. So come wearing comfortable clothes and with your 'faith like a child', and be prepared to learn from the youngest members of our church.

Our younger Commoners have been participating in a series of services focused on The Lord's Prayer. We have been working through the Lord's Prayer line by line and this week, we approach the grande finale of our series arc -- "For Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory forever. Amen!" The Kid's Team and our wonderful kids will walk us through a typical Sunday in the Red Room and will tell us what they learned and we will celebrate together.

Also on Sunday, the 9:30 club will be meeting before the service to jam together. Looks like it will be a full house this week, so come ready to sing, play, or listen!

After the service, we will be continuing our Lenten practice of sharing a simple meal together and using the money we would have spent at Chipotle to put toward our new Giving fund. The Stavlund's have offered to host the simple meal at their house this week, so directly after the service we will head over to their place in Falls Church.

Also going on this week: Midweek group will be meeting at Liz's house this evening (Thursday evening) at 7 pm to discuss chapter 2 of the book, What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty. Come out to share together in this all-important discussion.

Jackie

posted by Jackie # 12:35 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

March 7th through 13th

Hey church,

The season of Lent is upon us. I'm not going to preach at you (well, not today, anyway) about what this season could/should mean for us as followers of Jesus. And we don't exactly have a master plan for Lent as a community, just yet. (Have you met us?) ;-) But I'll just tease you with the suggestion that what seems to be taking shape is a Lenten season with practices and gatherings related (in one way or another) to a concept that the Buddha called "non-attachment", and which Jesus talked a lot about as well, eg. in the "Hakuna Matattitudes" in the Sermon on the Mount.

To begin this journey, please join us on Ash Wednesday (the 9th), at the home of Sandy and Chris Rackley (contact us if you need directions). Arrive as early as 6:30pm; we'll probably get going between 7 and 7:30. We'll begin with a shared meal - you're welcome to bring a beverage or side to share (or just bring yourself). Please also bring something burnable (not explosive, please) that represents something you need to let go of (or at least think about what this might be, and you can write it down on a piece of paper during the service). We'll share a worship service inspired in part by this blog post, in which we'll read the Ash Wednesday scriptures, spend 10-15 minutes writing our own prayer of lament, and then burn the things we need to let go of, and make the sign of the cross on each others' foreheads with the communal ashes.

Then, please join us at 10am on Sunday at Jammin' Java for our first Sunday of Lent, in which we will begin to explore this concept of non-attachment and its relationship to grace, with help from our own Karen Win Vroom, who got us thinking about this stuff in the first place.

The 9:30 am club (open-source musical worship) will be meeting prior to the service - come and join the group! Bring an instrument or your voice and look forward to some time to worship with music.

Please note that we may not be doing our usual post-church lunch at Chipotle this week - we usually adopt some Lenten community practice around giving up a purchased meal and donating the money saved to a worthy cause, and plans for that are still taking shape this year. If you're not on our Core email list, and you want to find out about Sunday's lunch/fellowship plans, please contact us.

And may your Lenten journey bring you closer to God, and to the footprints of Jesus. (Not those ones in the sand on that poster, though those are cool too. I mean the stuff he did and hoped his followers would do too. Peace.)

Mike Croghan

posted by Mike Croghan # 3:56 PM 0 Comments

Friday, March 4, 2011

February 28th through March 6th

This Sunday morning at 10am at Jammin' Java, we're taking a look at an organization that some of us know, and many of us have heard of: Relational Tithe. This is a group that Common Table has partnered with on several occasions as we've worked to support some of our friends and neighbors. It was started several years ago by innovative leaders including our own Stacy Stavlund, and it's still going strong and influencing churches and spinning up new cohorts all over the world. If you can't wait until Sunday, feel free to avail yourself of the RT website and especially of the paper that inspired this economic conspiracy: the fabled, provocative Embezzlement Document (at top of list).

We will then spend some time talking about our specific Common Table involvement - story-telling from our past involvement and our present passion - to move toward loving our neighbors relationally and regularly within our daily walks. How can we share our resources together in a way that can bless our neighbors and taking us beyond talking into action? What resources do we have to share with one another? What resources are we sharing already?