BUT most of the lay involvement is still focused on the logistics of the worship service. It is generally technical work that may involve some creativity if they are involved in developing themes and more creative or innovative services. Worship committees in my tradition are often responsible for procuring Communion elements, helping to serve, acting as a liturgist,2 decorating the sanctuary, and managing other details of the gathering. These are important. But the pattern remains: a small number of people craft and provide while the majority of people receive and evaluate the experience. And often, those involved, are primarily executing managerial tasks rather than bearing real spiritual responsibility for the gathering.

One of the key components of the Eucharistic Meal is that the experience is CO-CREATED by the whole of the gathered community. Rather than merely responding to the prompts of a worship team, liturgy, or pastor, the gathered community is woven into the destiny of the gathering.

Let me offer a few ways this is true:

1. Preparation and Execution: There are still logistics! In the Eucharistic Meal, however, these are clearly acts of hospitality rather than setting a stage. Cooking, setting tables, planning meals, etc. are all focused on the direct experience of the meal. These are not specialized liturgical tasks, but work that anyone is likely to be familiar with from preparing and sharing their own meals at home. The work at the Eucharistic Meal is often an opportunity to directly serve one another: preparing food, literally serving the food, , and cleaning up together are all clear means of mutual care.

2. Sharing Stories: Rather than the random life stories that might get told at coffee hour after worship, the gathered are guided to share stories of blessing and struggle, encounters with God and challenging situations they are wondering how to face with faith, hope, and love. Compared to a pastor’s sermon application points, these real-life stories seamlessly connect the gathering to the real, ordinary lives of those gathered. With the guidance of the host/pastor and the insights of disciples who have learned to recognize the Spirit of Christ in their ordinary lives, the gathered learn to see how the Gospel Story is weaving into their own stories.

3. Praying for one another: As stories and struggles and joys are shared at the tables, the gathered is moved to pray for one another. Rather than a long prayer list of people only small segments of the congregation may know, each prayer request comes directly from the person you are getting to know as you break bread with them.

4. Bearing with, disagreeing, and forgiving one another: I’ll talk more in a later post about leadership in this context, but when we actually interact and engage with one another, there is more opportunity to annoy one another, disagree, bump into one another literally and metaphorically. Some of this is just what happens when people are talking, cooking, and hanging out with one another. Sometimes, disruptive topics or questions might be intentionally introduced to “raise the heat.” All of this is happening in the context of Christ: broken and poured out, living among us. All of it is framed by the Cross and Resurrection. All of it is playing out in the New Covenant community that explicitly commands us toward humility, compassion, wisdom, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It is better to be annoyed with someone’s behavior, beliefs, or quirks in the context of the Cross and the Table, because we have our Rabbi, Head, and Savior reminding us of our need for grace and call to share it with others. But again, the PEOPLE are bearing this spiritual responsibility TOGETHER.

5. Bonus (OR, maybe this was really core to the Eucharistic Meal all along)–As the gathered share their God-stories, pray for one another, disagree and bear with and forgive one another, and serve one another, do you know what is happening? They are actively being trained to do the very types of things that bear witness to Jesus in love out in their daily lives. In a safe, connected environment, disciples become more comfortable telling their stories from a faith lens, talking about Jesus, praying, and finding opportunities to serve. In other words, the gathered are actually being trained for ministry out in the world.

All of the things I have listed above are inescapably the work of the people (what “liturgy” literally means). All of them are actively training people–sometimes inconveniently or painfully–in Christ-following, Christ-witnessing, and Christ-likeness. It is far more like the glimpse into Early Church gatherings that Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 11-14. Let’s zoom in on 1 Corinthians 14:26:

What should be done then, my brothers and sisters? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

It sure seems like the people are bringing the core elements of the gathering and offering them to the community, bearing the spiritual responsibility for the experience. And it is this context that inspires almost everything Paul writes from 1 Corinthians 10-16 (at least). It is the context, then, for one of our favorite chapters: 1 Corinthians 13–you know, “Love is patient, love is kind…” Paul is teaching them how to share a meal together. This is where LOVE is required and LOVE is trained. And this is WHY it was a meal. Meals give the opportunity for the COMMUNITY to CO-CREATE the spiritual experience with the Spirit of Christ.

Frank Viola provocatively reframes the Eucharistic Meals of the Early Church like this:

Unlike today’s practice, this was not a meeting where a pastor preached a sermon and everyone else passively listened. The notion of a sermon-focused, pulpit-to-pew, audience-styled ‘church service’ was alien to the early Christians…The governing purpose of the church meeting was quite different [from our own]. The purpose was mutual edification…One-anothering was the dominant ingredient of the early church gathering.3

In most familiar formats of Christian gathering–from Roman Catholic to Evangelical Megachurch and most places in between– “One-Anothering” is mostly optional. Maybe a young child is disruptive and I must “bear with” them or maybe I happen to have a really good conversation in the narthex (one of my favorite words you hear only in churches). But those are all incidental to the main content or product that the pastor, worship committee, or other leaders have provided. In the Eucharistic Meal, the core of the experience is the One-Anothering! And the One-Anothering is what makes us more like Jesus–far more effectively, holistically, and organically than almost anything in our familiar church worship services.

This is all true…with a caveat: Leadership is essential to keep such a gathering from devolving into chaos and harm. This is also what we learn from 1 Corinthians. What KIND of leadership differs dramatically from what we have often expected from pastors and worship leaders in our gatherings. And that is what we will explore in our next post.

Bridge-Builder: What non-church spaces have you found particularly fertile for growth, connection, and training in love?

Table Talk: What spiritual responsibility do you bear for the gathering of your church?

Part of the Breakfast Church Experiments in my DMin project was observing these different expectations and demands. And so I’d like to spend this post articulating some of these observations very briefly. In this post, I will share some of my observations from leading Eucharistic Meals. In the next post, I will address the different roles and expectations for the congregation.

But let me start with a brief introduction to a role that was common to the Greco-Roman Symposium Banquet that exemplifies this shift: The Symposiarch. The Symposiarch was somewhere between host, emcee, waiter, sommelier, and priest. According to Soham Al-Suadi, the symposiarch “was responsible for the tone of the meal, which was always in danger of disturbance by guests who were not happy with his decisions, uninvited guests and interactions between guests.”1 The role of the symposiarch was to guide the movement of the meal from gathering through the meal itself and then into the symposium–whether that involved discussion, music, or other activities. The Symposiarch was in charge of mixing the wine (stronger or more diluted depending on the purposes of the gathering) and dedicating that wine to the gods, founders, or other important figures to the group that had gathered. Does this feel like the typical role of a pastor or liturgist in your typical worship gathering? No! But as we will see, it DOES correlate to role of the pastor or leader of a Eucharistic Meal.

From Hero to Host

I have benefitted from the work of a group called The Art of Hosting, which looks at leadership through the lens of a host. This draws on the work of Margaret Wheatley, who writes, “We believe that leaders need to change their role from heroes to hosts. Therefore, hosting conversations is an essential leadership practice for these uncertain times.”2 As a host (or symposiarch), the attention is less on executing the technical mechanics of a liturgy and more on the experience of the community. As the host of a dinner party considers the experience of their guest both in planning the gathering and within the gathering itself, the leader-host is doing the same as they formulate the liturgy of a Eucharistic Meal gathering and as they facilitate the various dynamics and interactions of the gathering itself. Personally, I find myself pushing myself back from my laptop in preparation, closing my eyes, and imagining the gathering itself. I have been conditioned to write a liturgy that has a linear theological or thematic logic to it from beginning to end. The adaptive container of the Eucharistic Meal is less linear and certainly less predictable, especially within the gathering itself. We don’t know what questions will arise, what stories might be told, what combinations of people might end up at a table, etc. The leader-host has less control and cannot play the theological or sacramental “hero” of the gathering. The focus is less from the seats to the pulpit and more from the leader-host to the “guests.”

Managing the Temperature

Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky emphasize that adaptive leaders “control the temperature” of the organization.3 In a Eucharistic Meal, this means adding disruption to challenge growth (heat) and leaning into connection to reinforce safety and belonging (cooling). You can check out this previous post for more on these elements. Again, this takes place both in planning and hosting the meal. And again, it resists prediction. Different “symposiarchs” will struggle with different elements of this work. Some will fear adding the heat of prophetic disruption, preferring to placate everyone’s desire for comfort. Others will delight in “dropping truth bombs” and forget to consider the safety and connection that increases the probability that people can receive and respond to the prophetic challenge.

Adjusting the Volume of the “Expert”

When difficult topics are discussed, there is often an diversity of background knowledge in the group. Let’s consider a conversation about how the story of the Exodus relates to modern-day questions of oppression and justice. Not everyone will have all the same background information or time spent considering 1) the Exodus story, 2) current economic or political examples of injustice, 3) the relevance of the Church to politics, culture, and policy. There is a place for the symposiarch/leader to offer theological, statistical, or philosophical expertise. They have often trained, studied, and considered the issues at hand more than the average participant. But at the same time, a Eucharistic Meal is not a lecture. The leader is always attending to the question of how information and insight will contribute to the growth and communion of those gathered…and when it might just draw attention to the leader.

Integrating Lightness and Play

Rituals, Play, Imagination, and Humor are all valuable “cooling” techniques. Rituals reconnect us with our bodies; Play re-engages the more creative parts of our brains when we find ourselves shutting off parts of ourselves for protection; Imagination can help us to distance ourselves healthily from something that is hitting too close to home; Humor reintroduces grace, freedom, and joy into the experience, drawing us into the full range of our humanity and community. Like the previous observations, the challenge is that the symposiarch must resist the urge to use these to distract from the prophetic challenge or feed our compulsion to soothe and protect. The purpose is to keep people receptive, integrated, and capable of engaging and responding to the encounter.

Defining the Mission

As church leadership writer Tod Bolsinger writes, “There is perhaps no greater responsibility and no greater gift that leadership can give a group of people on a mission than to have the clearest, most defined mission possible.”4 In the Breakfast Church experiments, it became my practice throughout the discussions to write into my own scripts a clear statement of what the goal of the gathering was (to grow the congregation’s capacity to engage in disruptive conversations with compassion and creativity) and what the goal was not (to persuade them of a certain theological, historical, or political perspective). This was helpful for me AND for the congregation. With the mission in mind, we were able to find a place for the discomforts and awkward moments, remembering that these feelings were not evidence of getting “off track,” but part of the process. Defining the mission is a “cooling” technique, especially when people begin feeling disoriented or concerned that they are doing something “wrong” when the heat is rising.

Keeping Christ at the Center

I just rewatched the 1995 movie Apollo 13. There is a scene where the crew must manually shift their re-entry path, and the key is to keep Earth squarely in the center of their window. Spoiler alert: it is a struggle, but they succeed! So it is in the Eucharistic Meal. In the Eucharistic Meal, the whole point is to connect our stories to Christ’s Story, our eating and drinking to the Body and Blood of Christ, our gathering together and the Presence of Christ among us. This is true sacrament, the tangible experience and encounter of Christ in and among one another. The leader/pastor/host/Symposiarch holds Christ in the window of the gathering, keeping it from veering too far off into “our” stuff OR too esoterically into theology or liturgy.

When pastors talk about church change, they are often groaning at their flock’s resistance to their vision or proposed adjustments to the life of the community. I began, however, with the leader. The Eucharistic Meal is as much an adaptive challenge for the leader as it is for anyone else in the gathering. The leader is not pulling the people toward a destination to which the leader has already arrived. The leader is a guide, acutely aware of the discomforts, tensions, and resistance that human beings feel in the face of change and the unpredictability of encounter because they are right in the middle of it themselves! Shifting from the role of technical expert (liturgy-writer, preacher, etc.) to adaptive Symposiarch/host is one of the top line items when counting up the cost of shifting toward Eucharistic Meal gatherings.

To close, then, recall the payoff: Gatherings that actually prepare people to live like Christ in the adaptive challenges of God’s Kingdom, spiritual transformation, human life in this world. Is it worth it?

Next time, we will dig more into the shifts in expectations and roles for the congregation.

Bridge-Builder: Whether a different church, school, job, etc., think about a time when you participated in a different form of something you thought you were familiar with. What was that experience like?

Table Talk: Share about a time when expectations or roles changed for you. Maybe this came about with a new boss, advancing in school, or growing a family. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in that new role?

As someone who grew up a national anthem-singing, baseball-playing, patriotic American, I don’t think I had ever really thought much about how my emerging Christian identity and my American identity did or should interact. But in many ways, I’ve been exploring that July 4th Sunday morning feeling ever since.

Having sorted through much of the complicated intertwining of identities and adjectives and theologies and ideologies over many years, I would have told you a few months ago that I am very much NOT a Christian Nationalist. But a conversation with a friend challenged me to think more deeply on the question. So I’m going to explore that question here, hopefully with something of an open mind.

Am I a Christian Nationalist?

Definitions

Let’s start with some definitions. What is Christian Nationalism?

1. Christian Nationalism, in the very grammatical formulation of the phrase, is about the relationship of Christian Faith and National Identity or Commitments. In the phrase itself, “Nationalism” is the main thing–a devotion to the interests of one’s country–while Christian is the adjective. I’m not going to argue with the order of the phrase, though, as most Christians would say that their Christian faith and their devotion to Jesus supersedes their devotion to their country. But I will say that the danger of equivalence is there, seen in the phrase: “God and Country.”

2. Christian Nationalism can go in two directions as I see it. It might say that Christianity benefits from and should pursue official endorsement from the State (nation). In other words, the nation should structure itself to be friendly to the practice of Christianity if not outright promote or favor Christian belief and practice over other religions. It might also say that a nation, in order to prosper, needs the blessings that Christianity has to offer. To put this more clearly: The State should provide benefits for the Church and/or the Nation will benefit from the Church. The distinctions are important, but not mutually exclusive.

3. Christian Nationalism–and even AMERICAN Christian Nationalism–can come in different forms and means different things to different people. So I’m trying to be brief and general here without any illusion of being comprehensive.1

With those in mind, let me get into the sticking points as I see them when we’re talking about Christian Nationalism.

Sticking Points

First, there is a false dichotomy that often comes into play: control vs. disengagement. What happens here is that Christianity is either about taking over the world or it’s “not political.” In this dichotomy (like in most dichotomies), the failure is in the complete lack of imagination. Christians have more options in how to relate to their country beyond acquiescing to its secularity or accommodating to the rules of its power games. I believe the Gospel is DEEPLY and ESSENTIALLY political. Not partisan. But it very much does have something to say about how humans order their lives together. Christians are called to be a part of that conversation…but that doesn’t mean they have to be in charge of the conversation.

Second, a confusing word: Power. Christian Nationalism often takes for granted that there is only one kind of power, the power that we highlight when we learn history along a timeline of wars, national/tribal boundaries, and authority figures like kings, emperors, or presidents. It is often taken for granted that Power is the capacity to accumulate, dominate, conquer, and control. Worldly power is the ability to, in the end, get what I want, even when someone else doesn’t want to give it to me. In the end, Christianity often enters a contest in which everyone is vying for that kind of Power. There is another kind of Power, however, that is often associated with God in the Bible: the capacity to create, liberate, transform, and redeem. Such power is not a zero sum game. And we see that most clearly in two places: 1) The Genesis 1-2 Creation accounts, where life emerges from God’s abundance, which contrast the most common creation myths of surrounding ancient cultures, wherein the world and humans are byproducts of spiritual violence. 2) The Path of Jesus to the Cross.

Third, Christianity is often viewed as one “Team” in competition with other religious or secular “Teams.” The struggle for Power (as defined by the world) becomes a battle between Christians and the world. Christian Nationalism is seen as a means of martialing the political, military, and economic forces available in this global competition. Christianity is a Team to be on rather than a Way to follow. In the first, ends justify means. In the second, it’s all about the means. Whereas Jesus offers his followers an imagination as salt, light, a city on display, not conquering, but offering an alternative vision for how human beings can relate to one another and to God. Jesus initiates a movement from the margins and shadows that offers this alternative to the imperial-style power and Pax Romana of their host Empire: Rome.

Speaking of Rome, it is instructive that the stories of God’s great works throughout the Bible never involve actually usurping any of the primary powers of the day. God delivered the people out of Egypt and left Egypt to lick their wounds. Israel and Judah are often pesky resistors to the imperial advances of Assyria, Babylon, and–later–Rome. But these empires rise and fall while the people of God endure by God’s grace.

And so it may seem like I am coming down outside the camp of Christian Nationalism. That’s because, as it is often defined, I am. I find the approach to power, the accommodation to the world’s war game rules, and the scarcity mentality that often fuels Christian Nationalist movements to be utterly contrary to what I see from God’s people and Jesus in the Scriptures.

But What about Revelation?

But what about Revelation? Doesn’t Jesus come back to conquer? Well…there are images that might be taken to mean that in the Book of Revelation. And some have profited greatly from turning the return of Jesus into a political military campaign. But Revelation is tricky. And one of the trickiest parts, for many of us, is its context. Revelation is a series of visions to encourage the endurance in faith, hope, and love of a religious minority under the oppressive politics and totalizing mythology of the Roman Empire. Revelation is certainly a political book. But it is a book that subverts the temptations and threats of Empire. It doesn’t call Christians to create their own with a Jesus flag. Revelation is a valuable book to us, but the apocalyptic genre makes it difficult to draw literal conclusions about the application of images borrowed from war and politics in the ancient world.

Here’s the bottom line for me. If Jesus is the fullest revelation of God for us (and I think that’s basic Christian doctrine), then attending to the Gospel stories and eyewitness accounts of his life is of primary importance. In the Gospels, we do not see Jesus taking or pursuing political power. We do not see Jesus requesting special treatment from the powers-that-be. We do not see any real interest from Jesus at all in taking over Rome or any geographic location for his purposes. On the contrary, we see him categorically reject worldly power and political methods as he brings about his Kingdom on earth. Even in his resurrection, Jesus seems to choose the least politically advantageous and power-gaining ways to reveal himself. And so until I see something else from Jesus, I simply do not see it as a vocation of the Church to pursue what Jesus rejected.

So AM I a Christian Nationalist?

So why the question? Why even ask, “Am I a Christian Nationalist?” in the first place?

Because I DO want the presence, ways, and visions of Jesus to have a bearing on my country. Not for my country’s greatness. Not for my own convenience. But because I believe the Way of Jesus is what leads to peace and the presence of Jesus working in people’s lives is what transforms communities for the good. I guess, in a sense, I share that with those in the Christian Nationalist camp. I don’t want to be so against Christian Nationalism that I give up my desire to see the Gospel of Jesus actually make a difference in the world!

But that agreement aside, I believe Christian Nationalism diverges from the mission of the Church and discipleship to Jesus in almost every way:

1. Goals: I have zero stake in my country, the United States of America, being greater or the greatest in relation to other countries. The flourishing of the Gospel in the U.S. may mean a decrease in our share in global wealth, a decrease in relative military capability, a decrease in the influence the U.S. has across the world. So be it. For the sake of the Gospel, the Empire-esque power that the U.S. has “enjoyed” for at least the past century may crumble. This is often the cycle of repentance, healing, and transformation. And the measure of Gospel blessing is certainly not military, economic, or dominance.

2. Means: attraction, persuasion, and self-giving love. It is the work of the Church to intentionally channel God’s blessing wherever we find ourselves. Too often, Christians have relied on the convenience of political power to have their way. Losing this capacity, we decry how Christians and the Bible are being banished from public dialogue! No, it’s just that we’re being asked to make a case for the wisdom of our beliefs. If we believe a national day of rest each week would be good for human flourishing…then we should make that case in a manner that draws people in, persuades, and inspires people at the vision of such an idea. It’s definitely more work than just shouting, “It’s in the Bible!” But it’s a reasonable ask from our neighbors.

3. Commitment: the early Church teacher of the 2nd century, Tertullian, once wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” That may sound gruesome to some. But it is very consistent with the way Jesus engages with the world. When Christians pursue political power and the right to enforce their will and vision of what is good on others, it obscures the Way of Jesus–even if some might sacrifice their lives in that pursuit. The crucifixion of Jesus exposes the powers of this world for what they are because Jesus was not playing their power games. Even as his life subverted the foundations of the the Empire, it was not a power grab. It was an alternative vision. And his refusal to call in the “Twelve Legions of Angels” reveals an alternative methodology as well. Jesus’ commitment to his means of relating to the world was to love it even unto his own death, never succumbing to a grasp for worldly power.

4. Scope: The Church is radically trans-national. Christian Nationalism, as I said above, enters into the power squabbles of international politics on the world’s terms, feeding the system of jockeying for power, privilege, and prosperity in ways that undermine the bonds of Spirit that unite the Church across human-made boundaries.

So yes, I want the Gospel to make a difference in my country…and in every country. Not because the Church needs worldly power to accomplish her mission. Certainly not because the acquisition of worldly power IS the Church’s mission. But because the Presence, Story, and Vision of the Gospel, I believe, gives us the resources we need to find personal, relational, communal, and even international healing. But ONLY because the Gospel moves us to humility from dominance, liberation from control, love for enemies from the desire to conquer.

Christian Nationalism, time and again, ties itself in knots to separate its own mission and methods from those of Jesus. There is a vision of blessing and kingdom contrary to Jesus’ vision laid out in the Beatitudes. And they conveniently dodge the call to join sinners at the table, wash feet, and prefer to die at the hands of their enemies than destroy them. These seem to me the core callings of any Christian vision for individual life and engagement with the world.

So in the end, am I a Christian Nationalist?

Well, I do NOT believe that the Church needs to or should pursue worldly power to advance its own mission in the world. The Gospel, as it turns out, is often most explosive and discipleship most fervent in places that are least hospitable to Christianity.

I also do NOT believe that Christianity is meant to serve the interests of any one particular nation. Indeed, the values of God’s Kingdom (the Beatitudes, for instance) are often at odds with the pursuits of most political entities. So while I think that genuine Christianity is GOOD for those nearby when it is practiced, the goal of Christianity often has little to do with the goals and pursuits of any given nation.

So by my own definition, I find Christian Nationalism to be a corruption of the goals of God’s Kingdom and too-often taken in by the methodologies of worldly power. The “Nationalism” takes precedence over the “Christian.” It leaves the actual words and example of Jesus to the side as t pursues power in ways that Jesus does not.2

I will close with two words that would seem at least to give pause to the one who feels drawn by the call of Christian Nationalism:

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?3

It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth.4

What do you think? How would you define Christian Nationalism? What am I missing here?

Bridge-Builder: Talk with someone about how they believe Christian faith and national identity relate. Try to listen to both Christians and non-Christians.

Table Talk: What do you think about the phrase “God and Country”? How do you think Jesus would engage in American politics in 2026?

I clean-up after this all of the time working with certain Christian populations. It’s interesting that only 20% of our brains are cognitive and the other 80% is implicit. But we are “discipled” only in our thinking! The majority of our behaviors comes from the implicit part, not the explicit. I have found that most Christians have only a cognitive construct of God and not a felt-sense embodied experience of God’s presence. Belief was meant to be embodied and not just a feeble way of understanding.

So the questions become:

• “IS Christianity a Cognitive Behavior spirituality with all its limits in transformation, healing, and growth?”

• “Does Christianity have resources beyond our preferred CBT methods?”

• “What forms, practices, and approaches to ministry might better leverage the resources the Gospel toward deeper and more lasting change?”

Obviously, I think Christian faith and spirituality DO have resources beyond the realm of CBT, and there is hope not only in shifting the message, but in the forms we choose to employ as we organize communities around a desire to grow into Christ-likeness–that is, Love.

So let me offer just two ways the Table provides a perfect container to meet us at this intersection of Christian spirituality and trauma/materiality.

Safe Connection and Reciprocal Witnessing

As Bessel van der Kolk asserts, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”1 This connectional safety is not just about the absence of threat or the physical presence of other people, but about the positive relational feedback of “reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart.”2 Even as churches present themselves as communities of deep connection and relationship, the gathering at the center of most churches’ ministry typically involves attendants silently facing the same direction instead of toward one another (except perhaps in a “passing of the peace” or related moment in the liturgy). While churches do make varying degrees of effort to supplement these gatherings with connectional opportunities, “fellowship” ends up seemingly like an optional add-on separated from Eucharist or from any spiritual framework at all.

Shelly Rambo has helpfully explored how the Christian tradition contains resources for connectional encounter, including the practice of “witnessing.”3 Witnessing is typically applied in churches as sharing the story of Jesus (or the “gospel”) with non-Christians. Rambo reimagines witnessing as bearing witness to the complex dimensions of the Gospel story as they show up in one another’s stories. This adds a third dimension to “reciprocity.” Not only are we seen and heard by those around us, but Christ is seen and heard among us as we share our stories and search for fingerprints of the living Christ. In the Eucharist, the church bears witness to both the suffering of Christ and Christ’s presence among us. Common practices of Eucharist involve people who are in the same place, performing the same actions, and even eating of the same loaf; but they are not necessarily bearing witness to one another’s stories, seeing and being seen, helping one another discover the intersections and overlaps of their stories with the Story of Jesus. These are the very things that create the “safe connection” that Van der Kolk names as the precondition for healing.

Gently Touching the Pain

At the center of Christianity is the Cross, what Serene Jones calls “the central trauma of Christianity, the tortured death of God.”4 This is not how Christians often think of the Cross, but in doing so, the Cross can become not just the price of a heavenly transaction, but a place where we see “that in the throes of this traumatic event, God uniquely meets humanity in the fullness of love and offers to us the grace of life abundant.”5 Notice the similar merging of connectional and disruptive factors as trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem describes the work of healing from trauma: “We need to slow ourselves down and learn to lean into uncertainty, rather than away from it. We need to ground ourselves, touch the pain or discomfort inside our trauma, and explore it—gently.”6 Both Jones and Menakem emphasize that healing does not come from a “safety” that avoids disruption and suffering, but from a context of love and gentleness where disruption and suffering can be “touched” without further threat.

This gentle touch requires more than mere cognitive ideas. It happens in the extra-rational materiality of both trauma and faith. Both trauma and faith are formed in the in-between of body and spirit and shape human experience from those spaces. Working in that space is an adaptive challenge in and of itself. The Eucharist aims to mystically and transformatively touch these extra-rational parts of the person. The Eucharistic Meal does not merely create the “safe connections” necessary to open us up to the possibility of healing, but those spaces in us most wounded and tender meet the God who has been broken and poured out in love for us. This loving disruption to our calcified brains and souls leads us toward healing. It happens in the physical proximity of the Meal, but also as the stories of the people are told in proximity to the Eucharistic Story of Jesus: incarnate in flesh and blood like the bread and wine, broken and poured out on the cross, present with the community as risen and alive. The complex stories of suffering and hope touch one another as they are shared and proclaimed.

De-Mystifying the Eucharist?

One last point: When I put the re-engineering of the Eucharist in light of our growing understanding of trauma, some might say that this is itself a hyper-rational and pragmatic move, as though I am trying to suck all the mystery out of the sacrament by pulling back the curtain on the mechanics of how it might actually bring healing to our bodies and brains, not just our souls. To these critiques, I would respond that 1) The Eucharist has already been re-engineered away from its origins as a meal out of pragmatisms of various kinds, and 2) There is plenty of mystery and mysticism that remains for the Eucharist if we are seeking to encounter the Other in the meal encounters we share with other people. “Faith” and “Mystery” are more than that which we do not understand. A Eucharistic Meal that beckons people to bear witness to the traumatic event of the Cross as it touches our own deepest fears and sufferings requires a courageous risk. This is also faith, a more robust version of faith, a faith that trusts the Spirit of the Crucified and Risen Christ to meet us in those adaptive spaces within us and among us. Faith is not avoiding these complicated and messy extra-rational parts of our selves. Faith is trusting God and the full incarnation-cross-resurrection Good News enough to join God in those spaces and allow God to shepherd us through “the valley of the shadow of death.” The Eucharistic Meal gives us a chance to do this in ways that more typical forms of Christian gatherings do not.

We’ll leave it here for now. What I have tried to show in this discussion is that the Eucharistic Meal has more potential than our typical Cognitive-Behavioral gatherings to cultivate whole-bodied experiences of the “safe connections” we need to open ourselves up to healing. Theologically and spiritually, the Eucharistic Meal puts our hope for that healing at the center–not a theological model that allows us to escape from suffering, but a whole-bodied encounter with the Cross that draws us into the presence of Christ among us.7

Bridge-Builder: When you witness anger, rudeness, misery, or other “negative” actions in others, consider what offering them “safe connection” might look like.

Table Talk: Share with your tablemates what types of things help you to open up about your struggles, fears, and needs.

I completely shut down or lash out every time my teacher, boss, spouse, or friend points out something I’ve done wrong. My CBT-oriented counselor helps locate these unhelpful responses in an unhealthy core belief: “I have to be perfect to be loved.” This belief makes any criticism feel like a threat to my basic needs to feel loved and to belong. We then look to replace that unhealthy belief with a healthier/truer belief like, “I am loved no matter what.” Now, when I receive criticism and feel the urge to shut down or lash out, I remind myself that this criticism is not a threat to my belovedness or belonging…and I am able to engage with my critic in a more productive manner.

Annnd…Scene.

CBT can be REALLY helpful. This is one of the reasons why, I believe, it has been adopted not only as the primary therapeutic approach for mental health counselors,1 but as the foundational approach of the Church to spiritual growth.2

The problem with CBT is that it has significant limits. And those limits are often experienced in a sense of stuckness–as though there is a wall right in the middle of our spiritual growth path or we’re journeying through quicksand. The primary limit of CBT is that it doesn’t touch the deepest and most determinative places of our brains or souls. This isn’t a problem with CBT itself, only with its application. Just like the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”...“When all you have is CBT, you treat everything like a problem of rational thought and belief.” And as anyone who’s tried to hammer in a screw will tell you, having a limited toolbelt can do more harm then good…especially when you don’t know your limitedness.

It turns out that the idea that we can fix our deepest issues solely through a rational process of replacing unhealthy or false thoughts and beliefs with healthier or truer ones is a little too quaint. The founder of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud himself, understood that most of the most important aspects of our personality and dysfunction were sourced in “extra-rational” parts of our selves and must be accessed by observing extra-rational data like unconscious behaviors, dreams, etc.

More empirically, modern trauma research has taken this understanding to a whole new level. As pioneer trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk describes the shift, “Our search to understand trauma has led us to think differently not only about the structure of the mind but also about the processes by which it heals.”3 He pushes back against the limits of CBT directly: “Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However… very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention.” In other words, our lives are for more driven by the extra-rational parts of our brains and bodies than by the rational thoughts we can articulate or ideas we claim to believe.4

To complicate matters just one more degree, let me make just one more introduction: David Morgan. Morgan writes on a concept called “materiality.” If we really want to know what we believe, says Morgan, we can’t just look at ideas or formal teachings. Instead, “beliefs may be much more productively understood as emerging from and enfolded within the practices, things, and feelings that shape individuals and communities over time. Beliefs are what people do, how they do it, where, and when. Not just why.”5 It’s why we get so attached to buildings and traditions and carpet colors and musical styles and so many of the other things we’re constantly told faith ISN’T about.6 Because, in a way, it IS. We do not have faith except that which we experience and live out with our bodies in the places our bodies show up among the other bodies and material and spiritual realities we encounter. So even our beliefs go beyond the rational. If we really want to know what someone believes, rather than merely asking, “What do you believe?” we will get far deeper by helping someone explore a far more provocative question like, “What does Christian faith smell like, taste like, feel like, sound like, look like, and evoke from you?” Morgan is tapping into the same realities as Freud and van der Kolk. If we want to get at what REALLY drives us, we have to go beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond the rational mind. We have to get deeper not only into the brain, but into our whole embodied experience of reality and faith.

In the next post, I’ll talk more about how Trauma and Table come together. But for now, I hope we see the problem and the opportunity facing us in our churches. Cognitive Behavioral approaches to ministry and spiritual growth can only take us so far. Looking at the Eucharist—supposedly one of the parts of the liturgy most designed to be embodied and experienced—notice just how much of it rests on the logic and words of the liturgy and how little actually engages our bodies and touches the extra-rational parts of us. Anyone hoping to design an adaptive container with any hope of facilitating any deep or lasting spiritual growth or transformation must consider not only the logical flow of words and practices, but the whole embodied experience of participants and what makes people more or less receptive to encounters with new people, ideas, practices, and—of course—God.

Bridge-Builder: Participate in a religious or cultural gathering unfamiliar to you. Notice how it smells, sounds, looks, tastes, feels different or similar to gatherings you are more familiar with. Instead of evaluating the differences, try to get into the overall embodied experience of the gathering and contemplate that afterwards.

Table Talk: Explore the “materiality” question above for your own belief— What does faith smell like, taste like, feel like, sound like, and evoke from you?

Merry Christmas!

Take 2 minutes to breathe deeply in stillness, to find a peaceful place where you can be receptive to God. As you breathe, you may breathe this centering prayer:

Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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Abide with me, Prince of Peace.

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