New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

Today marks the 494th anniver­sary of Mar­tin Luther post­ing his 95 The­ses on the Wit­ten­burg Church Door — the  act which unof­fi­cially marked the begin­ning of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. You know what that means — only 6 more years until the party is totally off the chain. We should prob­a­bly start plan­ning the 500th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion now.

Justin Tay­lor posted a nice arti­cle filled with good resources that will help you bet­ter under­stand the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, and as usual he does a very nice job. One book I’d like to rec­om­mend is Michael Reeves’s The Unquench­able Flame: Dis­cov­er­ing the Heart of the Ref­or­ma­tion. It was pub­lished by Cross­way in 2009 and is a very acces­si­ble paper­back (just 200 pages writ­ten in plain lan­guage) that cov­ers the gen­eral back­ground and all the major play­ers of the Ref­or­ma­tion: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the Puri­tans. I can­not rec­om­mend this well-written book highly enough.

Enjoy Ref­or­ma­tion Day, and I pray that you’ll take advan­tage of Hal­loween par­ties in our town (per­haps even your own, or your Life Group’s) to build rela­tion­ships and share the Gospel with neigh­bors and peo­ple in our city.

You prob­a­bly know by this point that I am a Tim Chester fan. I’ve been greatly helped by his books and arti­cles. They have chal­lenged me to rely on the grace of God to grow as a Chris­t­ian, a hus­band, a father, a pas­tor, and a mis­sion­ary to our city. I will gladly read any­thing he writes.

I must admit, though, when I heard about his lat­est book, “A Meal with Jesus,” I was some­what skep­ti­cal. “Really?” I thought. “A book that is essen­tially a the­ol­ogy of food?”

How­ever, when I began to read sev­eral reviews, I see exactly why this book could prove to be so help­ful for us — par­tic­u­larly as mis­sion­ar­ies. One of the things peo­ple always say about New Life is, “I think it’s so cool that you eat din­ner together every week after wor­ship.” Eat­ing together is sim­ply part of the DNA of our church. Now, there will come a day when we are too large to do it all together any­more, but that doesn’t mean any­thing has to change about our DNA as a church. All that it means is that, like most good things in the church, it will have to be decentralized.

Back to Chester’s book. The sub­ti­tle to the book is ” Dis­cov­er­ing grace, com­mu­nity, and mis­sion around the table.” Chester makes the case that when we eat together, it is an act of grace because all good things, like food, come from the gra­cious hand of God. Fur­ther, we are com­mu­ni­cat­ing grace by extend­ing the offer of friend­ship to other unde­serv­ing sin­ners just like us. Even in the west in 2011, eat­ing together still has the same con­no­ta­tions as it did in Jesus’ culture.

Sec­ond, we find com­mu­nity around the table. I stated on Sun­day night that com­mu­nity doesn’t hap­pen by pur­su­ing com­mu­nity, but a com­mon goal. When peo­ple gather together with the com­mon goal of mak­ing, serv­ing, and eat­ing a meal, com­mu­nity hap­pens nat­u­rally. In fact, I’ll be going to make break­fast with mem­bers of our Life Group in just a few hours.

Third and finally, eat­ing together can be a mis­sional activ­ity. Many have said, “I just don’t have time to spend with my non-Christian co-workers, neigh­bors, or class­mates.” Well, Chester makes the point that we all eat (at least) 21 meals per week. If you asked some­one to join you or invited sev­eral peo­ple over just some of the time, that would be 3–5 more mis­sional oppor­tu­ni­ties with­out adding a sin­gle thing to the schedule.

You can check out Justin Taylor’s inter­view with Chester over at The Gospel Coali­tion Blog, or see the series of posts Chester has done for the Resur­gence as well. Happy eat­ing, and enjoy grace, com­mu­nity, and mis­sion as you eat!
Chester