Kids Table
This past week, something monumental happened in the life of my family. While visiting family, I was allowed to sit at the adult’s table and move from the kids’ table during the Thanksgiving meal.
The kids’ table has been my Thanksgiving meal location for years. My brother, cousins and I gather around this little folding table each year and partake of the Thanksgiving feast. It’s not much to look at but it has served its purpose throughout the years.
This table sits adjacent to the adult’s table. Their table is a nice wooden table. It is a very distinguished table. Here the adults gather to laugh, discuss (or gossip) about family, argue about politics, or just feed their faces with turkey, dressing and more.
The one foot distance that separates the kids’ table from the adult one seems so large. As a child, you are placed at this little, folding table for an indeterminate amount of time. Your only means of making it to the adult table is if A) a relative does not show up for the holidays (rare with my family) or B) a relative dies (a little more common but still rather rare).
You spend all your childhood asking the adult’s table for everything. Would they pass the salt and pepper? Can you move around them to get to the green beans? Is the turkey supposed to be this dry? Why does Aunt so-and-so come each year with a different “guest”? Your entire life is dependent upon the adult’s table.
In my teen years, I started to get a little bothered with sitting at the kids’ table. I was getting a little taller (not much), I was definitely getting older, and I found myself gravitating more to the conversations of the adults than the kids. But, to my dismay, there was no room at the adult’s table. I needed to stick with the kids and see (for the fiftieth time) how many spoonfuls of mashed potatoes my cousin could shove into his mouth. The holidays went from being a time to which I looked forward to a time I simply wanted to get through.
Isn’t this the state of many churches? We have new, fresh faces who are emerging as leaders in their own spheres of influence but the church doesn’t offer them room at the table. People who have been leaders for years don’t want to hand over leadership. They’ve sat in their seat for years. They’re always present and they haven’t died.
As I moved to the adult table, I noticed something very important. The conversation changed. The perspectives changed. There was now a new voice in the mix. Relatives had to give back-stories to the stories they had told over and over again with one another. It seemed a little awkward to some but it was a good kind of awkward. A recognition was made that a boy had come of age and was a man.
At this point, some people are asking, “Jason, aren’t you reading a little too much into the ‘table transition’?” Maybe so…but it was a living parable on change, of a generational hand-off.
The church of yesterday is not the church of today. The dynamic of the table will always change but there will still be a table and conversation. The conversations may look and sound different but these changes need to happen. If the kids’ table does not transition to the adult’s table then kids’ outgrow the table as they mature into teenagers and then young adults. They begin to have families and pretty soon over-crowding has occurred. The sense of family is tarnished and the holidays become more stressful than they were already.
Now, I’m not saying that people in existing church leadership or holiday families need to die off. Instead, why can’t our tables expand? Why can we lengthen the table, pull up another chair, or purchase a larger table? Why can’t we sit down and have conversations in which people around the table are seen for who they are, adults and not kids?
A beautiful thing happens as the adult table grows. The kids table continues to grow and the conversation gets richer. New memories are made and the story of the family continues. The holiday doesn’t get worse it gets better. A stronger sense of family develops as families do what they have always done best, multiply and tell stories.
May the same be true for the church as it continues to transition many generations in its centuries old story!
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Thanks Barney for sharing your story! there IS someone else out there that understands the whole KID’s Table experience! What a comparison w/ the Church… SO TRUE!
Hey Barney. It’s good stuff, but it scares the crap out of me (which may be a good thing considering im not sure how much i want to be full of crap.)
The thing is, I ate at the adult table too. The difference is, i AM still a kid. Im only 17, a senior in high school, with the world’s most ridiculous insecurities, and loving every minute of it because i am still totally a “teenager.” Nevertheless, I took my place on the fancy chair at the tastefully decorated table, complete with Indian and Pilgrim figurines. In my family, there IS extra room at the adult table and therefore, the four oldest cousins, all very much kids in our own ways, join the more mature members of the family for our holiday meals.
I guess this says a lot about the church too. We are called, regardless of our age, to join this crazy table of God pursuers. And while it scares the crap out of us, if we’re already at the table, we might as well swallow our ‘tatters and join the conversation. And of course, there MUST be times when we sit and listen to those who have been at the table longer than we have. But, Because we ARE still kids, we can breathe fresh air into this stiff ol’ wooden table in a unique way. Right?
I guess this is more a message for me and my fellow young-ins. But to you Barney, thanks for being one of the adults who always welcomes us. Don’t stop. We need to be here.