Radical hospitality and table fellowship in a time of unwelcome: Being church

Abstract

This is an expanded version of my Senior Sermon given at American Baptist Seminary of the West in April of 2017. The sermon was inspired by the work of my Mentor Project which shares the title of this piece. The work was the ministry of radical hospitality and table fellowship at the (A)Rise in Power National Convergence of radical Christian activists, which took place in February of 2017 on Oakland. The purpose of the work was to create a space of radical hospitality, welcome, and table fellowship as an expression of radical love, as a venue for spiritual healing, and as a model for ecclesiology. This work uses the vision of being church given in the book of Acts 2:42–47. This vision provides an alternative vision of our shared life together as Christians, and in this work I posit that to be church is to work to create this vision, whether in the walls of the church building, in the kitchen, or on the streets. This vision of church is fleeting, but as followers of Jesus we must continue to pursue it.