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Lunchroom Theology: Pushing Tables Together in a Fractured World
Is it possible our world is just one big high school lunchroom?In a world fraught with polarization and division—where we form separate tables based on political beliefs, skin color, economic status, theological ideas, and personal preferences—can we find a way to live differently, more aligned with the ways of Jesus?
In Lunchroom Theology, Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson confront our societal and theological rifts, and by weaving together scriptural and sociological insights, they expose the many ways our contemporary divisions are mirrored by the church today. Drawing extensively from the life of Jesus and the practices of his early followers, they propose a better way to live in the lunchroom. They beckon us to embody Jesus’ John 17 prayer for oneness and to think faithfully and creatively about how to push tables together in our fractured world.
In Lunchroom Theology, Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson confront our societal and theological rifts, and by weaving together scriptural and sociological insights, they expose the many ways our contemporary divisions are mirrored by the church today. Drawing extensively from the life of Jesus and the practices of his early followers, they propose a better way to live in the lunchroom. They beckon us to embody Jesus’ John 17 prayer for oneness and to think faithfully and creatively about how to push tables together in our fractured world.
215 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 6, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 29, 2025
3 stars in my eyes means "Helpful! Worth reading!"
I'll get my nitpick out of the way first: The council of Jerusalem bit to explain "yes, and" theology rubbed me the wrong way. A generous reading (see, I did pay attention when reading) would be totally fine, but I think it bordered on sketchy when describing James' decision-making process. It almost seemed as though the authors thought James was being forced to make the decision between obeying the OT (circumcision covenant) and including gentiles in the people of God. I think the authors' leaning (at least in this example) is to jump to "and" too quickly, prioritizing improvising for the sake of the mission of God over "yes", obedience to the whole of Scripture (including the messy and confusing particulars like "why don't we have to circumcise the gentiles?"). Just a critique, not an indictment. "Yes, and" as a concept is very helpful, but we have to figure out how to balance it well. Maybe it's ok that the authors may lean into "and" more in emphasis. Maybe that's why God made me a "yes" leaner. Maybe we can learn from each other? Maybe I am being shaped by this book as I write the review? Anyway, I am rambling now.
Generally helpful, particularly the chapter on charity and generosity in conversation and thinking. My default (as seen above) is to be a curmudgeon over every jot and tittle. Learning how to use how God has made me to be hyper-critical in balance with graciousness and love is a process. Just ask my wife. The diagnosis of "disconnectedness" in our culture (and our church) is spot on. For the longest time, before I met any smart Christians who disagreed with me, I thought that people who disagreed with me couldn't have actually read the Bible. Just being near people who disagreed with me made loving them easier, overcoming the disconnectedness.
I loved how this book allowed us to heartily disagree on what scripture says while eagerly seeking to understand each other. Just getting closer to those who disagree helps to humanize them. Then you begin to understand that maybe you aren't the only person who reads the Bible. It's like a muscle. The next person is easier to humanize than the last.
I'll get my nitpick out of the way first: The council of Jerusalem bit to explain "yes, and" theology rubbed me the wrong way. A generous reading (see, I did pay attention when reading) would be totally fine, but I think it bordered on sketchy when describing James' decision-making process. It almost seemed as though the authors thought James was being forced to make the decision between obeying the OT (circumcision covenant) and including gentiles in the people of God. I think the authors' leaning (at least in this example) is to jump to "and" too quickly, prioritizing improvising for the sake of the mission of God over "yes", obedience to the whole of Scripture (including the messy and confusing particulars like "why don't we have to circumcise the gentiles?"). Just a critique, not an indictment. "Yes, and" as a concept is very helpful, but we have to figure out how to balance it well. Maybe it's ok that the authors may lean into "and" more in emphasis. Maybe that's why God made me a "yes" leaner. Maybe we can learn from each other? Maybe I am being shaped by this book as I write the review? Anyway, I am rambling now.
Generally helpful, particularly the chapter on charity and generosity in conversation and thinking. My default (as seen above) is to be a curmudgeon over every jot and tittle. Learning how to use how God has made me to be hyper-critical in balance with graciousness and love is a process. Just ask my wife. The diagnosis of "disconnectedness" in our culture (and our church) is spot on. For the longest time, before I met any smart Christians who disagreed with me, I thought that people who disagreed with me couldn't have actually read the Bible. Just being near people who disagreed with me made loving them easier, overcoming the disconnectedness.
I loved how this book allowed us to heartily disagree on what scripture says while eagerly seeking to understand each other. Just getting closer to those who disagree helps to humanize them. Then you begin to understand that maybe you aren't the only person who reads the Bible. It's like a muscle. The next person is easier to humanize than the last.
February 17, 2025
"There is always room at the table for more."
These words from one of Jesus's famous parables flow through this wonderfully written book. Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson have teamed up to write a book that is positively healing medicine for the church. Imagine a high School lunchroom. Many of these lunch rooms are deeply divided and tribal. The high school lunch room has become unfortunately a picture of the American Church and the culture around it. Gorman and Nelson show how these divisions are not what God desires for the church. What makes this book a great read for churches is that it not only describes the problem but gives very practical and biblical steps for the church to move forward by pushing tables closer together. The work of pushing the tables together will not be easy but it is what God has called us to do and be.
These words from one of Jesus's famous parables flow through this wonderfully written book. Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson have teamed up to write a book that is positively healing medicine for the church. Imagine a high School lunchroom. Many of these lunch rooms are deeply divided and tribal. The high school lunch room has become unfortunately a picture of the American Church and the culture around it. Gorman and Nelson show how these divisions are not what God desires for the church. What makes this book a great read for churches is that it not only describes the problem but gives very practical and biblical steps for the church to move forward by pushing tables closer together. The work of pushing the tables together will not be easy but it is what God has called us to do and be.
September 9, 2024
Review of LUNCHROOM THEOLOGY:
Sometimes a Table is More Than Where it Sits: At Table with Jesus Today
9/8/2024.
This review was from a purchased copy of the book. I have also published it on Amazon.
The offering of Lunchroom Theology from Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson to the broader church is a delightful, engaging and accessible gift that deserves wide reading and discussion. Written to appeal to a popular audience, it wears its significant academic underpinnings lightly. It’s innovative organizing image of a lunchroom enables a good deal of broad audience buy in and, even with its limits, that is a very good thing. Gorman and Nelson call readers to embody the way of Jesus toward generous openness to difference and generous conversation and practices grounded in faithful improvisation. This old hillbilly lawyer who has retired from public service is sold on it. Buy it!
Now for a little more about why I believe that Lunchroom Theology will reward your attention to it—and it is not because I don’t disagree with them at times because I do. The American authors are essentially exvangelical in outlook —meaning they have moved beyond traditional evangelicalism while providing limited engagement with mainline American Protestantism. [Full disclosure, while raised in the tradition of the authors I have resided in the mainline churches for decades.] Still the model of open generous conversation does resonate with my mainline experience. So while the author’s intended audience is probably the penumbras around exvangelicals, the book can speak to a broader Protestant audience.
The strongest part of the book grounds their approach to pushing tables together in the witness of Jesus. Gorman and Nelson begin with laying out their lunchroom tables image of fracture and fragmentation in society and move to a discussion of the dynamics of sorting, especially partisan sorting, in American society. Next comes a theological grounding in a meta narrative of creation/“brokenness” [rather than fall]/redemption. Redemption arguably resonates with overcoming our fractures by means of conversation and generous openness grounded in the practice of Jesus and the early church. (We are not discussing atonement theories here.) With Jesus’ John 17 prayer and his nighttime talk with Nicodemus, they move to a concern for a church unity that overcomes fractures and affirms the ability of humans to change. Jesus’ table practice as he eats with sinners and tax collectors testified to this overcoming of fractures. The church improvises off of the witness of Jesus to continue this overcoming of fractures as it addresses internal divisions and expands beyond its beginnings. This theological improvisation continues with the Jerusalem assembly to address the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God after the Jesus event. This improvisation is grounded in a theological conviction about the imago dei in humans that manifests itself in a posture of generosity. Just as Ted Lasso encouraged curiosity among people in community, Gorman and Nelson call for generous conversation that engages how people gather for these conversations. Moving from emphasizing belief before belonging in community, the authors journey toward belonging first then to believing and arriving at becoming. Agreement on dogma is not of first importance. This argument could have benefited from a broader theological engagement as I thought of Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith at this point. Gorman and Nelson end up in the practices of a generous community as they realize that Jesus calls us to something better.
Primarily a book about ecclesiology, it emphasizes conversations more than practices. Curiously, there seems to be little discussion of prayer. From the foundational image of a school lunchroom it winsomely makes an argument for generous conversations in a manner that does not engage specific controversies and divisions— whether doctrinal or racial or economic or sexual differences. That is probably by design as they don’t want to lose their readers when readers slip back into comfortable defensive positions. With few exceptions, like the invocation of Mister Rogers on race, and even there it seems to be a safe invocation by means of a middle class comfort food-like symbol, they avoid sustained engagement with controversy. Similarly issues of gender or sexuality are alluded to but not addressed. They mention egalitarians and complementarians but do not engage equality in the church community. It would have surprised me to have an allusion to sex workers, or other marginal groups, at table with Jesus, but that may have been too risky for losing their audience. I am not so sure that staying above the fray on specific controversies was the wisest choice but I respect their choice—-as I uniformly respect their choices.
With both authors steeped in the Stone-Campbell tradition, they commendably reject rigid notions of pattern, precept and example that have plagued parts of the tradition, but that whole tradition predominantly does theology as ecclesiology and that is the case here. While the notion of table grounds their use of the lunchroom image in the table practice of Jesus—and that is substantive theology, they basically contend for doing church grounded in generous conversation.That generosity speaks theologically to God’s grace but a little more grounding in a Christian categorical frame could have helped their argument. Though they do not pay enough attention to Paul, it is powerful and good that they keep coming back to Jesus and tables.
Turning to a few of my quibbles with this fine book. First, the title is both a strength and a concern. Lunchroom as an organizing image is fresh and inviting, but like all images it has its limits. Frequently returning to an image of adolescent antics can trivialize some experiences, such as might be the case with oppression and the Hagar story, even as they qualify it with the notion of “backs against the wall”.
Second, I dissent from their biblical interpretation at points. For instance, I have concerns that their treatment of Acts 15’s “assembly” [better than council] is insufficiently political. The treatment of Mephibosheth at the end smacked of evangelical piety that could have been better served by a more political and cynical reading of David’s posturing. Also notions of brokenness and NT Wright’s 5/6 ACTS speak more to a contemporary allergy to sin language and use of a Reformed/evangelical meta-narrative that with Wright carries an aroma of Scofield Reference Bible dispensationalism. I am not against meta-narratives per se but this one needs some chastening.
Still, these concerns are quibbles. Gorman and Nelson call us to follow Jesus to table in a manner that is both generous and deeply engages in genuine conversation. That is the main thing and, like the traditional hedgehog that knows but one thing, it is enough. Amen!
Sometimes a Table is More Than Where it Sits: At Table with Jesus Today
9/8/2024.
This review was from a purchased copy of the book. I have also published it on Amazon.
The offering of Lunchroom Theology from Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson to the broader church is a delightful, engaging and accessible gift that deserves wide reading and discussion. Written to appeal to a popular audience, it wears its significant academic underpinnings lightly. It’s innovative organizing image of a lunchroom enables a good deal of broad audience buy in and, even with its limits, that is a very good thing. Gorman and Nelson call readers to embody the way of Jesus toward generous openness to difference and generous conversation and practices grounded in faithful improvisation. This old hillbilly lawyer who has retired from public service is sold on it. Buy it!
Now for a little more about why I believe that Lunchroom Theology will reward your attention to it—and it is not because I don’t disagree with them at times because I do. The American authors are essentially exvangelical in outlook —meaning they have moved beyond traditional evangelicalism while providing limited engagement with mainline American Protestantism. [Full disclosure, while raised in the tradition of the authors I have resided in the mainline churches for decades.] Still the model of open generous conversation does resonate with my mainline experience. So while the author’s intended audience is probably the penumbras around exvangelicals, the book can speak to a broader Protestant audience.
The strongest part of the book grounds their approach to pushing tables together in the witness of Jesus. Gorman and Nelson begin with laying out their lunchroom tables image of fracture and fragmentation in society and move to a discussion of the dynamics of sorting, especially partisan sorting, in American society. Next comes a theological grounding in a meta narrative of creation/“brokenness” [rather than fall]/redemption. Redemption arguably resonates with overcoming our fractures by means of conversation and generous openness grounded in the practice of Jesus and the early church. (We are not discussing atonement theories here.) With Jesus’ John 17 prayer and his nighttime talk with Nicodemus, they move to a concern for a church unity that overcomes fractures and affirms the ability of humans to change. Jesus’ table practice as he eats with sinners and tax collectors testified to this overcoming of fractures. The church improvises off of the witness of Jesus to continue this overcoming of fractures as it addresses internal divisions and expands beyond its beginnings. This theological improvisation continues with the Jerusalem assembly to address the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God after the Jesus event. This improvisation is grounded in a theological conviction about the imago dei in humans that manifests itself in a posture of generosity. Just as Ted Lasso encouraged curiosity among people in community, Gorman and Nelson call for generous conversation that engages how people gather for these conversations. Moving from emphasizing belief before belonging in community, the authors journey toward belonging first then to believing and arriving at becoming. Agreement on dogma is not of first importance. This argument could have benefited from a broader theological engagement as I thought of Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith at this point. Gorman and Nelson end up in the practices of a generous community as they realize that Jesus calls us to something better.
Primarily a book about ecclesiology, it emphasizes conversations more than practices. Curiously, there seems to be little discussion of prayer. From the foundational image of a school lunchroom it winsomely makes an argument for generous conversations in a manner that does not engage specific controversies and divisions— whether doctrinal or racial or economic or sexual differences. That is probably by design as they don’t want to lose their readers when readers slip back into comfortable defensive positions. With few exceptions, like the invocation of Mister Rogers on race, and even there it seems to be a safe invocation by means of a middle class comfort food-like symbol, they avoid sustained engagement with controversy. Similarly issues of gender or sexuality are alluded to but not addressed. They mention egalitarians and complementarians but do not engage equality in the church community. It would have surprised me to have an allusion to sex workers, or other marginal groups, at table with Jesus, but that may have been too risky for losing their audience. I am not so sure that staying above the fray on specific controversies was the wisest choice but I respect their choice—-as I uniformly respect their choices.
With both authors steeped in the Stone-Campbell tradition, they commendably reject rigid notions of pattern, precept and example that have plagued parts of the tradition, but that whole tradition predominantly does theology as ecclesiology and that is the case here. While the notion of table grounds their use of the lunchroom image in the table practice of Jesus—and that is substantive theology, they basically contend for doing church grounded in generous conversation.That generosity speaks theologically to God’s grace but a little more grounding in a Christian categorical frame could have helped their argument. Though they do not pay enough attention to Paul, it is powerful and good that they keep coming back to Jesus and tables.
Turning to a few of my quibbles with this fine book. First, the title is both a strength and a concern. Lunchroom as an organizing image is fresh and inviting, but like all images it has its limits. Frequently returning to an image of adolescent antics can trivialize some experiences, such as might be the case with oppression and the Hagar story, even as they qualify it with the notion of “backs against the wall”.
Second, I dissent from their biblical interpretation at points. For instance, I have concerns that their treatment of Acts 15’s “assembly” [better than council] is insufficiently political. The treatment of Mephibosheth at the end smacked of evangelical piety that could have been better served by a more political and cynical reading of David’s posturing. Also notions of brokenness and NT Wright’s 5/6 ACTS speak more to a contemporary allergy to sin language and use of a Reformed/evangelical meta-narrative that with Wright carries an aroma of Scofield Reference Bible dispensationalism. I am not against meta-narratives per se but this one needs some chastening.
Still, these concerns are quibbles. Gorman and Nelson call us to follow Jesus to table in a manner that is both generous and deeply engages in genuine conversation. That is the main thing and, like the traditional hedgehog that knows but one thing, it is enough. Amen!
September 8, 2024
Throughout Jesus’ life, he spread a message of love, acceptance and inclusion. He regularly incurred the wrath and ire of Jewish religious leaders for hanging out and dining with social outcasts: lepers, prostitutes, the poor and even tax collectors. This wasn’t what a rabbi was supposed to do. Indeed, one could easily argue that his persistent habit of inclusion contributed to his ultimate crucifixion on the cross.
In their book Lunchroom Theology, Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson make the case that we should aggressively follow Jesus’ lifestyle and teaching of radical inclusion. They compare this to the familiar school lunchrooms, wherein students tended to gather with “their own kind” and eat at tables separate from those who are somehow unlike them. Gorman and Nelson correctly assert that we perpetuate this segregation and discrimination practice throughout our lives. They convincingly argue that this was and is not Jesus’ intent. His is a message and calling to reaching out to those who are different from us, those who are often marginalized and overlooked by “normal” society.
The authors spend numerous chapters examining the psychology and reasons we segregate before turning to how we need to “pull the tables together” and become a more inclusive and accepting people and faith. As Christians … and, indeed, humans … we need to be known for our love, not our prejudices and exclusionary ways. By reaching out, overcoming barriers and including others, we will get to know others on a more personal and intimate level. We will come to see others as they truly are: children of God created in His (and/or Her) image. It is only then that we can truly be following Jesus’ overarching message.
Lunchroom Theology is much more than a “good read”. It is that, but it is also a call to truly become followers of Jesus and a beacon of light in a segregated world.
In their book Lunchroom Theology, Heather Gorman and Mark Nelson make the case that we should aggressively follow Jesus’ lifestyle and teaching of radical inclusion. They compare this to the familiar school lunchrooms, wherein students tended to gather with “their own kind” and eat at tables separate from those who are somehow unlike them. Gorman and Nelson correctly assert that we perpetuate this segregation and discrimination practice throughout our lives. They convincingly argue that this was and is not Jesus’ intent. His is a message and calling to reaching out to those who are different from us, those who are often marginalized and overlooked by “normal” society.
The authors spend numerous chapters examining the psychology and reasons we segregate before turning to how we need to “pull the tables together” and become a more inclusive and accepting people and faith. As Christians … and, indeed, humans … we need to be known for our love, not our prejudices and exclusionary ways. By reaching out, overcoming barriers and including others, we will get to know others on a more personal and intimate level. We will come to see others as they truly are: children of God created in His (and/or Her) image. It is only then that we can truly be following Jesus’ overarching message.
Lunchroom Theology is much more than a “good read”. It is that, but it is also a call to truly become followers of Jesus and a beacon of light in a segregated world.
October 23, 2024
“Always assume the other fella might be right.”
In a world that seems to continue to become more and more divided, Lunchroom Theology encourages us to a better way of living, one that is both old and new. Jesus always had space at His table for people - so why don’t we? If we take the life and ministry of Jesus seriously, then our focus should not be on winning arguments but on unity in Christ. Our world needs more unity in Christ and less division about secondary issues.
In a world that seems to continue to become more and more divided, Lunchroom Theology encourages us to a better way of living, one that is both old and new. Jesus always had space at His table for people - so why don’t we? If we take the life and ministry of Jesus seriously, then our focus should not be on winning arguments but on unity in Christ. Our world needs more unity in Christ and less division about secondary issues.
October 25, 2024
Feeling lonely, isolated, or frustrated with the state of the world? I am thankful for my friends Mark Nelson and Heather Gorman who graciously and expertly guide toward a better and more hopeful way of being in the world. Highly recommend you give it a read. I am better for it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews