This week, I came across an article on social media from Duke Divinity’s Leadership Education publication. It’s titled “Coffee hour and the beauty of lingering with one another,” by Presbyterian minister Mihee Kim-Kort and it’s worth the read. It immediately made me think of you all, because fellowship hour here is indeed something special. When I first moved to town, before I even began my official first day of work, a neighbor (who is not a member here) remarked, “You’re at First Church?! You know they use REAL tea cups at coffee hour?”
After reading the article, I realized this is the first congregation I’ve been in where the receiving line at the end of service happens not in the lobby by the exit, but by the doors that lead into the fellowship hall. Here we don’t “exit through the giftshop,” we “exit through the coffee hour.”
While I recognize that can be an overwhelming prospect for introverts, there is something deeply poetic about it. At the close of the service, I speak a benediction—words to carry on your heart as I send you forth. But you do not hear them and then go your separate ways. You very deliberately add another step. You literally funnel and filter what we share together in worship through a space of community before taking it out into the world. Between time set aside for prayer, learning and contemplation and then the work of going about our lives, you make space for fellowship, nourishment, lingering, rest, and joy.
The time spent together matters, even when no church business is happening (although I have been impressed at the impromptu uses of announcements and democratic process during fellowship to keep the work of the church churning along). It’s a reminder that between the work of grounding in our sacred values and the work of living those values out in the world, lies the work of community. We need people to help us discern what work is ours to do, support us, hold us accountable, and work alongside us, adding their gifts to our own. We need people to mourn and celebrate with. Even when it’s messy and even when it slows things down, in between the sanctuary and the streets, we need to spend time in community.
And those blue and white cups matter! I especially delight when I see our youth drinking from them. In a culture of disposability, waste, and hurrying, they offer an alternative set of values that counter the “on-the-go” ethic we’re so steeped in. They say, “stay a while.” They say “everyone deserves a bit of beauty and delight in their day.” They say, “this place is committed to something deeper, slower, more-lasting, and more sustainable than garishly colored trendy drinks in plastic to-go cups.”
When we take time to slow down, to nourish and delight in one another’s company, we come into the presence of the holy.
This Sunday is World Communion Sunday. We will bring this practice of breaking bread together into the sanctuary, so that we can see clearly the ways this work is always and inherently sacramental—a visible sign of the invisible presence of the divine. And this week in particular, I hunger and thirst for that truth. As news stories of violence, fear, division, and rising authoritarianism continue to flash across the screen, I need to be reminded that we can still meet one another at the table—that we can still honor one another’s humanity through small acts of care, beauty, and grace. I need to know that the presence of God is close at hand and we can still find them in the simple act of breaking bread.
If you need those same reminders, I hope you will join us for worship and communion this Sunday morning. All are welcome at this table.
And of course, there will still be fellowship hour.
In faith,
Rev. Danielle