The Biggest Table

The Biggest Table--Episode 02 (Mike Frost)
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Andrew Camp: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Biggest Table. I am your host, Andrew Camp, and the idea behind this podcast is to explore the table, food, eating, and hospitality as an arena for experiencing God's love and our love for one another. And today I'm thrilled to welcome Michael Frost as my guest.

Michael is an internationally recognized Australian missiologist and one of the leading voices in the missional church movement. His books are required reading in colleges and seminaries around the world, and he is much sought after as an international conference speaker. Since 1999, Dr. Frost has been the founding director of the Tinsley Institute, a mission study center located at the Morling College in Sydney, Australia.

He has also been an adjunct lecturer at various seminaries in the United States. He is the author or editor of 19 theological books, the best known of which are the popular and award winning The Shaping of Things to Come, Exiles, The Road to Missional, and Surprise the World. Frost books have been [00:01:00] translated into German, Korean, Swedish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

And for 12 years he was the weekly religion columnist for the Manly Daily and has had articles published in the Washington Post, the Tennessean, the Charlotte Observer, Le Monde, and other publications. He is one of the founders of the Forge Mission Training Network missional Christian community Small Boat Big Sea, based in Manly in Sydney's north.

He is also well known for his protests against Australia's treatment of refugees, some of which have resulted in his arrest by the NSW police. As well as his advocacy for racial reconciliation, foreign aid, and gender equality. Thanks for joining me, Mike.

Mike Frost: Thanks, man. That was a very fulsome introduction.

That was great. Yeah.

Andrew Camp: It's just great to have you here, and I'm excited to talk about the table as you've seen it, um, exhibited throughout Christian history, but also as you see the church moving [00:02:00] forward in today's culture. Uh, but you're in Australia, so... What's the food like in Australia, or how does the table operate in Australia culture?

Mike Frost: Oh, what's food like in Australia? Um, well, we're a former British colony, so my grandparents would have eaten very kind of British style, you know, roast vegetables and. Yorkshire pudding and steak and kidney pies and all that kind of stuff. But actually, you know, Sydney is in a kind of subtropical zone or a very temperate, moderate kind of, uh, um, environment.

Um, and so really, uh, You know, more recently, I think we've discovered our role as part of Southeast Asia. So there's a lot of kind of fusion cooking around kind of fusing Asian styles and, uh, and, uh, products and ingredients, um, with kind of Western kind of ways of, of, uh, food preparation. [00:03:00] And so, yeah, you know, lots of beef, seafood, lots of outdoor eating barbecues.

I think, you know, in terms of. International cuisine, I guess I would say Japanese and Thai food are probably the most sought after, but yeah, look, we have McDonald's and KFC here as well. Yeah, no,

Andrew Camp: the Western, or the American food has penetrated every place, it seems.

Mike Frost: Although, interestingly, uh, and only recently has kind of, um, American style barbecue and kind of southern cooking, you're starting to see some of that come to Australia.

Yeah. Cause if anyone asks what was American cuisine like, we would say it's, it's fast food, it's hamburgers and what have you, but yeah, actually we're kind of more recently discovering, uh, some of the best of American cuisine. .

Andrew Camp: Awesome. No. Appreciate that, so you recently came out with your newest book called, , Mission is the Shape of Water.

In it, you look back at Christian [00:04:00] history and sort of explore different themes that the church can, um, embody in today's culture. What give us a brief summary of what stood out to you from that book.

Mike Frost: Yeah, so the idea, the title kind of says it all. It's both kind of a bit intriguing and also when people think about it makes perfect sense that water never changes its inherent properties.

It's always H2O, but it is shaped according to whatever container it, uh, it finds itself in. So it could be shaped like a bottle on your desk or it could be shaped like a lake. And so, uh, I say that the mission of God's people. Which is to alert the world to the universal reign of God through Christ.

Never changes, and it hasn't changed throughout the last 2, 000 years. I'd even say that even prior to, um, the Christian era, I would say that the kind of the old covenant people, uh, It was the same mission in many respects to alert people to the reign of [00:05:00] Yahweh, to his universal reign. We would say to alert people to the reign of God through Christ, but it's the same thing.

God's people have always been charged with this mission to let people know that there is one God, and that one God rules over all, and that his rule is peaceable, joyous, just. It includes... Healing and joy and a new kind of society and, uh, experience of the immediate presence of Jesus, of God through Jesus.

And so that doesn't change. It's always been our task. But throughout history and in different... Parts of the world that mission has been shaped by the context by the cultural concerns of the time. And so what was happening in terms of the mission of the church in New Zealand in the 19th century would be different to what happened in Europe in the 10th century and different again to what 19th happened British Isles in the 8th century and so forth.

So, [00:06:00] you know, there may be debates around whether worship should change or what leadership looks like, or some of the kind of more internal ecclesiological concerns. There are some, some, uh, traditions like the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church who haven't really changed that much. Uh, you, you know, that listeners to this might be part of another denomination of some kind that doesn't change much.

It's internal kind of structures or, or policies or, uh, life. But mission is that external drive, that push outward into culture. And so naturally culture then becomes a conversation partner in what that mission looks like. And so, um, Mission is the shape of water is, you know, let's remind ourselves what the mission of God's people is, but let's be free to recognize that it's going to look differently in different contexts.

Andrew Camp: You know, and looking back at Christian history is not always popular. It feels like in today's culture just because of all the skeletons. [00:07:00] So what are you trying to hope to unearth by looking back for God's people?

Mike Frost: Yeah, good question. Um, because, you know, I think this happens less these days, but more classic examples of Christian books on Christian history just kind of lionize these kind of great heroic figures who did amazing things.

And we now know, I mean, they were. great people who did selfless and beautiful work. But we also know that it's very difficult to disengage Christian mission in the 19th century from the impulses and agendas of imperialism and colonialism. And we also know that there were great abuses perpetrated by groups like the Jesuits and others.

Uh, you know, we, you know, the 20th century, we know of the various abuses and scandals in the church. So, I think people now are very conscious of the kind of darker side of, of the history of the church, as, as you suggest. But [00:08:00] it is important that we develop some kind of balance of being able to say, look, we do recognize that, you know, Hudson Taylor and David Livingstone and William Carey, and you know, these kinds of celebrities from the 19th century were operating in the context of, in their case, British colonialism.

And there's no two ways around that. That was the context in which they found themselves. Certainly colonialism, Western colonialism in China was a little more fraught as a, as a system, but definitely in India and in Africa and places like that, and definitely the, before them, the, um, the, the Portuguese and the Spanish missionaries to, to the Americas, but owning it and recognizing it and acknowledging it, that that was the context in which they were operating and discovering that even within systems that are oppressive or broken or racist or cruel, um, or greedy, um, Even within those systems, God has raised up selfless, beautiful people to do remarkable things, [00:09:00] uh, that they didn't even know were remarkable when they were doing.

Andrew Camp: No, for sure. Yeah. No, and I loved it that you talk about that your real goal is to help normal Christians realize that God doesn't need the heroic figures. He just needs us to do our part, you know, you write in the intro that mission is like water and that it flows most effectively when hundreds of thousands of nameless, faceless Christians humbly submit to the task of contributing their bucket to the torrent.

Mike Frost: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And to recognize that God kind of, uh, gathers up all those little buckets and, and moves history in a particular direction in some form or another. And so, uh, yeah, I think it's, um, it's helpful for us to, to have our imaginations freed by looking at history.

Uh, Often when people talk to me about, you know, what's been done in the past and, you know, we need to be free of the past and we've got to innovate and be different from the past. They're really only talking about the last, you [00:10:00] know, 30 to 50 years, Andrew. I mean, that's pretty much their view of the past.

And then maybe. Depending on what, what kind of tradition you're from, you might know a bit about Calvin or a bit about Luther, and then you jump all the way back to the early church. And so I think having a good, healthy Christian memory, kind of knowing kind of the, the tributaries that the, the mission has flowed through, actually frees us.

It encourages us and frees us to actually, to be genuinely innovative, to be bold in our own context. To not feel as though we're breaking out of just the last 50 years, but that now is the time for us to figure out what the shape of mission looks like, uh, in this, in this day and age. And so I had a reader, uh, make a comment to me saying, I don't really get into history much, but I really enjoyed it.

But the best thing he said was. I feel really hopeful about the future of the church, and that's a pretty rare thing, actually, these [00:11:00] days. I certainly, you know, among evangelicals and Protestants and people like that, there's generally a sense like, woe is us, and numbers are falling, and, you know, we're feeling increasingly marginalized in the West, and there's not much hope.

But actually, you know, the church has been through this before at different parts of the world. The church has been like on its knees in various places of the world at different eras and epochs, and, and yet the river keeps flowing, the stream keeps, keeps bubbling away. And so, yeah, I think, I think that this book is actually a really encouraging book, which is a bit unusual for me, Andrew, because I often write books that can be a bit more, um, polarizing for people.

You either love them or you hate them, but it seems as though So for some, I'm in my sixties and I've finally written a book, which is encouraging and full of optimism and hope.

Andrew Camp: No, I find your writing very hopeful. Um, and just maybe, you know, coming from a younger [00:12:00] generation where I wasn't raised in a Christian nation per se, right?

Like it wasn't the heyday of the seventies and the eighties. You know, I, I do have hope. And so, you know, you talk in one chapter about unearthing. The gospel and the need to unearth a new God, maybe not a new gospel, but a more robust gospel for today's age. What, what did you, what do you mean by, by that?

Mike Frost: Yeah, one of the things I say, that's in a later chapter where I say, you know, we're not today introducing in the West, we're not today introducing the gospel to an un, un, evangelized nation. I mean, no matter what people tell you about the need to do evangelism, most in your case, most Americans have some rudimentary understanding of the basic ideas of the gospel.

It doesn't mean they're Christians, but you know, this is not new news for them. But the point that I make in that chapter is that actually the gospel in America, and [00:13:00] in my culture, in my country, actually goes deep, but it's become buried, um, by the advances and shifts toward individualism and secularism and humanism, consumerism, and all those world views that have kind of been layered over the top of it.

And now it's actually about digging into our culture in order to unearth, not to introduce something new, but to remind people of something which is buried there, which actually shaped their culture and made them. Uh, who they are. And, um, I have an experience of doing this, uh, with a group of students, uh, literally kind of unearthing in a way a rediscovery of kind of the, the kind of essential elements of what it is to be church.

I took a group of students on a study tour of Europe and we went to Pompeii and I wanted to do this not because we know that there was a Christian community in Pompeii, although there is debate about that, but whether there [00:14:00] was or not, I wanted them to go to an an ancient city that had been kind of frozen in time, as it were.

But whenever you get to other ancient cities, you see ruins and what have you. But here's a city kind of intact, which has been, as it were, frozen in aspic, you know, and unearthed. And so you can walk down cobbled streets and walk into people's homes and go into the forum and the market, and you can really feel like, ah, this is what it would be like to have been in a Roman city somewhere.

And I had an historian from the UK join us, and he walked us around the city, and he said, what would it have been like if there had been a church in this setting? And he took us into a villa, which had various apartments off a central courtyard. And he said, more than likely the Christians would have met in this courtyard.

They would have, I mean, it's a communal space for all the apartments off this Courtyard. But, you know, they would have said, Oh, well, tonight, you know, Maximus is having his, his meeting. And so [00:15:00] they'd pull out a big table and Christians would come and they would gather. He took us to a takeaway food, uh, restaurant, like, um, like an, like an L shaped bench with big holes in it, in which big vats would sit and food would bubble away.

And you'd take your receptacle and have it kind of filled. And then you'd take that to your, your Christian gathering. And you'd sit at this table, surrounded by people in these apartments who may or may not want to join you. And he explained to us that this is not a bizarre thing for ancient people, because that was what ancient guild meetings were like.

I mean, the silversmiths and the, uh, the sellers of purple cloth and various other merchants, uh, they would do the same thing. If they lived in one of those apartments, they'd kind of, as it were, kind of book the, The central court, they'd pull out their big table, their fellow silversmiths would come with their pots of food, put them on the table, and then they would eat those meal, that meal is a communal meal, and in the midst of that, they would like maybe [00:16:00] slaughter a small animal or a bird, they would say various prayers to the gods of silversmithing or the gods of um, Whatever their particular, uh, vocation was, uh, there may be kind of a incantations and, uh, um, and then a meal, and then they talk about the price of silver or whatever they talk about as, as business people, but his point in telling us this was that a guild meeting was always made up of men.

In a particular, um, industry. So generally middle class to upper middle class men, nearly always citizens of the city. Uh, and, um, no other people were welcome. Slaves are not welcome unless someone was serving them in some way. Women were not welcome unless a woman will happen to be there serving them in some way.

No one from a different socioeconomic background, or even from a different vocation could be there. It was a homogenous. And so if you lived in one of those apartments and you saw that [00:17:00] this guy's holding his guild meeting, you would pay it no mind because it's like, well, I'm not a silversmith or I'm not, I'm a slave or I'm a Jew or I'm an African or whatever the case may be.

I'm a woman. You know, I would, I just wouldn't even register that it was happening. I would walk right past it when I went home that night. But the Christian meetings look very similar around tables with food. So when you first walked into a courtyard like that, you might think, oh, it's a guild meeting.

But then when you looked again, there are women and men sitting at this table side by side, not women serving men, men and women together around the table. And then you would see that there are slaves and free people sitting around that table, that there are citizens and non citizens, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor.

It would be. I can't emphasize this enough to you, Andrew. It was unheard of. No one had ever seen anything like this before. You would like literally do the double take, like, what is this? And there was food on the table and [00:18:00] they were eating, but there was also a ritual, not the slaughtering of animals or the burning of incense or smoke going up to the sky, hoping that the gods might hear them.

They did something with bread and with Wine in the middle of their gathering. He had to listen carefully to figure out what that all meant. And it was intriguing and interesting. And here's the other thing that the early Christians would do is when they saw you come home to your apartment, they would call out to you and I'd say, Andrew, have you eaten tonight, brother?

You know, if you prepared your meal already, we have more than enough. Come eat our, eat our meat, eat our bread, drink our wine. You're welcome at this table. Now you would never welcome at a guild table. And so you might seek to join that meal and eat that food and then they would say to you like, um, Jesus is present at this table.

He is present here now. There's no God high up in the sky. I'm sorry, God is not just up high up in the sky or far away from us that we desperately hope that he might shower his blessings on us as silversmiths. [00:19:00] He eats with us. We eat the gospel in the, in the bread and the wine as part of a love feast.

Now, I think it's Stanley Halwas who says that the early Christians didn't conquer the, uh, Roman Empire with swords or with spears, but with tables. It was the table, this radical new experiment in a whole new way of being human, uh, that, like, literally turned, places upside down because they were intoxicating.

They were intriguing. They were bizarre. And so, you know, walking through a ruin and unearthing that, going to the takeaway food place, going to the apartments around and seeing why Paul gives advice to the early church about if you're going to speak in tongues, interpret it. Because there may be non believers sitting there at the table, or they might just be like literally just over there in that apartment.

Like, Paul assumes that the meal would actually be in a, in a public slash private kind of [00:20:00] space. Um, it makes sense of all sorts of things about, you know, when you meet, some will bring a psalm, some will bring a song, some will bring a word. This idea that there's this collective gathering around food.

which creates a whole new kind of society with Christ seated at the center of it all, very present in the, in the context of this feast, being experienced through the bread and through the wine and through, through worship. And that, that actually becomes, um, uh, a movement, a spontaneous movement across Asia Minor and then into Northern Africa and Southern Europe, which changes the whole Roman Empire.

And so, I'm sorry, I've gone to the Roman Empire, but I think that in the American Empire, if I could put it that way, there are stories to be unearthed, too, about the, the way in which table fellowships like that literally made America and need to be unearthed and rediscovered.

Andrew Camp: I love that story of, you know, The gospel [00:21:00] penetrated the Roman culture through the table.

Um, I'd be curious in your, in your study of the history, when did we lose the centrality of the table?

Mike Frost: We got given all the, all the Roman temples. I mean, once Constantine became the emperor and after the edict of Milan and what have you, um, essentially it was like, here, cleanse these temples and you Christians can have them.

But I mean, literally, if you read historians like Eusebius and people like that, I mean, he's just, His jaw is just slack jawed at this idea that like, surely we are taking over the empire because now I've just been given this temple of Diana and we cleared out all the kind of statues and why we got this marble building, like, you can imagine why they would be just like Wow.

Like it's happening. The whole world is becoming Christian. But little did they realize that what that then did was like reshaped the way the early church started to meet. And as it started to formalize itself as a kind of organ of society, [00:22:00] uh, meeting in temples, not around tables kind of changed the, those dimensions.

I mean, that didn't last long because then the, the empire in the West collapses, but I'd say that that's what kind of stopped that that gathering around, this organic meeting around tables that, that changed Rome.

Andrew Camp: So how do we reclaim then the table?

Mike Frost: Yeah, it's a very good question, right? Because our tables are not public slash private affairs, are they?

They're private affairs, right? We meet in our homes and doors closed. And if you're invited, you're welcome to come. I don't think we can reshape our society into a kind of a Roman style society. Definitely in parts of the world, you don't want to eat outdoors, particularly in winter. I just mentioned before that Australians, you know, we can eat outdoors.

That's a pretty good point. Chunk of the year, but there are lots of parts of the world where that's just not the case. So, I would suggest that we need [00:23:00] to find, if not weekly ways of doing it, you know, regular ways of, of having kind of public feasts, whether they're, now it depends on your, your particular culture, particular place in America, but whether they happen to be in pubs or, you know, at big outdoor tables during the summer and places like that, I've heard of not just churches, but I've heard of, um, Of, uh, you know, community groups in places like Oakland, California, just like fill up a whole laneway with one gigantic table, hundreds of people sitting at a table eating together.

Now, you're not talking to the person at the other end of the table when there's hundreds there. But it's a symbol of us being around one table. And I think Christians should rediscover this in the, in the times and places that. But they can do those kinds of gatherings in kind of outdoor sort of settings.

I went to a church in, um, San Diego years ago, um, called, uh, the Border Church, which like is in Friendship Park in San [00:24:00] Diego, right up against the border wall. Um, they set a table up and they push it up against the big, I mean, it's this big metal. wall. They set this table up against the wall. And on the other side in Tijuana, um, Christians, the other half of the congregation, set a table up on the other side of the wall.

So in effect, if you could send a drone up and look down, it's one table divided by this enormous border wall. And they gather in the park on the San Diego side. Uh, as do their brothers and sisters on the Tijuana side, and they have church, as they consider themselves to be one table church, and they break bread and drink wine in Jesus name.

Um, the pastor who took me there, Guillermo Navarretti, led, uh, it's so poignant knowing that you can just see through the, the chain mail, the kind of the, um, But the crisscross effect of the metal wall, you can just see figures through [00:25:00] there, knowing that this meal is eaten with a massive wall right down the middle of it.

But I found something incredibly powerful about that. Even though our world builds walls, even though our whole society everywhere is made up of wall building, This little defiant congregation split in two by that wall will meet at that wall every week and will break bread and eat together in Jesus name.

And then they end the sentence, I actually think that they've strengthened this wall since I was there. But when I was there, they would put their pinky fingers through the little holes and the kind of passing the piece was that people on the other side would touch pinky fingers. That's their way of, of, of touching each other in the context of a meal.

As I said, I think they've even strengthened that fence now or thickened it or something where that's not even possible to do. But I love the defiance of that table. I mean, the table we sometimes think is a gentle place, but sometimes it can be like that. It can be a defined and powerful [00:26:00] holdout against the, the, um, the world that tells us we have to be divided.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. Cause in your book, Surprise the World, you mentioned that the table is the great equalizer of all relationships. Um, you know, where it does break down those walls, even, you know, at that border church where there is a literal wall. Walls are being destroyed. Yeah. Um, and I just think that's so beautiful of what the table is.

The possibility of the table and what it can accomplish in today's polarization.

Mike Frost: Yeah, yeah. I often say to my students, uh, if I was to ask you to come to my home and share a meal with me at my table, how would you feel? And they all, like, sheepishly say, oh, I would be honored, or oh, wow, what a privilege.

And I'd be like, no, no, no, like, how would you actually feel? And they're like, Really intimidated, really nervous, um, so you're my professor, like, and you're old enough to be my father or grandfather, um, it doesn't feel very equal, you know, I would [00:27:00] be really nervous about coming to your home for a meal, but have you ever been to someone's home for a meal, your boss, your professor, someone, you know, you feel a bit intimidated by or not equal to, and you sit at a table, there's something really, I mean, unless the host is a jerk, I mean, there's just something, oh, really quite beautiful about the way we just find this great equalizing set of relation.

We discover, you know, our boss or our professor or whoever it might be, it's just an average guy. And he's telling some grand story and his wife is saying, well, honey, it wasn't quite like that. You know, I mean, that's just what happens in every family or, you know, his kids disrespect him or the dog poops in the corner or, you know, whatever.

I mean, it's, um, that's life. And we discover over food more often than not, that there is a kind of commonality about. humankind, and that we aren't all so different to each other, and I think that was the beautiful thing about the early church. I mean, I mean, Paul codifies it in a way by saying on a couple of [00:28:00] occasions, you know, there's neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor gentile, no Scythians, no, you know, um, he lists all these kind of outsider types, if you like, and No, now we're one.

Um, so he articulates that, but that was already part of the early church that like, of course, I'm sitting right next to a Scythian right now. There's no difference between him or her and me. And so that's not always experienced in traditional churches where we sit in pews congregations.

Uh, we think they're more holy, or more godly, or more learned, or more whatever than us, and we don't approach them, they're older than us, whatever the case may be, and I think, you know, we're clearly not doing it right if church is not, the gathering of the church, is not actually breaking down those kind of borders or those walls, and [00:29:00] And fashioning a new kind of society.

I mean, when you look at all the prophecies about the day of the Lord in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah, as you say, um, uh, what do they talk about? What's the kingdom of God like? You know, it's the year of the Lord's favor. It's justice. It's, uh, it's finding the broken heart and it's good news to the poor. It's the freeing of captives and all that kind of stuff, but also.

It's a new kind of society, a new kind of family. I mean, what they're dreaming of is we won't be a society like any others. We won't be like the Babylonians or the Egyptians or the Assyrians or we won't be. We're just, we're not like them. We'll be a whole new kind of different kind of society. Debts will be cancelled, land will be kept fallow every 50 years.

There'll be this extraordinary vision of a new sense of what people can be. Now, Israel never lives up to that, but then when Jesus opens the scroll of Isaiah 61 and reads from it, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's saying, I am [00:30:00] the fulfillment of that in me, what Israel dreamed of and hoped to be, you can be and will be.

And yet, we as Christians have also continued to fall short of that in so many ways. And at the very end of the Bible, you know, Revelation 21, you've got John saying, what does he see? He sees a great city coming down from heaven, you know, a city. prepared like a bridegroom, a place of justice. And it's like Christ is going to bring everything Isaiah hoped for, everything Jesus said he would fulfill.

It is coming. And our task is to plant seeds of that here in this world, to, to, to attempt to be those kinds of people, uh, as empowered by the spirit of God. And I think, you know, you know, your podcast and the fact that you're wanting to explore the issue of table and food and hospitality, it's an essential, not just a nice thing for churches to.

to be doing. It's essential to the very work of the people of God.

Andrew Camp: Oh, I appreciate that word. Yeah. And I, you know, as you're talking, [00:31:00] I'm remembering a dinner I had, um, when we were living in Park City, Utah, we got to know some Latinos because my wife is fluent in Spanish and they invited us over for a birthday dinner.

And I was the only non Spanish speaking person there. And yet I left feeling more loved and more cared for and more accepted. Um, then at most other parties I had been to, and it was just one of those beautiful instances where the table broke down all cultural, not, you know, it didn't break down culture, but it broke down any barriers, even despite the language barrier.

Mike Frost: That's nice. Actually, I was in, uh, I was in Georgia a years ago, and these two, uh, old, old Baptists or Presbyterians, I can't remember what they were, but, um, Older guys who, as they talked, it became pretty clear they were pretty wealthy, successful, retired men, and they had a real heart for mission and wanted to serve God in their retirement, and they told me this beautiful [00:32:00] story.

They said, we tried everything to serve refugees in our community. We felt, oh, that's what God wants us to do. So, you know, we, we tried to build things and start things and launch things and fund things. And refugees were very supportive and encouraged, not supportive, they were very thankful and grateful for our efforts, but we didn't get to connect with them at all.

Like, we didn't have any relationships with them, even though, like, I've been on the, you know, the treasurer for the Burmese Refugee Society or, you know, I'd volunteered at this program or I'd launched this thing or that thing. I wouldn't have said any of them were our friends. And then he said it suddenly came to us, like, food, the table.

And so they asked the Burmese if they would teach them how to cook Burmese food. And they said, you know, we've eaten at some of your events. We love your food. Could you teach us? And these guys, they had big fat hands with big fat fingers. And they were like, you know, I, I can, I can barbecue, but I [00:33:00] can't even, you know, cook American food.

He said, but. We went and volunteered, and of course, we couldn't do it. We looked ridiculous. You know, we couldn't cut things properly. We got things wrong. We tried to say the words of the ingredients when they told us we got them wrong. And the Burmese were laughing their heads off at us. We looked ridiculous.

But he said, That's what made the connection, like, when we humbled ourselves, not just to eat food with them, but to, in a way, lower ourselves, to make them the experts, to make them the one giving something to us, not just giving us food, but teaching us how to prepare food. I just found it such a touching story, and now they have regular Burmese cooking classes where they invite all these, all their American friends, and...

Wives and what have you to come and learn how to cook Burmese food. And it was the actual preparation of food, not just the eating of it. That was the really beautiful equalizer in that sense. I mean, one of the most famous dinner churches in America [00:34:00] is, um, one of the first was St Lydia's in Brooklyn. And, and I always, I've never been there, but.

One of the things I liked about that was that they required you, when you arrived at a certain time, that wasn't in time for the meal, that was in time for the food preparation. So you would turn up at the time it starts, and you'd be given a peeler and some potatoes, or you'd be given a knife and some carrots.

So that actually preparing the meal, was part of the event itself. Then you would all sit around tables and eat it. And there was a liturgy that would go along with that. And I thought, yeah, that's, that's really clever. Like actually, if you and I meet on that night and we're shoulder to shoulder peeling potatoes, there's something kind of powerful that happens between us.

Andrew Camp: Yeah, no, you're forced to talk more. You're forced to laugh at each other, you know, and laugh with each other. And I love that story about, them going to the Burmese, versus expecting the Burmese to come to them. How do we enter into those spaces [00:35:00] knowing that in the past we as Christians have always expected people to come to us, but it feels like the mandate now is we need to, to enter into.

Spaces as guests, not as hosts.

Mike Frost: Yeah, and to practice holy curiosity, to like ask, why, what, what is this food? Or why do you eat this? Or how does that go? What's the history of eating? You know, just to be genuinely curious about the people that we, that we go to..

Andrew Camp: where else are you seeing the table re emerge as you've been part of the missional movement, as you've interacted with Christians across the globe?

Oh boy. Are you seeing the table re emerge? Are there themes that are to give us hope?

Mike Frost: Yeah, yeah, there is. I mean, you know, Leonard Sweet, uh, an old friend of mine, uh, he says if you want to know what God is doing in America today, check out the dinner church. And I mean, dinner churches are popping up all over the place.

Some of them are... Like St. Lydia's, like actual [00:36:00] meals, you come together, you prepare a meal, you sit at the table, you eat it, and you, you, there's a, there's a liturgy that you enter into. In some cases, some churches are doing a hybrid thing, so they sit in pews or in rows. Uh, for, say, three Sundays of the month and then the fourth, they take out all the chairs and bring in tables and you sit around tables.

There's still a, in that setting, there's still a kind of a platform, if you like. There's still a place out the front that's lead. So there's kind of hybrid versions of this, but But dinner churches are, you know, popping up all over the place. In Australia, they tend to be called simple church. Uh, some simple churches don't include a meal or a table.

They might be in a living room around, you know, on couches and what have you. But, um, uh, I think that the dinner church or micro church or simple church is various names for it. is actually kind of really bubbling away. And in Australia, especially, I think it's the same in America, [00:37:00] something's happening there.

It's starting to kind of really get, get traction. Now, the thing about that is they don't need to pay a pastor. They don't need to put anyone on staff. It's a bunch of Christians gathered together at a table or a bunch of tables and eat a meal. And so sometimes we don't hear about it because they don't have kind of champions, as it were, pastors who tell the story and start websites and get the, get the word out there.

But I think there is an invisible movement happening around the table. Church or the simple church that I think is really, uh, interesting. Um, there's also the, um, micro church movement. I don't know if you're familiar with Tampa Underground and various churches like that. So it was, um, It was really, um, pioneered by a church called Tampa Underground, where they don't so much do it, I mean, the microchurches could eat a meal or be around a table, but the real [00:38:00] difference there is that each microchurch has a missional Project or calling to which they're committed and the gathering together as a larger group is optional.

They would much prefer that you find your sense of identity and community in a smaller group that has a real heart for, say, the Burmese refugees or for ministering to young people or caring for your neighbors or whatever the case may be so that The kind of drive mission has been caught to the DNA of these micro churches.

But they also recognize, Hey, it's great to get together with a big group of people and just sing your head off and, and laugh and just feel like God is doing something great in the world. So yeah, come along to the, the, the bigger thing. Well, now that's really. They've been doing that for a long time now, and it's now kind of rolling out in other parts of the world.

So there's now Kansas City underground, and, uh, I can't remember some of the other places, but it's beginning [00:39:00] to roll out as a movement as well. So the recovery of small, nimble, missional, intimate communities of Christians committed to serving people beyond themselves. And I think that's a very exciting prospect.

Andrew Camp: In your book, you talk about the church needs to rethink what it means to win and what it means to have power, like this movement towards the margins. Is that where the dinner church can flourish? Do you see that?

Mike Frost: Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. And I think that, I thought you were going to ask me, is that in reaction against a church, which is so, a traditional church, which is so coveted, kind of political power and influence and size and muscularity. And I would say yes to that if that had been your question too. I suspect that there are a lot of people thinking, Oh, I don't know that I can reform.

This thing that has become so, you know, hungry for influence and [00:40:00] political power. Uh, or my pastor is totally devoted to those type of things. Um, maybe the movement that is out to, you know, not in reaction, not with anger, but, you know, hey, all power to you, but we're going to go do this thing over here. And to not feel like you have to win every argument and you have to, Get every representative elected and you have to pass, you know, pass every bit of legislation that's going to endorse or support what you believe to be a Christian point of view.

And I think that there's a giving up on that, that, um, approach. Now, critics of this movement will say that it's not going to influence America very much, is it? Because it's, you know, it doesn't organize, it doesn't, I mean, you could be in a dinner church like across the road and I wouldn't even know with my dinner church.

Like, that's true. There is a, there are attempts by groups [00:41:00] like, uh, underground network and, um, the micro church network and parish collective, there are a few networks that are trying to bring them out. It's not, not to. Do anything with them, but just to say here, register yourself on our website on our map so that people can start to see these things are happening.

I mean, Parish Collective, their slogan is to be rooted. That is like deeply embedded in a particular place and connected. So connected to other like minded groups around the country that are doing the same kind of thing. Not so much for activism or for collective is there. activity, but to know what others are doing and be encouraged by it.

Andrew Camp: Yeah, no, to be reminded of, of the communion of the saints and to be reminded that we're all in this together. Um, you also mentioned, and I'd be curious, um, sort of slightly off of what we've been talking about, but you talk about rediscovering enchantment, enchantment [00:42:00] in our sort of disenchanted world. Can the table function? as a re enchanting place. And if so, in what ways do you see that happening?

Mike Frost: Yeah, it's not easy, actually, because the impulse when you're around a table is to, um, to the, uh, how can I put this, to the kind of the casual, the everyday, relational, We chit chat, Hey Andrew, are you new here, where are you from, you know, there is a kind of a, uh, an impulse toward the, um, the kind of casual, uh, friendly interaction and the like.

Whereas an experience of enchantment is actually a, an otherworldly kind of experience and invariably that is facilitated insofar as it can be through liturgy and a sense of occasion. . [00:43:00] And, uh, opportunities for us to sense the presence of God and the power of another world breaking in. And so, actually, it requires some deft kind of choreography by the leaders of the group.

Because the impulse will be just for us to... Have dinner and, and break bread, take communion, say we love Jesus, maybe sing a song or two, but actually to lead a congregation into an experience of something uplifting, uh, something mysterious. Some sense of the kind of the beauty and wonder of something beyond what's material and physical actually requires work and leadership.

So when I said to you before that in Australia, a lot of people are referring to these kinds of churches as simple churches. I mean, I get what they're saying. They have no buildings and no staff and no money and all that kind of business. But, um. But it ain't simple. It's, it's, [00:44:00] it's, it takes like very significant, uh, elements of leadership and wisdom to be able to kind of shepherd, uh, a dinner church into that kind of space.,

Andrew Camp: One of my first jobs was at a farm to table restaurant, um, as a chef. And the chef was talking to me about the simplicity of the food and saying that the simple food is actually harder to do. Um, just cause. You know, and I've come to realize it too, that you can't, there's no hiding.

You can't hide behind anything. And it takes more intentionality and how to coax out flavors and how to bring out the beauty of a simple carrot versus a braised short rib with 40 ingredients. You know? And so I think what you're talking about is as we gather around the table, it sounds nice and simple.

Um, but how to lead people into an experience of the otherworldly, um, and to lift our eyes above, above the food while still relishing the food, um, that's a hard task.

Mike Frost: [00:45:00] Yeah, it is. In fact, I read a review of a restaurant recently where they were like saying what is it with the waitstaff having to explain to you like all the ingredients that are in this meal and that the chef is, you know, from a Caribbean background and his grandmother taught him this and that's why he does that.

Like, why do I think In a way, and you certainly see this in kind of, uh, you know, those kind of cooking travel shows where people go around and they get the story of the food. There is, I think, in a sense, that's an attempt to create that sense of enchantment. It's like, this isn't just a meal that I got in a recipe book and here it is for you on the plate.

It's a way of saying, actually, you know, this food came from here and it was, Harvested this way, and my expertise is drawn from my background, which is from there, and there is a sense of wanting to elevate a meal [00:46:00] into something which has a kind of a slightly enchanted aspect to it, and So, yeah, I didn't like the review for that reason.

It's like, I don't want a big lecture before I eat my meal, but I do think there's something kind of quite enchanting about that. It's not just, uh, you know, a hamburger or a fast food place. I'm actually, I'm connecting to the land, to history, to culture. And so, yeah, I think that we need to figure out ways in which through liturgy and through leadership that dinner churches do something like that.

And I don't mean a description of the ingredients, but. a reminder of what, why we're gathering and what it's like. And when the early, as I said to you before, from that Pompeii experience, the early Christians had a real sense of mystery about their meals. So people would sit at their table or get a free meal, but what's this thing you do with the bread and the wine?

And why is he speaking a language I can't understand? And there are times when Paul is, as I said before, [00:47:00] it pains to say, well, you know, help explain these things. But there was an element of mystery and beauty associated with that. And I don't think we should make it also kind of suburban and, uh, and, and casual that we lose that.

Andrew Camp: And it reminds me too of your, um, exhortation to, to live in our place, you know, and to be rooted and to be grounded, um, you know, not to live above place, but to live into our place. You know, um, to be formed by the stories of our place. Um, you know, cause I think that does help enchantment in some ways, just because we can then know our story and who we are as a people.

Um, and how we are connected to a broader story. Yep. Absolutely. No. And so, no, this has been a lot of fun and enjoyment, and I love your wealth of knowledge of history.

As you think about the church, and, being a pastor for a few years, it was always hard to get people to do one thing, [00:48:00] you know, and are, you know, the demands on people's lives.

It feels overwhelming, you know, and I relate to this as a parent of two small girls, and both my wife and I have careers, and we're trying to figure everything out, um, and so the demands are, on life are real. If you could exhort Christians to do one thing.

might that be? Or what might that look like? And I realize it's a big question, and there may not be a simple answer, but

Mike Frost: Um, if I could exhort them to do one thing, uh, well, aside, you know, from love God and, and, uh, and serve Jesus. In terms of this idea around, kind of, mission, I would say Yeah, take your place in the neighborhood seriously, get to know your neighbors, listen carefully, practice that kind of holy curiosity I was talking about before, and then be, [00:49:00] you know, willing to adapt to the context in which you find yourselves.

I mean, when I was, I trained to be a school teacher way, way back in the day, when I went to teacher education training after I'd finished my undergraduate degree. They said to me, we're going to teach you how to be a different kind of teacher to the one that you were taught by. And we're not convinced you're going to, to do it because you're a success story from the old era.

Like you, you succeeded, you got through school, you got through university. See you later. It's going to take a lot of effort for you to break out of the system that served you in order to teach in a more contemporary way. I've never forgotten that, and I feel like it's the same thing with Christians. You know, we're success stories.

Those of us who are still in the church, who are still loving God, who are still committed to the church. It's worked for us. You know, it hasn't been perfect, but, you know, it's like [00:50:00] I found faith in the church, and I've grown in my faith in the church, and I've served in the church. And so to actually dare to do something really.

different, not just for the sake of difference. That's an important point. But in response to the needs or desires or hopes or fears of my neighbors. I mean, that's one thing I think I'd like to encourage us to be open to doing. Can I tell you like a really cool story about a friend of mine here in Australia who He grew up, uh, the son of Italian immigrants who owned a market garden, and they kind of grew fruit and vegetables, and so he grew up, you know, on the land, as it were.

Went to university, studied agriculture, and then felt a call to be a missionary, so he went to Bible college. Trying to be a missionary and then went to the Niger Delta in West Africa, thinking he was going to do evangelism and church planting and teach in a Bible college or whatever the case may be.

And then when he got there, he discovered, um, [00:51:00] in Niger, they pretty much denuded the whole country. They've chopped down every tree, uh, just for firewood and just to survive. And what that's done is it's destabilized the soil. Of course, it's now become dirt. And the other thing is, there's no shade anywhere at all, and so they can't grow crops.

You can't grow crops without shade, and you can't grow crops without stable, um, soil. And so they've tried to be planting, like reforest the Niger Delta by planting seedlings, and guess what? They die in the blazing sun. So it's just been a completely useless enterprise. But he gets there and he's got a degree in agriculture and he's grown up on the land.

And he said, do you know that all the roots of all the trees that you chopped down are still under the ground? Like, and he, the, the language he uses is he says, there's a forest underground. And so he teaches them how to dig into the soil and strike the dormant root system [00:52:00] and to, to create shoots from the existing root system.

And he's actually, this is an astonishing story to me, he's actually reforested hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of hectares of the Niger Delta by teaching farmers how to do this. They strike these, these seedlings, they grow another forest, then they can plant their soil, plant their crops in the soil.

And what he's done is he's lifted thousands and thousands of families out of poverty by teaching them to do this. Like he did not go there as an agricultural expert, I mean he is one, but that's not his reason for going. And the thing I love about that story is that when he got there, what was their greatest need?

The greatest need was to, to actually be able to feed their families. And so, you know, he, he uses, it so happens, the skills that he had, not that he expected that he was going there to do that. And so his book about that is called The Forest Underground [00:53:00] and they're now doing it all across Africa, this particular method that he's pioneered.

But the interesting thing about that is the Mission Society that sent him and a lot of his Christian supporters back here in Australia have really questioned, like, is this mission work? Is this really what we were funding you to go and do? Like, weren't you meant to go and evangelize people and teach the Bible and And so We do need to follow the impulses or desires or needs of our neighborhood.

It may not be as dramatic as reforesting the Niger Delta, but we also need to be conscious that, you know, we're going to get some flack from other Christians who think that what we're doing is not, you know, Proper Christian work, whatever that might be in their minds, and he's stuck to his guns on that, and he's now becoming quite well known as a real hero around the world, but not as a missionary.

If only people have recognized this is actual mission work. Right. Um, to preach good news to the [00:54:00] poor, to bind the brokenhearted, to, to, to set free the captives and to announce the year of the Lord's favor, which was actually about the renewal of the earth, as well as the renewal of society. Right.

Andrew Camp: Wow, what a great story.

Thanks for sharing. Before we end, just want to have a little fun with a few questions, just since we're talking about food. , what is one food you refuse to eat?

Mike Frost: Um, okay, refuse to eat, I, well, in Southeast Asia, there's a fruit called a durian, which is actually quite sweet to the taste, but smells like vomit.

And I, I have tried, I cannot eat it. But, and I hate to tell you this as an American, but the other food I really do not understand is collard greens, biscuits and gravy. I don't get that kind of food. I'm sorry. It's just like I ate biscuits and gravy once and I just felt [00:55:00] like, you know, I had this rock in my stomach.

Andrew Camp: Yeah, most southern food you don't eat and feel great about yourself afterwards. Or you feel great, but you don't want to go run a marathon anytime soon. But then along those lines. What's one of the best things you've ever eaten?

Mike Frost: Oh, I wish you had have told me this before we met, cause I, I am sure I could think about some great things that are not going to pop into my head right now. The best thing I've ever eaten. I was in South Africa at a winery. And I think I had the best steak I've ever had, and the best pinotage, which is a red blend, um, grown mainly in South Africa.

Uh, that stands out as, you know, just an astonishing, beautiful meal. Um, oh, what else? I mean, I love seafood, I love, um, oysters, prawns, and you know, you don't [00:56:00] have to do much to those to have them be delicious.

Andrew Camp: For sure. And then finally, one last question. There's a conversation among chefs in the world about last meals.

Like, if you knew you were going, if this was going to be your last meal, what would it be? And, and so I'm curious, if you knew you only had one meal left to enjoy, what would your meal of choice be?

Mike Frost: Um, I often think about this and think, would you be able to even eat a meal if it was your last meal? But I get the point. So it was my last meal. I think I would have a, uh, a Lebanese banquet, a Lebanese, you know, banquet of, you know, hummus and lamb and, and, uh, tabbouleh and, you know, the whole, the whole thing, peanut bread and baba ghanoush.

I think I'd have a, like a really tasty Lebanese platter.

Andrew Camp: Wow. I feel like there's a story behind that for another day, but, um, really [00:57:00] appreciate you joining me, Mike. Um, if people want to get in touch with you, where, where can they find you?

Mike Frost: Uh, I have a website, which is mikefrost. org and, um, yeah, they can grab me there.

Andrew Camp: Awesome. Thanks again for joining me. Uh, this was a lot of fun and it was a real privilege. And thanks for joining us on this episode of The Biggest Table, where we explore what it means to be transformed by God's love around the table and through food. Until next time, bye.

Thanks again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and reviewing the biggest table. Also, please share it with others whom you think would enjoy it as well. Until next time, may you find something beautiful at the table whatever you are eating with whom ever you are sharing it with. Bye.