Kitchen Table Wisdom

A lot of ministry happens around my kitchen table.

Sermons are written here. Worship services are planned here. My Bible is opened, commentaries are consulted, prayers are written, ideas are scribbled down and sometimes crossed out. And, of course, more than a few cups of coffee are consumed.

Long before anyone gathers in the sanctuary on Sunday morning, worship often begins here.

Recently, I attended a leadership conference and chose a workshop titled “Rediscovering Our First Love: How to Strengthen Your Church’s Vision, Identity, and Purpose for Transforming Ministry.”

They had me at Rediscovering Our First Love.
That’s the workshop I wanted.

Because when I hear the words “first love,” I think of Jesus. And I wanted to talk about how we help people fall so deeply in love with him that following him becomes more than an obligation. That serving, giving, changing, and even sacrificing become our response to his love.

I wanted that kind of love growing in my congregations.

Actually, I wanted it for myself, too.

I went into that room hoping we would talk about Jesus. Truthfully, I think I was hoping to rediscover my own first love. Ministry can make the heart weary, and somewhere beneath all the responsibilities of serving the Church, I wanted the flame of simply loving Jesus to burn brightly again.

Instead, we talked mostly about strategies for developing vision.

There was nothing wrong with what was presented. Churches need vision. We need to understand where we’ve been, where we’re going. We need purpose and direction.

Still, I felt disappointed.

What I had been longing for—for myself as much as for the churches I serve—was “a heart strangely warmed” encounter. Not another reason to work harder or another strategy to implement, but an encounter with Jesus that would rekindle a weary heart and remind us why we followed him in the first place.

Was another strategy really what my churches needed?

The question followed me home.

And eventually, I found myself back here at the kitchen table wondering: How do we help people in the church rediscover their first love?

I’ve been sitting with that question.

What does it even mean?
Or have I made it more complicated than it needs to be?

I think about falling in love.

You want to know the other person. You want to spend time together. You listen to their stories. You learn what brings them joy and what breaks their heart. You find yourself thinking about them when they aren’t around.
There is excitement.
Passion.
Joy.

But just like fire needs tending to keep it burning, so do the relationships we form.

Life gets busy. Responsibilities pile up. What once captured our attention can become familiar. We can live alongside someone we love and, without meaning to, we stop paying close attention.

I wonder if that happens with Jesus.

People go to church. They pray. They read their Bibles. They serve. They attend meetings. They help with dinners. They give. They do all the things church people do. But they’ve lost the passion of first love.

Pastors do it too.

I can spend hours preparing a worship service about Jesus without spending much time simply being with Jesus.

Ouch.

Maybe some of us need to tend a love that has grown familiar.
Maybe some of us need to stir embers that have grown dim.
And maybe some of us simply need to fall in love.

Maybe Jesus has always been somewhere in the background of your life, but you’ve never really thought of faith as a relationship. Or maybe you’re still trying to figure out who Jesus is.

Perhaps, like me, you need to rediscover, or discover for the first time, your first love.

Where do we begin?

Perhaps we all begin by spending some quality time with Jesus
We create a space in our lives to get to know him better. We get curious and dust off our Bibles.
We pay more attention to his words.
We listen.
We learn who He is.
And most importantly, we begin to discover how deeply we are loved by Him.

Maybe that’s what we…what I…have forgotten.
Love doesn’t begin with how much I love Jesus.
It begins with how much Jesus loves me.

1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.”

And maybe that’s the beginning of the “heart strangely warmed” encounter I was hoping to find at that conference.

Maybe our hearts aren’t rekindled by trying harder to love Jesus. Maybe they are rekindled when we encounter, once again, the astonishing truth that he loved us first.

That’s where the excitement, passion, and joy begin—not because someone tells us we’re supposed to feel them, but because we begin to grasp that the God who created us knows us completely and loves us still.

And when we begin to believe that—not just know it but really trust the truth of it—that changes things.

Because plenty of lifelong Christians can recite “Jesus loves me.” But the transformation comes when that familiar belief moves from something we know to something we trust.

Prayer becomes more than something we put into the order of worship. It becomes time spent with the One who loves us.

Scripture becomes more than something I need to help prepare Sunday’s sermon. It becomes a place where I listen to His voice.

Worship begins around the kitchen table, long before we gather in the sanctuary.

And loving our neighbor becomes something more than another command we’re trying to obey.

Our understanding becomes:
Love God.
Receive God’s love.
Love neighbor, remembering that every one of us is loved by God.

Maybe that’s where the vision I was looking for begins. Not with figuring out how to get people excited about church. Not with creating another program. Not even with writing the perfect vision statement.

Maybe we simply make room for people to meet Jesus.
Room to ask questions.
Room to listen.
Room to discover that they are known and loved.

And then we trust Jesus to do what no strategy can manufacture.

Maybe I didn’t find what I was looking for in that conference room. But the question followed me home. Back to my Bible. Back to my coffee. Back to the kitchen table where another Sunday morning is beginning to take shape.

And perhaps before I ask what hymn we should sing, what words I should preach, or what we should do next as the Church, there is a simpler prayer I need to pray:

Jesus, help us know you.
Help us know how deeply you love us.
And then, together, let’s see what happens.

Cathy D.