Faithful Presence: A Theology of Place

The goal of this series is to help our community see place – their city, their neighborhood, their block – as the site of divine possibility with a particular focus on the new neighborhood that The Table Church is moving into. In the Western world, we tend to see Time as of much greater significance than Place. This is demonstrated often by the ease with which we can rattle off days that are sacred to us and which we observe. In contrast, it is often difficult for us to name places we know to be sacred, and if we can name them, we often don’t have practices to observe their significance. While the rhythm of our lives revolves around constructs in time such as the calendar year, place garners little of our attention practically or theologically. When we do give it attention, it tends to remain abstract.

Our goal in this series is to invite people to reflect upon the practical and theological significance of place. How are we formed by our place? In what ways are we dehumanized when we become disconnected from place? We want to invite our community to consider what it means that so much of the Bible is about a people exiled from home (displaced) and walking out their faith as they seek return to that home (implacement). How can we in our mobile culture begin to talk about the sense of homeslessness we experience and the journey we can make back to being rooted in a place? Moreover, we want to ground our discussions in the “placed reality” of our church – our neighborhood and our city – and consider what God might be teaching us through the natural and built environment that we experience everyday. Finally, it is imperative that we never forget that to be reconciled to our place means that we must seek repair with the native peoples who were the original inhabitants of the lands we now live on. How can Christians rightly engage place and land specifically in light of this history?