Open Table trains congregations and their members, through the Open Table Model, to form communities – called Tables - that transform the vocational and life experiences of members into tools our Brothers and Sisters in poverty can use to develop and implement plans that create change. The Open Table process is a catalyst for the collaboration of faith communities, government, universities, businesses and non-profits working through a shared purpose model to move themselves and their communities from a transactional relationship with our Brothers and Sisters in poverty to one of transformation.
While congregation members join Tables to help others, they soon realize they are changed forever by the relationships they create through missional community. Through the Open Table, relationship is mutual: love, healing, purpose, faith and transformation given by each other for each other. God gives everyone human potential and the Open Table model allows us all to use it to give lives of meaning to each other.  ​

I have no memory of seeing hurt. No recall of pain. Not one picture in my mind of the face of one person experiencing poverty between the years of 1960 to 2005, in all the years of my life to that point. It is unexplainable. I am sure I must have driven by tens of thousands of people shoved to the margins. On the sidewalk, the expressway exit, in the neighborhoods, all over. I remember the french fries but not the poverty wage person I ordered them from. Then, in 2008, I met a man at a shelter who I remembered. And he remembered me. Our shared remembering led to Open Table. We have now been remembering each other for 12 years.

Are you experiencing my same memory challenges?

18 months ago, in a city in the eastern United States, one woman remembered a face from poverty. The face of a young woman in a supermarket 20 years younger. Pushing buttons on a cash register. She looked at her face. In that instant of opened eyes God showed her the beauty of creation. And she remembered. She shopped and shopped and shopped at that supermarket and searched the registers for her. And then the gift was given. The young woman remembered her. For 18 months of groceries they remembered and spoke to each other in the few minutes it took to scan the milk and eggs. And the woman learned that pain and hopelessness had invaded the young woman. Poverty was waiting to feast on her human potential.

During in the 16th month of this relationship the woman joined the Open Table movement. She sat on a Table that did not yet have a Sister or Brother. Then she remembered. She remembered! She shared her memories of the young woman with her Table. They invited the young woman working the supermarket checkout lane to become the Sister they would serve.