HOPE AND THE

CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT

in the

POSTMODERN WORLD

A Mutual Ministry of

Theological, Ecclesiological,

and Pastoral Conversations

LIFE ALIVE: NEW BEGINNINGS & FRESH HORIZONS!

WHAT IS TABLE TALK INITIATIVES?

Table Talk Initiatives is a coalition of Chris-tian searchers who meet at tables aroundthe United States and in Great Britain forthe purposes of fellowship and conversa-tions about the future of faith and the life to which it calls us in relation to ourselves,our neighbors, our enemies, our econom-ics, our politics, our communities, ourchurches, and our planet.

WHO IS INVOLVED IN

TABLE TALK INITIATIVES?

We include: laity, theologians, pastors, students, families, searchers, activists, work-ers, men’s groups, women’s groups, coali-tions, communities, congregations, housechurches, seminaries, interfaith connections,regional ministries, and more.

We are young and old, men and women,married and single. We are diverse. We are rich and we are poor. We are dreamers and activists, workers and retired, students

and teachers, employed and unemployed,wounded and recovering. We are from many traditions, many ethnicities, manybackgrounds, many nations. We are “re-memberers” and “hopers.” We are pilgrimsand sojourners in a postmodern world. Weseek “energized connectedness” in a time ofincreasing isolation and alienation.

SAFE PLACES AND SACRED SPACES

We are creating safe places and sacredspaces for exploration, questions, dialogue,mutual conversation, and action and reflec-tion in an often fearful, anxious, and closedbut rapidly changing world.

"Let there be, in some place, a community of men, women, elderly, children and new bornbabies as a first fruit, as ourappetizer, and an embrace ofthe future."—Rubem Alves, ChaliceHymnal (Chalice Press)

WHAT DO TABLE TALK

INITIATIVE GROUPS DISCUSS?

Table Talk Initiative groups may discuss anyarea that has meaning for the group. Theinitial meeting of each group will establishtheir own topics and parameters of discus-sion with the help of the Convener and Pastoral Theologian-at-Large, thus beingthe “subjects” of their own conversation.Some possible topics are:

• Faith in reflection, hope in action, lovein all things.

• The future of the church and the natureof future life-engendering communities.

• The wisdom traditions in meaning- making and interfaith dialogue.

• The realm of the Spirit in a technologicalworld.

• Redeeming the time: Too busy to live.• Narrative as a means of learning about,

understanding, and valuing ourselvesand others.

• Making meaning and promoting healingin our personal and communal stories.

• Where science and faith, literature andlife, politics and culture intersect.

• The nurturing of faith.• The healing of our wounds.• Generational encounters, understand-

ings, and overlap.• Civil conversation as humanizing

discourse…A lost art.• Life lived fully alive as gracious gift.

WHY JOIN A TABLE TALK

INITIATIVE GROUP?

Table Talk Initiatives offers a unique opportunity for faith conversations and relationship building that are life engen-dering. We learn from each other in ourpersonal stories and communal wisdom,under the guidance of a trained PastoralTheologian, counselor, and small groups facilitator. Established groups may be self-sustaining, with guidance and support fromthe Pastoral Theologian.

• If passion for the future seems to havewaned…

• If hope no longer sings…• If ultimate questions still haunt or

fascinate…• If you long for open and honest

companionship in the journey of faith…• If genuine conversation has grown

silent…• If intellectual honesty, attention to

experience, and spirituality matter toyou...

Then Table Talk Initiatives is for you!

"Relationships are not perceived;they are not objects. First andforemost they make up the milieuin which life exists....We are whatwe are by virtue of the 'relevantothers' with whom we speak. Firstand foremost, theology has to dowith the 'relevant others' whom weinclude in our dialogue concerningthe problem of our day-to-day life."—Rubem Alves, Frontiers of Theology in LatinAmerica (Orbis Books)

WHAT ARE THE

UNDERLYING COMMITMENTS

OF TABLE TALK INITIATIVES?

1. Expanding the table to include thosewho have not had a place, giving voiceand genuine conversational presence tothe disempowered, those simply toobusy “surviving” to be at the table.

2. Addressing our conversation and re-search to those issues that threaten both the “survival of our humanity” and the “survival of human solidarityin just and healing communities.”

3. Belief that Word and Sacrament (“theword made flesh in us and between us”)still has creative and impregnatingpower to shape a changing world in the face of the questions of absurdity,creational/human suffering and hope-lessness, addressing “end of the worldas we know it” issues—whether in insti-

UNDERLYINGCOMMITMENTS

tutions of religion, business, economics,politics or education.

4. Meaning-making explorations, community-building conversations,hope-engendering actions and life-affirming possibilities of a human futurebased on a deep Christian vision thatsees “the whole world”—in all of itscomplexity and pluralism—as the object of God’s love and grace.

5. The interface of wisdom and scholar-ship, actual experience and creativeimagination, faith narratives and justcommunities, conversation and peace-making.

6. Addressing questions in our personalfaith journeys, seeking passionateawareness, understanding and life-alive.

7. Exploring our own stories as sources oftruth and truthfulness in light of the his-toric function of Wisdom in the religioustraditions.

8. Exploring the question: “How shall wethen live after Christendom?—Future Church, the spiritual life, and sustainingcommunity in a postmodern world.

COMMUNIT

Y-BUILDIN

G

CONVERS

ATIONS

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF

TABLE TALK INITIATIVES?

1. Coming together in communal solidarityfor the purposes of:• Sharing our faith, our narratives, our experiences, our questions, and our desires.

• Naming and exploring critical issues challenging our humanity in relationship to the spiritual and religious dimensions of our lives in our inter-connected world and cultures.

• Combining critical thought and analy-sis with creative imagination, story telling, play, the arts, and feasting—seeking together meaning-making, refreshment and renewal, and wisdomfor personal and communal life lived in faith and hope, love and justice, peace and the common good.

2. Communicating, through a variety ofpublication methods and face-to-facegroup encounters, the results of conver-sations and outcomes of research onspecific issues regarding wisdom for thefuture in order to engender new andcontinuing conversations.

3. Offering Table Talk Initiative groups in avariety of locations and group settingsfor expanding the table of conversationin these locations and among these vari-ous groups.

4. Through these and other practiceskeeping alive the vital conversations between religious traditions, racial and

ethnic groups, the rich and the poor, theseminaries and the church, scholars andpractitioners, intellectuals and activists,the variety of disciplines, and the plural-ity of cultures and commitments withinwhich we all live.

5. Table Talk Initiatives is committed tokeeping alive conversations of faith and hope in which the head and theheart are connected, reflective living valued, human experience listened to,suffering and joy acknowledged, healing nurtured, and hope is incar-nated in action...• In a world where our suffering is oftenunarticulated

• our fears unattended• our joys uncelebrated• our experiences unheeded• our stories uninterpreted• and our hope unheard.

"Nothing is more needful in ourculture than a forum for the openexpression of the experience ofnegation that as a people we darklysuspect but do not, seemingly can-not, allow ourselves to admit, tovoice, to feel. There could, I believebe no more responsible public activity on the part of persons ofunderstanding and good will todaythan working for the creation ofsuch a forum."—Douglas John Hall, Godand Human Suffering (Augsburg)

BE A PART OF THIS KIND OF FORUM—GIVING ATTENTION TO AND

REFRESHMENT OF LIFE IN ALL ITS DIMENSIONS.

HOW DO I BECOME INVOLVED IN

A TABLE TALK INITIATIVE GROUP?

If you are interested in MATTERS OFFAITH AND WHY FAITH MATTERS, it’stime to begin a TABLE TALK INITIATIVESgroup in your area. Let’s SET THE TABLEtogether!

The values to participants in a TABLE TALKINITIATIVES group are:

1. Getting in touch with the dynamics ofone’s own story and learning from thestories of others.

2. Creative interpretive reflection on howour stories have shaped our lives.

3. Gaining insights into and understand-ings of the kind of world we live in andmoving ahead in healing and in hope.

4. Addressing our deepest faith questions,commitments, and practices.

5. Being empowered to “choose life andto celebrate life” in midst of its joys, sufferings and ambiguities—a renewalof the spirit for the journey to wholenessin relationship to ourselves, others, andGod.

We extend an open invitation to any and allwho are interested in exploring questionsand concerns surrounding faith and life-alive. If you are interested in being part of aTable Talk group, in beginning a Table Talkgroup in your area, in the kind of participa-tion, exploration and fellowship this kind ofemerging community affords, or in simply

finding out more about Table Talk Initia-tives, please contact us.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Groups are being formed. CONTACT USTODAY FOR MORE INFORMATION INONE OF THE FOLLOWING WAYS:

1. Return the enclosed form to receivemore information.

2. Email: Viclhunter@aol.com3. Write to:

Victor L. Hunter Table Talk Initiatives 437 S. Quay St. Lakewood, Colorado 80226

4. Telephone: Victor L Hunter 720.289.1821 or 303.953.8352

5. Visit www.TableTalkInitiatives.com

"Has the unfinished experimentcome to an end? Has the perpetualemigrant found a permanent home?Has the wild duck finally decided tobeat its wings no longer? No. Theculture-creating act…is an aperitifwhich always says there is stillsomething to come…Life is never exhausted. There are new possibili-ties ahead…What I am saying is that because of imagination, life can always begin again…the creativeact is possible once more.”—RubemAlves, Tomorrow’s Child (Harper and Row)

LIFE ALIVE! HOPE IN ACTION! NEW BEGINNINGS! FRESH HORIZONS!

LET US KEEP THE FEAST. LET US MEET AT THE TABLE.

"Wisdom acknowledges that it is limited by the inherent ambiguities and contradictions of human experi-ence and, ultimately, by the mystery of God. Wisdom is therefore not dogmatic and absolute, but tenuousand adaptable....The general premise ofwisdom is that people may discerntruths through experience and observation of the world created byGod. As such, revelation may come ineveryday realities as well as fromabove. Wisdom affirms the authorityof human expeience as part of theological reflection.”—Christine RoyYoder, The New Dictionary of Pastoral Studies(SPCK and Eerdmans)

CONVENER AND PASTORAL THEOLOGIAN-AT-LARGE

Rev. Dr. Victor L. Hunter is the Convener and Pastoral Theologian-at-Large of Table Talk Initiatives. Tables of Conversation are being organized across the U.S. and inGreat Britain. Dr. Hunter will coordinate communications and

publications and is responsible for the care andnurture of individuals and groups involved in this initiative. Dr. Hunter has worked with smallgroups throughout his ministries in churches, retreat centers, and seminaries in the UnitedStates and Great Britain. He is an ordained minister and pastor in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a teacher, retreat leader,writer and counselor. Dr. Hunter’s training atUnion Theological Seminary and his experienceas a retreat director, facilitator, and seminar leaderhave given him vast experience with small groupdynamics in a number of settings. He believessmall group work is a key to empowering healing,change, and growth in both individuals and organizations.