Orapax Inn is a Greek restaurant in the Ghent section of Norfolk, Virginia. More than 40 years ago, an immigrant, Louis Seretis, moved to the city and created a place where every kind of person felt welcome to come and eat. It seems natural that a business located on Lambert's Point between the coal and merchant marine piers and backing up to the old money houses of Ghent would be a place where diverse lives would intersect. For three decades Mr. Lou greeted the great and the small, the black and the white, the hard hat and the soft hands. His restaurant feels like your kitchen table.

When I began to consider planting a new church, I drove around Ghent with Lou's son Nick, current owner of Orapax. We ended up in the restaurant talking over possible locations for a church to meet. Then we looked around. Why not here? Closed on Sunday … plenty of chairs …

Next time the restaurant was closed, we moved every table out of the main dining room and took about 80 chairs and ...