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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 lined them up in rows with a center aisle. It looked ridiculous.

Eventually we decided to leave everything alone and let the restaurant look like itself, like the place Lou built where anyone would feel welcome.

An interesting consequence of holding our meetings in a "real world" setting is the way it made us rethink communication. In a typical church space, everything points toward one thing. The architecture of the room and the order of service bring one voice into focus. In our church, 50 percent of the people are facing away from you before you start to speak. They have to get up and move their chairs in order to see. There is no elevated place to stand. It is hard to ignore people who are this close. You really see them.

It changed the character of how we spoke. It was natural to move around because you couldn't see everyone as they sat behind columns or other people. It also seemed normal to speak with people rather than just to them. Questions that would be rhetorical in a traditional church setting were actually answered because the people hearing the question were so close. It seemed silly not to hear their answers. And their answers were interesting!

Before long we devoted a segment of our meeting to hearing from anyone who wanted to speak. Sometimes we'd put a question to the church. One day we began with a 15-minute lesson on tithing and then asked the church what they thought about tithing as a system of giving. It was amazing to hear what various people believed about giving, their frustrations and desires, why they give or why they hesitate to give.

Other times we simply ask people where they've run into God lately. Usually there is silence for a moment or two, then someone will volunteer their "God Talk." Others inevitably join in. It takes practice and patience to draw people out. It takes courage and tact to stop someone from going the wrong direction. This isn't for the faint hearted or the easily offended.

People sometimes say things that are just plain wrong, or things you never expect, like the young man who spoke up: "I thank God for the sunshine, which cheers me up even when it's raining s*** on my head." He meant it.

I'm not advocating bringing heresy or vulgarity into our church meetings, but I suggest these exist in any church. The difference for us is the ability to hear the unfiltered voice of our church and adjust our teaching, preaching, and discipleship. It has also revealed hidden gifts of people we never suspected could be teachers or speakers for the kingdom.

Do we still believe in teaching and preaching? Of course! But the more we hear from the people, the more focused our teaching and preaching become. People listen more intently. Value is added when people come knowing they will be heard.

This summer we joined forces with another congregation in our area and relocated to a warehouse space, but we took with us the worship-around-tables style we learned at Orapax. Hearing other people praise God and tell about where he has met them in the Scriptures, in prayer, or in a conversation or situation has become one of the most encouraging parts of our gatherings.

Ron Jones is pastor of Symphonic, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
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