Think Round

QUICK AND EASY CONGREGATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

A few words on Congregational Development from Canon Donald Vinson

from Koinonia, June, 2008

If you could do one simple thing that would instantly induce your congregation, including guests, to linger at coffee hour and parish dinners, and increase by many times the familiarity of members with one another and their enjoyment of their time together, would you do it?

Good. Purchase a set of round tables for your parish hall or gathering space.

The ones with the white plastic tops are lighter in weight and seem to be durable. They also don’t cost a lot, and don’t necessarily require table-cloths to look good. A bonus is that they roll into place. What they do is encourage people to sit, and linger, because the people at a round table can actually talk to one another. At long, banquet tables, we can speak only to the person on either side of us—and pity the poor guy at the end. Round tables facilitate group interaction.

Don’t get rid of the old eight-foot banquet tables entirely, unless they needed to be replaced long ago because they are ugly and dangerous. (They make long ones with the white plastic tops, too.) We need long tables sometimes—for example, for discussion groups of more than eight, when we like to sit around the outer edges of a square of tables and have view of one another. That arrangement almost makes a big round table.

A key is to plan when to use which, and to set up the room for the occasion. I visited a congregation that had a rectangle of long tables with chairs around the outside, seating perhaps 20 people. Other chairs lined the walls of the room. Only half the people at coffee hour were able to sit at the tables, which had been arranged for the forum which gathered earlier. The rest had to sit all spread out in an environment as welcoming and conducive to interaction as Junior High Prom. It would take just five minutes for two people to break apart the rectangle and add several round tables to the mix so that everyone could be accommodated for the next—and critically important—event : post-Eucharist hospitality.

Come on, the church tables haven’t been new since 1957. It’s time to update! And when you do, think ROUND.
Donald Vinson
Canon for Congregational Development