From www.umc.org
By Kathy Gilbert*
12:00 P.M. ET Dec. 2, 2011 | PHOENIX (UMNS)
Ernie Clark helped launch a national movement, the Open Table, when he asked young people delivering food to a homeless shelter if he could attend their church. A 2006 file photo by John Chidester View in Photo Gallery
Several young people were doing a good deed one Saturday, delivering breakfast to a homeless shelter, when one man stepped out of the crowd and changed their lives.
He had a simple request: “Would I be able to worship at your church?”
Ernie Clark was one of hundreds in the shelter, and the youth group from Paradise Valley United Methodist Church was doing its once-a-month mission. Ernie’s question needed an answer.
The next day, the group picked up Clark at the shelter and took him to church. That connection developed into a relationship that moved Clark out of poverty and into a self-sufficient life that includes a job, a home, a car and lifelong friends.
It also started a movement called Open Table.
“We were people who had driven by poverty all of our lives,” said Jon Katov, founder of Open Table. “We collided with an impoverished man, and he taught us how to change the world.”
Clark came into their lives in 2005. In 2007, Open Table obtained tax status as a charitable organization because there were so many calls from other churches to teach them how to start Open Tables in their congregations.
Jon Katov – founder of Open Table. A web-only photo courtesy of Jon Katov.
“It was like God threw the ball, and we just had to chase it,” Katov said.
Since that start, there have been 80 tables in Arizona, Texas and California, and, in January, the first will start in Florida. Katov said he is certain they will do 100 tables next year and double and triple those numbers in years to come. He said he is confident the movement will grow at the rate God wants it to grow.
Transformations
Listening to God’s call in his life is a 180-degree change for the man who was mad at God. Katov grew up in a Jewish household, and because of the Holocaust, became angry at what he saw as God’s indifference to humans.
When Katov was in his early 40s, his family moved to Phoenix. At his wife’s urging, he joined Paradise Valley United Methodist Church. While there, he had an opportunity to help a woman living in poverty. Katov said he came to a crossroad where he had to decide whether he would continue to be indifferent to God or step out in faith.
He decided to help. “When I did that, I learned that Christ was already there. I was late,” he said. “The indifference is in humanity, not in God.”
He was baptized at Paradise Valley and now works full time helping to set up Open Tables. He said he loves The United Methodist Church and Paradise Valley for standing with him on this journey and is amazed by the support he has received from his Bishop Minerva Carcaño, who leads the Phoenix area for the denomination.
“I wrote a letter to her, and she called me,” Katov said. “She wanted to break bread with Clark. A bishop breaking bread with this homeless guy that we ran into at a shelter. It was amazing.” They all met at a diner and spent an hour together. Katov said she continued to break bread with Clark throughout the process.
A model drawing for The Open Table. A web-only photo courtesy of Jon Katov.
Coming to an Open Table is counterintuitive to how most churches work with the poor, he said.
“The relationships we develop with the poor are a series of transactions from a can of Spaghetti O’s to used blue jeans to stuff. Transactions keep us separate; they build walls, and they don’t allow us to build relationships,” he said.
Katov said he believes that if other United Methodist churches would “power up” the entrepreneurs in their congregations, they could make significant changes.
The “intellectual and social capital” found among the laity in churches could transform the world, he said.
“The only thing people need to have to come onto the table is availability. God is going to do the rest.”
For information on how to start an Open Table, see the Table Model and read about how the organization got started. Contact Jon Katov: email jonkatov@theopentable.org.
* Gilbert is a multimedia reporter for the young adult content team at United Methodist Communications, Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.