The importance of sharing food with each other, Community House

Description

Brian Selby explains that building a community starts with bringing people together. This can be done with a simple act - just sharing a cup of tea and a biscuit.

TRANSCRIPT:
BRIAN SELBY
Extract 1 minute 34
selby-b20170509-sharing-food.mp3
9 th May, 2017

THE IMPORTANCE OF SHARING FOOD
Community is about people being together. It’s not about…It’s partly geographic but it’s… only part… partly about that. What changes people from being individuals into being a community (and this is what the church is all about) because what it does... it enables people to… be together… to celebrate the way that things happen together, by doing particular things - so that for instance one of the things that happens all the time here is that people eat together. A meal is very important together (there are all kinds of different ways, whether it’s a snack or a biscuit and a cup of tea) ... whatever… and that’s very very fundamental to Christianity, because Jesus met his disciples and had a meal with them. I’m not gonna say anything about the way in which the theology of that has changed… at this point anyway, but that’s very fundamental to Community House I think… It’s the change from being an individual person to being somewhere where you make a contribution. When you make a contribution to other people … (and that’s a very important bit I think) and it’s interesting how it happens… it almost rubs off on people, so that they come in the building and say,” Oh! Yes, the people here are nice! Here, the people are always friendly!” People are always… people always want to know how you are (and all of rest of it) and it rubs off a
bit, so that people take that on board and realize that’s an important bit.

• http://www.etonrdch.org/1000voices/content/people/selby.html (link opens in new window)