The Power of a Picnic Table

by Kristin Schell. Article produced from speaking engagement at the Good For All Conference in West Des Moines, Iowa.

In 2013, I bought an ordinary picnic table, painted it turquoise, and put it in my front yard. I know what you’re thinking: That’s weird. 

I’m from Austin, Texas, and our city motto is “Keep Austin Weird,” so I was just doing my part. But seriously—why would I do this? Why would I put a big, audacious turquoise picnic table in my front yard?

When I reflect back on what was going on in my life in 2013, there were three markers I’m sure you can relate to.

I found myself wondering: Am I making a difference? Will I leave a legacy? Am I doing something that matters for my family and for my community?

What I didn’t know then is that I was not alone in feeling those three things. 

We live in the digital age, the most connected era in all of history. Yet statistics tell us we are lonelier than ever. A couple of years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General declared the United States to be in a loneliness epidemic. In Great Britain, they’ve appointed a Minister of Loneliness.

Here’s another statistic: 50% of Americans do not know their neighbors. I’ve heard a range of different numbers around this figure, but approximately all of them say the majority of America does not know the person with whom they share a hedge, or a fence or a wall, or a ceiling or a floor. That is staggering to me.

In October 2013, this table arrived and totally interrupted my life. I did not plan to put a turquoise picnic table in my front yard. There was no five-step plan. There was no marketing plan. There was no business plan. There was no discipleship plan. There was no evangelism plan. There wasn’t even an art of neighboring plan.

But guess what? There was a master plan.

God had the plan. And he chose to give it to me in the form of a gift—a colorful, whimsical, albeit weird gift—of a table. 

The thing is, this is not the first time he’s given us the gift of a table. He’s done this before, and the Lord delights in bringing us to his table. Jesus spent much of his three years in ministry, eating and drinking and teaching at a table. He chose to spend the last night here on earth before his crucifixion at a table with his friends. This paints a beautiful picture for us of companionship, communion, and community.

God gave me a table, and it totally interrupted my life. I started thinking: Now what? I’ve got this table sitting out in my front yard. What do I need to do?

And God began teaching me two important things.

God gave me his word in the form of an unexpected verse. I thought he was going to tell me a verse in Luke that tells me to love my neighbors. Instead, he gave me Romans 12:13, the “hospitality verse.”

I had read it before, but this time, it came to me in a new translation, with the words of Scripture leaping from the Bible. It says this:

That freaked me out because I didn’t know how to do that. But I said, “Okay, God, teach me.” As I spent time studying that verse, I learned that we must learn the difference between entertainment and hospitality.

Entertainment. The word says what it is, and it’s great. There are plenty of times when I love to open my house and actually entertain. But biblical hospitality is something vastly different. The Greek word for hospitality (philoxenia) means “love of strangers.” That puts a whole new perspective on things. Love is not a feeling. Love is a verb.

Next, the Lord taught me about the ministry of presence. I had never heard about this before, but the Lord showed me this through a documentary I saw at a conference. 

The documentary tells the story of Ludmilla, an 84-year-old recently widowed woman in the city of Prague, the most atheistic part of the former Eastern Bloc.

Ludmilla found herself in a new season of life, and she was asking the same questions that I was asking in Austin, Texas: Does my life matter? Am I doing enough for the community? What will my legacy be? The Lord answered her with this: You are an ambassador to the Kingdom of Heaven. And it comes out of Scripture and Isaiah. And so Ludmilla, in this bold move, decides to take a bronze plaque and imprint on it “Embassy of the Kingdom of Heaven.” And she puts it right outside her door on her brownstone in Prague. 

She invited people to just come and sit. She did not consult Pinterest. She did not make big meals. She was not entertaining. She simply invited people into her home. And she listened. And she prayed. She gave them the gift of her presence. And I thought, Wow, am I getting it wrong? Am I focusing too much on the doing and not so much on the being? What if I just really planted myself and showed up in my neighborhood? What if I just showed up?

So I did. I began sitting at my turquoise table. I began showing up, and I began meeting my neighbors. It interrupted my life, but it interrupted it and transformed it for good. And more importantly than my life, it started interrupting and transforming our neighborhood. Today, there are thousands of turquoise tables in all 50 states and 13 countries, and it blows my mind.

We call ourselves front yard people, and we have a scrappy movement that I try to figure out how to lead and manage. But the point is that the table is not the hero of the story. The people are. And the thing that brought us together was that I wasn’t the only one.

God didn’t leave us with a to-do list. He left us as a community. But community doesn’t just happen—somebody has to go first. Going first takes courage. Someone has to be the one to say hello, to push through that mildly awkward moment and say, “Hey, I don’t remember your name.” Someone has to be the first to reach out. Someone has to be the first to invite. 

Be the first to make that connection. What we do in our front yard matters. Front yard people are gospel people, and we are the ones who raise our hands and say, “I’ll be the one.” 

Raise your hand. Say it. I’ll be the one. As we go back into our communities and as we go back into our neighborhoods, declare right now that you’re going to be the one.