Your Will Be Done At Our Table
A Review of
Every Table an Altar: Reclaiming Connection in a World of Division, Distraction, and Loneliness
Ian Simkins
Hardcover: Zondervan Books, 2026
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Reviewed by C.S. Boyll
Recently one of my pastors, Mateen Elass, challenged us with some inspiration from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Do we love our dream of community more than we love actual people?” And, “Gratitude makes room for imperfect brothers and sisters, and humility hopes that room will be made for imperfect us.”
Pastor Ian Simkins, in Every Table an Altar: Reclaiming Connection in a World of Division, Distraction, and Loneliness, shows how Jesus’s zeal for table talks was one of his favorite ways of loving people into community. Jesus sat at tables, he invited people to tables, he tipped tables over, literally and figuratively. He modeled this form of outreach for us to replicate. It’s much needed today.
Simkins presents alarming research about how lonely and unhappy many Americans are.
“We have hundreds of ‘friends’ online and almost no one we can call at 3:00 a.m. We conduct entire relationships through screens. We measure intimacy in likes and shares. The Survey Center on American Life found that the percentage of Americans who say they have no close friends has quadrupled since 1990. Fifty-four percent of people report sometimes or always feeling that no one knows them well. Forty percent say they have zero close friends at all. Zero….Sixty years ago, the average dinnertime was ninety minutes. Today it’s less than twelve. We’re not just lonely. We’ve lost the very rhythms that used to hold us together. This isn’t just a cultural problem; it’s a spiritual crisis” (4-5).
Simkins’s style reads like conversation at a table, and his anecdotal humor lifts the book (for example, his grandmother’s hotdog water, or crashing a wedding dance with his wife). Yet, Jesus and the importance of tables to his ministry remain the book’s heart. In fresh ways, Simkins takes the reader deeper through Zacchaeus’s meal transformation, Martha’s meal prep frustration, the prodigal’s homecoming feast, the Last Supper, and more. Such story familiarity may cause us to overlook subtle themes. A connective prayer Simkins uses for these events is, “Your will be done as it is in heaven and at our table.”
I enjoy a clever book cover and design. The cover of Every Table an Altar by Tim Green emulates a black table top, or possibly an altar. Tables as altars? This is one of Simkins’s insights. He extends the image of us as temples of the Holy Spirit, who provide others with altars when we eat and drink together. He explains:
“An altar, remember, was a place of sacrifice and encounter, a place where something ordinary was offered to God and something sacred was received in return, where the distance between heaven and earth collapsed.”
“This is exactly what happens when we approach our tables with intentionality. When we pray, ‘At this table, as it is in heaven,’ we aren’t just asking God to bless our food, we’re inviting him to transform an ordinary meal into a sacred encounter. We’re declaring that this table, whether it’s in our kitchen, at a restaurant, at a coffee shop, or in a conference room, is a place where his kingdom can break through.”
“Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly takes ordinary meals and infuses them with kingdom purpose. A meal with tax collectors becomes a demonstration of radical grace. A wedding feast becomes the stage for his first miracle. A beach breakfast becomes the moment of Peter’s restoration. Jesus didn’t just eat meals; he transformed them, turning tables into altars. And he invites us to do the same” (170-171).
The subtitle of Simkins’s book is Reclaiming Connection in a World of Division, Distraction, and Loneliness. Each of the ten chapters closes with an invitation, reflection, and suggested practice such as, “This week, invite someone to share a meal with you—maybe someone you never would have expected to invite. And not necessarily for dinner at your house. Maybe to coffee…and when you sit down together, practice the posture of Jesus. Put your phone away. Ask questions. Listen. See what happens” (25).
Simkins spends some pages on grace versus reciprocity. By this, he means do we just dine or drink with those who can reciprocate, who harmonize with our ways of doing life? In obedience to Jesus’s teaching in Luke 14:12-14, Simkins asks the reader to consider stretching to those who cannot repay. Jesus is not saying, “ ’Hey, every once in a while, it would be nice to invite some less fortunate people.’ He’s saying that when you host a meal, don’t invite the people you’d naturally invite. Don’t invite the people who can reciprocate. Don’t invite the people who will enhance your reputation or expand your network. Instead, invite the people who can offer you nothing in return. The poor. The marginalized. The ones whom society overlooks” (79).
These words pierce me, but Simkins offers some comfort and challenge: “As I’ve tried, often unsuccessfully, to live this way—proximate and present with others—I’ve learned something: People are hard to hate up close. When we can move past our hot takes and mic drops, out from behind our screens and devices, we stand a much better chance of seeing the sacred dignity of ‘the other.’ We discover that people are more than hashtags. They are more than the opinions they hold and the positions they post” (83-84).
There are many good books on Christian hospitality like The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon; Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl; and From Tablet to Table: Where Community is Found and Identity is Formed by Leonard Sweet. Simkins’s book should join the ranks. It is an approachable invitation to sit down with him and consider enlarging the Kingdom through our tables. My confession: the book motivated me to forget the Cracker Barrel Thanksgiving dinner I suggested to my husband. Instead, we and our guests plan to have turkey sandwiches, pies, football watching, and bingo (where everyone wins a prize). We hope and pray, “Your will be done as it is in heaven and at our table.”
C.S. Boyll
C.S. (Cindy) Boyll writes from Colorado Springs. The past two years she has found much joy serving at her church’s Alpha tables. Her website is www.csboyll.com.
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