The Story of Our Table: From Generation to Generation

When we launched our In Good Company series in October, you may have noticed a few subtle changes to our Sunday setup. First, we moved the pulpit from the platform to the floor. We wanted to feel closer together, with the hope of bringing a little more intimacy and proximity to our gathering. But we also unveiled a brand new (to us) Communion table — the site of our central act of worship together each week.

As we lean into the From Generation to Generation series for Advent, it feels right to share how the table came to us. Like so much in our lives, the table has been passed down, has seen many iterations, and has become new in our midst again. Just as the tabernacle moved with the Israelites, so too has this table moved with us. And it’s also become a place of beauty, belonging, abundance, and love central to our common life together — where we find ourselves each week in the center of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

It starts as an anniversary gift. 

Ten years ago, shortly after Natalie and I had moved to Durham for me to start at Duke Divinity, my mom sent me an image of an old Communion table. She was shopping at a local consignment store and discovered this heavy hunk of solid wood, unquestionably a Communion table. It had a vintage chic vibe at the time having been painted a faint teal and then distressed. Perhaps the sellers wanted to demonstrate just how versatile this piece of furniture could be — a coffee table, a desk in a kid’s room — the possibilities were endless. But knowing my call to church planting, the centrality of table fellowship to our lives, and believing that one day it could find use as part of my vocation, my mom decided it should return to its original purpose. So she claimed it. But then, of course, she needed an excuse to gift it. Luckily, our anniversary was coming up. Perfect. And thankfully, my mom graciously agreed to hold on to it until I graduated, as I have no idea where it would have gone in our tiny apartment.

In 2015, when Natalie and I bought our first house in Durham, the table found a home in our dining room/home office. It was the perfect spot for our cat, Belle, to stare out the window, and it held papers and books and commentaries as I sat to write my earliest sermons. When we moved to Pittsboro in 2018, it moved with us, finding a home in our garage, serving as storage for the many items we began to collect as we started down this church planting path with limited places to put things.

When we launched weekly worship at House of Hops in September 2019, we didn’t have room for the table on the trailer, and our team decided we had enough to set up each week without worrying about lifting a heavy wooden table. So it stayed in our garage a little longer.

But then, when we found ourselves in a new location last March, we reevaluated… everything. So much was going to be new, and we had a little more storage available at the school, so we decided to figure out how to use it. I called Hannah Holden, our go-to person with an eye for aesthetic, who then conscripted her husband, Taylor, to come and pick it up and then fix it up. “Let’s restore it,” she said. “I’m down,” I replied.

So Taylor, God bless him, spent hours — HOURS! — stripping the paint and sanding it down to return the table to its original glory. HOURS. (Next time you see Taylor, give him a fist bump — or maybe even buy him a drink. He deserves it ALL.)

Desperate to get it out of his garage (I get it), Taylor hauled it to Woods Charter, unloaded it, and we got to use it for the first time when we celebrated Holy Communion on Sunday, October 23.

But there was still a nagging question: Before it ended up at that consignment shop in Richmond, where did it come from? The only clue we had was a small plaque at the bottom of the table that read: “In Loving Memory of S. M. Goodman, Nov 25, 1883–May 20, 1951.”

Enter Susan Hynson, who loves tracing genealogies and solving puzzles like these.

Susan began sleuthing and discovered newspaper articles, a death certificate, obituaries, and advertisements that all helped paint a clearer picture of S. M. Goodman and the table.

Little is known about Sydney Marion Goodman other than he was a truck driver for an ice company in Richmond for 35 years. He was the son of a Teamster and married a woman named Willie Butler. In 1913, they had a son named Sydney Russel Goodman. Sydney Russell became a pastor, studying at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, before moving back home to Richmond, where he served Boulevard Baptist Church and spent time guest preaching at other area Baptist and Methodist churches. 

In 1952, Sydney Russell Goodman became the founding pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Richmond, where he served until 1983. We can’t know for sure, but putting all of these pieces together, it’s likely that with the church beginning just a year after his father’s death, the family donated this table to be used as the altar “in loving memory” of S.M. Goodman.

At some point in the past 30 years, Temple Baptist Church dissolved, as there is no longer any record of it. As a result, it’s likely that furnishings from the church were also given away or sold — including the table — eventually finding its way to this consignment store in Richmond where it would eventually, once again, find life among a new church… ours. It’s the same table, yes, but it’s also been made new in our midst.

So this is the story of our Communion table. It’s been passed down from generation to generation, moved around, given away, found, and embraced. Perhaps that’s our story, too. It’s a story of belonging, of belonging within a family, a church, and a people connected by this beautiful table. And it’s a story of God’s work to bring us together and bind us together around this same table each week, just as it has for so many before.

Thanks be to God.