Taylor students go to Taco Bell.
Scott Fenstermacher, assistant professor of kinesiology, observed fellowship in Taylor students’ Dan’s Donuts runs or Taco Bell trips. Having a Super Bowl party is fellowship over food — it brings people together.
Fenstermacher said gathering together over food plays into having a right relationship with God, creation, others and self. Food comes from creation which ultimately comes from God, and it is a way to take care of ourselves. It is also a way to live in fellowship with one another.
“The two areas where you as students have kind of a wealth of options is in your relationship with God through food and your relationship to others through food,” Fenstermacher said. “Never in your life, once you leave Taylor, will you have such easy access to Christian community and just the ability to eat meals together.”
Fenstermacher said that thinking about nutrition as putting gas in a car to get to a destination is an incomplete view of food. He said how people eat, the posture of their heart and who they eat with are important aspects of eating healthily.
Jesus ate meals with people. He ate with his disciples, and he ate with sinners – much to the horror of the pharisees (Matthew 9:9-13).
Chad Yoder, lead pastor at Pierce Church, said Jesus’ habit of eating with others was a large part of his ministry.
Yoder said eating together breaks down barriers. He said there is something intimate about sharing a meal with someone. Sometimes, food breaks down barriers that even language cannot cross.
“There's just something that breaks down that initial wall,” Yoder said. “And so I have found that even though I don't speak their language, and that a lot of times I need a translator to talk, there's something about sharing a meal together — it brings up that community even without the conversation necessarily being even in the same language.”
Food leads to conversation, Tia Cavanaugh-Goggans, director of intercultural initiatives and programs, said. People gather over meals with the people they love, feel comfortable with and have commonalities with.
She encouraged students to ask to join a table at dinner or to ask someone else out for a meal.
“We just have to have a desire to get out of our comfort zones,” Cavanaugh-Goggans said.
Cavanaugh-Goggans said gathering over a meal can be as simple as asking someone to have coffee with them.
When asking someone to go get food, she encouraged people to consider what would make the other person most comfortable. Ask them where they want to go and eat with them over food they love.
Cavanaugh-Goggans said the Office of Intercultural Programs (OIP) at Taylor hosts a rice day every other Friday. Students make sauces from their home countries and pair it with rice. She said they come together not only to enjoy the good food, but also the good fellowship.
Gathering over food, she said, puts the unity in community.
Yoder said we are designed for community; we crave it. Another way to get involved with community is getting plugged in at a church. Through a church, people can grow and walk through life together.
“Being plugged into a local church is important, but then I also think that it comes down to that intentionality,” Yoder said. “You cannot just expect that your neighbors or your coworkers are going to seek you out for community. And so if you want community, you'll have to be the one to go and seek it out.”
Be like Jesus: take your bros to Taco Bell.
