New pastor to launch ‘dinner church’ with focus on inclusivity

For decades, Sawyer Vanden Heuvel’s grandfather ran a meat locker in Rock Rapids, Iowa.

The late George Vanden Heuvel viewed his job as more than cutting meat, though.

“He thought of his vocation as he’s providing food for people in the community to have family dinners,” his grandson said. “He wanted to provide a good-quality product that’s affordable and nutritious and delicious, so he took very great pride in his work.”

This weekend, the younger Vanden Heuvel, a newly ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, will follow his grandfather’s footsteps in a way, providing food that will turn a group of people into a community. He will do it through a new ELCA mission start named Shepherd’s Table, which is based on the dinner church model.

A dinner church is a regular gathering that includes eating together as a central element, alongside meaningful fellowship and a spiritual program. Those in attendance build connections through literally breaking bread together while being fed spiritually and emotionally, through preaching and through the sacraments.

“So people know that God loves them, and there is nothing in this world that can separate them from that love,” Vanden Heuvel said. “And there’s an intentional focus on those who have been marginalized or forced out of faith communities, those who identify as LGBTQ, those that love them, their allies or really anyone who is seeking something new or something different.”

Those who know the 33-year-old Vanden Heuvel, who was ordained Oct. 7 following several other professional paths, said he is the right person to lead this nontraditional community.

“Sawyer will always not be about himself. He will make a point that this is not about me, it’s about God and those who are in dire need to know God because they are hopeless, futureless, there’s nothing that gets them up in the morning,” said Bishop Constanze Hagmaier, leader of the ELCA’s South Dakota Synod. “They don’t even know how to love themselves because of the stories and the names and the tags they have been given.”

Mara Stillson met Vanden Heuvel when he was a student at Augustana University — then Augustana College — and he was a classmate of her sister-in-law. Vanden Heuvel has a strong passion for creating community, she said.

“Not like a regular old community but a place of welcome and authentic care for one another,” Stillson said. “He will make room for those excluded and will be doing God’s work in a way maybe a little different than we see in our churches in South Dakota.”

Stillson’s personal friendship with Vanden Heuvel continued after his graduation, and she also grew to know him on a personal level as he sought a career that fit his talents.

Vanden Heuvel majored in business at Augustana and after graduation took what he calls “a windy path” to discerning his calling. He worked in a bank, then in marketing for a design firm before spending six years as the South Dakota Synod’s communications director.

Raised in another Lutheran denomination, Vanden Heuvel felt drawn to the ELCA one Sunday during his college years when he decided to cross 33rd Street and attend a worship service at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church.

“It was maybe one of the first times in my life when it was truly said ‘all are welcome to come to this table,’” Vanden Heuvel said. “It was my first experience, through the sacraments, through the bread and a little bit of wine and the understanding that was for me. … That time in college was the first time that I really got it.”

As he worked in the synod office, Vanden Heuvel realized he wanted others to realize that God loves them and nothing in the world can separate them from that. He attended Luther Seminary in St. Paul, taking many of his classes remotely during the pandemic and its aftermath.

Vanden Heuvel first heard about the dinner church model about five years ago. Over the past two years, he went through a discernment process with Hagmaier and her associate, then in the past year while he was on his internship an intentional exploration process was conducted.

“Really, the dream and the hope and the vision behind it is to create spaces of belonging for all people, to meet people where they’re at in their faith journey and in their spiritual journey, to provide them with a sense of belonging and a community,” Vanden Heuvel said. “Our hope is that we will do that through a variety of ways but one of them being offering a dinner church model where we would meet and share a meal together.”

This ministry resembles an onion, Hagmaier said. Its center is Christ, with the next layer of the onion the hope that everyone feels they have a seat at the table. For the LGBTQ community, where so many have felt excluded, there will be the intention of allowing Christ to be the healer, she said.

“The church needs to look at Shepherd’s Table differently because healing needs to occur,” Hagmaier said. “It’s work that’s a give and take.”

Shepherd’s Table needs the right person to lead it, Hagmaier said, and Vanden Heuvel is that person. She described him as “a bright, fearless person, courageous in his very own way.”

“Shepherd’s Table wouldn’t work with just anybody,” the bishop said. “That’s the heart of mission starts for us. In our denomination, if you do undertake, consider or explore a mission start, it only works if you have found the ‘unicorn’ who will bring in the guests. This isn’t anything we couldn’t have done first without God and secondly without Sawyer.”

Stillson said her friend offers a soothing presence that is root in a call for God’s love and mercy in a world that too often seems devoid of it. Sometimes, that means tradition must be upended.

Stillson and Vanden Heuvel both know that turning tradition topsy-turvy can make some people unhappy, particularly in a conservative state.

“Unfortunately, we live in a place where hate abounds,” Stillson said. “There are limiting factors when you are up against what are often conflicting opinions, often in a more conservative space. We don’t want to draw people into a space that’s not safe.”

The possibility of negative response to Shepherd’s Table can be a bit unnerving, Vanden Heuvel acknowledges. That’s a reality he knows and understands but doesn’t fear. Instead, he focuses on the concerts, shows and movies he enjoys, talking about theology and Jesus, and hanging out with friends, traveling and being involved in the community with his husband, Mark Leemkuil. He views himself as a community builder, someone who gathers people around.

“This is my calling now in life,” he said. “I just want to provide people with that sense of hope and that sense of safety and finding their chosen family. Sometimes the Gospel calls us into risky places. Elisha went to hide in a cave, Moses said, ‘How ‘bout you send my brother Aaron; he’s more eloquent and doesn’t have a stutter.’ There’s Joseph, who is the dreamer, and his brothers despise him, and Joseph saves his brothers from famine.”

About Shepherd’s Table

Shepherd’s Table will launch from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Sunday at PRISM Community Center, 500 N. Western Ave., with an open house and gathering. For information, visit theplaceforall.org. Worship services will begin in January or February. Shepherd’s Table is a new mission start through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It describes itself as a new community “that seeks to be a place for all to gather to be seen, heard, loved, welcomed and fed at Christ’s table.”