The Chosen Family: How a Weekly Meal in Attleboro is Transforming Lives
This is the second installment of Reawakening Stories: Our Family of Heroes on Mission in New England. In the ADNE we believe that God is equipping men, women, and families across New England to be the "everyday heroes" of his Kingdom. Our aim is to highlight the stories of these heroes in our family of churches – both laypeople and clergy – as they uniquely and creatively answer God's call to mission to their neighborhoods, through their passions, or in their diverse spheres of influence…
Lori Taylor with friend Brian Pierce
Two years ago Lori Taylor found herself needing a family to pray with her and support her. Today, weekly dinners in her home allow others to experience redeemed family in a healing community.
“Almost two years ago, I was in a spiritual crisis," Lori shared, " I sought counsel from our rector, [the Rev Canon Craig Vickerman,] who encouraged me to pray and [process] with my Christian girlfriends. Every Friday at my house after work we met to talk and pray and have dinner. After a month, I knew what God was saying, but we continued to meet and began praying for other needs.”
For a while, this was just a group of friends meeting in Lori’s home in North Attleboro until the unexpected realization arose in the group: “we need to invite more people in.”
Lori began what she calls “First Fires.” On the first Friday of the month, she opens her backyard to anyone who wants to come, whether friends, friends of friends, or neighbors. When the weather’s bad, they meet inside. Sometimes they sit and share and pray until one in the morning! On the other Fridays, her core group meets for dinner: they eat, share, laugh, pray, hold each other accountable in love, and press into deeper identity all around the dinner table… and over time more keep coming.
This expansion to feeding more friends and their friends has required some creative re-arrangement for Lori. When they first started, things were already a little cramped. When she felt called to expand the size of the dinner group, she told the Lord, “I don’t even have a dining room!” She soon felt prompted to convert a third bedroom to a functional dining room and brought an old table up from the basement for just that purpose. More recently, she moved the whole setup and converted her main living room to the new dining room to add even more places at the table!
It’s not easy; it takes Lori most of Friday to bake her homemade bread, prepare a nice dessert, start on the main course, and bathe her home in prayer, but she says it’s worth it when everyone arrives after a hard work week and the Spirit starts to move. “I just sit back and watch God work… He’s healing hearts; he’s teaching us how to be a family… it’s like Thanksgiving Dinner every week, and there’s not a Friday night I don’t go to bed full of joy and at peace.”
The sense of family is what really defines the unlikely group: they call themselves “The Chosen Family.” Lori explains, “no one in our core group grew up in Christian families; we’ve all come from very challenging backgrounds, but we call it the Chosen Family because we get to choose this family… none of us got to choose the families we were born into, but here we choose to show up, to be there for one another, to really love each other!”
Lori shared how just like a real family, things aren’t always neat and uncomplicated. Sometimes arguments arise and emotions flare at the dinner table… but she says, that is just an opportunity to learn how to forgive and be forgiven, to really belong, to really “do life together.”
Lori Nelson being commissioned to start a new dinner group.
What makes this group so remarkable is that it has multiplication in its DNA. Lori had told an original attendee, Lori Nelson, to not cling to this; that God would call her to start another group, and at a recent dinner she was commissioned to go start her own Friday group.
In addition to the Friday dinners, Lori also helps lead a midweek Bible Study with some of the same folks. Christine, one of the newer Christians in the group, was preparing for the Bible Study while on a break at her workplace. When her coworkers asked what she was doing, she said it was her “homework,” and began explaining why studying God’s Word had become important to her. Christine now leads a Bible study group with several of her coworkers, who are becoming more interested in exploring faith and church.
When asked what she specifically would like to share with the diocese, Lori enthusiastically responded, “[you] are all gifted with a talent! It might be hospitality, or it might be something else, but just letting God use you will result in so much blessing - you and others you share with will be blessed abundantly.”
