By Rachel McWhirter (she/her), Director of Digital Ministry @ Christ the King (Houston)

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about tables.

Some are literal: communion tables, fellowship halls, shared meals where stories unfold between bites. Some are digital: Zoom calls, livestream chats, comments on a late-night post that someone was brave enough to leave open. In both cases, the table is a place of presence—a place where we meet, really meet, and find out what happens when we listen to each other with curiosity instead of fear.

For me, one of the most life-giving communal practices in the life of the church today is interfaith engagement. Not as a nice gesture or a photo-op with clergy in matching stoles. I mean the real, ongoing, sometimes awkward, sometimes holy work of building relationships across faith traditions. It’s a practice I’ve come to treasure, especially as someone whose ministry often happens in pixels and prayer threads, where the boundaries of “church” are less about the walls of a sanctuary and more about how we show up for each other in public and online spaces.

Interfaith engagement invites the church to ask: What kind of neighbor are we, really? How do we hold space with those who experience God—or the divine, or the sacred, or mystery—differently than we do? And how do we stay rooted in our own faith while opening our arms wide?

This kind of practice is never just individual. It’s communal by nature. You can’t build bridges without a community that’s willing to walk across them. Whether it’s a congregation attending a Ramadan iftar hosted by the mosque down the street, or a group of interfaith leaders hosting a vigil after a hate crime, or even a church livestream shoutout to a local temple’s livestream—these shared moments form something deeper than tolerance. They begin to feel like kinship.

What I’ve found in digital ministry is that people are watching the church long before they set foot in it—if they ever do. And in this digital public square, interfaith engagement becomes one of the clearest reflections of who we really are. Are we gracious? Are we curious? Do we believe the Spirit moves beyond our own traditions—or are we still clinging to the illusion that God is only found in the familiar?

The church doesn’t lose itself by entering into interfaith relationships. It finds a deeper version of itself. That doesn’t mean we water down our theology. It means we trust that God is big enough, mysterious enough, to be working outside our walls. I think of Peter, in Acts 10, being called into something he didn’t expect—a conversation with Cornelius that shook up everything he thought he knew about purity and belonging. That moment didn’t diminish Peter’s faith. It expanded it.

In my own work, whether it’s building out a digital liturgy, designing graphics for holy days that overlap across traditions, or writing prayers that people of many faiths might see, I try to hold this same posture: rooted, but open. Clear about who I am, but not closed off to what I might learn. And honestly, a lot of interfaith work looks like just showing up. Showing up to grieve with our Jewish neighbors after another act of violence. Showing up to celebrate with our Hindu neighbors at Diwali. Showing up in the comment thread of a Buddhist friend’s Instagram post about mindfulness, not to correct them—but to witness.

This is discipleship. Not just knowing the right words but showing up with the right heart.