Priya Parker writes a lot about the art of gathering. It is her area of specialty, and I find that her insights into gathering and community often have a lot to say about discipleship.
Below, I hope you will find her writing as insightful as I have found it to be as she explores:
- Using our voice at gatherings to speak a truth others do not want to name, which is a practice that both Jesus and Paul model for us. It’s actually a consistent biblical principle – (in Greek, parrhesia) – often associated with prophetic speech and the intent to speak the truth no matter the consequences.
- Using our voice to speak subversively on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast
- Becoming what Parker calls an “insider-outsider.” In our various walks of life, we often (but not always) find ourselves on the “inside,” but as Jesus teaches us, we are to use that insider voice to speak on behalf of the outsiders.
She also paraphrases Giridharadas below about “the orchestra principle,” and I would invite you to see how closely the description of this principle is a reflection of Paul’s writings on the Body of Christ. She writes:
In his book The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas describes what he calls “the orchestra principle” in movement building: not everyone plays the same instrument, and not everyone should. Some protest. Some persuade. Some disrupt from within. Some build alternatives outside. The oboe player doesn’t yell at the flute that they’re doing it wrong. The mistake is assuming there is only one legitimate role. The work is to widen the range of options available to each other.
As we continue to explore Christian discipleship and how to do discipleship differently, I hope you find her insights below helpful and revelatory…
Hosting is an act of creation. Gathering is about connection. It is also about power. Who you bring together, under what auspices, and who you place alongside one another are all acts of creation. And perhaps none is more direct than the decision of who to invite.
If the host wields power at a gathering, every guest also holds some. But as guests, our toolkit collapses into two blunt instruments: polite silence or burning the house down. We lack the language and the imagination for what lies in between.
Perhaps we ought to name it.
In honor of the American saying, “the skunk at the dinner party,” maybe we call it skunk guesting. Or gadfly guesting. Or generative guesting. Done well, it’s generative. In The Art of Gathering, I call this “good controversy.” I write:
“Good controversy is the kind of contention that helps people look more closely at what they care about, when there is danger but also real benefit in doing so. To embrace good controversy is to embrace the idea that harmony is not necessarily the highest, and certainly not the only, value in a gathering. Good controversy helps us re-examine what we hold dear: our values, priorities, nonnegotiables. Good controversy is generative rather than preservationist. …It helps communities move forward in their thinking. It helps us grow.”
It’s the choice to use your temporary belonging — your seat at the table, your proximity, your invitation — not just to enjoy the room, but to shape it. To widen the geography of conversation. To interrupt, when necessary, in service of a larger value.
I’m thinking about this, as you might be aware, because tonight is the 76th Met Gala. I’m always intrigued by this gathering, partly because it’s so over the top, and partly because its chair, Anna Wintour, understands power and is a sophisticated gatherer. (To encourage conversation and presence, she bans guests from taking photos or posting on social media inside the party. Also banned: chives, onions, and garlic.) She knows that every choice shapes behavior. And whatever you think of the Met Gala, as I keep saying in our Group Life Labs, we can learn from everywhere. So here we go.
For gatherings like the Met Gala, the guest list is a proxy for cultural relevance. A coveted invitation temporarily puts you on the same plane as others in the room. For one night, before the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, you share a fleeting kind of equality and proximity – commenting on a handbag, wiping ketchup off a lapel, washing hands in the bathroom.
And yet, we assume there are only two moves: attend and say nothing, or refuse to attend at all. We treat absence as the only possible moral signal, and presence as compliance. In doing so, we leave so many forms of creative engagement on the table.
You and I may not be getting invitations to the Met Gala any time soon. But we each have our own versions of a group, community, or event we are part of, where we’re not OK with everything that is happening, yet we are still part of it. A family reunion where a cousin is being mistreated. A meeting where a decision no one believes in moves forward. A moment among friends when someone with more social power takes a jab, and the room goes quiet. Every community has moments when voice is a distinct possibility to employ, with its own risks and rewards.
In his 1970 essay, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, the economist Albert Hirschman argued that when a product or organization declines, people have three responses: they leave (exit); they stay no matter what (loyalty); or they use their voice. The same is true of gatherings. When a room is losing its way, do you say something? And how do you increase the likelihood that it’s heard?
We oscillate between silence and exit. We need to broaden our range of options for how we let people guest.
In 1968, Eartha Kitt attended a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson on juvenile delinquency. Written on the invitation and the program were the words: “Why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America?”
About sixty women attended. Many offered polite suggestions and ideas for planting trees or improving neighborhoods. When it was her turn, Eartha Kitt redirected the room: “I think we’ve forgotten what the subject of this luncheon is all about,” she said. And then she shared what the American men she had met abroad who were dodging the war told her directly: “It’s a silly war… It’s an unwinnable war, and we don’t want to go.” She continued: “That’s why they smoke pot… because they just want to go to sleep until everything is all over.” She named what others would not.
By the end of the lunch, her government car had disappeared. The papers reported she had made the First Lady cry. The CIA opened a dossier on her.
There are social costs to speaking up.
There is no single “right” way to use your power in these rooms. New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is skipping the Met Gala this year. In part because every mayor before him has traditionally attended the Gala, his absence may itself register as a statement. (He is also the first mayor to scrap the gala on inauguration day in favor of a massive block party with an invitation to all New Yorkers.) But for most of us, absence simply cedes voice. There was a version of showing up for Mayor Mamdani that could have been creative, but it would have been a high-wire act, and perhaps not worth the risk.
I want to expand our notion of all the ways one can guest. Being invited in is its own form of power. Protesters heighten the stakes. Others crash the gates. But, there’s also space for other forms of guesting.
One of my mentors in conflict resolution, Randa Slim, used to call it those with “insider-outsider” power. You are on the inside, but for whatever reason, you also carry the lens of an outsider.
These insider-outsiders often have the clout to say something or be listened to, but haven’t entirely drunk the Kool-Aid either.
In his book The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas describes what he calls “the orchestra principle” in movement building: not everyone plays the same instrument, and not everyone should.
Some protest. Some persuade. Some disrupt from within. Some build alternatives outside.
The oboe player doesn’t yell at the flute that they’re doing it wrong. The mistake is assuming there is only one legitimate role. The work is to widen the range of options available to each other.
Guesting works this way, too.
Formation 