50 Years—And Counting

By Rev. Laura Randall on November 27, 2024

It’s such a simple thing, a tiny cardboard box with a small opening in the top for dropping in change and bills. Yet, for 50years, this tiny box has made a big impact for human rights and UUSC partners around the world. It is also a beloved tradition in many Unitarian Universalist congregations and families.

Created from the start as a multigenerational program to include people of all ages, the Guest at Your Table program fosters connections between Unitarian Universalists and UUSC’s global partners by highlighting the stories of four individual partners and encouraging people to get to know them as if they were a dinner guest. Adding money to the iconic boxes to support these guests after learning more about them is a way to share our resources with them, as if we were sharing a meal together.

The Rev. Lisa Bovee Kemper, a life-long Unitarian Universalist currently serving the UU Congregation of Columbia, Maryland, remembers looking forward to Guest at Your Table each year. “We got our box and kept it on the dining room table—each of us putting a few coins or dollars in every day.”

Werner Salinger, who served as UUSC’s Director of Development for many years and started UUSC’s Guest at Your Table program, recalled visiting Holland to meet with members of the International Association for Religious Freedom. “I encountered this program, which in Dutch was called ‘gasten aan uw tafel,’ which literally translates to ‘guests at your table.’ I was really inspired by it. They had these little boxes, and I brought them back to show the senior staff, including then-Executive Director Dick Scobey,” he explained.

Soon these tiny boxes, and the booklets of stories that accompany them, were in congregations and homes across the United States. Fifty years later, the program’s annual resources include videos directly from the featured guests, a recorded sermon, worship resources, religious education resources, and more.

Since its founding, the program has remained UUSC’s largest source of financial support from congregations for our grassroots partners. Today, more people give to Guest at Your Table via QR codes and webpages. Yet, through all the technological changes, the little box remains. It continues to serve as an important reminder of the ways Unitarian Universalists are called into greater relationship, solidarity, and mutuality with our neighbors, near and far. It is such a simple thing, this tiny cardboard box. Yet the hope and compassion it can hold remains limitless.

Image credit: UUSC