The Message of Your Home: The Dining Room

This post is part of a series on decorating your home with a Gospel-centered purpose.

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Disclaimer: My husband has informed me that the quality of the photos contained in this post is terrible. For that I apologize, haha.

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“My idea of a good night has always been having a lovely meal and a proper conversation.” – Kirsty Gallacher

I want the atmosphere of my dining room to accomplish two things: 1) Provide a place to comfortably enjoy meals and 2) Inspire edifying, God-centered conversation. 

The dining room is where we gather to share a meal and discuss the highs and lows of the day. It’s where we reunite as a family. It’s where we get to know new friends. It’s where we discuss strange concepts and deep theologies and questions of ethics. It’s also where we fight toddler food battles, explain socially acceptable behavior, and repeatedly discourage bodily noises (which, let’s be honest, can be pretty funny).

The dining room is the hub of my home. Meals are eaten, the Bible is discussed, school is taught, paperwork and phone calls are attended to there. It’s a place of action, and I love it. I want my table to be loud with life. Yes, I want my children to learn table manners, and I would love it if I could finally get through to them that napkins were invented for a reason. But I am not of the philosophy that the dinner table is a place for children to be seen and not heard. It’s where our best conversations take place. It’s a place that represents acceptance and individuality and freedom to explore new ideas within the bounds of God’s truths. We let our hair down, sing silly songs, and sometimes even start food fights. And no, electronics are not banned at my dinner table because Google provides many of the answers to the deep questions my toddlers ask, and ends many debates between my husband and me. (btw, did YOU know that Oscar the Grouch was originally orange?)

I want my dining room to feel like love, warmth, and big ideas. 

Before I began decorating any rooms in our Little House on the Corner I sat down with a notebook and sketched out some ideas. I wanted the overall feel of the house to flow nicely, so I tried to plan somewhat overlapping decorating schemes. I chose themes centered around the purpose of each room and the message I wanted to convey when people entered that space.

I was going for a rich, cozy, warm feel in the dining room; a place which would encourage people to linger and enjoy their food at a slower pace. The purpose of the room was “nourishing conversation.” I wanted people to comfortably enjoy their meal and be inspired to talk of higher, deeper, more meaningful things. I also wanted the focus to be on evangelism and taking the Gospel to all nations, so the theme I came up with was loosely based on Travel.

We love having people over. I want the room where we eat to be welcoming to people from all walks of life. It is in our own home that we (my husband and I) most comfortably and naturally share the Gospel. But I have this problem. I’m not a great conversationalist. Connecting with people is something I have to force myself to do. I struggle to make small talk. So, I had this idea of decorating our dining room with conversation starters. I wanted something in the dining room that people would ask about, something that would not only start a conversation but also lead the conversation toward Christ and His Word.

This is what I came up with:

The map was kind of falling apart but I liked it because it was large. I bought wooden plaques at Hobby Lobby and painted them with chalkboard paint. I used those Velcro adhesive things to stick the plaques on the wall, then I wrote the names of missionaries we know on each one, along with the population of the country where they work. With twine I connected each plaque to the corresponding country, flagged with a stick pin.

The smaller map on the right is a map of Uganda, the country from which we first tried to adopt. I printed the map on thick paper and steeped it in cold tea until it was a rich, antique looking golden brown. Then I baked it in the oven on very low heat until dry. I crumpled it a little to give it texture, then I scorched the edges with a lighter (over the sink! Don’t set your house on fire!). This took two or three tries to get it just right without burning half the page away.

I loved this display not only because it provided a great conversation piece, but because it served as a daily reminder to pray for our missionary friends. It also gave us an opportunity to discuss with our children what it means to “go into all the world.”

I added a few travel themed touches, some family pictures, and a couple of bookshelves. Books tend to inspire great conversation. On one bookshelf I set our change jar, on which I had painted more chalk paint. This is where we began saving for our adoption. I wrote our goal amount on top of the jar and kept a running tally of our progress on the front. I set the jar in front of a chalkboard with our fundraising slogan. At the time we were adopting from Uganda there were roughly 2.7 million orphans. Our goal was to make that number one less. That started a lot of great conversations, too!

This was my first project when I started decorating my home with purpose. I liked that the map display was the first thing that most people noticed when they came into our house. People would almost immediately start asking questions about what it meant, which led to discussion about the Gospel.

It wasn’t necessarily the prettiest room, but it served its purpose :) I never got around to painting the dining room or buying curtains I liked (we moved before I could get it all “finished”), but I somewhat naturally ended up with accents of gold and burgundy. Overall, the room ended up a bit darker and heavier than I liked, but deep, rich colors do tend to convey a “thinking” mood which is what I was going for. In my next dining room I would like to find a way of capturing that same mood without such a formal feel. After all, it is a school room, too. Maybe I’ll go with a more whimsical theme… Hmmm…

Any ideas? What kind of atmosphere do you want in your dining room? Do you have something in there that points to the Gospel? Share your dining space!

Challenge: Find an interesting item to display in your dining room that might spark conversation about the Gospel. Even if it doesn't attract attention from visitors, it will serve as a visual reminder to you to steer dinnertime discussions toward biblical matters.