Pastor Writer: Conversations on Reading, Writing, and the Christian Life
Pastor Writer: Conversations on Reading, Writing, and the Christian Life
Ryan Rush — Meals, Tables, and the Ministry of Jesus
Ryan Rush, serves as pastor of Kingsland Baptist Church, in Katy, Texas.
He has spent more than 20 years working in ministry, and during that time, he has been on a mission to connect church and home life, becoming a national voice for the “Faith at Home” movement.
In over a decade serving as Adjunct Professor at Liberty University, he has taught more than 1,500 students the course he helped to design, “Theology of the Family.” Ryan currently teaches Doctoral students in the Marriage and Family program at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Ryan is a graduate of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and holds a PhD in Christian leadership with a ministry concentration from the Cook School at Dallas Baptist University.
He is the author of several books, Home on Time, Why Everybody’s Stuck, and his latest book, Restore the Table: Discovering the Powerful Connections of Meaningful Mealtimes. In today's conversation, we'll be exploring the place of tables in the ministry of Jesus and how meals are an important part of the Christian calling.
You're listening to episode 218 of the Pastor-Writer Podcast conversations on reading, writing and the Christian life. I'm your host, chase Replogle. For several years this podcast has been about books, about reading them, about writing them, but every once in a while we get to insert other topics. This one around a book. But today we get to talk about the table and food and meals together. If I love to read, I also love meals. I love time with people at meals. It's really a center part of how we approach pastoring. So when I saw Ryan Rush's book Restore the Table come across, I was really excited to dig into it. He talks about the power of sharing meals together, the power of meeting people at a table, how prominent tables are in the ministry of Jesus. A really interesting conversation, a really practical conversation, and I hope it's one that encourages you to maybe start some new meal traditions with your family and in your church. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:I'm joined on the podcast today by Ryan Rush. He serves as pastor of Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, texas. He spent more than 20 years working in ministry and during that time he's been on a mission to connect churches and home life, becoming a national voice in the faith at home movement. In over a decade serving as adjunct professor at Liberty University, he's taught more than 1,500 students the course he helped design, theology of the Family. Ryan currently teaches doctoral students in the Marriage and Family Program at Dallas Theological Seminary. He's a graduate of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and holds a PhD in Christian leadership with a ministry concentration from the Cook School at Dallas Baptist University.
Speaker 1:He's also the author of several books Home on Time, why Everybody's Stuck, and his latest book, which he joins me today to talk about, restore the Table Discovering the Powerful Connections of Meaningful Mealtimes. Well, ryan, it's really an honor, a privilege, to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Hey, I feel the same. Thank you, chase. Thanks for having me. Well, maybe a good place to start. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the place where you pastor and also this idea of faith at home, this movement around the idea.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Kingsland is a wonderful group of people who worship in West Houston, so Katy is a large suburb just outside of Houston, texas, and it's an amazing place to be. Kingsland or Katy, rather West Houston is the most ethnically diverse community in America, which means I'm more likely to live next door to someone from a different culture than anywhere else in the country. It's kind of a cool place, mostly because of the petroleum industry, but it's really an interesting dynamic, and so one common bond that we have with people who come from all over the world is this need for legacy and family, and so that's been an opportunity for me to share and really build bridges with people who are from a far different background than mine and, of course, from a missional standpoint. When you have such a global idea or mentality in the culture anyway, it creates an incredible dynamic and opportunity to go to really difficult places around the world and share the love of God with other people. So that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Well, I got an advanced copy of the book Restore the Table and I knew right away it was one that I wanted to read and probably be able to discuss with you, because my wife and I are food people, meal people. As a pastor, I'm always having people in our home and I think anybody who stops and thinks about the way in which we gather around tables they recognize the same thing you do, that that seems to be diminishing Some of the material that I was sent around. The book said that only 30% of people now eat meals together at a table. How is it that we've lost this practice of meals around a table, and what was it that drew you to this need or this challenge as a place to write a book, a place to investigate and begin exploring?
Speaker 2:Chase, great question. And isn't it interesting that we all inherently know that mealtimes are really special and important? I mean, we kind of anecdotally know that from our own experiences most people and yet we also inherently know that we're doing it less and less. So all the research bears both of those things out, but we already kind of know this. So what is the deal? Well, we also kind of can look around and see why we're distracted more than we've ever been, we're busier than we've ever been, our kids have more activities, opportunities than maybe they did in the past, and so we're moving in lots of directions.
Speaker 2:And then when we do get together, we still eat. But you and I both know, when you go to a restaurant if your listeners go to a restaurant tonight, and you look around, you'll see families eating together and you'll see everybody mom, dad, kids looking down at their devices, and so they might be together, but they might as well be miles apart. And so all this has kind of brought us to this point where we are disconnected in really significant ways and, frankly, dangerous ways, because we've underestimated what was naturally happening around the table. That was a deep connector for people. That we know scientifically, sociologically, is important, but more importantly, way before science bore this out, the scripture talks about mealtimes as very significant events.
Speaker 1:You use the phrase phrase restore the table. So there's something in the book which I got a chance to read it and we're going to talk about several of those things, but this idea that the table needs to be restored. Maybe you could speak to how significant the table is in our homes and what you mean by this idea of restoring it.
Speaker 2:Okay, there's really two different ways. At least Chase that I think these happen. From a practical standpoint, we need to restore the priority of the table, in other words, meaningful mealtimes together, and we're trying to do that at Kingsland. A number of other churches are trying to do that as well, through what we call a restore the table challenge just asking people families to invest five meaningful mealtimes a week with the ones they love, for 40 days. I believe once you do that, as challenging as that might sound, you'll do it forever. So you have to do that.
Speaker 2:That's one side of restore the table. The other side of restoring the table is recognizing that one of the real challenges we have in family life today is there's a lot of people who have a lot of hurt and baggage from the past. I mean, we've just come out of a generation with maybe more brokenness in the home than we've ever seen in North America and so because of that, when people say, well, we need to come back to the table, they have some really tough memories around that table. So when we talk about restoring the table in that way, we're talking about redeeming around that table. So when we talk about restoring the table in that way, we're talking about redeeming God's ideal for the family, so that they can experience the peace and the joy and the connection that God intended for the home.
Speaker 1:One of the things you point out in the book is how often Jesus met people at tables. And as soon as you said it, all the stories come to light and it seems kind of obvious to miss the point. But Jesus is constantly at tables, isn't he From?
Speaker 1:the people he's inviting to tables, to of course the communion table, to even the promise of heaven having this great table feast, and you specifically get into this idea of breaking bread, which is sort of Christianese language but has some real significance, as you point out in the book. Maybe a little bit about why tables were so central to the ministry of Jesus and what it is he was doing by this idea of breaking bread with people.
Speaker 2:Right, it sounds kind of funny, chase, to talk about a theology of the table or theology of food, but when you look through the lens of a mealtime in the scriptures, it's incredible how much that is involved thematically. So you talk about Jesus. Go to the book of Luke, and you can barely go two chapters without seeing him sitting down with somebody, whether he's sitting with his disciples and eating, or he's sitting across the table from people who are wildly different from him, and he's sharing a meal, while he's sharing far more than that. I talk about the idea of bread, the Hebrew word for bread, and how it's so similar to the idea of the Hebrew word for flesh. And so what are we talking about there? Well, yes, we have imagery that bears out the Lord's Supper, but even more than that just real, practically we think of food in our Western eyes as something that's just a convenience.
Speaker 2:A lot of times you go to a lot of places in the world today and you find people who recognize that food equals life, like if they don't have food, they die. I had a professor in my PhD work who was a longtime missionary in Thailand and she said just as we would say today to someone, let's say, just an acquaintance we see on the street how are you, how are you doing, how's your day? Something like that. The common phrase that would be used in Thailand is have you eaten today? And you can look that up. It's kind of crazy. That's what they do because they recognize like that's survival. So we live in a different life.
Speaker 2:So when you understand that mechanism, how God designed us, where if we eat we live, if we don't eat we die, then all of a sudden this becomes the stuff of life and you recognize how deep the connection is between food and our lives and the spiritual aspect of our lives. And there's a sense in the Bible where food equals identification. When I eat something, I'm partaking of that, it's becoming a part of me, okay. Well, now we're at the Lord's Supper. Even before that, maybe the most significant meal in history right is Exodus, chapter 12, the Passover, which continued for generations, in some ways continues, but now we carry it on in the Christian tradition. Through the Lord's Supper, where we have this deep connection, we're remembering the mercies, the justice, really the attributes of God, the holiness of God, how, by eating Of all things, god created that through a meal.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering, in your own personal experience, what role the table has played perhaps in your family, and have there been times where that that discipline of meeting at the table has been a challenge? Or maybe the, the stresses, the busyness, as you've described already, of life have have, maybe for a season, uh, uh, pushed you away from the table or required some intentionality to come back to it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'm glad you asked, even though it's hard to answer. When I just wrote a book, I feel a little bit like a hypocrite Chase.
Speaker 1:That's why you write a book, right, right, exactly. I know you're reading and saying hey man.
Speaker 2:I know I've got to be honest about this and I tried to. We have three daughters. Our two older daughters are grown and gone, they're 30 and 27, but those were some of the key moments for me. Around the table and you're a pastor, you can relate to this the challenge with the it's a very churchy term, but the old, old fashioned kind of idea of family devotions when you say, okay, we're going to sit around and have like the family altar, if you remember that term that's really challenging for a pastor because it always came across as contrived to my kids at least. They felt like, okay, what you're doing, Dad, is you're really just kind of preparing for the lesson you want to give to the church, and so it wasn't highly effective for us. That doesn't mean it is for everybody and I still recommend that you have times of study and God's word and prayer with your families. But if you carry that over to the table, it's amazing how those same things become really natural.
Speaker 2:You share a mealtime. There's something that is a common bond, you share the conversations, and so mealtimes became abundantly, immensely important to our family as our kids were growing up. Now there were times, just like everybody else, where they were involved in extracurricular activities and so we had to learn to adapt. And some of the sweetest moments we had with our girls when they were growing up were hopping the back of the minivan in the parking lot of the barbecue restaurant and having a little picnic before we went to basketball practice or before we went to dance or something like that. So we learned to adapt. We recognize that special meals doesn't mean that you have to have. You know, you have to recreate Thanksgiving or a five-course meal.
Speaker 1:That's Do you have some advice for families? I mean, I have a couple of young kids. I know a lot of the listeners perhaps are in that same stage where they are, as you describe it, running between school events and getting home late from work and trying to get a lunch packed for school for the next day, let alone dinner and sit down at the table tonight. How have you been teaching families to do this in your church? What's some advice about how families can carve out more time, be more intentional about creating that space together for meals.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, chase, I think that the families who have done this over a sustained period of time in our congregation have been the ones who have scheduled it. Like it sounds really silly, but you just make a plan, you say I'm going to stick to it, and once you decide I'm going to schedule it now, you're automatically going to get creative. You can have the dinners out where you say, hey, every Tuesday, on the way to such and such, we're going to eat together. It can be breakfast. We have some church families who say you know what Monday morning looks really well for us, and so we all get up and we all have breakfast around the table before everybody rushes off. We just get up a little bit early.
Speaker 2:That works really well. So try to find those built-in times that already exist. You just have to schedule, put it on the calendar, and it might mean that you have to say no to some other things. But it's amazing, if you do this for a few weeks, how, when you say well, I'm supposed to go to such and such on Friday, you'll start to say, no, wait, a second Friday is family game night, where we get together and we have dinner and then we break out the board game or something like that, whatever it is. But you start to build in intentionality and I don't know any other way than to say you have to be creative, yes, but you have to schedule those meals yeah.
Speaker 1:No cell phones, no TV. Even if it's a frozen pizza, have it around the table together, I think.
Speaker 2:That's it. Yeah, so that's the part of the specialness of mealtime. They have to be scheduled, they have to be special. That mainly means no technology, no distractions. You're not doing something else. You are really present in the moment, together around the table, enjoying whatever meal you have in front of you. That's what it means. Yeah, that's what it means to have it as a special meal. That's it.
Speaker 1:One of the other things you talk about in the book is inviting other people to the table. We've been kind of talking about this regular rhythm of meals together as a family, but what does it look like to also use the table as an invitation to other people?
Speaker 2:Yes. So it doesn't have to be a both end, it can be. I mean, you might say, well, I'm going to share a table, you know, once a week or once a month, with somebody outside my circle at work Okay, and then it's a work lunch or something like that. But something really special happens when you say okay, on a regular basis, let's say once a month or more than that, our family is going to invite some neighbors over, maybe that we don't know, and share a meal together. We've done this in some different ways in our own neighborhood here in Katy.
Speaker 2:I already mentioned that we have a very eclectic community, very multicultural, and so, starting about COVID, you know that's kind of the milestone. Everybody knows right, Everybody was stuck at home. So we put a note on everybody's door and said, hey, we need to get connected, Just like a lot of people listening, we knew our neighbors' faces, we waved at them when we came home, but we didn't know them, you know. So we created this little text stream. We said, hey, let's have some meals out on the cul-de-sac. So we invited them and we started to spend this time together. Now the funny thing about that is we're doing it with people who we would normally not have anything in common with.
Speaker 2:My next-door neighbors are from India. They're Hindu. Their neighbors are from England. They are Anglican, but just religious, not practicing. They don't attend. We have some atheists from China next door to them. We had some Russians that now live in a different neighborhood and then next door to them is a couple from Louisiana which is, let's be honest, that's kind of a different country, right. I think people from Louisiana would admit it's a little different. So it's really fun to see these people come together.
Speaker 2:And the fun thing that's happened this last six months is our neighbors from India sent out a text the last time and said, hey, let's just make this a regular thing, We'll host the next dinner and then somebody else can take it after that.
Speaker 2:And so they're initiating this process where the barriers have completely come down Chase. So they're initiating this process where the barriers have completely come down Chase. And I'm telling you these things have happened in a way that if we had said I'm not trying to take away from anything like a Bible study in your home, that sort of thing, but if we had invited somebody to our house that are our neighbors and said, hey, wouldn't you come over for this study or for this talk? They would have said no, absolutely not. But we invited them for a meal and all the walls came down and now we're just, we're sharing a meal, saying tell me your story. How did you all meet? How did we meet? How did you end up in Katy, Texas, and then from there, guess what? We've had the privilege of sharing our story many times.
Speaker 1:The idea of inviting people into your home for a meal. I think we're talking about this idea of hospitality, which certainly has like a tradition within the Christian faith.
Speaker 1:But it also strikes me as something that is becoming more difficult for people when I think about my grandparents, my grandma. Nobody could cook and put on a meal like my grandma right, so there was food at the table and then she was packing it up for you to take home. I mean, hospitality was her thing. I'm technically a part of the millennial generation and I've read some studies recently about DIY skills in the millennial generation that we don't know how to fix anything Right and I think one of those other things that seems to be diminishing is this idea of hospitality.
Speaker 1:It can feel uncomfortable for somebody to think about. I have to put a meal together, I have to invite people into my home. How do you welcome people? Do you see that that hospitality is becoming kind of a lost skill for people? That needs to be reclaimed.
Speaker 2:Yes, but I would take a little bit different angle, chase. I've been thinking about this because I don't think that most people today are averse to connecting with other people. What they're averse to is falling short of this irrational standard that we have today. So we're living in this Instagram generation where they think everything has to be perfect and they're afraid if they invite people into their home and the laundry basket that's not folded yet full of clothes is on the couch. It's going to be super embarrassing. And so they'll say, well, as soon as I clean up or as soon as I'm ready, then I'll invite them. And then you never do.
Speaker 2:I think that has more to do with it than anything. And so we've got to throw out the irrational standards. And here's this little secret If you will invite your neighbors over to eat or your coworker over to eat and into your home and you have the half-folded laundry basket on the sofa, you'll actually communicate that you're a real person and you'll put them at ease, because they have some dirty laundry at their house as well. So I think that's don't you. I think that's part of the reason why a lot of times, it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's right. And I think about people's houses I've gone to for dinner. You know there's people's houses you go to and you're impressed by the house and by their possessions, the furniture. And then there are other people's houses you walk into and you just feel comfortable and at home and you know great to have all kinds of relationships. But man, what a blessing is to feel like it's a place you can just sit down and be yourself and eat. And yeah, how do we create those kind of spaces? I think you're right. It means just being ourselves and not feeling like hospitality is the same thing as putting on a show or pretense or trying to impress anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well said.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to ask about one of the topics in the Bible or in the book you talk about is the table and rest. That the tables, and we've kind of talked about how it impacts the family, how it can impact a neighborhood or inviting other people to the table. But you also see the table as a place personally, for you used the word rest. Maybe you could explain how those things are connected for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chase, you can go to Israel today and you can see many in Israel, among the Jewish nation who still practice Sabbath rest on Saturday. And so Friday, when you're walking down the streets, you'll see all these flowers being sold everywhere and people picking up flowers, because it's just kind of across the board. They know the men are going to grab flowers and they're going to take them home, give them to their wives and then those are going to be a centerpiece at a wonderful meal. Everything's going to be cut off as far as distractions and they're going to have this moment.
Speaker 2:And so in the Jewish culture rest is equated with a meal, it begins with a meal. Those things go hand in hand, and so it gives us this opportunity to again go back to kind of ground zero of who we are. We're needy people who are going to have this opportunity not only to have sustenance but have joy and pleasure in dining together. And through that we're also going to have a shared connection and we're going to have conversation. And the heart of rest isn't just taking a nap. The idea of rest is to be in the presence of God and to kind of recalibrate who we are, our identity as human beings and our identity as children of God, and I don't know anything that helps us do that better than a good meal together with friends, and I've seen it so many times. You can try it other ways, there's other strategies, but when you just share a meal, all of a sudden you dial back the pace.
Speaker 1:If you do it right, I mean if you have a meaningful mealtime- yeah, it's interesting we started this conversation I was thinking about the first time I was in Israel. It's the exact same thing you were describing. Being there as a Sabbath was beginning and out, walking and seeing into some homes where families were as exactly as you described them sitting around the table beginning to place food, that they were sort of practicing this rest as a part of a meal, and I can't help.
Speaker 1:My wife and I just got back from europe doing some work over there and we got to spend a couple days in paris and the place we like to stay as a cafe on the first floor we stay right above it, right and uh, you know we'd have our windows open until late at night, one, two in the morning. You know the parisians love to just sit in the cafe and just talk you know, multiple hours usually, and it does feel like something.
Speaker 1:Here in the US, meals have become kind of transactional. We get them done so we can move on to the next thing, but that idea of lingering or just being present with other people over a table, over a meal, seems like something we need right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really true, chase.
Speaker 2:I mentioned this in the book, but about 15 to 20 years ago I took a trip with my wife and kids to Italy Same thing, you know where. We got there and I noticed, okay, we generally come in and we sit down at our restaurant at the table and there'd already be a family next to us laughing, enjoying the conversation, and then we get up to leave and they'd still be there and you could tell that everybody else seemed to like have the table for the evening and we have this Americanized system of oh, I thought we were just supposed to be here for 45 minutes and then take off and they're like, no long after the meal is gone, they're having courses. That's lasting longer and they're just enjoying the company of one another, all surrounding the food lasting longer, and they're just enjoying the company of one another, all surrounding the food. So I I'm not sure where we lost that or whether we had that before, but, man, a lot of cultures that seem to have a better lifespan than us seem to have this like built in right.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, even the, the different tradition of when you're done eating here, I mean just sometimes, even before you're done the bill, the, you know the, the staff's putting the bill on your table and in Europe you have to request the bill. You know they assume you're just going to. It's rude for them to say, you know, hey, pay and get out. Uh, they assume you're just going to be there for a while. Yeah, there's definitely something to that. I think we could. We could stand is speaking of sort of lingering. It's a great idea. You include some recipes in the book as well. As, towards the back, speaking of reclaiming or learning hospitality. You have a section just on starting conversations at the table, a long list of questions that people could use to just bring up these kinds of meaningful conversations in time with people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, chase, first a confession. Let's talk about the recipes. So I talked to my wife about that and when we looked through it I thought you know there's. If I was reading this, I would want to know how she made the sloppy joes. I would want to know about the blueberry kirkus recipe. So we decided, ok, let's do this. I didn't want to have a cookbook, but you just needed them there so you can taste them as you're reading.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask also, that's perfect. I was going to ask who's the cook in your family?
Speaker 2:I feel sort of like a hypocrite. My wife is a wonderful cook, my mom's a wonderful cook. I just have never learned. So I'm. You know, that's one of my goals. I want to learn Spanish and I want to. I want to learn Spanish and I want to learn to cook. So I haven't cooked all the things in the book, but I've enjoyed every one of them heartily. So that's part one and the other. What did you just ask about? Oh, the conversations in the back.
Speaker 2:I have a conversational questions and, chase, I put just a few in the back to get people started, because I know for some people this is brand new. You didn't experience it as a child. And so you're thinking, what am I going to talk about? So they're simple questions and just so we don't, you know, kind of bury the lead. Look, they're not complicated, so you're going to don't go there and think you're going to find something profound.
Speaker 2:Incidentally, there are free questions without the book. If you go to restorethetableorg you can pick those up yourself. We try to have some conversation, but they're just a chance to prime the pump. So, for example, I think one of them says what would be the perfect age if you could be any age. The thing I like about that question if you have a bunch of adults around the table, they'd kind of enjoy that question. If you have a five-year-old and a 13-year-old, they'd enjoy it too. So just things to prime the pump. There's an opportunity to go deeper with some spiritual questions that you could. But I'll tell you why, chase, I didn't put like a boatload or a chapter full of questions, because I am convinced if people just kind of use those training wheels to get started, you'd be shocked.
Speaker 2:You're not going to need them. It might be something with the day's events, it might be something else. So, going back to my own experience, when our girls were younger, we had a stack of books on the table that we'd sometimes go to. Most of all that just reminded us to have conversations. So Focus on the Family, years ago had these books called Sticky Situations.
Speaker 2:They might still be around, I don't know, but they'd have some scenario that a child might go through or a teenager might go through, and they'd say what would you do? So those might be the initiators. We had either Our Daily Bread, like a little scripture you could pull up and read and we might use those. We had other books that were conversation starters. But most of the time what we do this is so cheesy, but we would just say what's the best thing that happened today, what's the worst thing that happened in your day, and we'd go around the table and talk about those. And once you get started on whatever topic comes to mind, something's going to rise to the top and for the next hour you're all set. So it's not as complicated as you might think, but yes, there's some conversation starters that not only might start that conversation, but will start your brain thinking about how you can do this.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things I like best about getting to read the book was, in some ways, it's two things. It's really simple and obvious have meaningful conversations with your family and neighbors. Sit down at a table hey, you're eating every day, so why not use that time to do something meaningful? I mean, in some ways it makes perfect sense. But you also recognize that the potential here is profound. I think that's what stood out to me in the book that although these are simple things, you really believe that if Christians could practice this in our homes, with one another, in our neighborhoods, in our own sort of personal rest, that this could have a huge impact not just on our families but on our churches and on our communities. I wanted to make sure that you got a chance to sort of say, as you do in the book, the real potential that you see in the table for believers today.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, my goodness, chase. So first of all, I believe this with all my heart from a scriptural standpoint. We've talked about that this is a biblical thing to do. Psalm 128, your children will be as olive shoots were around the table. Like that's the way it's supposed to happen. So secondly, I believe this anecdotally I've seen it happen in our church we're about to embark on another Restore, the Table Challenge, where we ask our people to commit to five meaningful mealtimes a week with the ones they love for 40 days. And during that 40 days we're also asking them to do four other things Invite three people outside your circle to that table. And finally, we're going to finish it with community tables, where we're inviting them to ask their neighbors for a community meal, whether that's the apartment complex where they live or the cul-de-sac or wherever it is.
Speaker 2:So we did this about a decade ago, and I was doing it honestly, chase, because I thought, well, this is something simple that everybody can raise their hand and say, well, I can do that, and it might at least instill some habits. I mean, how much can one meal do? I mean, how important can it really be? But at least it's moving them in the right direction. What I didn't realize is how profound the change would be, and so lots and lots of those families that took the initial challenge 10 years ago are still going strong, having raised the value and the priority of meals in their homes, and we have seen marriages get stronger, we've seen kids grow in their convictions, we've seen channels of communication open up with moms and dads and their kids that were never there before, and so it actually accomplished far more than I ever imagined. So it turns out that all the things that we want to accomplish in the family I mean most people, if they have kids, want their kids to turn out great, right, so you can think of. I've seen lists of 50 different things that parents ought to do to raise great kids, but the reality is, if you just do this one thing, this is like the linchpin that holds it all together. It's like the Trojan horse in every household. If you just think about the kitchen table, that's the place where you can bring in all the good things that a family needs, so you can tell them. I believe in this, I've seen it.
Speaker 2:The third element the reason I'm so convinced is because now, not only do we see it in Scripture, but science and sociology bear this out. Study after study after study has now been done, demonstrating that multiple mealtimes a week with people that they care about, where they're in community, they're connecting, have scads of positive results for kids. So everything from research on better health, better grades, to lower rates of depression and suicide, to fewer eating disorders, to fewer problems, and on and on it goes. If you just Google mealtimes together, the benefits of mealtimes together for children, for teens, for everybody else, you see this coming out. And why are we surprised when the scripture said it all along? So there's something about this that is more than hey. Wouldn't it be nice if we remembered how we can get back to the Norman Rockwell paintings and have dinner together? That doesn't excite me at all. What excites me is the fact that we have this mechanism that God has given us. That, by the way, we all inherently know is important and it's doable, and it can make a huge impact on families.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of pastors who listen, and I think you laid out how your church has kind of been doing this, but if you were speaking to a pastor and they were saying, okay, I want to teach my congregation to do this as well too, I mean, I think about our congregation, something we believe in, we do in the spring. We always do a box lunch after church for our whole church where we eat together.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:We always do a Christmas dinner where the church funds it and we eat together. We've tried to practice this, but for a pastor who's saying, hey, I'm convinced, how do I teach my people to do this? The book is a huge benefit. Any steps they could take to just begin that process of giving this, offering this to a congregation.
Speaker 2:I love that and it's one of the things I've tried to be more intentional about. Chase is making sure that we export these things. In fact, we created a website called empoweredhomesorg a few years ago with nothing but free resources for leaders and families that pastors can go to and find some next steps they can take. In this particular instance, if someone will go to restorethetableorg anybody, any family, can find resources, but, pastors, we have a special resource section just for you where you can pull off a little menu for lack of a better word that you can use to begin a Restore the Table Challenge Pick the dates to say we're going to start here, we're going to go 40 days and do this.
Speaker 2:There are message outlines that are there that they can take and use or build upon, and the thing I love about this is any pastor in any size church can take this, and most of your people are going to first of all say we probably need to do this. Most of your people are going to be honest and say we don't do this enough, and they're all going to be able to say, okay, we can, let's do it, and so it creates a really fun experience where people can compare notes and talk about what the Lord did, but again it creates the opportunity for pastors and leaders to really introduce some key concepts that they're wanting to share with the congregation during that time through the discussion questions.
Speaker 1:Again, the book we've been talking about is Restore the Table Discovering the Powerful Connections of Meaningful Mealtimes. A really great book, really practical and helpful, but yet as we've sort of, I think, already described in this conversation impactful and significant. It really is, I think, a meaningful call that you've given to the church. If people want to be able to follow you I know you just gave out the website Is that the best place for them to go to maybe pick up a copy of the book, or if they're interested in learning more about the work that you're doing?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The book, when it comes out on April the 2nd I believe, is available on all the different the regular places Barnes, noble, amazon, et cetera, christianbookcom. But restorethetableorg is kind of ground zero for this whole project and challenge that we have in front of us and I am super excited about it. Chase, by the grace of God, the wonderful people that I serve, we've been able to orchestrate this where 100% of what happens with the book goes toward missions, and so it's kind of that win, win, win where some people around the world who are hungry are going to get a meal that they wouldn't have had otherwise. So kind of fun to watch what the Lord is doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I'm really excited for it as well and I hope people pick up a copy of the book, maybe take the call, the challenge in their own life, maybe pass it on to a congregation as well too, and I hope it inspires a lot of great meals and a lot of great conversations for listeners and their family, their neighbors as well. Ryan, really great book, great resource. Thank you so much for your work on it and look forward to maybe one of these days, who knows? Maybe we'll find ourselves at a table, but if not, I hope the book brings a lot of other people to the table as well.
Speaker 2:Man, let's make that happen. Chase, you're so kind. Thanks for having me, and what an honor to be with your listeners today.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorwritercom. I've got a link to Ryan's book there. You can also follow the link to learn more about him and his work. Also, if you haven't already, I'd love for you to leave a review. You can leave a review by clicking a star rating wherever you listen to podcasts or take a moment to type a brief review. It gives me helpful feedback on the show. Really looking forward to the conversations to come. Hope you're subscribed as well. As always, until next time, thank you, thank you.