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How To Have Incredibly Meaningful Weekly Family Meals · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  it has the power to completely transform the kind of family that you're raising. And that family is going to be a tremendous blessing to the world. Our families are blessed, as it says in Abraham, to be blessed to be a blessing. So if you want to craft the kind of family that is maximally blessing to all of society and to the kingdom of God, this is where it starts. You have to learn how to craft a table culture that goes multi-generational.
• 0:28
  Welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. We have been talking about the multi-generational family meal. We talked about how to make it fun, how to make it sustainable. And today we're going to be talking about how to make it more meaningful. A lot of families tend to get into this place where they're kind of just going through the motions. And so very few, I think, can build meaning over long periods of time.
• 0:49
  So, Jeremy, maybe what's the big change that separates a rote kind of dinner, repetitive dinner process from a tradition that really forms people spiritually over years? Yeah, you can imagine that in our culture, we talk a lot about these weekday meals where we're just kind of catching up and everybody, poof, you know, runs back to their regular life, their screens or their own individual activities. We're talking about a meal that feels timeless, where no one has anywhere better to go.
• 1:18
  And the main thing that we're trying to experience in this meal is peak family life, where a father feels like a father, a mother feels like a mother, a son like a son, a daughter like a daughter. We need to experience our family-ness. And oftentimes we just don't take the time to have that kind of experience. And you can actually choreograph.
• 1:40
  like a liturgy that leads into your meal that causes people to sort of settle into those identities. People today are obsessed with trying to figure out who they are, what is their identity. And this is really coming because there's a rootlessness in our culture around identity. We don't have any place in our own families where we just, in a peaceful, regular, weekly way, we
• 2:05
  incredible meaning that comes from being a son in this family to being the mother of this family. And so we're talking about what are the traditions that you can sort of sprinkle in to a weekly meal that allows people to just settle in and experience who they are and who we are as a family team. Oh, that's excellent. Jeff, give me a couple tips on bringing maybe spiritual meaning, especially if you have like a younger family.
• 2:28
  I would say three things. I would say number one, ask good questions at the table. I think the job of the host is to facilitate the conversation. One of the easiest ways to facilitate really good conversation is ask deep, meaningful questions that everyone has good answers to. And so that can be serious, funny, lighthearted, joyful. You know, hey, when was the last time you were discouraged? Can you tell us about that? Hey, do you remember a time of difficulty when you were a kid or with a sport or something that you had to try out for? And what do you remember about that?
• 2:54
  Or if you have grandparents at the table, you can say, hey, tell us of, do you remember the time when you fell in love in the 1700s? Please tell us about that. Or so on and so on. But be a host that asks really good questions. And I think you will find, you know you're doing it well because you can ask a few questions and then step back and the next hour is basically without you. You just get to listen and see how powerful and rich the stories are. Number two is a secondary one of that, but I would say number one is ask good questions. Number two is tell good stories. So I do think sometimes it is time for you to come in as the father or the mother and step in and tell good stories. And I think that's a good story.
• 3:24
  You know, we have an 11-year-old and down, 11 years old and below. And I think one of my favorite phrases I use that just gets the kids going all the time on Family Meal is, hey, remember that time when you, is a phrase I say a lot, and then they will usually want to fill in the blank or ask about it, or I'm naming something from when they were three years old and did something ridiculous or funny or silly or whatever.
• 3:43
  And all of a sudden, we're talking for 30 minutes and just belly laughing on, hey, remember that time when you and did this thing. And so that's a really, really fun way is basically just tell stories about the kids when they were younger. And it's really powerful about their identities. And then also is really fun because then it brings up other opportunities for the adults and the grandparents to tell similar things. And then number three, this one, I don't know the brain science behind it, but it just works. Turn off the lights and light a candle. Boom, all of a sudden, anything you do from that moment on is deeply sacred and meaningful. You could literally do anything.
• 4:13
  And all of a sudden, if the lights are off and there's a candle being lit, it just feels like you leveled up the meaning through the roof. Don't ask me to explain it. It's just true. Just do it. I love it. That's totally true. All right. So if somebody is listening right now, I'm talking to you. If you are listening right now and you're like, OK, just give me the step by step. What do I do to do this? Go to familyteams.com slash meal. That is going to give you everything you need to kind of kick off this tradition and kind of deepen both from a meaning, sustainability and from a fun standpoint. Yeah.
• 4:42
  So go to familyteams.com slash meal. That's the best way to do that. Jeremy, what causes maybe like these sacred rhythms that we set up for family to turn into kind of a box checking? I remember when I actually traveled to Israel with you, Jeremy and April both, and I remember we went to a Shabbat of a lifetime. And I remember the Jewish version of the multigenerational family meal.
• 5:05
  And I remember they just ripped through all the blessings and the prayers and all this different stuff that they're doing. And it felt like there wasn't actually that much meaning. It just felt like a task that they're trying to get through. And so how do we keep that from happening as we build these traditions for our family?
• 5:20
  Yeah, that's really unfortunate. Oftentimes liturgies can turn into dead liturgies. And oftentimes it's the person who's doing the presiding that they need to sense the meaning. They need to dial into what's going on. And oftentimes that's the father and the mother. And when you do that, everyone else can kind of sense that kind of emanating from you. And if it sounds like you're just trying to get through this, I feel like...
• 5:43
  you know, I have to do this. That's going to also come across. And so this is an opportunity for the father and the mother or the grandfather or grandmother to really dial into that space and say, I'm here, I'm present and this matters to me and the kids and kind of the downstream effects are gonna be clear. Everyone else is gonna feel that. And so this is why oftentimes we, so some of the things that we do in terms of like a liturgy and liturgy sounds like a really fancy religious word to a lot of people,
• 6:10
  Those are just the repeated actions of your life. A lot of people have a liturgy and they wake up in the morning, they check their phone, they have like 18 steps, their cup of coffee. And, you know, we need to craft a liturgy. In other words, a practice that helps us dial into meaning when we launch a meal. And you want to keep it really simple, especially at first to make this really clear. But I would say the first thing I like to do is try to connect what we are experiencing with the gospel.
• 6:35
  I never want my family to feel like this meal or a day of rest that this might be kicking off is something that we are trying to keep in order to somehow attain our righteousness. Right. This is something the gospel really is opposed to because Christ himself perfectly kept the Sabbath and he gave this to us as a gift, not as a religious obligation.
• 6:55
  I do think though, we need to help our kids understand that, wow, we get to rest. Like this is a gift given to us by God. And we get to experience this familiness. Like this is a gift, the family, these roles that we get to experience. And so oftentimes we will try to come up with questions that really help our family dial into the meaning of the gospel. So oftentimes as the father, I'll try to come up with questions that help us like figure out what that means. One of the questions that I've asked from time to time is something like, you know, what are the different kinds of rest?
• 7:24
  Right. So and our kids have kind of been trained in how to respond to that. Well, there's the kind of rest that you have that your body needs when you're exhausted. OK, that's that's one kind of rest. But describe to me soul rest. And so then they will say something like, well, soul rest is when you're completely done with the task. Like you may be working on a project for six months and in the middle of the week you finish it and you want to enjoy it.
• 7:48
  Like there's something, that's a different kind of rest. And I'm like, what kind of rest are we entering into right now? And they'll say soul rest. I'll say, well, how is that? How did that happen? Well, because when Jesus died on the cross, he did all the work that we really had to do, which is to live a perfect life. And then he died and dying. He said, it is finished.
• 8:05
  And so now we are entering into the rest of this day and this meal, knowing that the real work that we absolutely had to accomplish has already been accomplished and our soul can just relax. You don't have to earn anything. The identity that you're experiencing right now in the gospel and in this family, it's yours. It's yours because of what Jesus has done, not because of anything you have done. So just dial into that and enjoy it. And so you try to help your kids
• 8:32
  And for me, what I'm looking for all the time, if I'm listening to a sermon or reading a book or reading through the Bible, I'm trying to figure out what are the things that's touching my heart as a father and how can I deliver those things to my kids at the beginning of a Sabbath dinner? And so this is helping them sense the meaning that's emanating from me. And then they just sort of enter into the meaning that I'm experiencing as their father. And I think that God has designed this sort of connection to happen between father and the family.
• 9:00
  And so oftentimes I'm used to seeing that from a pastor, but I'm not used to seeing that from a father. And so it took me a long time to get comfortable, like helping my family enter into the meaning of something spiritual in the home around the table. And so I encourage dads, you got to practice this. This is going to feel a little awkward at first, but you're going to lean into it. And I think just begin by asking the question, what's meaningful to you? Like in your time with the Lord this week, what was the thing that really stood out to you?
• 9:27
  Take note of that thing and find a way to sort of deliver it in maybe your kids' language, whatever age your kids are at, and just help them to experience that. I think the other thing that a ritual that's been really meaningful for us is to craft blessings that you can say over the children. The oldest father or grandfather, the oldest grandmother or mother can put their hands on the children and bless them. This is something that happens within Jewish families. They also do this.
• 9:53
  from husband to wife. And so there's a sense in which you want to bless those members of your family so they can sort of take a minute and just experience what it is to be a son. And so the way we always start this is I'll say, once the candle's lit, has God blessed our family with any sons? Because I want it to be a surprise. We don't deserve sons in this family. Has God blessed our family with any daughters? Whoa, I got four daughters. I mean, they all get up and it's like, oh my gosh,
• 10:20
  look at this, look, look what's happening in our family. And so when my mom or my dad, and, you know, when part of what we experienced was, you know, we had to write these things on little cards so they can, they could read them because they weren't, they weren't used to doing this. Like we had to, you know, make this really easy for them.
• 10:36
  They would put their hands on the sons. My dad would bless the sons. And I just wrote this little blessing that kind of weaves together the gospel with a traditional Jewish blessing. The Lord would make you like Ephraim and Manasseh, which is sort of that traditional blessing. And then we added, and give you the faith of Abraham, the heart of David, and the righteousness of Christ as you build our family from generation to generation. Because part of what you want them to experience is that sense of generational connection.
• 11:01
  And so that just inherently brings a tremendous amount of meaning. We talk more about how to think about the generations. But if it's just two generations, then get used to this process of being the dad and blessing your son or your sons, being the mom and blessing your daughter or daughters. That's excellent. Yeah.
• 11:17
  That's so good. We're recording this on a Monday and already I'm like, man, I wish it was Friday right now. Like you're, you're making it sound so good. April, in the past two episodes, as we talked about fun and we've talked about sustainability each time, I think we've had to hold you back from going and jumping into the meaning side. I feel like this is your favorite one. So I'm kind of curious from your perspective, you know, talking about bringing in a meaning, what's been meaningful for you and how have you been able to kind of contribute to that? Yeah.
• 11:46
  It is hard for me to hold back on this because I think it's just like... It's pretty obvious. Yeah. Wow. The way the Lord has used the Sabbath rest, I mean, it's the meal. The meal has a huge part in kicking it off, but also just having a day of rest to grow me spiritually is...
• 12:04
  So powerful. It has been such a powerful tool for me. So in the meal specifically, I think that there's so much meaning if you're able to get to that third generation, inviting grandparents to come, even if it's just like once a month or over Zoom or something creative. I think having their presence, it infused meaning into my training of my kids because we trained them. And this was after having a few like...
• 12:32
  not great times with them there because our kids would just, you know, be acting out or, you know, being silly when they're trying to tell a deep story or my dad would get choked up over something and my kids are goofing off and they're blowing bubbles in their milk or something. And so we, I had to train them. Listen, when your grandparents start talking, you should be quiet and listen to what they're saying. And it became this like, yeah,
• 12:58
  this meaningful time. Our young children learned how to sit still for a meaningful story. And so there's that component of it, like appreciating the meaning of family and the multigenerational piece. But then there's also the meaning of what is happening. Like,
• 13:17
  We are entering into a cathedral in time, like Jeremy said in a different episode. This is what one of the, I think it's Abraham Herschel said that this is a cathedral in time and it's epic. And Jesus said that he made it for us. And so it's like a gift that we get to open each week and it's okay because I am very conscientious. I want to do everything the right way. I want to follow all the rules. And so to get to a place where it's like,
• 13:46
  I'm trying so hard and I'm still not finishing everything. I'm trying so hard and I'm still not, you know, getting it all right. And the Lord is like, and that's okay. And you need a break from trying so hard. And, um, for me to accept that has been really a step towards the gospel that I, I don't know how I would get there otherwise than through this weekly practice.
• 14:10
  Oh, that's awesome. That's really good. I like thinking in terms of inversion, which is like, okay, if we want to have a meaningful Shabbat, then we should do this. Another way to think of it is what are the ways to make sure there's no meaning in Shabbat? Jeff, I'm kind of curious of your thoughts. What are the meaning killers? How do we remove the meaning and make sure that we don't do those things?
• 14:31
  I think one of the biggest killers of special family connection time or a family meal that has a lot of meaning is speed and hurry, essentially. I think a family that is hurried, a family that has speed kind of in their inner world pushing them throughout the week, it's gonna be really, really hard to show up in meaningful ways.
• 14:50
  at any point in the week. And so another way to put that is, you know, if your inner world is full of chaos and speed and hurry and hustle, well, then your external world is going to show that. And so to have a cathedral in time and show up at a table and show up in the living room and show up as a family in these really deep, meaningful moments,
• 15:09
  You have to make sure that your inner world is also a place coming from that. I think of the two Marys in the New Testament. Well, there's multiple Marys. I think of two Marys specifically in the New Testament. The first one being Mary, the mother of Jesus, after being visited by the angels. What does it say she does? I love this phrase. It says, when she hears what the angel said, it says, she pondered these things in her heart.
• 15:33
  I love that word ponder. We don't ponder enough. We don't ponder. We just either transactionally have the thought and move on or whatever. We don't ponder. And I wish we'd be families that ponder on what the other person says, ponder on what the Lord is telling us, ponder at the table. And then the other one is Mary Magdalene.
• 15:50
  when she is at the feet of Jesus weeping, it actually says in her distress, in her emotion of tears, it says this other word. It says that she lingers in the tears or lingers in the hard emotion of basically the death of Jesus. And that's another good word, linger.
• 16:06
  Like, man, do we linger? What would it look like to linger? Why shouldn't we be families that linger with each other, linger around a table? And why I think it's important, even though she did it in her distress, because she was honest in her emotions, she then becomes the first witness of the resurrection. And I think sometimes we don't get the power we want to see in our family because we're unwilling to linger, maybe in the uncomfortable emotion we need to first.
• 16:26
  And so I would find it very, very important as families to just linger in the full range of emotions that your family is living in and then allow Christ's resurrection to bear on that. And he rewards us with that when we are willing to linger. Oh, that's awesome. That's really good. Okay. So if the enemy here is hustle or hurry, Jeremy, how do we combat that? What are some tips that you have to make sure we're bringing in the meaning and the lingering and that sort of thing?
• 16:57
  Yeah, this is something that culturally can be really tough for a lot of us. And I know for me, one of these I was blown away by was studying kind of a Jewish culture when it comes to grieving, that when a parent dies,
• 17:12
  The children, they say a special blessing at Shabbat for that parent for an entire year. And there's different periods of time depending on who dies, but that's the longest. And when April's dad suddenly died and we were like, well, like, how do we, how do we process this? He, he was for years at our Sabbath table. All of a sudden there's a place missing and we all are experiencing it. And sort of in an American culture sense, you kind of just want to like,
• 17:39
  Forget about it. Like it's, this is a negative emotion. Like Jeff just said, how do you enter into it? And so we decided that for an entire year at the Sabbath table, we would begin our Sabbath by asking, did anybody have any memories of grandpa this week? Did anybody, and you know, just, we cried every, every week. Like we just kind of.
• 17:57
  had to experience those emotions. But instead of grieving apart, we all grieved together because we had this tradition and it gave us space that we didn't, we weren't busy. We weren't hurried. We just, we, and that allows your heart just to open up in the same way. You know, when our first grandson came to the Sabbath table, the level of joy was completely off the charts. Like.
• 18:21
  Somebody, I mean, my daughter had just won the Super Bowl. I mean, to see that generation for that, when that child came into at our Sabbath table, that was like the fourth generation at that table. And everyone there just experienced it and felt it. And because we have this ability to linger before the meal, talk about the meaning of what's happening right now and enter into it together as a family, like this allows everyone again to just the roots, you can just feel and see the roots
• 18:50
  of everybody's identity going deeper and deeper into the rich soil of the family. And that's what makes us resilient people. That's what causes us to see who we are and where we belong. And this is missing for so many people. And so I think having those moments and just sort of leading your family into sort of pausing and saying, let's experience this right now and giving that permission, giving that space. And that has taken, I think for me, it's not been easy to...
• 19:20
  Like I tend to want to avoid emotion. And so this has like been a practice that I've needed. And like Jeff said, I had to have a space that didn't feel hurried to even go there in my own heart.
• 19:31
  It's so interesting hearing the way all three of you are talking about this. I think I anticipated that we would be talking more about injecting scripture into your Sabbath tradition. And it's not that you're not doing that, but it seems like it's much more about emotional presence than it is about the injection of kind of like a spiritual checklist into this activity. It's just an interesting observation kind of seeing how you guys talk about it.
• 19:58
  I feel like it's, you know, you can start these things off with the intention of wanting to do something right or doing it the right way or, you know, check the boxes like you're saying. And as you do that, like for me, the way that took form was we had these blessings like Jeremy mentioned. We had them written out on index cards.
• 20:17
  And so like when the grandparents weren't there and I was the one to do it, I would read them. And then I'm the one to light the candle. So I read the blessing for the candle. And it was fine for a while. It worked. And then all of a sudden, one Shabbat, I was like, I can't read this.
• 20:35
  It is losing meaning. It is losing significance. I needed this to get started, but now I have something else to say. I have something different, something that the Lord taught me this week. It's not like something that we wrote on the card six months ago. And so I started to be able to use that time to bring forth something that the Lord was teaching me.
• 21:00
  currently? Jesus is the light of the world. What does it mean to have light come into the darkness and things like that? So I think it's okay to have these things that you need to get you jump started, but the way that meaning can just come, I feel like that's part of what the Lord set it up for, for us to have an avenue to,
• 21:22
  to seek out these things we don't even know we need, or we're going deeper in our own hearts in the ways that we didn't know that were possible, allowing the Lord to meet us there in our liturgy, in our roteness. When we get past that, it's like, oh no, I need to say something different to the Lord this week. He hit me in a completely different way.
• 21:46
  So allowing the Lord to come into those places where it's not just like I'm trying to infuse meaning for my children. It's like I am being changed and therefore I can't help but bring the meaning and the depth to the situation along with the fun and along with the sustainability, allowing these other things also.
• 22:09
  Yes, you're really describing a receptivity to the meaning that God wants to infuse into this, as opposed to trying to manufacture meaning on your own or something. Yes. That's excellent. That's great. I know that one of the biggest blessings for my family was early on being able to piggyback on your Sabbath, Jeremy and April, and going on Friday nights. I think we went every other Friday for probably a year. If you're listening to this, and you're like, oh, I want to see how this is actually done, what's cool is if you go to
• 22:39
  two things are there. One, you can get a PDF which kind of walks through some steps to do. But two, I think maybe even more helpful is they have a short video kind of vlog style of the prior Shabbat where they, I think Kelsey when she was probably a teenager, their daughter, when she was a teenager kind of did a little vlog kind of walking through what that looked like.
• 22:58
  little things like that are so helpful to tangibly be able to feel and see and kind of get the vibe of what it looks like. So go to familyteams.com slash meal, and you can get both of those things there for free. Um, we really want to have everything we can to kind of make this helpful for you guys. Um,
• 23:13
  So speaking of which, that's it for today's episode talking about me. Can I say one more thing, Blake? Oh, yeah, go ahead. I just want to add, like, I think one of these that you guys hear us talking a lot about in this is a kind of older upstream generations. And that kind of stirs up a little bit of a complicated...
• 23:29
  emotion or situation for a lot of people. Um, and so we know there are people where it's like, oh my gosh, can I even do this? If, if I'm not in a great relationship with my parents or like, how does all this work? Um, and so I think that part of the way that it's really important to understand is, is some, some of you are going to do this downstream, like, and you, you are crafting the kind of meal.
• 23:49
  that you want to restore your family line and you want to have good relationships and you want to see your grandchildren and be in good relationship with your children. And so to get to that third generation does does mean maybe for some of you guys primarily going downstream. And so don't lose hope if that's if that's your story. That's where a lot of people start. And this is so valuable to sort of prepare the groundwork for that coming.
• 24:12
  For those of you who do think that maybe there is an opportunity to infuse some some meaning and unfold people upstream. One of the things that you can do is I always encourage people to start with just one meal and see how it goes and and try to get good at this. So we did this with both sides of our family, my parents and April's parents.
• 24:30
  Um, part of that wasn't really on them. It was just, we, we didn't know if we could enter into the meaning of this and if this was going to make it unsustainable for us to have them over. And so we would just have them, you know, on at one-off, uh, meals and then eventually just got better and better and better. And so we started to invite them every week. And that, that happened over the course of, you know, uh, maybe a whole year of just like really seeing how much meaning there was. One of these we discovered in that process was, oh my goodness, this is,
• 24:57
  this is really the purpose of this whole season of life when you're older. Like a lot of older people today, they're in nursing homes and they're like, why am I still alive? Like no one's listening to my stories. Like nobody, nobody, like nobody pays attention to who I am. I'm not, I'm not imparting any identity to my family. Now, if you contrast that to my grandmother came to one month of Shabbats in her nineties. So she was living in Michigan, but she came down for one month
• 25:25
  And she was at my Sabbath table. And at that table, she was bridging seven generations of our family. She could remember three generations in the past. And she was seeing four generations of her descendants at the table. And so she was carrying that identity. And everyone at that table was...
• 25:45
  Our identity got richer because my 90-year-old grandmother was able to be at that table and be a part of that whole experience with us. And that is the point of that season of life. And I hope everyone listening to this, I hope you live into your 80s and 90s. And I hope that when you get there, you are at a table with your descendants and sharing stories and passing on identity.
• 26:07
  And you are feeling that the maximum moment of meaning of your entire life is going getting better and better and better every single year because there's an actual arena for where you get to experience that and pass that on. And so if you can do that for upstream generations, please consider how to do that with your parents and grandparents. If not, please craft the kind of culture so that you get to have that experience with your future grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• 26:34
  And so there's so much at stake in this one simple tradition in terms of the depth of meaning it can bring into your family. So that's why we believe in this. And it has the power to completely transform the kind of family that you're raising. And that family is going to be a tremendous blessing to the world.
• 26:53
  Our families are blessed, as it says in Abraham, to be blessed to be a blessing. So if you want to craft the kind of family that is maximally blessing to all of society and to the kingdom of God, this is where it starts. You have to learn how to craft a table culture that goes multi-generational.
• 27:11
  Excellent. That's great. All right. Well, stay tuned for next week. We're going to be interviewing the barbers. They're a family that has been doing this for over a decade. And so you guys are going to kind of go into the details in the weeds with them on kind of what it's looked like over time to do that together. So look for that next week and we'll see you guys soon. Thanks, everybody.
• 27:30
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.