Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 210 | Inviting Unbelieving Family Members to a Sabbath Meal

Transcript

Ep. 210 | Inviting Unbelieving Family Members to a Sabbath Meal · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  We're gonna, we do a couple rituals before we get started. These might seem weird. We'd love for you to help. You can bang on the table. You can repeat after me. You can do all this or you can watch and here we go.
• 0:12
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of 5-Minute Fatherhood. This question comes from Maggie in our homeroom community. She said, do you do anything differently when you invite unbelieving family members to be part of your Shabbat or Sabbath meal on occasion? Do you do different explanations or do you just allow your regular routine to be a witness to them? Now, Jeremy, I'm interested to hear what you think. For us, I think this is a thing that actually, not just on Sabbath, but on like, I'm always...
• 0:38
  I, how do I say this? I'm very sensitive to how other people are feeling specifically around religious language, tradition, the gospel, all these different things. And so one tool that I think is very helpful is like, just be honest and like, it's, and like disarm them. Right. And so like, like I, and then I think what that does is that actually frees you up then to be more honest or to do more kind of unashamedly what you want to do. You know, like even I got in trouble from a couple of commenters the other day, cause I wrote this little article.
• 1:06
  I gave away a free book and a $20 bill and wrote like a letter in it. And I just set it somewhere in like a mall. And I just said, you know, whoever picks this up, I want this to be for you. I want it to encourage you, blah, blah, blah. But one little line in there, I said, like, I said, Hey, there's a lot of Jesus stuff in here, you know? And I said, if that makes you feel weird, then just skip past that. I think you'll still get some encouragement from the other stuff. And some people were like, why, why would you say that? You know, you don't want to just skip over that. Like they need to know. And I'm like, yes, I agree. But there's something about
• 1:31
  alleviating people's fears and disarming them that actually makes them hear you better anyways. That's right. Right. Or that even that comment in the letter might make them go, oh, like, well, who is this Jesus guy? Like, you know what I mean? Right. So I think there's something about disarming that's really, really powerful. And so, yeah, back to the specific question. We do that on Sabbath. We have a lot of people in our home sometimes for Sabbath, different kind of levels of how they're comfortable with it. Are they aware of it? Whatever. Yeah.
• 1:55
  And one thing I do is I'm just usually calling it out as it's going like, hey, this is going to be weird to you. Right. Or I'm going to say, hey, just, you know, just pay attention. Or like if it's the song, I say, hey, this is a fun song we sing. You probably don't know the words. Just bang on the table and you'll probably, you know, fit right in. You know, like you just kind of like I just kind of make it fun and disarm and hearted like that. And to me, that's just like then it just moves on. And what it does then, too, is it then also comes back to us and enables us to then be free in it.
• 2:17
  Because then what happens if you're not communicating well, then you start to hide or get sheepish or whatever. When it's just like, I literally just said that, hey, we're going to, we do a couple rituals before we get started. These might seem weird. We'd love for you to help. You can bang on the table. You can repeat after me. You can do all this or you can watch. And here we go. Right. Like stuff like that. Like I just think you just be honest and just kind of talk normal and be normal and things usually go normal. But yeah, I don't know. What would you say?
• 2:40
  Yeah, don't suddenly start praying with these and those or suddenly break into some kind of religious— Yeah. Like, a lot of times we don't know how to just be at home. I just wrote about this. Totally. If you guys are subscribed to the Jeremy's Journal, the family team's email newsletter I shoot at every week, I talked about the most—one of the coolest invitations I ever got in my life when I was 23 was to a Sabbath dinner when I was living in Jerusalem—
• 3:03
  And it was happening repeatedly. I was being invited to people's houses. And what's really cool about these kinds of observances is oftentimes people, they're just kind of curious about like, how do you do things? What you can't do is with family, there's a little bit of a, there can be a little bit of like, kind of like you, you guys actually should be doing this. Or there's, there's just really subtle little messages that we're, we think we figured out better ways or, I mean, that's, I think where this can get really tough.
• 3:32
  for unbelieving family members is if it ever feels preachy, if it ever feels kind of like you're coming down on them. And so you have to really ramp up the sort of vibe that, hey, we just want to share this thing with you guys we're doing.
• 3:48
  Yeah. And, you know, and it's not exclusive and it's just we're trying to just sweep, you know, sweep people into it, make it really simple, do a really good job, you know, explaining things. My wife, April, is incredible. When we have, you know, any of our Shabbat dinners, we have people that are new. She'll stop me, like, routinely, like, okay, what Jeremy means by that is, you know, like—
• 4:07
  Because I can be a little bit insensitive to this topic, and I think me and April make a really good team because she's much more. And she has my permission to stop me, pause, help me, help us make this an experience that everyone feels like they're a part of. And so, yeah, I know this can be really tough. I know there's so many details to a lot of situations. You might get frustration or anger even from people
• 4:34
  from unbelieving family members, like, what do you think you're better than us or whatever? Some of those things are stirred up just because this is different or whatever. So we just want to make sure we're not contributing to that. You can't always, don't blame yourself if that starts to happen. Sometimes that's stuff that they're really wrestling with. But oftentimes we've found that there's a tone you can strike, especially over time,
• 4:56
  extended family starts to feel like, I really like this. I love it when you invite me over to Shabbat. I appreciate the meaning behind it. And I get to hear and understand a little bit more about your faith or about the gospel every time we come over.
• 5:11
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