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Abrahamic Hospitality · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:01
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:20
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. I am here with a couple of friends of mine, Phil Goodwin from Athens, Georgia, and Chris Cirillo from Eugene, Oregon. Thank you guys for joining me today. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited.
• 0:35
  So we're dads who are all interested in this topic of hospitality. And I wanted to kind of dive into this a little bit deeper and try to understand the implications of really pursuing hospitality as fathers and as families and the impact that has on our building out of kingdom culture. So I'm going to read a little essay I wrote, just a very short article on hospitality.
• 0:58
  on Abrahamic hospitality. And then I want to hear Phil and Chris's thoughts and just kind of start a conversation around this. I think this is a very important topic. I think one of the critical topics that I think is just very under discussed and in the church. So something I really would love to see us recover, but I think it starts with having a vision for what this is all about. So this is Abrahamic hospitality, becoming the master of the feast.
• 1:28
  How are we to steward excess income? The current pattern is to find ways to build walls to keep others out. More money leads to more isolation. As David Brooks once said, Western Christians rarely serve as exceptions to this rule. However, they are more likely to give a higher percentage away than their secular counterparts.
• 1:55
  But the real purpose of wealth is not to build higher walls, but longer tables. A fatherhood goal for most men in history was to become the host or master of many feasts. Vikings in their halls, kings in their palaces, chieftains in their tents all had a passion for hosting feasts. Jesus attended many of these feasts, even when the food was purchased by traitorous tax collectors.
• 2:22
  But he often leveraged his celebrity status to turn the tables on his host and introduce them to the culture of his coming kingdom. This culture was not against feasting. In fact, it involved even more feasting, but with an expanded guest list to include the least of these.
• 2:38
  When the early church emerged in Acts, the feasts were so frequent, an entire team of leaders was ordained to ensure the food reached everyone. Families sold fields to keep the banquet going. This radical hospitality is a central part of every Abrahamic religion. As a total stranger, I've been invited to Jewish Sabbaths and to Islamic Iftar, the sunset meal during Ramadan. But there's one Abrahamic religion—
• 3:05
  where as a stranger, I've never been invited to a feast. And it's my own tradition, Christianity. And this is, so that's going to be, but yeah, that's the part of it probably that gets me the most is, you know, you think about the whole idea of where do we get our culture of hospitality from,
• 3:28
  And it does seem to run as a through line through the Abrahamic faiths because Abraham has been the real model for this. And Genesis 18, the idea of Abraham and the three strangers was really an inspiration for the Jewish faith in kind of creating a culture of radical hospitality. But of all three Abrahamic faiths,
• 3:57
  There is one of the three that is actually commanded, not just given Abraham's example as a way of doing this or as an inspiration, but are actually commanded to follow Abraham's example. And that one faith is Christianity. Christians are told in Hebrews that we are to entertain strangers because some have entertained people.
• 4:21
  angels without knowing it, unaware. This is what the author of Hebrews said, and clearly a reference to Genesis 18 and what Abraham did with the three strangers.
• 4:30
  So it's very odd to me that the Abrahamic faith that both has the inspiration of Abraham and a direct command to follow his example is the one that's actually least likely to show Abrahamic level hospitality. And so this is something we really need to dive into. Why is that and how do we recover that? So, yeah, I'd like to start with you, Phil. What is this kind of topic stirred up for you as a father, as a follower of Jesus? Like, what does this look like? And tell me how you kind of react to creating this culture of Abrahamic hospitality.
• 5:00
  yeah we we've had uh my wife and i've had like a really big heart to host gatherings and events specifically around food and kind of like having kind of this uh
• 5:11
  almost like this combo of like a meal and a teaching kind of like interwoven together. It's like the nicest place to like do teaching. Like I don't really, I don't really enjoy teaching in front of a crowd, like at a, on a stage or something, but I really enjoy teaching over a meal and like inviting interruption. Like I, I just like, I, I enjoy that so much. So we've done, you know, we do like Passovers and we do Sabbath dinners. We've done like Sukkot kind of gatherings under big tents, you know, and, um, um,
• 5:38
  I just love that whole aspect of it, of kind of bringing in the teaching part. I think probably, and I don't know if that was as much touched on in the essay, but that's something that for me, it always kind of is a piece of these big feasts and gatherings. It's not just kind of facilitating a space
• 5:53
  for it, but it's also kind of like using that space to teach something about God and something about his character and nature that's being expressed in this gathering and kind of something we want to touch on. But I think probably the sentence in your essay that stood out to me was the real purpose of wealth is not to build higher walls, but longer tables. I thought that was such a
• 6:13
  It just it struck a chord with me because we we live in like a pretty small house with like a 1500 square foot house. You know, we knocked out a wall so that we can have more space, you know, like open space. But now we kind of we have a table that probably seats about six comfortably. And so we're constantly adding, you know, we have people who are constantly adding these fold out tables. But it gets, you know, our space is not conducive really to have large gatherings.
• 6:37
  And so we've, you know, as we've like desired, you know, if I've kind of grown in career and things, we've like really wanted to like build a bigger space, like have a home that's, that's more apt to facilitating like a larger gathering. So I totally, I resonate with this whole essay because I'm like, man, this is what I want. You know, this is what we want to be able to do. So those are kind of my initial feelings on it.
• 6:57
  Yeah, I love the theme of this is a place for like directly teaching, talking about what really matters around a table because it really brings in both elements of like you're able to talk about things abstractly, but you're actually experiencing something at the same time. It also like allows for maximum integration. You've got kids there. You have older people there.
• 7:18
  And so, yeah, this is I think that the idea of a father at a table teaching his family is such a powerful image. And then then what it's also a much easier place to sort of allow people to not only experience the kingdom and place that's way more comfortable.
• 7:35
  Essentially, then showing up to a worship service if they're not a Christian at all. But, you know, it also allows them to to hear directly about the inspiration behind this kingdom culture that they're experiencing. So, yeah, I think that's a that's a great theme. I'd love to tease that out some more. Chris, what about you? What does it start for you?
• 7:55
  Yeah. Funny enough, Phil, you kind of just described our family mission statement. And it's still hard. We exist to create environments where people experience the kingdom of God primarily through teaching and hospitality. And that's the same aim for us is like we want to have conversations with people. And what your essay brought to mind for me was the kind of like taste and see.
• 8:21
  And how do people like really experience the kingdom they taste and they see, but it has to be manifest. And, and I think one of the primary ways that we can do that really well is by crafting environments really intentionally.
• 8:37
  And teaching has to be kind of a key element. But I think people also misunderstand what teaching looks like. And so I'm worth probably calling that out just like for people listening that that we're not talking about maybe a sermon at the dinner table or or maybe anything that looks quite like that. But.
• 9:00
  Yeah, I also more recently discovered kind of like the like hospitality, the root of hospitality, the word in the Latin has a lot to do with strangers and enemies. And so I think we we like think of hospitality most of the time, especially in the church, as like hosting our friends, hosting our fellow congregation members and like, but it's actually like.
• 9:27
  the opposite. It's, it's hosting people that are not your people that are not from your group, that are not from your tribe. They're just like Abraham, you know, it's like this stranger, these three people, I don't have any idea who they are, but they're walking towards my tent. So let me like do what I can, you know? And so
• 9:48
  That's what initially came out. That's interesting. Yeah, I love that picture. Jesus really shook that up. And that's what I find interesting is that he seeded this idea of kingdom culture in an Abrahamic culture already. They were very into hospitality. They were very into feasting.
• 10:05
  had lots and lots of regular feasts on the annual calendar. They would have weddings that would go on feasts for like a week at a time, three pilgrimage festivals every year that every family would participate in. And so Jesus was being constantly invited to feasts and weddings and different things.
• 10:22
  And so his, it's interesting that he was basically saying, Hey, you're not doing this enough. And, and really the thing he was adding to it was what you described. And that is, we need to be inviting more people, invite people that will never invite you back, invite people that, you know, that, that if, if they're, if people aren't interested in the kingdom,
• 10:42
  that are your wealthy neighbors, then go out and invite people that are poor and would, you know, with, this is likely going to impact them even more than, than you. So it's a, it is a, it is, there's like these different layers of hospitality. There's family, there's friends, there's strangers, there's, you know, you mentioned like even enemies like there's, there's ways in which the table is designed to bring everybody together and heal and, and, and,
• 11:08
  be a like a manifestation of of like redemption and forgiveness and of love and peace. And so but it's tough today because I think part of what I'm trying to understand is there's it's difficult to to overcome a problem if you don't really diagnose it properly.
• 11:27
  Why is it that we don't just naturally and instinctually engage in this level of hospitality anymore? It seems like something has happened. I don't know what your guys' thoughts are about as you sort of overcame the gravity that is, hey, our houses are private. This is a place just for me and my family. That David Brooks quote, you know, that when people get, when Americans get wealthy, we purchase loneliness.
• 11:54
  there's an assumption that our culture has that as you become more affluent, the goal is to do less and less hospitality, to do more and more isolation, which is ridiculously counterproductive, but it's a very clear trajectory. People tend to do this. And even the way we design neighborhoods, I remember watching a documentary once that said that people
• 12:19
  in America uniquely fear one another by income level. So, and so that's when you see subdivisions that are basically like a very specific socioeconomic, like, like range. Like we, we sell houses from 400 to $450,000 so that you don't ever have to see someone poorer than you or somebody who's much richer than you. Like, whereas like, like I live in a, in a town that was built before the automobile. So our house was built like 1890s and, and,
• 12:48
  man, it's just like, you know, there's a duplex and triplex and fourplexes all over the place and then large single family houses all sort of intertwined together on our street and then in all the streets around us. You never would see this kind of
• 13:04
  area built out that way unless somebody is attempting to do something extremely countercultural. So, yeah, how have you guys thought about the nature of the problem? Why do we struggle with adopting a hyper-hospitable culture?
• 13:21
  Need a blueprint to revise your family to be a multi-generational team on mission? The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or familyteams.com. That's a really good question. I think it was...
• 13:45
  I feel like for my wife and I, we both kind of come from families that are a little bit more hospitable than like maybe your average family. So I think for us, it wasn't as big of a it didn't feel as countercultural. Right. It kind of felt like we this is what this is what should be normal. This is like, you know, this is what we do. So I think for us, I think the barrier was a little bit lower. We did want to like take it to like a different place. Right. Kind of based on a lot of the other things we've been learning the last few years. But yeah.
• 14:13
  But yeah, but I did totally when I when I heard that quote, when Americans become wealthy, they purchase loneliness. I was like, we totally do that. Like even even being somebody who loves to, like, you know, do hospitable things. There's still this element. I think there's just a fear right around like other influences, especially when you get a family and kids. And you're you there's an element of you that wants to protect your kids from the world. Right. But at the same time, you don't want to. Yeah.
• 14:39
  you don't want to totally block them out so that at some point they get exposed to things. And, you know, we all kind of, I, I grew up in that society where like the, the, the parents tried to keep the kids from all everything in the world. And then, but inevitably I'm in public school. So I'm getting exposed to all those things at like a rapid clip and more and more in middle school. And I was terrified. I was not terrified. I was, I was mortified at the things I learned in sixth grade on the, on the bus, you know? So I think, I think there's like this element of fear, number one, of like,
• 15:08
  people invading that space um for multiple reasons um but but it is a weird phenomenon like i don't yeah i don't i don't have a good answer as to like why do we do that in mass like why did people in mass get money and then remove themselves from society i yeah especially in light of these direct commands yeah chris what have you thought about this
• 15:31
  Yeah, like you, Phil, I don't really, I haven't landed on anything, nor do I know that we have the ability to really intentionally find the right answer. But one of the things that came to mind was, as you were talking about this,
• 15:48
  Rich people have done this since the beginning of time from what we can tell from the history books. Right. And like the more wealthy you get, the more isolated you are. And I think maybe there's something to shame or hiding from our sin or not wanting to be exposed. Privacy equals sin.
• 16:10
  some level of like being able to hold on to what I'm living in, walking in that I should maybe shouldn't be. I don't want to be exposed by people. That was where my, my mind went first. Um, and maybe that has some element to do with Jesus's, you know, descriptions about, uh, the camel and the eye of the needle and rich people and, uh,
• 16:32
  perhaps it's just much easier for them to be in a place where they can't be confronted with the kingdom in, in quite the same ways as other people. And there's a level of independence they have. They no longer have dependence on,
• 16:47
  other people, let alone on God in their minds. And yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's a hard question. It's a conundrum. I know that one of the variables that I've wondered about is just...
• 17:02
  having grown up in the church, I just experienced, you know, virtually all of my spiritual life was usually in some kind of institution, like in a, in a church building. And I remember countless nights being, you know, we would host banquets at the church building. We would, I would remember being there late, you know, early setting up and late tearing down. I was just,
• 17:26
  There was one year in particular, I was a youth intern and I must have been at the church 60 hours a week. It was just like constant ministry in that space. And I think that one of the things I didn't know until I started to really investigate other cultures is that
• 17:45
  historically, most religions were centered in the home, in the household, like even Roman, Greek religions, ancient Jewish faith was centered in the house. They would have supporting elements outside the house. The first century synagogue was not like a modern day worship service. It was sort of like a library because people didn't have their own books and it was a
• 18:12
  attend a public reading on a weekly basis on the Sabbath, the men were commanded to. But most of the worship actually took place in the home. And this was also true within the Roman religion. They had a temple system that was built around a support structure for the rituals. These were the more extreme rituals that you might do.
• 18:34
  But every family had a hearth. Every family had a special fire, had all kinds of ways of doing worship through the house. And that was everyone's primary experience of their faith. And all of a sudden, now we are really centering our faith outside the home.
• 18:53
  And I think then taking advantage of that and saying, okay, well, I guess this means that my house can be completely off limits and I can just let my hair down and not have to think at all about my faith, not integrating my faith into my home at all. And I think for a lot of people, that's the first step into this, it seems like, is to start to think about their house as a vehicle for both their experience of the faith and their families, but also expressing ministry to others.
• 19:23
  And so for you guys, how have you, I'm always really sensitive to somebody who's like, okay, I really do think that there's something powerful about like beginning something like an Abrahamic hospitality, like different practices. Yeah. How would you guys encourage somebody who might be wanting just to get started? What's sort of like the training wheels version of starting to show hospitality?
• 19:50
  I'll jump in. And I think it actually, it starts with using your table in general. I think the average American family doesn't eat hardly any meals around the table. And so I think you have to start there. You have to value the table enough to do it yourself. And then you have something to invite other people into. So we've been really fighting as a family over the last probably five or six years to
• 20:18
  And are currently in a season where, by God's grace, we're eating three meals a day around the table with our kids, which is unheard of. And we never actually thought we would get here, even like with work schedules and all that stuff. And it's been amazing.
• 20:35
  But I think what it's done, too, is it's totally changed our perspective of food, of the table, of how we use that space. And we're already cultivating faith conversations and stuff with the kids and memorizing Bible verses or, you know, doing Shabbat stuff on Friday, whatever it is.
• 20:53
  And I think then you're building the foundational elements of something you can invite others into. And then for us, the next stepping stone was inviting people to join us for Shabbat on Friday, you know, and it's like one or two people and things like that. But yes, Phil, what comes to mind for you?
• 21:12
  Yeah, I think that I don't even think about the fact that the table that is like a huge issue, I guess, that like we've also we've tried to be really intentional to use our table for our family first. Right. Like as many meals as we can. Like, let's be intentional with the table. I didn't think about the fact that like a lot of it's so it is normal. Just you just go out to eat or you eat in front of the TV. Like it's a very like our culture. Those things are.
• 21:32
  So normal, right? The table might not even be very normal. So that's a good first one. I think second, it's like good to address the fears that might exist, right? So one fear might be like, well, I can't cook. Maybe you have a husband and wife. They don't really cook, right? Or they're insecure about what they might make themselves. So I think make stuff easy off the gate, right? Like just, yes, use your table, order food in, right? So don't put this pressure on yourself to have to cook some kind of elaborate meal. Make it as easy as it has to be as far as like preparation goes.
• 22:01
  And then the people that you bring in, I think, pick the easiest people first, right? Test it with the easiest people, whether that's, some people in the family is actually not the easiest, right? Like their in-laws might be the hard people to invite to the dinner, right? So start with the ones that are the easiest, whether that's like your, you know,
• 22:16
  your friends or if it is your kids, right. Or, or maybe it is like for us, like we, we try to be really intentional with our, you know, both my, we're just so fortunate to have both sets of grandparents, like within 15 minutes of us. So we are trying to pull them in all the time. So they're the easiest people for us. So I think finding, yeah, find your like your easiest people and don't put pressure on yourself to have to cook some elaborate thing and make it easy on yourself on cleanup too. Like use disposable stuff, like very practically, um,
• 22:43
  I know people can kind of get anxious about a lot of these things. Well, there's going to be a big mess or I'm going to, I don't know how to cook very well or who do I am? So I think just addressing some of the fears and kind of like expounding some of like expounding, it's not the right word, expelling some of those fears out the gate would really help take some baby steps, you know?
• 23:00
  Yeah. Well, I wanted to hear too, Phil, you describe a little bit about what it looks like to teach at the table. Because I know that for me, that was a big barrier because I was so used to, like I was saying, teaching is something that happens in a church building.
• 23:16
  And so to me, it was a lot more comfortable standing in front of 100, you know, hyped up middle schoolers and giving them a lesson than standing in front of my family and starting to do any kind of intentional teaching or discussion like that. That was that was just a.
• 23:32
  Just felt out of place, very awkward. Like, it feels like I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing. Again, because it just, I was, it wasn't that we weren't experiencing that. I experienced a ton of that growing up, but it was, it was really centered in the church. And so it was really weird to bring it into the house. I remember, you know, I had this experience a couple of years ago when we were in Israel, when we take groups over to Israel, we always go to a Orthodox family's Shabbat dinner.
• 23:58
  And we were at the Shabbat dinner with this guy who's probably 35 years old. And he was hosting and it was like incredibly complex dinner time because it was, he had like about 30 guests from America. That was our group. And then he had his whole family. His mom was there. His sister was there with her whole family. So it was like, it was like 10 to 12 people from his family, 30 people.
• 24:20
  And this guy stood in front of the Shabbat table and he led and taught and there was singing and there was like discussion and there was teaching and it was all interwoven. I was just like, it was like a clinic for how to lead a table. And I could tell this guy clearly has a multi-gen, like he's been a part of a tradition that has learned how to really lead a table time.
• 24:44
  in a way that I've never even experienced. And I was so blessed by it. And I've been, you know, I practice this on a weekly basis with my family. Like, okay, what can we do? And it's for me, it's always like a process of trying to get better at this thing. And anytime I walk into somebody's house,
• 25:01
  And I see how they do it because there's not one perfect way to do it. There's a ton of ways to do this. I'm just so inspired. So like, yeah, take us inside of, you know, the Goodwin house. You know, we're all sitting there. How do you lead people into any kind of like teaching or intentional time?
• 25:19
  Yeah, well, first off, I think the scariest, I don't know the scariest word, the most uncomfortable for me is actually when it's just my family. If it's like me, my wife, my three kids, that's the most uncomfortable situation for me to teach in. And I feel the most out of water, like a fish out of water feeling of that. When we bring in people who like are, they've never experienced a Shabbat before, or if we're doing a...
• 25:38
  if we're doing like a Passover celebration, right? Or we're doing like, we're kind of meeting together during Sukkot. That feels easier to me because there's kind of like, there's kind of stuff and topics that we're specifically addressing. I've looked at these topics a lot. I've read these things a lot. In Passover, we have a Haggadah. We have a booklet we're going through. It's just an easier time to teach. The every Friday night, like hangout time, it's very short. Anything teachy is kind of very short and it's definitely like a, I don't really know what I'm doing every week, right?
• 26:07
  Um, but when we normally start with, we try to keep it easy and we just sing the Shabbat Shalom song every Friday. So the two, the two word Shabbat Shalom song and my kids like kick it off for us. And I always say, I told my oldest, I'm like, all right, Finn, let's go like start it up. And we bang the table and we start that off. And so anybody who's like joining us and never been a part of it, it's super easy to learn. Right. And it's just kind of a fun, like loose way to get everybody around the table and like, yeah.
• 26:31
  kick it off. So that's as far as like very practically. So I'd try to kick it off with the, with the song. Cause it's just, it's easy. And then my wife lights some candles to make way for like a nice candle to dinner. And then normally I kind of address like stuff about Shabbat to remind us, right? Like, all right, we, we do this to remind ourselves that we are,
• 26:50
  we're working from a place of rest. This is the reset time of the week instead of the other way around where we're just working to get to this day. This is actually the first day that kind of sets us up for what's to come next week. And so just trying to teach a little bit about that. And if people are totally unfamiliar with
• 27:04
  anything kind of like rooted in kind of old Testament, you know, history of around like a Shabbat or a feast. We talk about, you know, the moon. This is why we kind of celebrate this stuff when the sun goes down. You know, we talk about, you know, creation and Genesis one. So those, those are kind of like the basic sort of stuff we hit on. And then we normally, you know, talk about Jesus and body and blood. We do like communion together every Friday. So we kind of make that a part of our, like our Shabbat before we actually dive into eating like the, the, the bulk of the meal with, you know, all the mains and the sides and stuff.
• 27:34
  So that's kind of the practicals of how it works. But I do find myself very uncomfortable every Friday trying to like figure out, okay, how do I, how do I teach in this and especially when it's just five of us, or even just one set of in laws, you know, so definitely still a work in progress for sure.
• 27:51
  Yes. I've tried. I can't tell you how many different, I mean, like I said, there's not a perfect way to do it. I've had times where it's like I teach the same lesson and ask the same questions, like it's basically like a pretty standard liturgy going into a meal like that. Then I did a whole season where I was just researching like 20, 30, 40 themes. And I would like, you know, every week I would basically come prepared with a theme and I'd be like looking at another one. I was reading all kinds of books on the Sabbath. And every time I find a new theme, I
• 28:20
  like write a thing on it. And then recently I heard, I'm going to try this next, several families in our area, they put those, and I think we did this like years ago, but it's like, it's a sort of escapes, maybe 12 years ago we tried this, where they put like strips of paper in like a basket and every one is a different theme. And so somebody from the table, one of the kids would just randomly pull something out of the box
• 28:49
  the basket and you would read the theme out loud and then the father could then start a little bit of a discussion with the kids about that theme. Like, let's like, yeah, let's explore this thing. What is this about? Like, how is it like Jesus is like the light of the world or, you know, how is it that, um, you know, like, why does, why do we, why does the word Sabbath mean cease? And what are we ceasing from? Or, you know, you can think about like 30 or 40 themes of the Sabbath that you could just have in these little slips of paper. It could start with four or five,
• 29:19
  Anyway, I think that it's useful to have prompts. And this is the part of it that's a little bit, like that's what I mean by training wheels, you know, to kind of get something going that starts to feel, get over that, you know, especially what you described, Phil, like especially when it's just you and your kids. I agree 100%. That's like the hardest because it's like people, like you kind of feel like this is just, you're supposed to just be super informal, nothing formal.
• 29:43
  And I think that's actually a major problem. You know, there's a, there's a scene. I have friends, Blake and Chandler, they referred to when a father gets in front of his family and starts to just present something as the Fezziwig speech. Because in the Christmas Carol, you guys remember that scene where the Charles Dickens novel where
• 30:09
  Scrooge is like a young man working at this amazing family. And this family is hosting this huge, amazing Christmas party for all their employees. And there's dancing and there's fun, there's feasting. And there's some point at which Fezziwig starts to talk about the
• 30:25
  the year and what this means. And, and so I like to think about the idea of the Fezziwig speech being the father explaining the meaning of what we're entering into right here. And, uh, and so just bringing people into the meaning, because if you don't do that, nobody goes there. Like it's, it's not, it's not normal, like for your heart to really pause and think about what's happening here.
• 30:48
  Oh, guys, look around the table. We got multiple generations. Look how good God is. He wants us to rest. How crazy is that? How did that start? What is it about the gospel that allows us to have all of these things we've left undone at the end of this week yet still enter into a place where we're going to just receive the grace and love of God to just feast here right here in the middle of...
• 31:13
  our 50 projects that are undone just because it's a Friday night, a Saturday night, because it's the Sabbath. Yeah. Chris, how have you played around with this? What has worked for you? And how have you thought about bringing meaning into any kind of feast or, um, yeah, special, special meal. Are you following us on Facebook and Instagram yet? Look up at family teams to get even more free content and never miss out on event announcements.
• 31:41
  Yeah. Like you guys have tried a lot of different things and failed at most of them, it feels like. But lately, probably the last probably six months in my nightly routine around the table with the family, I've actually been toying with a totally different structure and kind of doing more of a discovery Bible study type of environment. Right. And we read like, I don't know, five to ten verses and then.
• 32:11
  Um, one of my boys is responsible for retelling the story in his own words. So he's got to pay close enough attention to retell it. My boys are eight, six, four, two and newborn. Um, and so varying degrees of success with that, depending on the age. And then I ask.
• 32:30
  each of them questions and they actually earn points and stuff like that based on being able to answer questions and just making it fun and when they earn enough points they get a cookie or they get a lego set or something and really just tying reward uh enjoyment joy to that process and and
• 32:49
  So when in the past we've done like Passover gatherings with, you know, three or four or five other families. And this year we had just moved back to Oregon. And so we had all of our other family were around that that weren't around when we had done the last two years of Passover festivals in Texas.
• 33:12
  And so because of all of that, and they're a little bit more focused on kind of like Easter celebration versus Passover. So we hosted an Easter gathering at our house and we had four generations present. And I kind of just started doing a little bit of the same thing. I read a couple passages from the scriptures around the crucifixion and the death, burial, resurrection. And then I just started asking the little kids in the room questions.
• 33:42
  And it was so cool to see as you just ask questions, like how that stirred up the room. And by the time we were done and I, you know, don't take credit for this necessarily. Like I was just exploring different ways of doing things. But the fourth generation, the my wife's grandma came up to me and she was like in tears. And she's like, that was so special. And it was just amazing to have all of my kids and their kids and their grandkids, you know, like.
• 34:10
  And the room was stirred. And all I did was read a couple passages and ask some questions, you know? And so for me being someone who has always been much more traditional teaching in the sense of like, I talk at people when I teach, that's just kind of the framework I've always had. This has been a massive like adjustment for me, but also bearing, it seems, more fruit at times. And so it's kind of blowing my mind a little bit. Yeah.
• 34:40
  That's awesome, man. I love that. I love the discovery Bible study process around a table. I think that's a great, great way to do that. Just some verses from the Gospels, get your kids familiar, and then just get a conversation going around some element there. That's awesome. Yeah. I think that part of what we want you guys to be thinking about in terms of the family's culture is,
• 35:07
  One of the things that's really challenging, you mentioned, Phil, that you grew up with, you know, some hospitality happening on you and your wife's side of the family. I think that a lot of what's happened is that there are a lot of old world cultures, food cultures that as people have immigrated to the U.S. in particular and to North America, a lot of that has been lost.
• 35:30
  And now we're getting further and further away from a culture of where we're sharing meals and where we have this, you know, this, this kind of where our kids are growing up with a, the experience of what a, what a table culture feels like and looks like. And so it's tough to reignite that, like to re, it's almost like, it's almost like resurrecting a dead language.
• 35:56
  It's a lot easier just to continue to slide into the unintentional kind of pathway that our culture is going. So we just want to encourage you guys to really take seriously the crafting of a table culture for your family and to be thinking about that as a...
• 36:14
  primary tool for ministry. When the gospel says practice hospitality, when Paul says that an elder is somebody who enjoys practicing hospitality and is constantly doing it, when a woman, he says, he describes women who are faithful, are the ones who have washed the feet of the saints, really serving
• 36:38
  And so there's so many references in the New Testament to this kind of radical hospitality culture where I think that it seems like a lot of believers think this is somehow optional and that a hyper individualistic culture is just as you can just contextualize that for the kingdom.
• 37:08
  God reveals himself as a father and Jesus as a son. And we are headed towards the wedding supper of the lamb in Revelation 19. This is a part of what it means for us to follow our father, is to be the kinds of fathers and mothers who know how to host a feast and bring our children and our extended family and our friends and then the strangers and others who are far from the kingdom into that feast.
• 37:37
  Yeah, that's where we're headed. That's where we want to figure out how to do. So thank you guys so much for just teasing this out with me today. Absolutely. That's fun. Good blast. 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 FamilyTeams.