I think what holds a lot of people back from inviting people over is you have this sense, you don't want to have people in your house until it's perfect. Yeah. Because all we see is social media.
So, you know what? We need to wait until we paint the walls or we clean the house or we do whatever. And listen, your neighbors have that same. Laundry basket full of unfolded clothes on their sofa, too. You know?
And you'll actually make them feel more at home if you just leave it there and say, We're gonna sit around the kitchen table and just break the ice.
So stop worrying about being perfect before you invite your neighbors over. It'll mean more if you do it now. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.
This is Family Life Today. You know what just hit me? What? Is we're doing this whole interview wrong. This is day two, and we don't have any food in front of us.
That's the truth. Think about that. We should have had food at the table. We're talking about the dinner table, meal times, how significant it is with Dr. Ryan Rush.
And, you know, yesterday that's all we talked about. And all we have is something to drink. You know, where's our steak? Where's our turkey? Where's a burger?
If you missed the conversation yesterday, go back and listen because it was rich and wonderful. And I feel like it was really inspirational.
Well, you guys were a blessing to me. And I would say that the idea of a meal time while we're having an interview sounds good in concept, but I don't know in practice if people want to hear us. Our audio engineer would probably hate that as we're chewing and talking about it. It's called ASMR, right? Isn't that ASMR?
That's all the rage on you. Are you serious? Seriously, yes. Like old videos where like all you hear is like them cutting the food. Right.
Our daughter, who's disabled, will watch videos of a dude eating mac and cheese. No. Slurping spaghetti. What? Yeah.
Ooh. This is a thing. You know what? Forget that idea of having food at the table. I don't know what I was thinking.
But we're at the table and we're talking about something you've been studying for years: restore the table, discovering the powerful connections of meaningful meal times. When I. Pick this up, first of all. I'm like, really? And then I read it and I'm like, wow, this is.
Oh, thank you. I mean, it's in scripture, Jesus modeled it. I mean, it's everywhere, but it's something we don't think is important. And it isn't just important. Mega important.
That's really true. And I find that it's one of those things where I rarely come across somebody who says meal times aren't important, but it gets set on the back burner. We don't think of it as a priority. It's something that we get around to. And most people don't realize how long it's been.
Since they've had a meaningful mealtime, because it's just something that we get busy about. We still eat, but we don't eat together. I think parents, I think they would say it is important. I agree. I think they would love it, but they don't know how to go about it.
Our kids are in a million different activities. We don't have time to cook.
Somebody's going here, somebody's going there.
So, how do we find the time to sit at the table together? It feels impossible. What would you say to that? How do we? Yeah.
I would say you're eating anyway. Like we're all eating anyway. Yeah. So, how long is that taking you? 20 minutes?
Is it something you do in the car on the way to something? First of all, we talked about that a little bit yesterday. That's not very healthy.
So there's other issues going on if that's what mealtime has been reduced to. But you can do this. Everybody needs to eat anyway.
So this is the perfect stopping point to press pause in your day and say, let's do it. We've had some wonderful testimonies in our church of families of teenagers or preteens who are doing this at breakfast.
So that would be another place. If you say, well, I'm just too busy. You don't know. Later on, we'll do this. No, if you don't do it now, you probably won't.
It doesn't matter the season of life. And if you're busy, that's even more important that you do it now.
So find time that everybody's already together and do it.
So yesterday you said five times a week. People are like, there's no way we can do five times a week. Do you think it's possible? Absolutely. It's possible.
And so five times may sound daunting. First of all, if you understand we're not talking about a four-course meal, you're not trying to impress the neighbors or put it on social media. You don't have to cook it yourself. No. And then you just find that time that you coordinate everybody's schedule.
So here's my challenge to a family who's busy. That's most of us. Sunday after church, have a meal.
So Sunday after church for the Rush family, we finish up. We go to the same Mexican restaurant near our home. My parents, who are now part of my church, kind of cool. I get to pastor my parents join us for this meal every week. Together.
That's a time that a lot of people have kind of pressed pause and you have time together.
So, what do you do with the NFL football game? You know what's funny? It's I have to be careful because it's on in the restaurant.
So, we just have to face the other way because I can be the world's worst about acting like I'm watching. You've done that. You know, you're looking over the shoulder, and my wife has caught me so many times, like, no, we're not doing it. Yeah, good question. But we can record these things nowadays, right?
Good point.
So, Sunday afternoon, sometimes breakfast Monday morning, you kick off the week. Why not have a time together? A lot of churches will have some sort of mealtime or activity on a day of the week, like Wednesday. Our church actually has a mealtime there. And so.
Bring your family together, pay a few bucks, and sit around the table and have a conversation.
So find those built-in pockets of time.
So, when our girls were younger and they were racing around, we would have one day a week when we were on our way to dance practice for Reagan, and we would go buy this one food truck that sold barbecue, and we'd pop the back of the car, the minivan, sit on the back, have a picnic. And so, you know, you just build around your life, but you take those moments and you seal them off. I'm telling you, five is not that many. That's good. I like the creativity of that too.
We, I have a thing with our grandkids. We call it trunk picnic. Same thing that you did. You're saying, like, we go through the fast food, we pop up the trunk of the car and we sit in the back. We have a blanket there, and we sit and we just talk cross-legged.
And you wouldn't be able to fit back there. I can't bend my knees like that. But you could sit on that. The kids will never forget it. The grandkids never will.
So is this literally a trunk or is it like a tailgate? It's not a tailgate. We're in it because we're in Michigan and it's cold sometimes and raining. And so we are in the back. Of the car.
Of an SUV? Yes. Not the trunk, then. Oh, yeah, that's true. Hold down the seat and get out of the room.
This was an image. It was odd to me. SUV trunk. Your grandkids are going to wake up saying, remember when grandma put us in the trunk and we couldn't breathe? You call it the trunk, though.
We ain't laying on our side.
Now today instead. I have to tell you guys something because, and since we're picking on you, I listened to a podcast the other day that you guys were on, and you quoted Psalm 27, 3. And you said, the fruit of the loom is the reward. And so I want you to know right away, I thought these are my people, and I'm going to be right at home.
So you're good. They were supposed to edit that out. Did you hear me laughing at that? I listened to it again, too. I laughed at it.
That was the same one that she kept saying. The fruit of the loom is your reward. And your wife is taking the kids to the trunk. Hey, don't be ripping on fruit of the loom. They're pretty good.
Wilson's, we do it right. Trunks and looms. We've talked about this before, too, but because our boys were. All in football. They'd come home from school, have a snack, but then we would wait to eat dinner.
I'm not kidding. Because I was coaching. And so dinner would be like eight o'clock at night. And most of the kids I coached never had a meal with their family because they missed it. And I'm like, my wife is saying, nope, we're going to wait.
We're going to eat at 8 o'clock. Jump in a hot tub after, but that's awesome. Yeah, where you go. You were living this. You're right.
I think you have to be creative to make it happen. And it's so funny. I'm thinking of my dad again. He walked into somebody's house and their dining room table was just full of junk. Their kitchen table was full of junk.
You guys, he was so rude sometimes. He walked in and he would clear the table because we had fast food or whatever. He's like, We're not going to sit on the couches. We're going to sit at the table. You know, I'm like, this is so embarrassing.
Dad goes, no, we're not. This is We're gonna sit at the table and eat. And he loved food. Maybe that was most of it. And he liked to eat it on a table.
But that was important.
So even think about your kitchen or your dining area. Are you using it that you can all sit down? Because it's easy to stand around an island now and not even sit and face each other. I think that's important. Absolutely.
And to think that you're giving your kids snapshots that they'll have written in their hearts and their minds for life.
So you remember the conversations with your dad. You have your grandkids in the back of the car, not the truck, the back of the car. They're never going to forget that.
Some of my favorite memories growing up early childhood were around my grandmother's kitchen table. My grandfather was in the army, so they lived all over the world and she would make these international dishes. And I treasure those moments. And I can't remember a lot, you know, from those early years. I'm talking five or six, but I can remember her kitchen table and I can remember the smells of those meals.
Wow.
So they will never forget. Yeah. You know, it's interesting when you say that. Because, you know, I shared yesterday, I sat with my mom, just my mom and I. My grandma Best cook in the world, we had a table.
That's the only place in my life I had our table. Wow.
Grandpa was there, grandma was there, my mom was there, and me. Yeah. Yeah, I can see it. When you said that, I was like, wow, look at the power. Of the table.
Wait, did you not sit at a table with your mom? Yeah, we did, but you know, it was just, it was a little dinky table. It wasn't even, it was just mom and I, but the community part of having grandpa and grandma there, that's the only time I ever had it. I never even thought about it until right now. How about that?
I mean, talk about the power of a community over a meal. There it is. And Ryan, you've traveled worldwide. Are you seeing this everywhere? I am.
In fact, some cultures have a head start because they don't have as many distractions, perhaps. And so they are already enjoying the meal time a little bit more. And we're seeing this happen naturally, life transference. When you go to other places, sometimes you realize what we've lost. Wow.
But you also recognize the power of connecting even beyond the family, making your family a lighthouse to others in your neighborhood. I don't know that there's any more powerful tool than the mealtime. I just got back from Somaliland in East Africa. Most people aren't familiar with Somaliland. It's an offshoot of Somalia, the nation you hear about with the pirates and Blackhawk down and Mogadishu and all these things.
Well, in 1991, they won their independence through a bloody civil war, but they're not recognized by the UN yet. That's a long story to say. They're in a very difficult situation. It's a nation that is 100% Muslim. There's not a Christian church in the land.
And yet we have partnered with them because they have a priority for education that we do as well.
So they've allowed us in. They're very aware that we're Christians. But as you can imagine, there's a little bit of distrust.
So when we first came in a few years ago, got to know these people, we were just talking about education. I was trying to use, you know, pull my PhD card and share with some information that we could say this is empirical evidence that this works, talk family that way. But what changed. Was a mealtime. I talk about this a little bit in the book, but we sat around a table with the mayor of that region, the education minister of the nation, and the governor.
And they set down in front of us all these random dishes. And it's one of those things when you go to other countries, sometimes you don't want to know what you're eating. Oh, yeah.
So it's an old saying, it's my job to get it down. It's God's job to keep it down. I will say this, in Somaliland, they're known as the camel capital of the world. Come on. They eat a lot of camel.
So we have gravy over some sort of meat, and we have some chicken, what have you. Tried to focus on the chicken, but who knows what I eat? Here's what I want you to know: I'm sitting next to this guy that doesn't trust me. He's the education minister of this foreign land. We start to ask.
I wanted to know how he got involved in his particular area of expertise. And before long, what do you talk about over a meal? You talk about family. We have pictures out, what have you. And all of a sudden, the walls came down.
And I look around this table with 12 or so people and everybody's conversing all of a sudden. And we left that table, friends. And if it weren't for that mealtime, I'm telling you, I don't think that we would have ever had the inroads in that nation.
So I just got back.
Now I have some dear friends in Somaliland. And we just opened our second school. This happens to be a school specifically for disabled children. It's the only one of its kind in the entire nation. And it's also called the Lily Rush.
School for Special Needs.
So it's named for my little girl. And so it's pretty special to me. But God is opening these doors. In a far-off land, because of the table. I'm telling you, God is using the table.
Where we get to share the love of Christ with these people who've never heard. Wow.
I mean, I'm thinking, and you have a chapter in your book about neighbors and others coming to your table. That's a little bit what you did there, but talk about how that looks in your home now or any of our homes. I think the idea of evangelism in the Christian church today is sometimes seen as a bad word. It might be the only thing that Christians and non-Christians kind of agree on. They have a distaste for evangelism.
It's because we made it something so much different than what we see actually in scripture, where you have this life-on-life relationship-based conversation about the Lord, where the Holy Spirit transforms a heart and a life and then a home.
So, we have found the table to be the most effective tool in this way. And so, with our neighbors, we have just gotten to know them by saying, Hey, let's get together, let's have a meal together. And it's become such a natural thing around our cul-de-sac that we actually rotate between our neighbors who's going to host the next one the next quarter.
So, once a quarter, we have a meal with everybody in the cul-de-sac. And to give you an idea of what that's like. In West Houston, we have the most culturally or ethnically diverse zip code where I live. in America. But what that means is you're more likely to live next door to someone of a different ethnicity than you than anywhere else in the country because it's just very spread out.
It's very kind of a hotbed of the petroleum industry.
So people come from all over the world. I have neighbors from India who are Hindu, wonderful people. I have neighbors next to them who are from the UK and are cultural Christians. They don't normally go. Very nice people.
Some people who are not church from China. We had a couple move out from Russia next to them. They don't live in the neighborhood anymore. But we have another couple next to them from Louisiana. And let's be honest, that's sort of like another country.
So we'll get to, I'm just kidding. You're going to get notes from people from Louisiana. Don't blame us. We didn't say it. But you couldn't ask for a more diverse group of people as far as backgrounds.
Like, what do you talk about? But you put a plate in front of you, or even better, say, why don't you bring a dish or feed us something from your background? And you never run out of conversation. And so the Lord has opened incredible doors just by doing that. Yeah.
I know very few people who would not say yes if you invite them to a meal. You know, just say, hey, let's have dinner together. And so instead of going to a neighbor with a tract and just evangelizing, you're saying just bring them to the table and have a meal and get to know them. Absolutely. Hear their story.
Let them hear yours. And it all happens very organically. How do your daughters, I'm sure they've been a part of that. And Lily, your 18-year-old daughter with special needs, has been a part of that. How has that shaped them?
I think if they were sitting here, they'd tell you that they have great memories growing up of mealtimes because it was sort of a respite in the busyness of life in a pastor's household. Again, The challenge that we face, and Dave, you know this is that if your practice or your career of ministry, of investing in people, uh, becomes too polished or rote, then your kids are the first ones that realize you're faking people out. Yeah, so you can't fake it. And I decided a long time ago, I'm not going to try to be a super pastor, I'm just going to try to be a follower of Christ in front of my kids. And I think they know that.
So, our meal times, thanks mostly to my wife, Lana, were a time where we just sealed everything off and they were treasured moments.
Now here's the challenge. When Lily was born, she's 18 years old now. The first few years were absolute chaos. In and out of hospitals, we weren't sure whether she was going to live. And so that was a stormy time in our lives with our girls.
A lot of trauma from that sense. And so, when we had the chance to have the meal time, it became a treasure time. Of course, our older girls are out of the house now, but they still look back on that time. Here's what's funny: when I was writing this book. We recognized how different our meals have become because we have a daughter who's nonverbal, mostly hearing impaired.
And so when we sit around the table, We could lose sight of the idea that, well, is she even focusing on this? Or maybe she doesn't care, so let's just turn the TV on. And we recognized how special it is to her. Just to have that eye contact. It's even more important.
Yes. And so Lily can't talk. We're not fully aware of how much she understands, but sometimes she blows us away with these insights of helping us know she's very aware of what's happening around us. But she's our prayer warrior. And in some ways, she's our prayer police.
So she can't talk again, but she'll fold her hands and look at us. It doesn't matter who's around the table. It doesn't matter where they are in their spiritual walk. They're going to pray. And she'll give them the stink guy.
Oh, yeah.
She's got her hands folded. She'll just stare at them like, we're going to pray. If you go give seconds, you're going to have to pray for that meal again.
So she's watching this whole thing play out. And so she's just taught us so much about just depending on the Lord and recognizing how important it is that we clear off the clutter and have that time together. That is sweet and powerful. Like it shaped you guys. It really has.
And I bet it's shaped your neighbors coming over to be around her. And what I think is that as they see her wanting to pray, I think your neighbors would think, oh, this is the real thing for their family. Right. Like this Jesus thing or this prayer thing is important to them if their daughter is actually initiating that for all of us, the boldness of that. Absolutely.
Yeah. And also, you know, I know you've experienced what I've experienced is if you invite your neighbors over, it's like, oh no, the pastor's inviting us to his house. Whether they go to your church or not, they know your pastor is like. Oh no, this is gonna be weird. Who knows what he's gonna do?
But if you have a meal and have a fun conversation, They go back home like.
Well they're normal. Absolutely. They were fine. That was a good, you know what I'm saying? Absolutely.
And not only that, I think for those who aren't pastors, most of your listening audience, they don't have that stigma. But I think what holds a lot of people back from inviting people over is you have this sense, you don't want to have people in your house until it's perfect. Yeah. Because all we see is social media.
So, you know what? We need to wait until we paint the walls or we clean the house or we do whatever. And listen, your neighbors have that same Laundry basket full of unfolded clothes on their sofa, too. You know, and you'll actually make them feel more at home if you just leave it there and say we're going to sit around the kitchen table and just break the ice.
So stop worrying about being perfect before you invite your neighbors over. It'll mean more if you do it now. Yeah. And if you invite them over, they don't have the pastor invited me, but I bet they have, oh, the. Churchgoers or the Christians invited back.
Absolutely. And you know what? You don't even have to talk about Jesus. Just have a great time with them.
Well, and there's ways, maybe as a first step, if you want to make acquaintances, just invite all the neighbors over, have a Christmas meal together, what have you, and it'll kind of blow them away because so often this doesn't happen in today's culture. But it's more welcomed maybe than ever. And so if you'll do it, just initiate that conversation or have it outdoors if you have a season of good weather where you live and have everybody bring a dessert to start with from the place where they're from. You're going to automatically have conversation with them. And then that's going to lead to the meal times.
You know, it's interesting. I haven't thought about this in. 40 years, and I've never connected the dots that I'm connecting right now. My first vision. I was in college.
of a Christian marriage was over a meal. Really? Think about that. Bill, uh Crimmons was a senior student at Ball State University, the most incredible university in the Midwest. Everybody knows that.
Powerhouse football plays. I'm learning it right now. And I was the quarterback there, and it's a long story, but he found out that I had just come to Christ from a friend of his who reached out and said, Did you realize the quarterback in your football team came to Christ? He reached out to me. We met.
And I'm brand new in Jesus. I'm scared of the Bible. You know, I've never read it. Wasn't a church-going kid. And so he starts mentoring me.
And then, I don't know, weekend or so, he says, Hey, why don't you come to my. He lived in student housing. He's married. Senior student. Come to my house with me and Corky, that's his wife named Corky Crimins, and have a meal with us.
And I drove over there. I remember scared to death, some Christian dude, I'm doing this. What do they want to do at dinner? And we just sat there and had a meal. And I remember getting in my car.
And I remember going, That's the kind of marriage I want. I've never seen a Christian marriage. I'd never seen a good marriage. And it was over a meal. I never connected the dots that if I'd sat with them in the student union, it would have been different.
Sitting over a meal. All we did was talk. I watched them interact. We laughed. And I got in my car and I said, that's what I got to have.
And here we are.
So I hope that'll give some hope, maybe who have difficulties or challenges in your home right now. But don't miss the fact that we get to do this all the time. There's people around us who don't have access to this. If you just invite them to the table, then what's the extra expense of one more dish at the table or one more place at the table at a restaurant? It could be life-changing because it's not about the meal.
They're watching you. You're not investigating the claims of Christ, even. You're investigating the Christ in someone else, and it's transformational down the road. And we can all do that. I think in this culture, we're so tired by the end of the day.
People, we all want to numb out to watch some Netflix thing or some show or football or whatever. And it feels like, I just don't have the energy to put into that. But I think what Dave and I have realized, we may be tired, but there's an energy that comes from. Creating, it doesn't have to be hard. You order in, you sit at the table and you talk instead of watching TV that night.
Yes. And what happens is, You go to bed feeling like that was good. I'm really glad we did that because it brings energy to our soul. Where when we want to just veg out and kind of numb out, that doesn't bring us energy necessarily. Yes.
You said it so well. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. And I think that's what maybe surprises people the most when they take the challenge. Me too.
Is you start to realize, okay, wait a second, this actually added energy to me. Yes. And you realize I just, when I do sit and veg in front of that television for three hours, it's not giving me any life back at all. It drains us, honestly. Right.
And so it's a totally different thing. And we, we have gotten so far away from it that we don't even realize how life-giving it is. Yeah. Yeah, let me say this. Let me invite you.
I know you've done this a bunch of times to take the challenge, the 40-day challenge. We're going to put it on our website, familylife.com/slash tabletalk. Just go there. There will be the 40-day challenge. There will be some questions.
I love that because sometimes you think, oh man, I can't do this. But for 40 days, you can do almost anything. Try it out. And if you want the book, Restore the Table and you need to get it, just send us a donation of any amount. We'll send you this book.
And that's at familylifetoday.com. Or you can call us at 1-800-600. 358. Six three two nine. Or F is in family.
Why are you hitting me? I don't know. No, no, it's F is in food. Oh, there you go. L is in life.
Lasagna. Lasagna. F is in food. L is in lasagna. And the word.
Today. I think this would be a great book, Restore the Table, to do like even in small groups. I'm thinking of a lot of my friends. This would be a really fun one to do and to take the challenge together with some other friends, some other people, because it keeps you accountable and then you can talk about with your group of friends, like how's it going? Especially with toddlers or teenagers, it's going to be different or maybe you have a parent that you're inviting that's not doing well.
So I think it'd be really fun to do this with some other friends too. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry. helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
