FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

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 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.

Speaker 2

Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Speaker 3

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us@familylifetoday.com. this is Family Life Today. You know what just hit me?

Speaker 2

What?

Speaker 3

Is we're doing this whole interview wrong.

Speaker 2

Why?

Speaker 3

This is day two, and we don't have any food in front of us.

Speaker 1

That's the truth.

Speaker 3

Think about this.

Speaker 2

We should have had food at the table.

Speaker 3

We're talking about the dinner table, meal times, and 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 our burger?

Speaker 2

If you missed the conversation yesterday, go back and listen, because it was rich, wonderful, and I feel like it was really inspirational.

Speaker 1

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.

Speaker 2

Want to hear us, our audio engineer would probably hate that as we're chewing.

Speaker 1

Exactly.

Speaker 3

ASMR, right? Isn't that ASMR? It's all the rage on YouTube.

Speaker 1

Are you serious? Seriously? Yes. Like, whole videos where, like, all you.

Speaker 3

Hear is, like, them cutting the food.

Speaker 1

Right. Our daughter, who's disabled, will watch videos of a dude eating Mac and cheese.

Speaker 2

No.

Speaker 1

Slurping spaghetti.

Speaker 2

What?

Speaker 1

Yeah. Ooh. This is a thing.

Speaker 3

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 picked this up, first of all, I'm like, really? And then I read it, and I'm like, wow, this is.

Speaker 1

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 3

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, it's mega important.

Speaker 1

That's really true. And I find that it's one of those things where I rarely come across somebody who says mealtimes 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.

Speaker 2

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?

Speaker 3

How do we.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I would say you're eating anyway. Like, we're all eating anyway.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So how long has that taken 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 you say, well, I'm just too busy. You don't know it. 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.

Speaker 2

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?

Speaker 1

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.

Speaker 2

You don't have to cook it yourself.

Speaker 1

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.

For the Rush family, we finish up, we go to the same Mexican restaurant near our home. My parents, who are now a part of my church, kind of cool. I get to pastor. My parents come 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.

Speaker 3

So what do you do with the NFL football game? You wait.

Speaker 1

You know what's funny? I have to be careful because it's on in the restaurant. So we just have to face the other way because I could 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 that.

Good question. But we can record these things nowadays, right?

Speaker 2

Yeah, good point.

Speaker 1

So Sunday afternoon, sometimes breakfast, Monday morning to kick off the week. Why not have a time together? A lot of churches will have some sort of meal time or activity on a day of the week, like Wednesday. Our church actually has a meal time 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. 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. 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, and have a picnic.

You just build around your life, but you take those moments and you seal them off. I'm telling you, 5 is not that many.

Speaker 2

That's good. I like the creativity of that too.

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.

Speaker 3

I can't bend my knees like that.

Speaker 2

But you could sit on that.

Speaker 1

The kids will never forget it.

Speaker 2

Never forget it.

Speaker 1

The grandkids never will. So is this literally a trunk or.

Speaker 2

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.

Speaker 1

Of the car of an suv, not the trunk then.

Speaker 2

Oh, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3

Pull down the seat and get out of the room.

Speaker 1

This was an image. It was odd to me.

Speaker 2

SUV trun grandkids are going to wake.

Speaker 1

Up saying, remember when grandma put us in the trunk and we couldn't breathe?

Speaker 3

They did call it that.

Speaker 1

We ain't laying on our side.

Speaker 2

Maybe they think it's the trunk now today, instead, they call it the trunk.

Speaker 1

I have to tell you guys something because, Ann, since we're picking on you, Good.

Speaker 2

I like it.

Speaker 1

I listened to a podcast the other day that you guys were on, and you quoted Psalm 27:3. 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.

Speaker 3

They were supposed to edit that out.

Speaker 2

Did you hear me laughing at that? I listened to it again, too.

Speaker 1

I laughed again.

Speaker 3

That was the same one that she kept saying.

Speaker 1

So the fruit of the loom is your reward. And your wife is taking the kids to the trunk.

Speaker 3

Hey, don't be ripping on Fruit of the Loom. They're pretty good. Wilson's. We do it right. Trunks and looms.

Speaker 2

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.

Speaker 3

Waited because I was coaching. And so dinner would be like 8:00 at night.

Most of the kids I coached never had a meal with their family. And I'm like, my wife is saying, nope, we're gonna wait.

We're gonna eat at 8 o'clock, jump in the hot tub after.

Speaker 1

But that's awesome.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Way to go.

Speaker 1

You were living this.

Speaker 2

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 gonna sit on the couches, we're gonna sit at the table." You know, I'm like, "This is so embarrassing, Dad." Because no, this is important. 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 way? Because it's easy to stand around an island now and not even sit and face each other. I think that's important.

Speaker 1

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 in 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.

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.

Speaker 3

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.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

That's the only place in my life I had our table.

Speaker 1

Wow.

Speaker 3

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.

Speaker 2

Wait, did you not sit at a table with your mom?

Speaker 3

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.

Speaker 1

How about that?

Speaker 3

I mean, talk about the power of community over a meal. There it is.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Speaker 2

And, Ryan, you've traveled worldwide. Are you seeing this everywhere?

Speaker 1

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 mealtime 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.

Speaker 3

Wow.

Speaker 1

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 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 Black Hawk 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. When we first came in a few years ago, we got to know these people, and we were just talking about education. I was trying to pull my PhD card and share some information that we could say this is empirical evidence that this works.

What changed was mealtime. I talk about this a little bit in the book. We sat around a table with the mayor of that region, the education minister of the nation, and the governor, and they sat down in front of us with all these random dishes. It's one of those things; when you go to other countries, sometimes you don't want to know what you're eating. There'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.

Speaker 2

Come on.

Speaker 1

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. I look around this table with 12 or so people, and everybody's conversing all of a sudden. We left that table friends. 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. It's also called the Lily Rush School for Special Needs, named for my little girl. 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.

Speaker 3

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.

Speaker 1

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've 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. With our neighbors, we have just gotten to know them by saying, "Hey, let's get together, let's have a meal together." It has 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 each quarter. Once a quarter, we have a meal with everybody in the cul-de-sac.

To give you an idea of what that's like, in West Houston, we have the most culturally or ethnically diverse zip code in America. That surprises people, but what it means is you're more likely to live next door to someone of a different ethnicity than you than anywhere else in the country. It's very spread out and is 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 to church, but they are very nice people. There are some people from China who are not churchgoers, and we had a couple move out from Russia next to them, although they don't live in the neighborhood anymore. We also have another couple next to them from Louisiana. And let's be honest, that's sort of like another country! Just kidding—you're going to get notes from people from Louisiana.

Speaker 3

Don't blame us.

Speaker 1

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. 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."

Speaker 2

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.

Speaker 1

Absolutely. Hear their story, let them hear yours. And it all happens very organically.

Speaker 2

How do your daughters, I'm sure they've been a part of that. And Lily, your 18 year old daughter with special needs needs has been a part of that. How has that shaped them?

Speaker 1

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 becomes too polished or rote, then your kids are the first ones that realize you're faking people out totally. So you can't fake it. 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 mealtimes, thanks mostly to my wife Lana, were a time where we just sealed everything off. 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 hot hospitals, we weren't sure whether she was going to live. That was a stormy time in our lives with our girls, filled with a lot of trauma. When we had the chance to have mealtime, it became a treasured 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 non-verbal and mostly hearing impaired. 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. We recognize how special it is to her just to have that eye contact. It's even more important. Yes.

Lily can't talk, and we're not fully aware of how much she understands, but sometimes she blows us away with these insights that help us know she's very aware of what's happening around us. She's our prayer warrior in some ways—our prayer police. She can't talk again, but she'll fold her hands and look at us. It doesn't matter who's around the table or where they are in their spiritual walk; they're going to pray. Even if your neighbor's coming over, she's got her hands folded and will just stare at them like, "We're going to pray." If you go get seconds, you're going to have to pray for that meal again.

So she's watching this whole thing play out, and she's just taught us so much about depending on the Lord and recognizing how important it is that we clear off the clutter and have.

Speaker 2

That time together that is sweet and powerful. Like, it shaped you guys.

Speaker 1

It really has.

Speaker 2

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.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

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.

Speaker 1

Absolutely.

Speaker 3

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 you're a pastor. It's like, oh, no, this is going to be weird. Who knows what he's going to do?

But if you have a meal and have a fun conversation, they go back home. Like, well, they're normal.

Speaker 1

Absolutely.

Speaker 3

They were fine. That was a good. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1

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 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.

Speaker 3

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 me.

Speaker 1

Absolutely.

Speaker 3

And you know what? You don't even have to talk about Jesus.

Speaker 1

No doubt about it.

Speaker 3

A great time with them.

Speaker 1

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.

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.

Speaker 3

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.

Speaker 2

Really Think about that.

Speaker 3

Bill Crimmins was a senior student at Ball State University, the most incredible university in the Midwest. Everybody knows that powerhouse football plays.

Speaker 1

I'm learning it right now.

Speaker 3

And I was the quarterback there. 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, "You didn't realize the quarterback of your football team came to Christ." He reached out to me, and we met. I was brand new in Jesus and scared of the Bible; I had never read it and wasn't a church-going kid. So, he started mentoring me.

Then, I don't know, a weekend or so later, he said, "Hey, why don't you come to my house?" He lived in student housing and was married to a senior student named Corky Crimmis. He invited me to have a meal with them. I drove over there, scared to death, thinking, "What do these Christian people want to do at dinner?"

We just sat there and had a meal. I remember getting in my car afterward and thinking, "That's the kind of marriage I want." I had never seen a Christian marriage before, nor had I seen a good marriage. It was over that meal that I realized the difference. I never connected the dots; if I had 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 said, "That's what I gotta have." And here we are.

Speaker 1

So I hope that'll give some hope maybe to those 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 are people around us who don't have access to this, and 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, we can all do that.

Speaker 2

I think in this culture, we're so tired by the end of the day. People, we all wanna 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 is that 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.

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, whereas when we want to just veg out and kind of numb out, that doesn't bring us energy necessarily.

Speaker 1

Yes, you said it so well. That's what I'm talking about. 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.

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.

Speaker 2

It drains us, honestly.

Speaker 1

Right. And so it's a totally different thing. And we have gotten so far away from it that we don't even realize how life giving it is.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

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 gonna put it on our website, familylife.com tabletalk just go there. There'll be the 40 day challenge.

Speaker 2

There'll be some questions for you.

Speaker 3

Sometimes you think, oh, man, I can't do this.

Speaker 1

But for 40 days can do almost anything. Yeah.

Speaker 3

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@familylife today.com or you can call us at 1-800-358-6329 or F as in family.

Speaker 2

Why are you hitting me?

Speaker 3

I don't know. No, no, it's F as in food.

Speaker 1

Oh, there you go.

Speaker 3

L as in life. Life.

Speaker 1

Lasagna.

Speaker 3

Lasagna. F as in food. Alice in lasagna. In the word today.

Speaker 2

I think this would be a great book. Restore the table to do, like, even as 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. Fighting. It's not doing well. So I think it'd be really fun to do this with some other friends too.

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