Greatheart's Table

I love good children’s books. This is so well known, that a 9 year old member of our church recently took great joy in giving me Volume 1 of a collection of Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books. She was beaming, and so was I. Books like these ought to be read for the sheer delight in them. A good children’s book will delight adults often in ways different than they delight kids.  But as well...

The content of this episode is excerpted from my retreat addressing what I call “off-script kids.” I explained this in a post a few weeks ago. The retreat is linked in the show notes. Parents of off-script kids carry many different emotions. But what they should not have to carry is the burden of guilt, shame and doubt which often is placed on them by well meaning but wrong readings of scripture....

Ordinarily you only hear me on these episodes. But periodically I like to drop into the mix longer conversations with men and women who have insight into pastoral well-being or practice. Rainy Day People are, as suggested by Gordon Lightfoot’s song of that name, those who know what to say, and do so with care and understanding. That’s what we want these conversations to be for pastors and others....

Inasmuch as the title and conceit of this podcast and the newsletter on which it is based is drawn from the allegory Pilgrim’s Progress , I trust you will allow me occasional flights of fancy, such as is this one. Is it a dream? I’m not sure. I have been pondering, though, the repeated emphasis in Scripture on gentleness, and the seeming lack of it in my own heart, not to mention among many in the...

If you are a pastor, you could probably list thirty-two things that ministry requires that you don’t believe you are good at. We are harsh self critics. But what if we need to be just “okay” at these things? What if it is enough to be “good enough?” What if the pressure to excel at everything is a cultural expectation that we have wrongly accepted? A family practice doctor need not be expert in ev...

Many of you may know that one of my concerns has been and is the guilt and shame of parents whose adult children have made choices troubling to their parents. This sends many parents into an emotional free fall, and often they are in churches where this common situation is neither acknowledged or validated. Consequently I’ve created a retreat for such parents – the next one is in October &#8...

In the U. S., today is Memorial Day, a day for remembering those who have given their lives on behalf of their country. I have distinct memories of, as a child, visiting a cemetery on this day and listening to the sound of taps being played, the bugle in the distance and the notes weaving among the hills, the trees, and the gravestones. It’s a solemn memory, and I’m grateful. I hope your day is re...

Pastors are always having to decide what to do. In our day of political turmoil, especially, touching as it does on a plethora of deeply meaningful moral concerns many of us feel that we need to do something, and if we don’t, our parishioners as well as internet pundits press their agenda upon us. Being wise and thoughtful in our response is required, but often not easy. And sometimes the wisest a...

The following episode was first aired in September of 2021. The frustration, hopelessness, and caution, it touches upon remain relevant today for pastors and others. We are urged to do something! We are told to act! But what does that mean? What are we to do? What can we? It’s worth thinking about. The underlying conviction of this decidedly non-activist podcast is that in the long run who we are...

Hello. I’m Randy, and I pastor a small church. That, of course, is meant to sound like the stereotyped introduction of an AA meeting.  But this is not an admission that this idea of “Small Church Thinking” which has occupied us recently arises from my being hooked on churches being small. The truth is the opposite. Most of us are addicted to bigness. We are so drenched in the assumption that...

Hi! Thanks for joining us around Greatheart’s Table. If you are new, I particularly welcome you. Our goal is to start and sustain conversations that help pastors thrive, but we find that these things have meaning for people in all life situations. So whatever your role in life or in the church, we welcome you. We were stimulated a few episodes ago to think “small” about ministry. Not to think part...

Hello! I’m Randy Greenwald, and welcome to Greatheart’s Table .  Cue the celebratory music! This begins year five of Greatheart’s Table . When I began I wasn’t sure I had enough material to last a year, and here we are pressing on with enough ideas in the vault to keep us going for some time to come. This feels then like a good time for a re-introduction. Many are new listeners and may not kn...

Hello! Welcome to Greatheart’s Table , the podcast for pastors and those who care for them. I’m Randy Greenwald. Surprisingly, to me, with this episode we wrap up four years of episodes. If you’ve been with us for a short time or for the entire journey, I’m glad you are here. We have no plans to stop, so I hope you stay with us. With this episode we are continuing to examine pastoral themes sugges...

This episode is a reset of one which originally aired in September of 2021. That was a heavy time, and this, a consideration of pastoral playfulness, seemed particularly necessary. That necessity, sadly, remains. There is so much that can weigh us down, that we forget that God has created us for joy. There is much that tries to extinguish that impulse, to suppress it and obscure it, but now and th...

I mentioned in a previous Third Monday post my intention of now and then spending some time reflecting on the insights into pastoral ministry from the unlikely source of 2 Chronicles. I want to ease into that by considering the spirit and tone of the whole book and particularly the faith of its author. He is, I think, reflective of a class of people that God has used to sustain us all in our Chris...

Hello. I’m Randy Greenwald. Welcome to Greatheart’s Table . Imagine John Lennon as a pastor. It’s easy, if you try. Okay, maybe it’s not that easy. But it’s easy to imagine the song he might have written had he been a pastor: You may say that I’m a cynic, but I’m not the only one. It’s not my desire to turn pastors into cynics, but dealing with people can shape a heart in a cynical direction, and...

If you’re new, head back to episode 67 to find what’s up here. That episode is titled “Mr. Greatheart and his Metaphorical Table.” In short, our desire is to encourage pastors. But we find that the net that is cast is much broader, and that many others in ministry, as well as those not in ministry, find beneficial content here. We are glad you joined us. This episode is a reset of one originally a...

I write to encourage pastors, particularly those weary or beaten down, those needing to be reminded of the value of what they do regardless of the unrelenting expectations of modern church culture.  As pastors we fill a prophetic role. What to speak, how to speak it, and when, are questions that concern us all.  It seems, though, we live in an age when calling for something as basic as l...

Those feelings of doubt and disorientation which we’ve come to know by the name of “imposter syndrome” are not the exclusive experience of one profession or activity. But they’re well known to pastors. Pastors of small or struggling congregations may feel these things with particular intensity, but they plague all at some level. Comparison and discontent blind us to our value, and the value of tho...

Once each month or so I re-post previous installments. This one was first released in August of 2021. Consequently, some of the issues referenced may seem old to us now. I’ve left those unedited, however, if only to show how quickly the issues on which pastors, or others, are expected to be expert come and go.  The point remains unaltered. Pastors are in the difficult place of having to both...

I don’t need to tell you that I’m not Tim Keller or Beth Moore or John Owen or any other Christian celebrity living or dead. I don’t need to tell you, and I don’t need to tell God, but I do need to remind myself of this now and then. We all enter ministry and engage our Christian life in unique ways, and we all can be tempted to conform our practices to that of the well known, which can be disastr...

“Rainy Day Conversation around Greatheart’s Table ” are audio interviews that I have with men and women who have insight on topics of concern to the Greatheart’s Table community. For this conversation I’ve invited two men with a great deal of pastoral experience (60+ years between them) to speak into the subject of sustaining pastors in ministry, to keep them from “sinning out, tapping out, or bur...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Welcome to Greatheart’s Table. I’m Randy Greenwald, one wearied by the ubiquitous Christmas playlists found in stores and coffee shops this time of year. I can only stand so much rockin’ around the Christmas tree. On the other hand, were I to be enveloped in a steady diet of the hymns of advent and Christmas, I’d be far less Scroogey. To reflect on the one who was “pleas...

Pastoral ministry is serious business. And, as we know from the Spiderman movies, with great seriousness comes great responsibility (or something like that). I suggest here that we are responsible from time to time to lighten up. A congregation needs a pastor with a good sense of humor if either are going to thrive. God has over time not let me take myself too seriously. In this episode, I share s...

No one would really dress pastors in capes and ask  them to stop a runaway locomotive of to faster than a speeding bullet. And yet, we can forget that they, or we, are human. Pastors are humanly subject to the same struggles and afflictions and, yes, doubts, as other Christians, and it’s healthy for us to remember that.  I could travel the path that Stuart in last week’s story traveled....