Back in March of 2020, churches all around the country found themselves in a difficult situation. God’s people weren’t able to gather in person due to the spread of a global pandemic, and churches were forced to re-evaluate their ministries. For our own church, this season gave rise to a series called TableTalk—so named because of our Lead Pastor’s love for Martin Luther, who would famously gather around a table to discuss issues of church, theology, and culture with his students.
TableTalk began as many things, with a different video live streamed each day of the week as we attempted to minister to our congregation even while separated by physical distance. Some days involved teaching, others involved reading children’s books, and one day each week took the form of a round table discussion in which Pastors Andrew and Gary, together with Luke, would discuss a topic in a conversational style.
Over the course of time, as restrictions began to ease and in-person ministry began to open up, much of what TableTalk had been was no longer necessary. Despite that, the round table discussions remained, and we have been uploading weekly TableTalk discussions ever since. We have covered topics ranging from our own mission statement and values to discussing practical everyday resources for children and their parents to grow in their knowledge of God and the gospel.
As we listened to feedback from people in our congregation, we began to realize that live streamed video was not the best format for what we were trying to accomplish. With that in mind, we took the time over the Christmas break to transition TableTalk into an audio podcast which we feel will better serve the goals we have for TableTalk and will better serve everyone listening as well.
In our new TableTalk podcast, you can expect to hear discussions of Church, Theology, and Culture each week, beginning with Pastor Andrew and Luke as hosts, branching out into more hosts in the future. Just as Martin Luther sought to have discussions like these to prepare his students for gospel ministry, our aim is to serve you—our people—(as well as anyone else who wants to listen!) with edifying conversations that will build us all up into a greater understanding of the work of our faithful God who loved us and sent his Son to die for us and strengthen us for fruitful lives of love and ministry to others.
If you already listen to podcasts, you can find TableTalk on whatever platform you’re already using. If you don’t listen to podcasts, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify. Alternatively, you can follow the link in our weekly eBulletins to listen online. Look for a new episode every Friday at 3:30 pm, beginning with a short introductory episode available now. We look forward to having many of you join us as we step into this new season of TableTalk, and we pray that it will encourage you!
All the best,
Luke
