Around the Table

Guests: 
Frank Sauder
Ted Witzig, Jr.

Show notes:

• Importance of communication to church once people became aware of the tragedy.
• How the church came together during the crisis.
• Family needs privacy.
• How we deal with loss is personal and unique to the individual.
• Loss affects us over time.
• Some people recover from the loss quicker than others.
• The church body has an important function to help the hurting individual(s); the elder can't do it all.
• Support from the national church body was tremendous.
• Needs of the local elder in dealing with his own loss.
• Various emotions experienced in the wake of a loss.
• It is important to meet people where they are at, not where we think they should be.
• Communicate caring to the hurting; can be texts/notes or physical touch.
• It may take months or years to work through hurt.
• Grieving process is God's design.
• Help grieving people find hope.
• We think we need answers (why?), to make sense of things. We need to trust in a God who cares.
• How can we help? Pray for them and tell them they are loved.
• Don't isolate when we are hurting.
• Trauma can add to the grief and get in the way of healthy grieving.

Guests: Karen Martin, Anne Heinold, Ron Messner

Show notes:
• What is palliative care?
• How is hospice and palliative care initiated?
• What is the difference between hospice and palliative care?
• Palliative care availability is more concentrated in larger urban areas.
• What is hospice care?
• How and where is hospice care administered?
• Most insurances cover both palliative and hospice care.
• Spiritual services provided with hospice care.
• Use of volunteers in hospice care.
• What hospice is not. It is not 24 hour care.
• No support for euthanasia.
• Emphasis on comfort, not hastening death.
• Decisions are not black and white.
• Experiences of joy as a believer dies; seeing the sting of death removed.
• Depressing experiences of seeing an unbeliever die.

Guests: Karen Martin, Anne Heinold, Ron Messner

Show notes:
• Importance of advanced directives.
• Importance of planning your death.
• Recommended documents.
• Importance of involving your physician in end of life planning.
• Importance of having ready access to completed end of life forms.
• Have all necessary passwords for accessing online accounts.
• How to spare the surviving spouse from making difficult end of life decisions for a dying spouse.
• Importance of hope when faced with end of life.
• Privilege of walking through death with another.
• How strong should one fight to live?
• Consequences of life-extending treatments.
• Financial implications of fighting to extend life.
• Quality of life when fighting to extend life.
• Importance of having a family conference for effective communications.
• How is letting death occur different than euthanasia?

Guests: Karen Martin, Anne Heinold, Ron Messner

Guests: Ron Messner, Jeff Streitmatter III, Tom Waldbeser

Guests: Ron Messner, Jeff Streitmatter III, Tom Waldbeser

Guests: Curt Frank, Greg Lehman, Ken Wuethrich

Guests: Herbie Knochel, Matt Manz

Notes
• What music do we listen to outside of church?
• Music can be very personal; personal tastes are diverse.
• Careful not to judge someone else's musical tastes.
• Consider what is God-honoring.
• Songs must set God apart.
• God sees into the heart; is pleased by our music when our heart is right.
• Secular songs can also be calming and used by God for good as long as they do not contradict God and his word.
• God is worthy of praise.
• Opportunity to consider new hymns; may take time to appreciate.

Guests: Herbie Knochel, Matt Manz

Notes:
• Lots of scriptural examples mentioning music, both Old and New.
• Music can involve instruments and/or voice.
• How music is used in scripture.
• Scriptural instructions to sing as worship.
• Singing is intended to be unifying.
• Singing is intended to be mentally uplifting and emotionally stirring.
• Music reminds us of days gone by.
• The Holy Spirit fills us through music.
• Singing inspires, calms and prepares the heart for hearing the word preached.
• Personal examples of the role music played in the brother's lives.
• Music & singing supports the word.
• Music enhances memorization.

Guests: Nick Gutwein, Frank Sauder, John Wiegand

Notes:
• “Baptism is entrance into the Christian community”.
• “It’s that working together that gives God glory. That collective working together with Christ as head, that gives all honor and glory to Christ”.
• John 13:34-35 loving one another requires us living in community with one another.
• Connection between the “practical” body and the “broader” body.
• The “body” cannot be just the broader body of believers through all ages; the bride of Christ.
• The practical, living out (loving one another) requires a local body.
• Independence contradicts the concept of the body. We are dependent on God and interdependent on each other.
• Our culture primes our thinking to understandings that are contrary to the Biblical body.
• “Causes us to lose sight of how God designed us to function together”.
• Challenges to interdependence with one another:
• When members around us are imperfect Christians.
• When interdependency loop is not affirming or reinforcing.
• Recognizing our dependency on Christ draws us back together.
• Living life in community forces us into situations of exercising instructions on forbearance, forgiveness, love & esteem.

Membership is individually helpful:
• Accountability
• Forces me to consider my relationship with Jesus (molds and shapes me to be like Jesus).
• “What is good for me, is good for us”.
• The local body is where we begin to understand what unity is, who Jesus is.
• For church leadership, it’s hard to shepherd sheep that are not there.
• The local body is a benefit to our unbelieving communities when they see the love of Christ shared among the members.
• The unbelieving community is hindered from coming to Christ when they don’t see the local church connected to the head (Christ).
• The local church is where we live into our calling, 24/7, instead of it being a performance.