Greatheart's Table

Today the words and voice that follow will not be mine, but that of a wise friend of mine. Mike Osborne and I have known each other since seminary. For the past fifteen years we’ve pastored churches in the same town. He’s a gift. Over lunch a few months ago, Mike, who now supports pastors […]

The triple negative in the title of this episode is more than a gimmick. We have power, we are not to seek power, and we revel in our weakness. And that can be confusing. Pastors for the past forty years, in my experience, have been battered and attacked by vocal critics for not being more […]

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Rainy Day Conversations around Greatheart’s Table. I’m Randy Greenwald. This is part two of our two part conversation with Dr. Jessie Swigart of Covenant Theological Seminary regarding professional identity formation. In the first part we began to discuss how a pastor comes to think, feel, and act as […]

Ministry, like life, can be beautiful, and at other times confusingly messy. Sometimes we are given the opportunity to see the fruit of our labors. But at other times, we see no fruit, and we only sense the weight of what feels like futility. This is a reset of an episode first aired in November […]

I mentioned some time ago of my intention to work slowly through the pastorally-suggestive book of 2 Chronicles. This episode is a part of that. Honest pastors know that the interpretation of the Bible is not always straightforward. There are pitfalls and byways, and among those is what I’ve playfully named, from an image in […]

Hi! I’m Randy Greenwald, and welcome to this episode of what I call “Rainy Day Conversations around Greatheart’s Table.” I am always on the lookout for generous, gracious, and thoughtful people who have insight into the work of pastors and into the interaction pastors have with their congregations. In this episode, being released in two […]

Recently we’ve revisited the question of when a pastor should possibly leave one church for another. Those episodes were resets first written nearly four years ago. I find that now I’m getting asked a question I was not being asked back then: “When do you think you’ll retire?”  That’s a great question for which I’ve […]

Hello, all. Welcome again to another Rainy Day Conversation around Greatheart’s Table. This is the second half of an episode that first aired in September of 2024. The first half aired a few weeks ago.  I’m reprising this conversation because of the value of addressing the often overlooked but challenging role of being the spouse […]

This episode of Greatheart’s Table is the third of three which are here reset from when they originally aired in the fall of 2021.  One of our objectives here is to encourage pastors to stay in ministry and, if possible, to stay at their churches. But also, we realize, that is not always possible or […]

This is the second of three resets from the fall of 2021 exploring the question of when a pastor might want or need to leave his church. A part of that question is why we stay? Why do we hang around doing a job that is admittedly hard with people who can be inexplicably difficult? […]