Welcome to the Table

When something breaks, Christians often are not sure they are allowed to fall apart. The expectation is that faith means staying strong. Smiling through it. Finding the silver lining. And the result is a church full of people who are quietly grieving things they have never been given permission to name.

The Psalms — the largest book in the Bible — are largely a collection of laments. God did not curate them out of Scripture. He preserved them. Which means the faith that saves you also has space for your grief, your anger, and your honest cry of "where are you?"

This episode teaches what biblical lament is, why the Western church has largely lost it, and how recovering the practice of honest grief before God is not a sign of weak faith but one of the most spiritually mature things a believer can do. This episode explains the spiritual discipline of lament — what it is, why the Bible is full of it, and how to practice honest grief before God without losing hope, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn the structure of a lament psalm and how to pray through it. You will hear why suppressing grief is spiritually dangerous and why God invites your honest cry. You will walk away with a vocabulary for bringing the full weight of your pain into prayer.

If you have been carrying something you do not know how to pray through, this episode will give you a framework. Lament is not the opposite of faith. It is one of faith's deepest expressions.

Related episodes:
The Spiritual Discipline of Reflection — EP 57
The Spiritual Discipline of Silence and Solitude — EP 29
How to Win the Daily Battle Against Sin — EP 78

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Someone asks you to disciple them and you freeze. You have been a Christian for years. But when someone actually sits across from you and wants to grow, you have no idea what to say or where to start.

Discipleship is the core of what Jesus commissioned every believer to do. But most churches have either professionalized it so only the trained can do it, or made it so vague that nobody actually does it at all. The result is a church full of believers who have never been discipled and have never discipled anyone else.

This episode lays out what discipleship actually looks like in practice: what to do in those early meetings, what questions to ask, what resources to use, and how to build a relationship that moves someone toward genuine growth in Christ. This episode teaches everyday Christians how to disciple someone — what to do, what to say, and how to structure a relationship that actually produces formation, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn the simple structure that makes discipleship conversations productive rather than awkward. You will hear what the first three meetings with a new disciple should cover. You will walk away ready to say yes the next time someone asks you to walk with them.

Discipleship is not just for pastors. It is for every follower of Jesus who is one step further along than someone else. If you have been waiting for permission to start, this episode is it.

Related episodes:
Living Life on Mission — EP 38
The Spiritual Discipline of Study — EP 49
Are My Relationships For a Reason or Season? — EP 62

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Most Christians read the Bible like a random collection of stories, commands, and poems that do not connect. They hop from Genesis to the Psalms to the New Testament and wonder how it all fits. Without a framework for the whole story, the pieces never add up to transformation.

The Bible is not a collection of religious self-help. It is one unified narrative — creation, fall, redemption, restoration — and every book, every covenant, every character points toward the same ending. When you learn to read it that way, it stops being overwhelming and starts being inexhaustible.

This episode teaches biblical theology: how to trace the storyline of Scripture from Genesis through Revelation, why the meta-narrative of the Bible changes how you understand every individual passage, and how reading the Bible as one complete story deepens your faith. This episode explains how to read the Bible as one unified story — creation to new creation — and why that framework transforms your understanding of every passage you read, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn the four-act structure that holds the entire Bible together. You will hear how to locate any passage within the larger story and understand its purpose. You will walk away with a framework for reading Scripture that makes every passage make more sense.

If the Bible has felt disconnected or hard to understand, this episode will change that. Scripture is not a maze. It is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end — and you are in it.

Related episodes:
The Spiritual Discipline of Study — EP 49
The Spiritual Discipline of Biblical Meditation — EP 23
15 Must-Read Books for Your Spiritual Formation

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Most Christians take evangelism so seriously they have drained all the joy out of it. They imagine awkward conversations, canned gospel presentations, and people who immediately change the subject. And as a result, they say nothing at all.

Some of the most effective communicators of truth in history have used humor not to avoid difficult topics but to disarm the listener long enough to actually hear them. Comedy creates connection. Laughter opens doors that argument and debate keep permanently shut.

Garland Owensby and Jeff Gowing join Khalil and Sean to explore how humor functions as a legitimate tool for sharing hope, building relational bridges, and making the Gospel accessible without making it smaller. This episode explores how Christians can use humor, joy, and levity to share their faith in a way that is winsome, warm, and genuinely life-giving, hosted by two pastors and ministry leaders.

You will learn why laughter is not a distraction from the Gospel but can be a doorway into it. You will hear how to cultivate the kind of joyful presence that makes people want to know what you have. You will walk away with a more relaxed and natural approach to sharing your faith in everyday life.

If you have been treating evangelism like a performance review, this episode will change how you see it. The most compelling witness is often the one who is genuinely, infectiously alive.

Related episodes:
The Spiritual Discipline of Evangelism — EP 39
How to Share Your Faith: The Practical Skills Most Christians Never Learn — EP 43
Living Life on Mission — EP 38

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Most Christians experienced the pandemic as a disruption to church life. Services went online, community fractured, and the ministry playbook stopped working. But what if the crisis was not a threat to the church's mission? What if it was an invitation to finally live it?

Dr. Debbie Lamm Bray has spent years studying how the church engages culture — particularly at moments when culture is in upheaval. Her research offers a framework for seeing crisis not as something to survive but as something to leverage, because the moments when people feel most desperate are precisely when the Gospel is most compelling.

This episode explores how seasons of pandemic and cultural crisis open unexpected doors for the church — and why leaders who position themselves to serve rather than just to sustain will come out ahead. This episode teaches how the church can turn seasons of cultural crisis into opportunities for witness, community, and Kingdom impact, hosted by two pastors and a ministry educator.

You will learn how times of crisis historically accelerate the church's growth when it responds with compassion rather than self-preservation. You will hear how to identify the specific opportunities your church and community have right now. You will walk away with a more missional posture toward uncertainty.

The church was not designed to manage crisis from behind closed doors. It was designed to run toward the fire. This episode will help you see why — and how.

Related episodes:
Living Life on Mission — EP 38
Incarnational Living — EP 77
How to Be a Good Neighbor

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

You found a podcast. You've been listening for a few episodes. But you realize you don't actually know who these guys are or why they started this thing in the first place.

Khalil and Sean are two Oregon pastors who built Welcome to the Table because they believed real discipleship happens in community — around tables, not just in church buildings. This episode gives you a front-row seat to who they are, where they came from, and what drives this conversation.

This is the origin story. Khalil and Sean share their faith journeys, how they ended up in ministry, and why they built this podcast around the image of the table. This episode introduces the hosts of Welcome to the Table — two Oregon pastors committed to making discipleship practical for everyday followers of Jesus.

You will learn who Khalil and Sean are and what drives their ministry. You will hear the story of how this podcast started and what it is trying to accomplish. You will walk away knowing whether this is the right community for your spiritual growth journey.

If you have been listening and wondering who is behind the mic, this is the episode for you. Every table has a host. Meet yours.

Related episodes:
Welcome Back — EP 74
How a Table Changes Everything

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

You give when you feel like it. When there is enough. When the cause is compelling enough. And as a result, generosity is an occasional response to good circumstances rather than a way of life — it depends on your financial situation rather than your spiritual one.

Generosity in Scripture is not primarily a financial strategy. It is a spiritual posture — one that reflects how much you actually trust God with your life, your resources, and your future. The person who gives freely has resolved something internally about who owns what.

This episode explores generosity as a lifestyle and a spiritual discipline — what it means to live with an open hand, how generosity disrupts the hold of money over the soul, and what a genuinely generous life looks like in practical terms. This episode teaches why generosity is a spiritual discipline, how it reshapes your relationship with money and security, and what it looks like to build a lifestyle of giving rather than a habit of occasional giving, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn what the Bible says about generosity and why it is connected to freedom, not just charity. You will hear how to diagnose whether money has a grip on you that generosity is meant to break. You will walk away with a framework for building generosity into the actual rhythms of your life.

You cannot serve both God and money. And you cannot hold on to your resources while letting go of your fear. This episode will help you figure out where your hands are currently closed — and why opening them changes everything.

Related episodes:
Living Life on Mission — EP 38
The Spiritual Discipline of Worship — EP 53
Imago Dei: What Does It Mean to Be Made in God's Image? — EP 50

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

You know you are supposed to rest. You even have days off. But when the week ends and Monday hits, you do not feel rested. You feel like you have been running on empty so long you forgot what full feels like.

Most believers confuse a day off with a Sabbath. They are not the same thing. A day off is passive — you stop working. Sabbath is active — you intentionally cease, rest, delight, and contemplate. Pete Scazzero identifies those four rhythms as the core of what Sabbath is actually designed to do for the human soul.

Khalil and Sean are joined by kids ministry pastor Andrea Mendenhall to unpack the biblical case for Sabbath, why the creation account matters, and what it looks like practically to build Sabbath into a busy ministry life. This episode teaches the difference between Sabbath and a day off, how to practice it in today’s world, and why stopping is not laziness but a declaration that you are not a machine, hosted by two pastors and a ministry leader.

You will learn the four pillars of biblical Sabbath — stopping, resting, delighting, and contemplating. You will hear why Sabbath, practiced well, actually makes you more productive rather than less. You will walk away with a personal starting point for building a Sabbath rhythm that works for your specific life season.

If your schedule is running your life and slowing down feels irresponsible, this episode will challenge that assumption directly. Sabbath is not an option. It is a declaration of what you believe about God and yourself.

Related episodes:
How Sabbath, Margin, and Stillness Prepare You for the Life God Has Ahead
The Spiritual Discipline of Silence and Solitude — EP 29
Leading Ourselves Well — EP 48

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

When crisis hits, most people spiral. They panic, scroll endlessly, and feel the walls close in. Even longtime Christians are surprised to find how much their sense of security was built on things they never realized they trusted more than God.

In March 2020, when COVID-19 was changing everything by the hour, Khalil and Sean pressed record and asked a hard question: what does following Jesus actually look like when everything you took for granted disappears overnight? The crisis turned out to be a pressure test that revealed exactly what people's real gods were.

This episode explores how Christians can respond to pandemic and cultural crisis with radical love, active compassion, and Gospel-grounded hope rather than self-preservation. It draws on the history of the early church, the theology of neighboring well, and the simple question Jesus kept asking: "What do you want me to do?" This episode explains how Christians can navigate crisis, panic, and cultural collapse with faith, compassion, and practical love for their neighbors, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn why crisis is a revealing pressure test of where your real security lives. You will hear how Christians throughout history — including during the bubonic plague — responded to crisis by running toward people rather than away. You will walk away with practical ways to love your neighbors during hardship without needing all the answers first.

This is not a feel-good pep talk. It is a pastoral call to stop reacting from fear and start acting from faith. If you have ever wondered what makes Christians different in a crisis, this is the answer.

Related episodes:
How to Be a Good Neighbor
Living Life on Mission — EP 38
Incarnational Living — EP 77

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Welcome to the Table, in this episode we simply want to give you a quick overview of what you can expect in future episodes. We'd love for you to rate and subscribe to be a part of this continuing conversation.

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