Greatheart's Table

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Hello! Welcome to this unusual, audio only, third Monday edition of Greatheart's Table. This is the third and last of our Rainy Day Conversation with my two friends, Adam and Byron discussing books. And though our initial focus was on pastoral reading habits, all of these conversations apply widely to all Christians.  In this episode […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Welcome to this third Monday edition of a “Rainy Day Conversation around Greatheart's Table.”  This episode is a continuation of a conversation that began on March 31 on the reading life of pastors (and other humans). If you missed that first episode you can go back and listen to it first, or you can dive […]

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. […]

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. […]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another “Rainy Day Conversation around Greatheart's Table.” Unlike the short content that is normal for this space, in these conversations I invite other voices to share their observations and expertise regarding pastoral practice, ministry, or the Christian life in general.  These have been fun to produce, and they have introduced me […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Some of the truest things every spoken have been spoken through story, through fiction. What follows here then is fiction in a genre I have dubbed “pastoral horror.” It's brief, and for some it will be unsettling and for others it will be resonant. Either way, it explores spaces that few ever want to visit.  […]

I'm Randy Greenwald and this is Greatheart's Table, the podcast for “busy” pastors and those who care for them. I've put quotes around “busy” because this is the second of two reset episodes from first released in August of 2021 on the subject of the “busy-ness” of pastors, an affliction with which I'm all too […]

With this episode and the next I reset and re-release two episodes from August of 2021. As we all know, to be busy and to be a pastor are co-morbid conditions. But should they be? There will always be things to do. But are they the right things? Thanks for listening. We encourage you to […]

Welcome to Greatheart's Table, the podcast for pastors and those who care for them. In this episode I want to take you on a tour around our small suburban house, to consider the trees in our yard. I assure you that you have not accidentally linked to a podcast on home landscape design or the […]

A couple of months ago, I mused here about Jesus' call that we love others. A Christianity that cannot walk in love with one another and with the world is not a Christianity that reflects the one we claim to follow, and so we must lean into it. And while the phrase “the devil is […]

I don't often respond to current events. I work so slowly that by the time I have a response, the event is no longer current and has been forgotten. Nevertheless, my concern in this episode is one that continues to be raised, and so the time feels right to address it once again. If you […]

I'd like to welcome everyone to the inaugural “Rainy Day Conversation around Greatheart's Table.” These are longer conversations in which I invite some smart, insightful, and experienced people to talk and to reflect realistically on some aspect of pastoral ministry, or ministry in general. There is no telling what direction these will take. Currently the […]

Hello, everyone. Welcome once again to Greatheart's Table, the podcast for pastors and those who care for them. This one has a provocative title, to say the least, one which is disconcerting no matter how you read it. I am using this week's space to explain and to frame a new feature of Greatheart's Table […]

With this episode we doing something different. We are going to hear from someone else around the table. For quite a while I've appreciated the writing of Adam Tisdale as he has urged me with his newsletter he calls “Double the Joy” to be more grateful for the small things in my life. Adam's the […]

Thanks for joining us here at Greatheart's Table, the podcast for pastors and those who need therapists. Well, that's not exactly the tag line we normally use, but we've been touching on a common thread over the past several episodes that could make it plausible. I've written these posts to help us all think through […]

If you are new to Greatheart's Table, I suggest you dial back to listen to episode #67 titled “Mr. Greatheart and This Metaphorical Table.” That will explain what we are trying to do here, and where the title comes from. I post a new episode three Mondays of each month, and though usually each episode […]

Although I write Greatheart's Table with pastors in mind, the content is often widely applicable. Perhaps I should promote this as being “for pastors and those who have pastors.” In the case of this episode, a reset of one first released on July 12, 2021, the thought really does apply beyond pastors, as we consider […]

One of our goals here around Greatheart's Table, insidious to some, simply subversive to others, is to broaden the way pastors think. It's good for our thoughts to be seeded now and then with outside ways of looking at the world. That can be frightening at times, of course, but it needn't be. God has […]

With this episode I begin a series of four which in one way or another considers the relationship between pastoral ministry and clinical counseling. In so doing I wade into water some might call hot. I know that what I will suggest will not be shared by others. Still, there are things here that I'd […]

This episode is one of what I call a ‘reset.' I regularly re-post older episodes like this one which was originally released in July of 2021. I think it is still relevant. One of the things I want to do with Greatheart's Table is to encourage pastors, as one friend put it, “to be comfortable […]

We're spending a couple of weeks thinking about the idea of love, both for God and for others, and if you want to be a part of the conversation, feel free to email me. Or, you can head over to Substack where the same content shows up in print form and interact there. Please rate […]

I've noticed over the years that it is somehow easy for Christians to become rather cynical about the idea of ‘love.' The word and the idea have been used in overly sentimental ways, of course, but I sometimes wonder if the distance some put between themselves and the word comes from fear of the idea […]

This is another one of our resets, episodes that aired some time ago which I'm re-recording and posting to allow me some space to catch up on other projects. My son Seth is an artist, a musician, and a wise observer of my spiritual vulnerabilities. He knows the kinds of metrics I use to measure […]

Quite a few of you are new and may be uncertain of what we're doing here or why, and many may wonder where the name comes from. For all such mysteries, I recommend that you scroll back and listen to episode 67 called “Mr. Greatheart and This Metaphorical Table.” And if that doesn't answer your […]

In this episode, we take a somber turn, and consider pastoral grief. I can't recall this being addressed elsewhere, and yet as I've thought about it, it's hard to think of a more consistent theme pulsing across the pastoral landscape than loss and the consequent experience of grief. My concern is what we do with […]

I write Greatheart's Table with pastors in mind, but I know that often the themes I address apply much more broadly, and so many of you are not pastors at all. This post, aimed towards sharpening pastoral ethical standards, nevertheless lands broadly. As Christians, not just as pastors, who we are may be far more […]

This episode is another reset, one that first aired in June of 2021, and it addresses a theme I've often returned to: the need for pastors and others in ministry to have friends. As I get older and my friends move away or in other ways my friendships change I'm reminded of how difficult finding […]

Hello, all. I'm Randy Greenwald and I want to welcome you to Greatheart's Table. After the last episode, some have taken to addressing me “Whiney Pastor.” Given the positive response that that episode generated, I'm okay with that. Contrary to what some thought after listening, I'm doing fine. A key part of that fineness is […]

Welcome to Greatheart's Table, the podcast for pastors and others who care about ministry. I'm Randy Greenwald, and, in the words of Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds, “I aim to misbehave.” Well, not much, really. I'm going to whine, and some may judge it to be in poor taste for a pastor to whine. But I disagree. […]

Today's episode is what I am calling a ‘reset'. This one was written in early 2021 and released on May 24th of that year. We were a year into the pandemic, and deep into ongoing concerns regarding race. Pastors were weary of trying to hold polarized churches together. That was three years ago. Our challenges […]

Hi! I'm Randy Greenwald, the host and ringleader of this this gang we call Greatheart's Table. That's strange talk, I know. But in this episode I think about the associations we seek, the gangs we join, and the way in which those choices form, or deform, us. If you are not a regular member of […]