Season 3 Finale: The Common Table Story

The Common Table Colaborative Story

In this episode, we explore the inspiring journey behind the Common Table, a groundbreaking ecumenical initiative fostering collaboration across Christian denominations. Our guests, Dr. Thad Austin and Kashmiri Schmookler, delve into how trust, shared practices, and diverse spiritual traditions are transforming leadership support and community health within the church.

Main Topics:

• Origins and evolution of the Common Table since 2013
• The role of relational and spiritual capital across faith traditions
• Insights from empirical research on clergy health and wellbeing
• Strategies for ecumenical collaboration and breaking theological barriers
• Future gatherings and envisioning a resilient, supportive church community

In this episode:

• Thad shares how initial concerns about pastors’ wellbeing led to the creation of a support network
• Kashmiri explains the significance of spiritual accompaniment across diverse faith backgrounds
• Insights into how trust acts as the currency for collaborative success in ministry
• Practical tips for fostering ecumenical dialogue and shared practices
• Announcements about the 2027 Common Table gathering in Boston focusing on resilience and suffering

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Introduction to the episode and guests
 00:27 - Thad's background and work with the Common Table
 01:34 - Kashmiri’s journey from multi-faith upbringing to spiritual accompaniment
 02:59 - Defining spiritual accompaniment and its importance in transition and crisis
 04:14 - Heritage and faith background of Kashmiri
 06:11 - The roots of the Common Table and its foundational research efforts
 07:55 - Connecting support networks for pastors and church leaders
 09:33 - The systemic analysis of pastoral wellbeing challenges
 11:56 - The influence of empirical research and funding in clergy health initiatives
 13:39 - Personal stories of burnout and resilience within church leadership
 17:27 - The vision of unity and the Body of Christ working together
 18:24 - The role of relational and spiritual capital across traditions
 19:43 - Culture of ecumenical openness and shared prayer practices
 21:43 - The logo and name of the Common Table - symbolizing inclusion and open seats
 23:54 - The power of imagination in church innovation and collaboration
 24:53 - Kashmiri’s upcoming spiritual care initiatives
 27:58 - The role of pastors’ past experiences in shaping support services
 30:33 - Addressing brokenness and promoting healthy leadership
 32:16 - Challenges with funding and ecumenical barriers in collaborative efforts
 34:22 - Building bridges between different church traditions
 36:07 - The importance of trust and practical engagement strategies
 38:15 - Guidelines for respectful and effective group participation
 41:39 - Key outcomes from past gatherings and cross-sector collaboration
 44:28 - Christian practices and spiritual community development
 46:07 - Announcing the 2027 Boston gathering focused on resilience and crisis response

Resources & Links:

• Common Table Network

Upcoming:

2027 Common Table Gathering in Boston, focusing on resilience and suffering in the church, bringing together scholars and faith leaders from diverse traditions to foster healing and collaboration.

Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution.  This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We're doing things a little bit differently. In this episode of our podcast, we actually have two guests with us. I have Dr. Thad Austin, and I also have Kashmiri Schmuckler with me. Thad is a seasoned leader in the executive experience of nonprofit organizations, including fundraising, strategic evaluation, creative problem solving, and leading high-performing teams. Currently serving as vice president of Philanthropy and executive director of the Every Age Foundation and Executive Director of the Common Table Collaborative. He's also authored a book, Carol for Clerty: Understanding a Disconnected Network of Providers. Welcome, Thad. Thank you. Great to be here. And Kashmiri, we've got some things to say about you as well. You are a spiritual accompanier and the founder of Pilgrim Table, which is a hospitality-rooted project offering spiritual accompaniment and belonging for pilgrims and people in a life transition with a particular focus on the Camino de Santiago. You're the service chaplain to the Common Table Collaborative. And amongst many things, you hold a graduate theological degree from Yale. Welcome, Kashmiri. Yes, thank you so much, Valerie. Yeah, Kashmiri, you're actually dialing in from somewhere else other than Australia and the US.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Where are you? I am. So I just moved to Santiago de Compostela, which is, for those of you who don't know, the end of the Camino de Santiago, which is a pilgrimage across Spain. So living here for some months, trying to learn Spanish, which is going very slowly. And yeah, serving pilgrims. And it's been a lovely place to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Tell me a little bit about the work that you do in this space.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yes. So what I'm doing is um, so I'm a chaplain by training, and I think just by vocation and calling as well, can see that thread throughout my life to just be a spiritual accompanier. And I've done that both in a university setting at Yale and end-of-life chaplaincy at MD Andersonic Cancer Hospital. And I fell in love with pilgrimages around the world, especially the Camino de Santiago. Thousands of miles, and just was so curious by the conversations I'd be having with people that you walk with every day. How it just felt like such a need to be offering spiritual care and listening to their stories, how at end of life with someone on, you know, their deathbed, I'd be having very similar conversations with people while walking every day. So it's a new project, lots of learning here, but just trying to create these spaces for seekers to feel welcomed and belonging. Kashmir, what is a spiritual accompanying? Yes, that's a good question. And I mean, probably people define this in a multitude of ways. So this is just my perspective and something that I've been practicing as well with um the Common Table Collaborative. So what I see this as is kind of a combination of chappancy, spiritual direction in a way, therapy, but for spirituality. So it's really just, yeah, well, regardless of what someone's religious background is or the way that they, you know, maybe practice religion or spirituality, just accompanying them and listening to the voice of God in their own lives and how helping them to deepen in their own tradition. And those can be often in times of transition or, you know, often those needs come in times of crisis, whether that's a health diagnosis, entering university for the first time, ending a thousand-mile walk. So it's very much just an accompanying myth of listening to God in their lives and helping them to grow in their own faith.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

I learned that you have Indian and Polish heritage, and you didn't grow up in a Christian home, I believe. I think I got that from the gathering.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yes, that's true. Exactly. Yeah. So grew up in a very much multi-faith home. My mother's from India, so Muslim father is well, grew up in the States, but our ancestors are from Poland and Belarus, the Jewish part. So yeah. Grew up in very much all religions and have come to really just have such a deep appreciation for their own faiths. Um, and then slowly made my way into the church and yes, found a home in it.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

So well, I'm so glad to have your voice on this podcast for so many different reasons, but I think you're uh a great witness to how uh God encountered you, you encountered God, and now you're sharing that those encounters with other people, regardless of religion, that they might find their way. So I'm so glad to have you here. Well, thank you so much for saying that. It's a pleasure. Thad, you were a busy man at the conference. I don't, I think I've probably only got five words to you. So I was thrilled that you said yes to come on the podcast. To say that it was something I had never encountered before would be an understatement. And I just knew I had to talk to you to find out about the story and and truly fully transparent to actually see how it can encourage and inspire us in Australia um to do the same thing. So I'd love to find out from you, Thad, how did the journey of Common Table, how did it even start? How did it come together?

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Yeah, so it's great to be with you. And the uh journey of the common table um was something that has been in existence really since I think 2013 in various forms, where there were denominational groups that were all struggling with the same basic questions of how do we support our leaders and how do we create healthy congregations. Um and so they realized, hey, what if we just got together and tried to work on some of the similar problems together? So there was um a convening that happened in uh 2013 that brought together a number of denominational executives alongside a research uh community to say, you know, here's the things that we're currently working on, or we have questions about those kind of things. In 2019, I was at uh serving at Duke University and received a very generous grant uh from the Duke Endowment to do some North American landscape analysis of the support network that was available to Protestant Christian pastors. And uh so there had been a lot of work uh that had been done on the individual health and well-being of pastors, but no one had asked this question of what's the support network that's available to our pastors. So I uh embarked on that. Kashmir and I kind of partnered together on a few uh elements of that research project. And what I found was that there were a ton of people, a ton of people who were actively working to support, support pastors and to create healthy churches. But oftentimes they did not know each other. They were just kind of operating in these silos. So we looked at this across various sectors, so denominational officials. In the U.S. in particular, we have pension benefit and insurance providers, oftentimes that are associated with denominational bodies. They're funders that in the philanthropic realm they are concerned about the health and well-being of pastors and their churches. They're frontline providers like spiritual directors, counselors, coaches, chaplains. I mean, the whole gamut mental health providers that specifically focus on these issues. And then the last sector, which was not immediately obvious to me, was scholars and continuing educators. And so I presented the first four of those sectors that I just mentioned to someone from the Association of Theological Schools. And I just said, give me some feedback. These are the kind of buckets I'm thinking that there's a lot of activity in each. I love those, but she said, I think you've forgotten one, and that's the academy. And I said, Well, what are you talking about? And she said, Well, a lot of times when pastors get to a dry point in their ministry, their first call is not to the counselor, to the coach, the spiritual director. Instead, they sign up for a doctor of ministry program. They go back to school. And so I started calling around to all these doctor of ministry programs in North America. And one after another, I heard these directors tell me stories of how half their job was just trying to keep people in ministry and caring for almost like the wounded population that was coming off of the front lines and those kind of things. It's like, my goodness, this is, yeah. So, so throughout each of those, we did kind of a systemic analysis to better understand from both a quantitative and also qualitative study to really try to understand like, who are these people? What are they doing? Where are they located? Are they partnering together? Are they talking to each other? And in many cases, they were totally unaware. And it just kind of struck me because what would it be like if the body of Christ came together to be able to offer coordinated care and support for its ministers and for the churches they they they serve? So one last little thing I'll I'll just mention, and this is where my association with the common table kind of comes in. I I served in local church ministry for about 10 years. And when I was ordained, I was ordained with 12 other people. There are only three of us who are left.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

From the ministry and the faith?

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Yes. Yes, to both of those. Yeah. So, like, that's not a great track record. And you mentioned like some of my formal academic training is in fundraising, philanthropic studies, all these kind of things. I'm a part of a lot of conversations about finances, about buildings, these kind of things. I keep saying this is not the most critical issue that the church is facing right now. The most critical issue is about leadership, having the right leadership, both the pastors and also healthy lay leaders as well. So, all of that to say that there was this kind of, it wasn't really branded in a way, this kind of movement of these different denominational officials that'd been meeting together. There was research that came in. And then what we did is to put those two together and then to try to expand its scope and impact. And what was birthed out of that then became the common table.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Amazing. And I know that the Lily Endowment and the Duke Clergy Health Initiative have been instrumental. Let's travel even further back into time. How does something like that even happen? Because we're talking millions and millions of dollars invested in the space. How does one get to the point of believing this is worth or this is an issue?

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yeah, I mean, I think there's been a number of empirical studies that have been funded. So I'll just speak uh, and I think this is public record, so I'm not speaking out of turn here. The Duke Endowment's investment in clergy well-being came from a uh conversation that that resulted from a bishop in one particular uh denomination. He was going to be having a meeting with some program officers at the Duke Endowment. And he comes in just frustrated and late to this meeting, and he says, I'm so sorry. I just came from a meeting with our actuarial team. And if we don't get our health insurance premiums under control, in 15 years, there's not going to be a church. They were finding that their health insurance premiums were like right in line with other kind of high-risk occupational groups like coal miners and other. I mean, like, so so what they said was okay, if this is really a critical factor, then we need to understand it in a more concrete way. And so, to their credit, they they've produced some of the gold standard, I would say, of social science research related to clergy well-being. It's it's on a very specific population of uh pastors within the United Methodist tradition in North Carolina in the United States, but it is some of the best that that's that's out there. And they've actually done a longitudinal study. So they followed the same population over more than a decade now. And so they're able to actually track and to see trends over time.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, I I I think the elegance is in the specificity of it and and it brings depth, but then you've got the longitudinal aspects, brings clout credibility, it starts to tell a story. So, I mean, that's how I fell into this. Actually, I didn't tell you this story, but I've been talking about this since I think probably 2014, because as a clinical psychologist and a Christian and a pastor's wife, I fell into this area actually. I was sitting in my private practice, people had heard I was a pastor's wife, and they'd come in secrecy. I remember we had to deal with weight room issues, the shame. Will I see my congregants? Um, or you know, academics, will I see the Bible college students here? Can we manage it? And we used to do this this do of, you know, shuffling them about. And I remember getting to the point of just saying, this cannot be God's vision. For you know, the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few, and they seem to be falling out uh around me. And uh in 2014, I felt like I was the only person ringing this bell because I was starting to see patterns and trends. And at the time, I would just go and visit people. Just I think this is okay to say, in Sydney circles, as a female, non-theologically trained, it was really difficult for me to even get entry into conversations. So I'd have to bring my husband, he's an ordained minister with me to kind of rubber stamp me, right? And it got to 2017. I wasn't burnt out, but I was deeply discouraged. And I was actually physically sick as well. But my husband said, You need to come to this thing. There's this guy called Donald Guthrie, he's from the US, he's been brought out to Australia and you know, he he's gonna share some things with us. And I remember sitting at the car park at that time of the train station going, Lord, I got nothing left. If I attend this thing and it goes the way it has been going, people saying, ah, there's not an issue. Uh pastors just, you know, they're all right, suffering is part of ministry. If I attend this thing and I hear someone from the US say the same thing, it will break me. So I will only go, Lord, if you believe I should be there. And I went. And that was how I encountered the work of the Duke Clergy Health Initiative. It blew my mind. I wrangled myself into having dinner with Donald and his wife. I read cover to cover what he wrote. There was a lot of email correspondence between myself and him. Um, and that's how I actually in Australia encountered the work.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Yeah. It's really wonderful. And I feel like God is kind of weaving together all of these different, you know, uh various members. Um, I mean, in one way, what the common table was trying to do is to knit together the body of Christ. Because I actually believe that we have everything we need. I think we have everything we need in order to have a healthy, productive, and effective church. The problem is kind of we're going like this, right? Like everyone is kind of headed in their own way. And so, I mean, as the Apostle Paul said, right? Like the I cannot say to the ear, or vice versa, that that I have no need of you, that if we were to yet come together, there's a way that God can amplify our work. And so, yeah, that's that's the whole vision behind some of the stuff that that we're trying to do. I'm so glad that you're able to connect with uh the folks from the clergy health initiative too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

And Cashmere, we've just talked about the types of capital it takes. So it takes a vision, it takes finances, it takes um lots and lots of strategic thinking. I'm wondering from your point of view, um, how have you seen things like the relational and spiritual capital um contributing to this? Diverse people, diverse faith traditions coming together. What's been what's that been like for you? What have you observed?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yeah, I know that's a great question. I think that's what makes the Common Table Collaborative so special, unique, is that it's such an ecumenical initiative. Even at this last gathering in Houston, um, this past January, we had people from the Orthodox tradition, Roman Catholic, Protestant mainline, evangelical, and we're able to have different prayer gatherings of people. We had a divine liturgy, an Orthodox priest led us, which was beautiful. And then, of course, you know, I'm um I converted into the Roman Catholic Church. So I was leading us into some contemplative prayer rhythms, inviting us into like practices of like the examine and lectio divina. And then we also had prayers and worship from more of a Methodist and than evangelical. So, really all these beautiful parts of the church coming together to love one another, listen to one another, to seek God together. I feel like it's just there's such beautiful, I mean, yeah, spiritual capital that the common table has really cultivated this network together. Yeah, just to support and listen together.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah. And I'll just add to that that so the common table obviously is this ecumenical gathering. And it's not that theology is not important. We actually think theology is incredibly important, but there have oftentimes been these kind of artificial barriers related to something that is in the church's kind of history that have caused deep divisions, that have said, you know, I can't work with this person or I can't work with that person. And what we've been trying to say is that, like, okay, just for a moment, if we can just pause the conversation on theology, we might discover that there's actually a lot more that we have in common than we have that separates us. So I'll just give you a quick example. Cashmere mentioned the Orthodox Church here in America, and they were really struggling. So their priests are able to marry, and they were struggling because they did not have proper and adequate support for their spouses. There was nothing that was done within that tradition. Well, so at one of the common table gatherings, this Orthodox denominational official gets connected with a Methodist who has an exclusive ministry just to the spouses of religious leaders. And out of that has been birthed this robust network of support within the Orthodox tradition that would not have existed. Or if it did exist, it would have taken so long for it to incubate. And so they were able to pull upon the best of what was possible.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

That's incredible. I just spent a little bit of time um sharing how the name and the logo came about. At the end, you got a bit apologetic about being passionate about the logo. I'm all for being passionate about logos. Visual representation, um, it's plastered on our psychology practice, and I'm constantly going to the logo. When something comes up to go to the logo, we've drawn on our logo because it tells a visual story. Tell us about the name Common Table, a little bit about the visual representation of the logo.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Sure, yeah. So the common table is meant to be that. It's intended to be a common place where people can come together to focus on the health and well-being of religious leaders and and the congregations or churches that they serve. The way that the graphic designer and I sat down, and we spent we spent months on this. We spent, and it's you wouldn't know it by looking at it, but we spent months. It's it's these these circles that are in a circle, and those are intended to be seats at a table. However, there's one of the circles that's not colored in, and that's supposed to indicate that there's an open seat that's available to you. And in fact, that open seat is what makes the others to form the letter C. So kind of like the common table. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah, I think that's precious. Um at first I thought the open seat was Jesus, but I can see that he's everywhere. But uh, I think I just want to encourage you that when I when you shared that to me, to the group, it hit me like a thunderbolt because I understood why I was there. All the way from Sydney, probably I think there was about four Aussies that attended, but we were given the invitation to come and participate in honestly, what actually feels like an impossible thing for us to achieve in Australia. Um the the number of times the word imagine was used in the gathering, I wish I had counted it. It was across speakers. It's the power of imagination, but I also think it's the encouragement of fellowships, differences, bolden us to think that we can imagine beyond our box. Um, because there are others that seen the same picture. And if we pull together, uh, you know, we'll build something big bigger. So, Kashmir, you've had that interesting role in the conference. You were uh providing contemplative spaces. I loved all the emails we got, by the way. Uh, for those of you who are listening, the Common Table would send these emails even before we got into the conference. It was well executed in that it gave you, I love a well. Gathering and conference. It was very well run. Everything was spelled out, but it also gave us things to prepare our spirit and our heart and our minds for. I've never seen that been done before. Um, I'm curious, Kashmir, when you're looking at all these different faith traditions for you. What did you see in the conference in your role there?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yeah, I saw just such, I mean, I saw many things, but just such an earnestness, a seeking together of God. And I think like just the people that come to this, you know, global gathering are such providers. They're caretakers, they're, you know, they could be ministry leaders, pastors, they could be spiritual directors, retreat providers, denominational leaders, all across the spectrum. Um, but they are, you know, people that often pour into others. And what Thad and I's intention with kind of creating these more spiritual care spaces was that we could offer just a glimpse, maybe a small bit of what they pour into others, that we could give that back to them. Um, so that was kind of the intention of yeah, these spiritual care um spaces. And what I just saw was that that was received in such deep ways from people. Um so it was kind of through group gatherings, um, leading people in practices, but also just offering one-on-one accompaniment where I kind of brought this love for pilgrimage to this gathering in Houston where I'd be carrying little water bottles with me and offering them to people as I do when I'm hiking. And then just talking to them, walking around the beautiful grounds um, and talking to them about their life and their ministry, and just surprised by I mean, maybe not surprised since we know burnout is real. Um, but the amount of people that were kind of questioning their calling or their, you know, the direction of their ministry and opening up and asking for prayer in these times of discernment. That's kind of yeah, what I noticed.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

So powerful. I think that's the the unspoken cost that we don't think about. We think about the trink the shrinking church, we think about, you know, stats and strategy, the the spiritual health, vitality, the connection of our ministry workers back to the Lord is so important. I just think we don't see it, we don't talk about it, we don't see it as a true cost and risk. Just what you've articulated there, that even in a in a gathering of so-called experts, because um that's what people were, that there can be that vulnerability and that brokenness. And if you don't inquire or make space for it, it never gets seen or articulated. So I think that was a really special ministry, Kashmiri.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

I I think that Kashmiri's ministry is incredibly important. And that, you know, it we've seen that both uh in the specific application of the services that she's offered and it continues to offer to those that are part of our community. But we've also seen it worn out in the empirical research that we did that kind of founded all of this as well. So the light bulb moment for us as we went through and investigated all of these different providers across all these sectors, was to find out that 70% of those that are involved in this line of caring for pastors or for their congregations, 70% former pastors themselves. They served in local churches, right? So, and the other 30% have usually a direct connection or tie to local church service. So it could be that their uh that their parent was the pastor of the church or those kind of, or their spouse is the pastor. But that then begs the question of what was that ministry experience like? And what we found not through the quantitative survey, but rather through qualitative focus groups, one-on-one. We started just asking, you know, like, tell us how did you get involved in this? And one after another, these people told these just gut-wrenching accounts of how they've been beat up or burnt out by the local church and they wanted to do something about it. Yeah. Well, in every other helping profession, like that's not a bad thing that you had a bad experience, right? Like it can be a motivator to do something positive. And for helping professions, it often is some type of negative experience that leads to the offering of providing that type of support. But the difference is in the church, you can just call yourself a coach. You can just put out a shingle and say, you know, these are the services. And your negative experience becomes the very thing that qualifies you then to offer the services that you're providing. Like in every other profession that I know, normally you have to undergo counseling before you offer counseling. Not always the case in the church. And so, so I guess what I'm trying to get at is that like there certainly is a level of brokenness that happens for pastors, for ministry leaders in local settings. But oftentimes the Aaron's and the Hurs who are lifting up the arms of Moses, to use a biblical analogy from the book of Exodus, chapter 19, oftentimes they're lifting up those arms with broken arms themselves. Yes. So part of what we're trying to do through the common table is to attend, and this is where Kashmir's ministry comes in so well, is to attend to those spaces of longing or discernment or brokenness. Because the more that we can help those that are offering care to be more effective and healthy in doing so, we actually believe that that is the essential ingredient to having the person down the road, the pastor in the local setting, receive good quality, healthy care.

unknown 27:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

So true. So true. So more than a decade on, I'd love to understand uh challenges that might have come along the way. Um, to me, you know, 2026 Houston was bedazzling brilliant. It worked, uh, was effective. Um, but I imagine that there would have been some challenges along the way. I'm I'm curious, you know, what did you experience along the way?

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah, it uh is uh there's no question that so I've got a good friend and mentor from from leadership education at Duke Divinity, and his his name is Dave Odom. And Dave is such just a thoughtful person who can put into words oftentimes the frustrations or feelings or experience that you're having. And so Dave, he told me one time, he said, he said, Thad, networks are notoriously hard to fund. And it was like, come on, Dave, right? Like, I got a degree in this stuff. Like, I think I can figure this one out. Like, I know a few things, right? Like, but then I've gone through and and Dave has been exactly right. The the biggest challenge that we have had uh is twofold, uh, especially on the funding side. One is uh when we talk with funders, they're like, okay, tell us what you do. And we're like, well, we convene and like we bring together all of these different providers. I was on a call literally right before we just joined this one, where this person said, So you're telling me you don't work directly with the pastors or the churches? I was like, well, no. Like, no. Like, well, we'd like to make sure that the impact is driven right down towards, you know, the point of service. And so because of that, they're more interested in funding our um, you know, the people who are part of our uh community than to fund us. Uh that's one is the localized impact that we oftentimes get to celebrate with our members, but we can't take direct credit for. The second is the ecumenical nature of our work. So what I found is that as you go kind of up the uh philanthropic pyramid, usually those of capacity that are passionate about the church are passionate about their church. So long as you don't talk with those evangelicals, or so long as you don't talk with those Orthodox, or you know, so that what I found is is a really significant barrier for us is those that are most passionate about the church usually are also some of the most ideological, which is great. You know, like that they're passionate about their particular tradition. But what happens is that they they fail to see the larger picture of how all of these disparate parts could potentially be connected in a way that actually amplifies. I'll give you a quick just example of what I'm talking about. So at the global gathering that you came to in Houston, Texas, there was a woman who has a fledgling ministry, much like you, uh, was the spouse of a religious leader, had some negative experiences and really wanted to be able to uh to do something about it. Great. So she was, you know, like, should I come? Should I? I was like, you need to be here. I was like, we will save you three to five years of work if you just come. Please just come. She said, no, I don't think so. So I got back in touch with her. I was like, look, if we scholarship you, will you please come? And so eventually she said yes. And so she shows up, and by the end of it, she's had four or five different strategic conversations with different people. And she calls me up so excited after the conference and says, we're gonna expand our work across the United States. I can't believe this. And it's all because like there was an inefficiency that happened because here she feels like God's calling her to do. And there's another part of the church, it's like, we really need what you have to offer. Yeah. So what we try to do is we try to help bring those together so that the body of Christ can work more effectively.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Yeah, I'm gonna put you on the spot, Dad. Those two issues, do you have elevated pitches for both of them? When someone has really got this ecumenical pushback, what's your elevator pitch for that?

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Yeah, so one is like what's I usually try to turn it back to them. So tell me about your particular tradition. Can you point to uh a place of brokenness within your particular tradition that caused significant pain and harm, not only to the reputation of the church, but to people? Let's talk about that. Tell me about that. We'll go down that road for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

Don't you think it could have been mitigated or prevented if there was better support that was in place? Yeah. And then I might try to tell a couple of parables of, you know, like, you know, like I mentioned earlier about the Orthodox and you know, the Methodists who get together and now they're, you know, that's a scalable solution for the pat the spouses and a particular tradition. So that's one of the things I do. Also, I'll just mention this too, and this is, I think, really, really critical. So the currency with which the common table operates is trust. We move at the speed of trust. If there's not trust between our members, then it's it's significantly more time consuming to make those connections possible. But if the person that you're sitting across the table from, you see them maybe as a friend, like that actually is a significant lubricant that allows the spirit of God to begin working. So the currency that we operate in really is is Trump.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

I don't know whether you got my email that I had asked you had a slide up on the common table that gave us some guidelines or rules. I don't know whether you have it in front of you because I was um I loved that. Do you have that in front of you?

SPEAKER_02 34:12

I can pull it up. Yep, it won't take but just a second.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah, well, first of all, you know, I I I said I I love a well-run event. Um, and I love that you gave the guidelines right at the beginning. And I love that you're apologetic about it, and I love that everybody just accepted it. I don't know how you get to the point of having a group of experts just comply. Um, and and I suspect it's got to do with the friendships that have been built, not just over three conferences, but conversations and communing and friendships over a long period of time, just so we see the commonalities and not the differences.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Sure. So um what you see here on the screen, these are commitments of presence. And I'll just mention that um this is not a product that is uh that was developed by the common table. We've adapted this from the Center uh for courage and renewal circle of trust and courageous conversations. Uh, but the first thing that we invited folks to do is just simply to be present. So you're here. God might want to do something here. So please be present. Don't be somewhere else while here. Please be here, whether it be technological or anything else. We invited folks to share. We wanted them to feel open, to be themselves and to be honest, uh, and to practice confidentiality, but also to practice generosity with listening. So not just to be a lecturer, uh, but take this opportunity to learn from the wisdom that we are already assuming is in the room. Uh, obviously, with that, we need to be aware that this is time limited. So we need to have an awareness of time and really to welcome discomfort. And so um I love the way that this is expressed here to expect and accept a lack of closure. So to love the questions, to let those just linger, and then to release the compulsion to find uh those comfortable answers, to stay curious. Uh so one of the things that we always uh encourage uh is not to um not to fix somebody that that you feel is is all if you can pray for them. Don't don't fix them, but instead to turn to wonder. So I wonder what is going on with this individual that leads them to that conclusion. I wonder why I'm feeling this way. So to really to turn to wonder, and then finally to just believe it's possible, just to simply believe that it's possible for us to be refreshed and surprised by our time together. So those are a few uh commitments of presence or rules of engagement, perhaps that we offered.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Even just listening to it again, I I love it so much. So 2020, what have been the key things? And either can I ask a Kashmir at that? What has come out of common table gatherings and and connecting? What are some of the lot the big things that you've seen come out of this?

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Yeah, so I'll start things.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Yeah, I'll start and then Kashmir, I'd love for you to to layer on and particularly talk about some of the things that you're doing uh through your ministry. Um, we we have seen uh a lot. So as I mentioned earlier, the account of the individual that came with a fledgling organization now is scaling their work nationally. We've seen connections that are being developed between mental health care professionals and the church, oftentimes with there being significant kind of difference between those two, to actually partner together. So some of our members are working on initiatives that provide um youth mental health uh and trying to think through scalable models whereby the church could actually be part of a solution. If you think about it, the places where youth spend more of their time uh than any other place, a lot of times schools, religious communities are another. And so if you're in the mental health space, you cannot ignore the fact that some of the greatest convening power happens within the church. So, what would it be like to actually build bridges between the church and the clinic? Like, does that gap have to actually be that wide? Or could we actually partner together to offer better support and encouragement? We've seen scholars get together and instead of working on separate projects, they're like, Oh, you're studying this thing too? I had no idea. Why don't we partner together? We've had scholars who they have gone uh and said, Man, I've got this, you know, I've got this research agenda and I got these really deep, important questions. The problem is I can't get anybody to take my survey. Well, through the common table, like I can give you access to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of religious leaders to the denominational officials that so it's like, hmm, we can help improve this research. We can make it better. So whether it be from a theoretical side down to the practical nuts and bolts, what we're seeing as outcomes from the common table aren't just friendships, but actually people working together on the big sticky problems of the church.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

That's incredible. Kashmir, do you have something to add?

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll just add on to more of the Christian practices, which is something as yeah, the common table, we've been really trying to deepen that ministry. Um, and growing out of this past gathering, we've kind of yeah, been thinking about creating these spaces and to gather together as a community to have spiritual care. So we're going to be offering our first, I guess, this kind of gathering um in a couple of weeks. And it'll just be a way to kind of be together in community, have a space to pray, meditate, just be poured into. Um, and then also just as we've seen this need of one-on-one accompaniment for people part of this network, um, to we're also offering that continually. And so if people want to be able to meet with, you know, me and just be able to like receive prayer or um discern something in their life or ministry or anything together, we'll do that. So those are, and then we're just imagining a lot of imagination of what future Christian practices could be, whether that's practices of generosity, of Sabbath, of pilgrimage. That's another thought we've been having of just more these embodied practices we can engage in as a community. Yeah, I mean an imagination's a word that keeps coming up. So yeah, I think that.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Wow, that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

And now to finish off, the plug for the 2027 Common Table Gathering. Please let our audience know.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

Yeah, so we would love for you to join us. We'll be in Boston. Um, and uh, we've got some great hosts from Gordon Conwell, uh theological seminary from Boston University, Boston College, and we've even had an uh an invitation out to the Orthodox seminary that's in town. We'll be coming together across these religious traditions and we'll bring together the world's leading scholars and practitioners who are literally building the future of health and well-being for the church. This is gonna not just be your typical conference. This is gonna be a place for collaboration, for conversation across those sectors and areas of difference about the big issues of the church. The theme for the 2027 gathering is uh about resilience and suffering. Um we're going to Boston, which was one of the epicenters within at least the Roman Catholic tradition, their other traditions have experienced as well, of the clergy sex abuse crisis. We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about how the church has taken responsibility and also is implementing um continued procedures as well as opportunities. I mean, there's a whole group within the um the Roman Catholic tradition who have come together to say, never again. Absolutely never again in our church. But they said, we're not just gonna address this issue, we're gonna address management, we're gonna address human resources, we're gonna address the financial health, we're gonna, and so they provided that holistic kind of understanding of what might it take for the church to be healthy and effective. So we'll be hearing from folks from the academic per uh academic realm as well as those on the ground doing the work through creative means.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Amazing. Thank you so much for spending time with me this morning and really inspiring me and I believe the people who will be listening to this episode. And I hope there will be more than four Aussies at the conference next year. Thanks so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

That sounds great. And if any of your listeners would like to get involved, I'll encourage them to come to our website uh where they can learn more. And that URL is commontable.network. So commontable.network.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

Thanks. Thank you so much, Gallery.