Saturday mornings are my favorite day of the week to spend with my family. Our Saturday morning starts when Bryson wakes up. I will hear him wake up and then I will get up with him.
Some Saturdays, we get everyone up and we go out for breakfast. We will go somewhere like Waffle House. The boys really like the Waffle House. Those Saturdays are rare and saved for special times.
Our usual Saturday morning looks like this:
Bryson and Daddy do a survey of what we have in the house to make for breakfast. It has to be enough for the Fantastic Four (our family nickname).
Our usual menu consists of scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, and some type of fruit. Sometimes it is grapes, sometimes bananas. There are other times where we will cook up some apples. (They are delicious.) We sometimes have sausage, or hashbrowns. The menu varies. The menu is not the most important thing.
I will crack all the eggs into a bowl and Bryson will whisk them up as best as he can so that we can pour them into the pan to make scrambled eggs. He also likes to help me open the biscuits and place the biscuits on a pan.
While the food is cooking, Bryson helps Daddy set the table. The plates will go on the table, with forks and spoons. There is butter and jelly. Daddy and Mommy have coffee cups at their place and there are cups for the boys, ready to be filled with chocolate milk.
When the food is ready, Bryson finds Mommy and Luke to let them know that breakfast is ready. The kitchen is full of the smells of bacon, biscuits, and coffee. Everyone comes to the table to sit down together as a family.
After everyone is seated, the boys will take turns praying over our food.
The best part? You can stay in your pajamas and eat.
Our conversations are different from Saturday-to-Saturday. Sometimes we talk about what we are going to do that day, sometimes we never get past Thomas the Train or Batman.
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about Bob the Builder or Iron Man. Mickey Mouse or The Hulk. The important thing is that no one feels like they don’t belong at our table. They want to be there.
Church should be like family. (The people, not the building.) Everyone should be welcome to the table. A visitor should feel like they are walking into your house and you are inviting them to kick off their shoes and enjoy a meal at your table. We should do our best to treat everyone like family (not that they should wear pajamas at church) and give them the seat beside us at the table.
Our visitors, friends, family, co-workers, whoever comes through the doors of our churches should not feel judged by what they drive when they pull into the parking lot. They should not feel judged because their kids act differently than your kids or because you are wearing more expensive clothes.
If you come to my house, most of the time, you will find me in jeans and a T-shirt. That is my jam. I will most likely be rockin’ flip-flops because those things are super comfortable. What am I saying? If you come to my house, you know that you don’t have to dress up. You don’t have to put on a mask and hide your feelings or insecurities. You get to see the Fantastic Four in real life. It’s not always pretty. We are far from a Norman Rockwell painting. However, we hide nothing. If you show up at a random time, you are likely to see dishes in the sink, toys in the living room and baskets of clothes that are waiting to be folded.
What’s so crazy about that?
Discipleship is about doing life together. If you come to my house, you are going to get to see a picture of my life that is a little bit different than what you see on Sunday morning. At my house, you get to see me in my roles as husband and daddy. At FaithPoint, you see me as pastor. I like Iron Man, writing, blogging, and riding bicycles. I love my wife and boys.
Inviting you into my house, is inviting you into my life.
I want you to know that you are welcome at my house and at FaithPoint.
You are welcome at our table.
- Refined and Refreshed: A Year Later - June 13, 2021
- Discipleship: From Spoon-Feeding to Mentoring - August 5, 2020
- Pastors and Live Video Options - November 4, 2019
