Going on a Mission in Your Own Front Yard

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Take the assessment of focusonthefamily.com/7 traits that's focusonthefamily.com/7 trade movie in the front yard and maybe we start doing our ordinary activities. Dinner pizza on paper plates: bubble blowing our family was Artie doing what if we were to do it in a more visible way in the front yard. That's Kristin shell and today on Focus on the Family you'll hear her unique story about how she began loving her neighbors in a more intentional way your hostess focus Pres. and Dr. Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller, John.

It's so easy to drive in and out of our garages and not get to know our neighbors. It takes away from what the Lord can in your neighborhood to touch people in his name and that working to discuss that today was a very special guest this one of those programs that that should equip you to think a little differently. I think help train your children as well. How to look at the world around them and have an impact in the name of Christ yet. This is a fun, unique and inspiring story about ways that you can show hospitality and our guest is as I said Kristin shell. She's the author of the book the turquoise table finding community and connection in your own front yard and she and her husband Tony have four children they lived with her family in Austin, Texas Kristin, welcome to Focus on the Family, thank you.

I'm delighted to be here before we dive into the turquoise table. I want to go back to what started your love for food and fellowship around the table, which I think is an important part of your story is my understanding you started with receiving an F in high school.

Now you fessing up to that thousands of people now lead with your failure rate French understand as I could totally understand that the world's problems.

This is not high up there that when you are in high school and you can have that glaring ass on your tree and follow you around, probably around anyway. Okay, so how did mom and dad responded that when you came home French author.

It was like good parents, tutors, or maybe if we help her out tell you there was no help in my brain for whatever reason was not going to learn the language and so this is crazy but unanswered. This last ditch effort.

They sent me on a summer immersion program and France teachers are committed first child and said they didn't know that they were all nervous like a dream and units are the bless your heart is to get a free hated sleepover can't. I didn't like to spend the night out like leaving with a homebody going to France to stay with a family and live in a country where clearly it was not a nightmare but at the ripe old age of 15, I found myself in a teeny tiny town living with a family and not understanding what would you like to save your mom in bed thinking you know I clearly think he was in my heart and keep you know what I learned in the course. I didn't know this at the time, but what I learned was that hospitality. The Greek redefine what it means love of strangers, and so I was a stranger in a foreign land. Clearly not understanding the language and I've never felt so loved. And like I belonged at the table and it was. Now I can look back and got a hot that's what God was doing at the time of course you know it was muddied and I didn't I didn't understand but the food and the ritual is sitting at the table. The French have it going on mean they sit at the dinner table.

Two hours at night and very real, very relaxed in the conversation flowed not remember. I couldn't understand a lot of what I knew that what was happening around that table was something that was it was contagious and it was enthralling and I knew that was something I wanted to be a part of that whole Mediterranean cultures like that, had the pleasure of being in Spain and France and other places. But there is a different pace. It's a beautiful one that we should embrace here in the United States.

More so, rather than the hurry up we grade ourselves on how fast we can meet exactly which is a plus if were like down to 10 minutes. We could do dinner intimates with microwave it put on the table quickly needed to talk to each other for a couple seconds and were done enough to our sporting events right where I was growing up as this is myself after my sophomore year in high school and that's the world that already, even in the 80s I was living you now very fast-paced and so it more so than the language which by the way, I ended up being a French major thoughts more than my right is right mastering the language it was the lifestyle it was the eye I know a good conversation food as nourishment for the Saul and just that family time around the table and you encourage us to embrace it.

Rather than run from right. Some of us can be a bit fearful that much time with each other, you know, I mean, and in my context that much time with family with right but certainly not every single night. So what you end up ordering the table.

Tell me about the story of the turquoise to flash forward you many many years later and say Tony and I are married or living in Austin and end at the time our children were sort of metals will age sent life was busy.

It was the exact thing we just talked about on to the next sports practice is all good right I felt like I was spending more time in my minivan than I was at the kitchen table and I still have that longing seed that was planted all those years ago in France, but I cannot figure it out you had to figure out when to cut how to bring people unit to the table and then often you know when I would bring them to the table. I was so tired from cooking and trying to get everyone there that very kind person or a good hostess and so I felt like again I was family so how did you get the idea of a picnic bench what happened. So this mean again it was it was, when I was having a party with the neighbor and friend of mine and I needed an extra place to seat some people we were doing a barbecue and I was in the backyards.

It was very casual and so I ordered a picnic table and this is just a plain old table like everybody has seen the wooden picnic tables and I ordered it from Lowe's because they could deliver it and have it assembled. The next day and that's what I needed and it was under 100 bucks that made Tony happy as all get so when they delivered in its heavy picnic tables are heavy, they put it outside right next to the edge of our straighten up underneath this magnolia tree in the front and the pain to get me to ask where I am. So when I walked out to follow the delivery guys I saw that picnic table underneath the tree and it was an aha moment. It took my breath away because I had been sort of in this holy restlessness for five or six years trying to figure out how to offer hospitality how to get to know my neighbors. How can I do all this, I saw that table. I know it sounds crazy, but I was like this is. Maybe this table should stay in the front yard and maybe we know we could start doing our ordinary activities. Dinner piece on unit paper plates, homework, bubble blowing, you know, things that our family was already doing.

What if we were to do it in a more visible way and do it in the front yard and with so counterintuitive, it is very why would I want to do.

Why would I get I get it, and when I went in and explained to the children in the end to Tony Austin's motto are kind of our self-proclaimed motto and for Austin's keep Austin weird good mom you have, but picnic table in the front yard doing your part to keep Austin weird came with the old village well you know we weren't burdened by the pressures of entertainment. So I'm no longer not worry about cooking for people to house doesn't have to be clean you because people are going to be in the front yard that it caught on y'all. It just it became a thing and you sit down. The first day and what are you thinking should happen what your expectation and then what does happen. So here's a little teeny bit more of the back story to was, I knew that I need a call it a great hospitality hack like I said like I didn't with you and we wanted to kick perfection to the car, you know, I knew I wanted to bring people together, but I didn't want it to always be at book club, a Bible study supper club because that overwhelms people and so I thought what if we were to do something and just be present if we were to slow down long enough and just be present in each other's lives and I did not know about. I'd never heard the term ministry of presence before and so through just reading and and great discipleship. I am I've I learned about the ministry of presence, which is also very counterintuitive because we wired you know human doing what this message was to me was just human being. What if, what if we were to take 15 minutes 20 minutes and just be present with one another like what can happen weird right so I do not want to go outside and just be present in my front yard at a turquoise picnic table like a blossom apartment with us to the point you in my favorite color.

I mean so nice dark word would be maybe boring turquoise turquoise and I remember the day that God was very gracious. It rained for about a week after we painted it because I knew I needed some courage to get up to wipe it off. I thought maybe taken that one more. I think it was that the very first day I went out and I took a whole bunch of stuff to look like I was busy like I knew what I was doing at a turquoise table with Horton to the you took your busywork. I know yeah but that was only perfectly normal to do much paperwork and stuff up by mail and think about that insecurity unit. That's what I was feeling, and so clearly I live right into it that you all about minutes after sitting down there pretending like I was busy I neighbor walked by and I had never even seen her before said not somebody I had even waived that didn't and we struck up a conversation and 30 minutes later we were having just an incredible and exchanging emails and phone numbers and talking about neighborly things and was almost 5 years ago and now cannot imagine not knowing Susan what is so important to really say what you're saying. That is, it was a facilitator for meeting people that live right around that's the point is the point. I think intuitively I knew that I couldn't articulate it yet and so now I say things like, you know, the trip was tables become like the old village well and it's a place where people can stop in and quickly touch base with one another and then catch up that unit all happened so fast that I you know I don't know that that's going knowing that I was can happen. Christian effect you had an encounter with an elderly couple that made an impression on you. What happened we are neighborhood is very multigenerational and so Tony and I were one of the very first unit I think of us is younger to buy from the original homeowners and sent out become one of the older couples that at the time there. You know we were we were the humans and so the neighbors around us. I noticed that they they were starting they want is out as much, but it became clear to me that one of the things of community is noticing and paying attention you names. After a few days of noticing habits of of our neighbors, it became clear that they needed looking after looking you know looking on to and Elizabeth is one of our neighbors and Elizabeth walks her dog. She's in her 80s and she walks her dog Clyde almost every day. Still. But here's the thing.

When you notice that when you realize her rhythm and her patterns and then Elizabeth isn't walking a dog one day an actuator she's living.

Is she okay and so will go over and check on on each other and may not seem like a big deal that I believe in God's economy.

It is neighbors right across the street from us one day we had a coyote problem in the neighborhood we live in Austin and were right kind of in the center of town, but there there were coyotes that were in our neighborhood and so for a lot of us. There were facebooking a can or emails or text going around. Be careful, make sure kittens and just taking care of one another, but I knew that the neighbors across the street wouldn't have any of that technology or the way it was wonderful to be able to go over and sit down and end up in their kitchen table. You know, kind of on coyote alert to take care of and it starts really small and that way these things over time in person so often. I think as a culture we like to keep it at a superficial level, because I can manage that emotionally but often times, as believers in Christ, he wants more from us. He wants us to provide his peace in these areas of chaos around us, and that's sometimes in your neighbors lives right so even had some pretty dramatic situations as well. We have and that you know like to your point, you know, it's like to get to know the dog walker first and you have to be able to trust not be trusted, and then you have that coffee when you're on coyote patrol first. But the reason those things matter is because life is hard and we all know it and and it's in every single no matter your neighborhood. There are things going on behind those garage doors behind as apartment doors, and no neighborhood is immune to it and ours is no exception and we had all the things in our neighborhood.

We had the cancer diagnosis we had the divorce we've had the prodigal child which starts small in many ways and can seem insignificant, is getting to know a neighbor and talking, walking their dogs. I would've never known them know Hadley not been present in our front yard and then we were able to serve and come alongside deepest power as any Christian you're describing this. I'm reminded of research that comes out every year that's I think it's called the loneliness index. It's never been higher than it is right now and when you look at that you think of all the social media connection all the Pinterest often Facebook stuff and you can connect in so many ways, but people are more lonely today than they've ever been, and really what you're describing is an antidote to that loneliness, where when you can is neighbors sure the burdens the emotional burdens of each other. It makes life so much richer so much better even in the midst of difficulty for those neighbors to be able to come and talk with you then, pour their heart out to you. That's what you're talking about exactly and that's really what I saw in my children in our before I knew about the turquoise table before eating any of this.

I mean, I noticed you, Tony and I unit or raising digital natives and so is their communication styles and bills started to change.

The other was really a manual for that as a mom and so Tony and I were concerned and we were like unit.

What we do as parents is these raising these digital natives and part of my concern to was in this digital era.

To your point yes were more connected than ever in history. And yes, we are lonelier and part of that is losing artists just conversation back to that conversation that you know I was having in France since I was worried that my children you know who were learning about emoji's and texting in things like this could they even someday sit at a table conversation and so hard that unit was my heart and and desire was to steward a place that that would help teach not only the kids and let's be honest, I'm on my found you.

I love that tautology can be used for good to practice their skills and so because the hard times are, and there you are sitting at the turquoise table in your front yard. Did your kids come out, did your husband come out or did you have to bribe them with special dessert can't depend probably on both extroverts and introverts in your family like every other family so for the extroverts. It was a fun thing with scriptwriters about the introverts. This is so interesting in this comes up early on in the conversations I'm not surprised it's come up with passing and introverted like oh but this is hard and scary Tony as he is an introvert and he loves it for a couple of reasons. And here's why. Because I cannot speak as an introvert high don't have in my body. I unit I have it on good authority from several introverted friends that there's something so relaxing and comforting about being outside.

You know you don't feel trapped. There is like an easy way out.

It's a front yard. You can leave right and then by design, picnic tables are small there only next to seat for maybe 68 if you squish and so it intimates conversation that it's fostering so challenge is getting stuck at a big party where you're like showing the door and this is exhausting me and said you know for everyone so good and the kids responded well you have a damage your children.

You know I can't speak for them either.

You can have the one on the line.

The counseling strangers brought about who knows that you know it's interesting they have in their teenagers now so it is all you people do ask what are the kids think about it and I'm not allowed to post photos of them or talk about them, which is use it to use it to and I think that that's important you know. And Sarah is the youngest in and this is a great story of how our children are watching us and at all times and so we had to neighbors that moved in just recently and I was sick had laryngitis at the time and we were kind of hoping it wasn't the flu and whatnot but we saw the moving van and we knew they were cunning and shame on me.

It had been like three days and had not gone over and introduced myself.

And again you know I was second in one night unit take all the germs and Sarah at 10 years old, said mom this is ongoing over on behalf of introducing ourselves and so she did. She walked across the great banged on the door. I don't know what she said.

He told me. She said where the shells here's my mom's number. Welcome to the neighborhood mom feeling better. She'll be over soon and to me, you know, it might be the one thing I'm a member of this whole entire year that maybe claiming it only because it's they do they notice and that was powerful to me as a mom but it's great that you marveled. It's also great that you put a timeframe. I hadn't thought about. We have neighbors and after certain point in time. After the movie and if you don't know them, you probably won't get to know them… Really awkward like four years later, I wish I would've done the three-day thing is right, and it does it just becomes more awkward because then you're like what's his name. What's her name and then you push the and in one of the things to his is the most important thing in the most simple thing you know that I like to tell people if they're thinking about this, but overwhelmed and kind of work. Just learn and name somebody is something that you've done this thousands of people are following suit.

This is become a thing turquoise table and what were some of those barriers or if you could rattle off three or four of the reasons people say you know what love to drive.

That's great for you. I'm not quite wired that way.

One of those barriers for us. I'm sure people listening right now is why we hear the obvious ones unit homeowners associations, you know, maybe it is not to let me pet a turquoise picnic table in my front. I don't live in a neighborhood.

I mean N/A or or I will I live in a very urban setting as I don't have a front yard or in Texas. I live on a huge ranch and don't see neighbors for months and months and months in one of the things that we have brainstormed because remember when I started this this was just my table.

I had no idea that I would become, the turquoise table lady and people would ask the things that we do is we just brainstorm like notice what is what's the rhythm of your neighborhood because what works in Minnesota isn't gonna work in Texas and what works in Colorado Springs is in work in Florida every neighborhood and if you have a home of any kind of dwelling you have a neighborhood and so what are the rhythms where the people naturally tend to gather where is gravitate and I suffer from analysis paralysis. You know, I can think about something until it's just, you know, totally average and make things harder than I need to and I think that a lot of people do and so this really is an exercise in simplicity, but more than you know there's a freedom and not to take off yester the pressures of it all, but from the faith standpoint when we show up to the table empty-handed almost a cold couple water is sometimes all that word told that we need to bring. It allows God to do that so I hope people here we get hung up on the picnic table junction.

That's a facilitator of communication. Ali said the table is not the hero of the story, God's people are. And so if it's just if it's an encouragement or if it's just a reminder of you know that we belong at his table.

What a whimsical fun way to doing describe how it has spread. What's the dimension of the turquoise table. Well it it's where their turquoise tables and communities in all 50 states and I think 11 countries and so it's just I mean takes my breath away and rinse your language skills. Every morning I wake up in there. There are emails of people sharing their stories and how it's transformed their neighborhoods in the most simple and most beautiful profound ways that I mean all still just as much as I was that day that the table arrived because I can't believe first of all, that this is how God would ask me to go on mission and that's really creative of God right a turquoise picnic table. I mean.just as well if he wasn't try to wash and he wasn't trying to store our God makes turquoise rent paid, let me ask you years back. This all started, how many years ago 75 okay five years ago.

As you look at it now, you know, on behalf of the person that's listening going I'm never doing that I wouldn't do so outside of my capability or my interest. One of the things that you've learned over those five years with two or three core things that you would be less rich in your spiritual life in your emotional life. If you have not done it five years ago speak to the person who's the naysayer I tried the challenge here is will first of all, just on a very basic and personal level.

I did not know any of my neighbors.

I knew a few by name. I could wave at them. We were friendly and now I cannot imagine not knowing these people and that will absolutely when you've attended funerals when you've attended births. When you are taking dinners down and praying over unit diagnoses and so it's the highs and lows all the celebrations but to me like you sure can go through life and skim on all of that and just have that surface level but once you've tasted that good bit of community and relationship.

It is so hard to go back to Kristin. This is so good you're really challenging us to be a good neighbor exactly what Jesus was challenging his disciples and followers to do as well. And folks, this is one of those resources that will really give you some practical ways that you can do this.

It's not overwhelming. It's not too much and the reward that comes back in the way of relationship and friendship. I think it'll make it all worth it.

As Kristin said five years. Looking back, I wouldn't do it any other way and I think that's fantastic Kristin. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you is my pleasure, and we hope that Kristin Schell has inspired reach out and to love your neighbor more intentionally and of course a great starting place is to get a copy of her book the turquoise table that will walk you through the process of kind of opening up your heart and your life to others.

We have copies of the book the turquoise table right here at Focus on the Family. And when you order from us. Those proceeds go right back in the ministry. So please consider getting a copy from us. In effect, will send a copy of the turquoise table to you as our thank you gift when you make a donation of any amount to Focus on the Family today support the ministry and will send that book to her number is 800 K in the word family 800-232-6459 four. Look for the contact information in the episode on behalf of Jim Daly in the entire team. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family I'm John Fuller inviting you back.

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