August 25, 2020 • 37 mins
What's the first thing you think when you get lousy service at a restaurant or at a hotel? Most of us are not happy, we're paying for service and expect to be treated like royalty! Today's guest on LOVE SOMEONE, Kevin Finch, of BIG TABLE is serving up some food for thought and reminding us that a healthy dose of compassion feeds the soul.
A once upon a time, pastor-by-day and food critic-by-night, Kevin, who spent a lot of time ministering to people, sensed a very great great need in the service industry - if you combine food service and hotel workers, this sector far exceeds any other organized work force in America. It's made up of some of the most vulnerable, at-risk people in our society. Low pay, long hours, crazy shifts, covered by at-risk teens, single parents, immigrant populations, and those who have served time... Barely living paycheck-to-paycheck with no guaranteed hours or benefits. It's a population plagued by addictions and circumstances beyond the comprehension of most of us who go out to dinner or on a vacation.
Kevin is working to fix this, flipping the script in a completely novel way. He's setting up his BIG TABLE (it's real and seats 48!) in communities like his home town of Spokane, Seattle and San Diego - and hoping to be in 10 cities across the country in 10 years. He serves those who serve us at his pop-up underground restaurant - and in daily conversations over cups of coffee. Whether it's much need transportation, supplies for a new baby, or educational assistance, you never know what might be dished up by BIG TABLE. Join us for one of the most fascinating stories I've heard in a loooong time! ~ Delilah
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Great ideas are born every minute, but rarely do they
actually come to fruition. But this one did. Welcome back
to love someone with Delilah. I have such a fun
story that I want you to feast on today. Pastor
(00:28):
Kevin Finch, a one time food editor and food critic
for a Spokane Washington magazine, was a trained observer. Over
the years of doing his work, the focus of his
attention became not only about the food that was set
before him, but also on those setting the food before him,
(00:53):
the chefs, the kitchen and waite staff, the hostess and
the bartenders. He wanted to know their stories, and we
want to know his. It started with an idea. Kevin
Finch wanted to invite all of those folks who are
normally busy working, sweating, frustrated, exhausted serving others. He wanted
(01:19):
them to sit down at a big table and enjoy
a meal made by some of the world's very best chefs,
served to them by those they normally cater to. First
things first, he had to get a custom table. A
custom table that seats forty eight was made. Kevin is
(01:40):
here with us today to tell us the whole story
why he serves who he serves and how he serves
at the Big Table. Right after, we give a moment
to our sponsor, our incredible sponsor who makes this podcast possible,
who could also help you make a really big table
if you decide to do that. This podcast is sponsored
(02:02):
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one place, the Home Depot. How doers get more done?
Welcome Kevin Finch. Thank you for spending some time with
(02:49):
us today to talk to us about the work of
the Big Table, mostly the work of your heart that
is translated into to the Big Table. That's I guess
that's true. Yes, great ideas are born every minute, but
rarely do they actually come to fruition. This one did
(03:12):
this is the first time my listeners have probably heard
about Big Table. Was the first time I heard about it.
My sister Diana, who is the producer of the podcast,
brought me the story and I said, whoa, this is amazing.
And I used to own a restaurant, so I know
firsthand how challenging it can be. What exactly is Big
(03:34):
Table and how is it being a blessing to others? Well? Um,
Big Table cares for those that work in crisis, where
a nonprofit cares for those in crisis who work in
restaurants and hotels, which is pretty much everybody who works
in restaurant and hotels right now. Absolutely, overnight in March,
(03:57):
the whole industry of shattered, top to bottom. So tell
me how how it started, how it was birthed, what
your vision was, and how you decided, Hey, you know what,
I want to be a blessing to those who are
constantly blessing others. How did that happen? Well? Um, I
in early two thousand's was moonlighting as a restaurant critic
(04:18):
in eastern Washington. My day job during that time was
I was a pastor in a church, and I've been
a pastor for about fifteen years. But no one who
knew me as a restaurant critic or a food writer
knew that I was a pastor. I was just the
guy who was writing restaurant reviews. As I was doing that,
(04:39):
my spiky sense and it took a couple of years,
but my spighty sense started to go off thinking that, gosh,
it seems like there's a higher percentage of folks in
crisis behind the smiles of folks who were in the
hospitality industry. And that wasn't just an overnight kind of
lightful It was a slow process of just going seems
(05:00):
like there's a lot of folks hurting here. Give us
some facts because I know some of the statistics about
the food industry. Yeah, highest grades of drug and alcohol
abuse of any industry in the nation. Um and first off,
at least pre COVID. It's by many counts, it would
be the largest industry in the nation when you put
(05:21):
restaurants and hotel workers together. So it's a huge group
of people. It's a group of people, a lot of
whom are in transition or coming out of crisis themselves
in other areas of their life. But because the industry, um,
there's no barriers to entry. If you're willing to work,
you can get a job. Um. The industry tends to
(05:43):
collect all of the folks who are kind of most vulnerable,
who are still able to work. So think at risk teams,
single parents, folks who were formerly incarcerated who can't get
a job anywhere else because of background checks, new immigrants
to the country who may not have a firm grasp
of English yet, income insecure seniors. We put all those
(06:07):
groups together, and it's not rocket science that this industry
would be the industry with the most crisis and need
in one place. So here you are a restaurant critics
sitting down to a plate of waffles and gravy or whatever,
and you're you're the pastor, and you the person that
(06:27):
loves people and loves God. Said, wait a minute. This
girl who's standing here smiling at me, handing up these
serving up these waffles, looks like she's been crying all
day long. Well, let me tell you one story, true story. UM.
I was with a friend who was has been part
of Big Table for many years too, and we went
(06:50):
out for sushi late night and the woman who was
serving us just did a horrible job of kind of
tracking our order, got our drink order wrong, And the
typical response of the customer is to kind of say,
what's wrong with this person? Um years of kind of
caring for the industry, who made me ask a different question?
(07:10):
When she came back to the table, I asked her,
are you all right? Are you okay? And her response
was to like freeze, and then she almost started to cry,
and then she literally ran away from the table without
saying anything. She left. When she came back, I asked
her again. I said, no, I really wanted to know
(07:32):
the answer to that question, and she said, I have
to go to court tomorrow to find out if I
have to go back to prison. And in that instance,
I realized I knew exactly why she messed up our
drink order. It wasn't because she was a bad server.
It was because the brokenness in her life had just
overwhelmed her and she was doing her very best just
(07:54):
to be in the restaurant that night. I think so
often as customers, we expect these folks, it's part of
the social contract to say, get me my food, get
it correct, and we forget that these are people. And
what Big Table has done is say I think this
is the place where there's the highest concentration in need
(08:16):
in the nation. We could care and do something about that.
And how did you start this? What was the first
step you took after you had that revelation? And that
must have felt like one of those, as Oprah calls them,
aha moments where God kind of part of the clouds
and let you see, this is the destiny I'm calling
you to. This is why you've gone through all this.
(08:39):
So Delilah, do you want the rotary version of the
story or do you want the past your version of
the story. I want the real version. I want your
heart version. I don't want an edited I don't want
to Well, I gotta talk to my audience. I want
to know how that happened. Yeah, all right, Well I'll
give you the real version. So I noticed all these statistics.
(09:01):
I'd realized that there was a sense that it was
kind of a little of a kind of an Emperor's
new clothes moment for me, when I realized that there
was so much need concentrated in this industry, and I
researched it and even looked at the I R. S
website and realized because my goal wasn't to start an
organization or to start a movement. My goal was to
(09:23):
just avoid a little bit of my personal guilt. So
I was looking for an organization that was already caring
for the industry online that I could give to. And
I couldn't find anything. This is two thousand and six,
and there were a million and a half nonprofits registered
with the i r S. Not a single one out
of a million and a half was caring for the
(09:44):
largest industry in the nation, with the highest risk factors.
It just made no sense whatsoever. But I was a pastor.
I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur, so I
just didn't know what to do. But I was asleep.
This is the fall of two thousand and six. I
was asleep. The family was all gone, so I was
(10:06):
all by myself in the home the middle of the night,
about two in the morning, I went from completely asleep
to fully wide awake instantly, And it was so abrupt
that I got out of bed and walked to the
foot of the bed in the dark, listening for what
had woken me up. And I thought maybe the doorbell
had run, maybe a window it broke. Someone was trying
to get into the house, and I just was standing
(10:27):
there in the dark, listening for what had woken me
app and I heard a voice. Um. I don't know
if it was in my head or it was allowed
in the room, but the boy said, Kevin, I need
a pastor for the restaurant industry. Are you interested? And
it was a statement and then a question, and I
knew I had to say something, UM, so I said yeah.
(10:51):
But then I asked the question myself, and I said,
what would that look like? And the reason I asked
the question was after five years of moonlight as a
restaurant critic, any time anyone in the industry found out
I was a food critic or a writer, everyone wanted
to talk to me. But the instant anyone asked what
else I did, and they found out that I was
(11:12):
a pastor. It was the end of the conversation. In
I could clear a table in thirty seconds. It was
like cockroaches when you turn on a light at just instantly,
no one wanted to talk to you. So in the
middle of the night, I felt like I had just
been offered a job that was a guaranteed failure, to
be a pastor to an industry that didn't want a pastor,
(11:34):
so I said, what would that look like? And again
not sure what the physics of this word, but in
a pitch flak bedroom, I saw a Bible that was
open to acts chapter two in the New Testament, which
is a passage where Luke describes the early Church forming initially.
(11:54):
And as I'm reading a passage of scripture that I
don't think physically existed on a page that didn't physically exist,
two phrases jumped out at me. The first was they
ate together, and the second one was they took care
of each other. And then the voice said, well, that's
how you had passed through this group of people. And
(12:15):
then the voice was gone, the Bible was gone. I
was just in a black room again, and I wasn't
sure what had just happened, but I knew it was important.
So I went downstairs and turned on a light and
wrote down everything I could remember. The really cool part
of Big Table is that's exactly what we do. We
create community around shared meals and over cups of coffee,
(12:39):
and then we care for books without any strings attached.
And it really is amazing. I'm speechless, speechless and in
awe and how cool is that it's well for me. UM,
it's where you started. A lot of great ideas happened.
Rarely do they come to fruition. And I also say
(13:03):
that there's no way I could have done this. People go,
how did you have the guts to do that? And
it was in the middle of the last procession that
this started, which is a horrible time to start a
nonprofit UM in the middle of recession. Other than that's
exactly when nonprofits are most needed, because who hurts the most.
It's the folks who are kind of on the bottom
(13:25):
runs of the ladder, who don't have resources. But such
an incredible team, and I would say God has brought
together with the skills that I don't have to make
this what it is. How many people on the Big
Table team? First off, who made the Big table? Because
I heard it it seems like fifty people. Forty eight people.
(13:45):
Forty eight people. Yeah, it's cheaps, forty eight people. Um.
There was a local architect in town that we approached
and said, we have no money, we want to make
a really cool table, could you design one? And basically
it came up with a design where I went to
home depot and we bolted together two by four's on
edge and then put legs on it, and then different
(14:09):
sections enough to see forty eight people. It was so
heavy that anyone that tried to pick the thing up
needed to see the chiropractor the next day, so we've
had to re engineered over the years. But it's this
very fun, very simple table. We had a small dinner
for some restaurant owners last night with four sections of it,
(14:30):
and then there's a separate table that we built for
our Big Table team in Seattle, and a separate one
for San Diego, which is our third location. Where are
they stored? Where do you keep them? Like? Where where
does this happen? So the Big Table dinners function kind
of like an underground restaurant, so we pop up all
over town. We've done them in barns in agricultural districts.
(14:52):
We've done them in banquet halls. We've done them outside
in backyards. How do you move this thing? It breaks
down into sections. Um. That was one of the instructions
we gave to the architect originally, is we've got to
be able to move this thing from location to location.
So it all breaks down, But it's so fun. The
pictures of the dinners are just amazing. The one in
(15:15):
Spokane lives in a kind of a horse trailer, the
one in Seattle lives in a refrigerator truck, and the
one in San Diego lives in kind of a storage
facility and we just pick it up for each dinner
in the back of a pickup truck. Wow. How fun.
How many of these Big Table meals do you average
a year in each city? We do three to four um,
(15:39):
where it's bringing the community together, but day in and
day out, which is kind of really what our heart
is is that what we're doing is caring for folks,
and some of those are people that were guests at
the dinner. Many of the people that come to the
dinner then would refer someone else that they know that's
in trouble. And initially all of the referrals came from
(16:02):
a dinner where someone would put down on a three
by five card, here's someone that needs help. But the
referral piece is one of the most unique things about
Big Table that we just stumbled onto that we I
don't feel like I can take credit for. But when
I was a pastor, there was a stream of folks
who would come in the doors of the churches that
I served, since they were kind of center city churches
(16:23):
asking for help. All of those people needed help. Very
few of those people needed the help that they were
asking for. What they were doing was kind of working
the system, and whether our church said yes or said no,
they would go to the next church with the same story,
or go to the next social service agency. So you're
talking about people who would come and say, I'm being
(16:45):
evicted from my apartment and I need a thousand dollars
to pay my rent. And if you said yes to
the request, you knew that all you were doing is
prolonging the addiction. And if you said no, you felt
like a bad person because they're going to be out
on the street. Absolutely, And so when I started Big Table,
(17:05):
I was saying, how do we not create a cycle
of dependency for folks who are right on the edge.
And the very first dinner that we did, I thought, gosh, um,
just as I was walking out the door, I grabbed
the stack at three by five cards and brought them
along to the dinner and then just handed them out
(17:25):
to the people who were in the industry that we're
sitting at the table and asked them who do you
know that's hurting that we could care for. Uh. What
has happened is that's developed into a system where all
of our referrals come from someone who knows a person.
It could be a person who just eats in a
restaurant who has gotten to know a server like you mentioned.
(17:46):
It could be a coworker, it could be a manager
or an owner who sees someone who's starting to spire
a lot of control. But what that does is it
gets us to the folks most in need rather than
the folks who are most vocal or who are working
the system, And it totally changes the dynamic of how
(18:07):
we care for people because they're not asking us for help,
which is really hard for people to do in most cases,
We're reaching out to them and just saying a friend
of yours said that you're going through a tough time.
We would love to see if there's a way we
could help, which completely changes the dynamic of the relationship
(18:28):
from that first phone call. And how many people on
an average a year do you think your your ministry
is touching? Again that COVID has totally skewed that because
it's just been a tidal wave of need through the
pandemic as people lost their jobs. Essentially the whole industry
(18:48):
lost their jobs, and most of the restaurant groups and
hotel groups they laid off anywhere from their employees within
a couple of weeks. I wish I had the numbers
right in front of me right now. But in each
city we're impacting between three and five family units with
kind of ongoing mentoring care. And the goal would be
(19:13):
at the end of ten years, with ten cities across
the country, that's our vision to be impacting five thousand
people a year directly, and then by extension that's twenty
thou people in terms of the kind of ripple effect
for those families. So where does Big Table get funding
to be able to say, listen, you know we can
put you over an apartment or do you say, hey,
(19:34):
move into my house. How do you do that? Um?
A lot of the funding, the first a lot of
the original funding came from folks who just knew me.
Um So folks from the church that I left, or
people who knew me that I shared the story with.
Often these would be people who love to eat out
or love to travel and go, oh my gosh, I
(19:55):
didn't realize there was such a need. Um a number
of those people will give to us monthly. Also, we
get money from businesses that are connected to the restaurant
hospitality industry who realized that we're caring for the people
that keep them in business. That would be the food
supply companies like Cisco and US Foods and Performance Food
(20:15):
Group in different parts of the country, or bar garin Ellingson,
which in the Seattle area and in other parts of
the country is one of the major restaurants suppliers. So
it's companies like that that give restaurant groups where we
start to care for their employees and they go, oh,
my goodness, how can we help. I've never come across
(20:36):
the more generous group of people than the folks who
work in restaurants and hotels. In a lot of ways,
they put many of the folks from the faith community
to shame in terms of how generous they are. If
someone's rent is due today and my rent isn't due
till tomorrow and they don't have enough money, it's amazing
how many people say, hey, here, I'll help you pay
(20:58):
your rent and hope that someone will do the same
for me tomorrow. I just it's amazing, and so it's
so fun to care for those kinds of people. So
give me a story, Share a story or two some
of your favorites. I know, yeah, you won't share real
names for anonymity reasons, but some of the stories of
people whose lives have been impacted either by sitting around
(21:20):
the big table or simply by association with the big table.
I've got so many stories. Let me do a short one.
Just recently, our director in San Diego, Jesse, just got
to deliver a huge care package to a family that
English would be the second language, Spanish would be their
(21:40):
first language. Um, the father and the family. When they
came out to deliver all these gift cards and things
to just help this family get through the next couple
of months, he literally said, I have nothing to give
you to thank you, but could my family and I
pray for you. And so his gift back was to
(22:03):
pray for Jesse and our team, and our whole team
ended up crying at that. Let me tell you though,
maybe one of my favorite stories is the story of Nicole,
and she's given me permission to use her name. She
was a single mom three little kids, interviewed as a
bartender at an event venue in Spokane. She was given
(22:27):
the job. As she was leaving, the manager who had
just hired her saw her outside trying to push her
car out of the parking spot and went out and said, Uh, Nicole,
are you okay? And she goes, oh, yeah, it's my car.
It doesn't have reverse, so anytime I parked in the spot,
I have to push it out. So she helped her
push her out and noticed that it was also a
(22:49):
convertible and Nicole goes, oh, yeah, the top doesn't go up,
so anytime it rains or snows, which happens fairly regularly
in Spokane, the car turned into a bathtub. This is
a single mom with this kind of car, and so Desiree.
The manager called me as Nicole was driving off and
sent Kevin, I just hired a bartender. Could Big Table
(23:13):
provide a car for her? At that point we had
almost no money? But my answer in the situation, of
course we can, right well, I said, let me see
what I can do. Uh. Literally forty eight hours later
I got a phone call from Seattle, someone who knew
(23:35):
about Big Table said Hey, Kevin, I've got a car
I want to donate. Is there any chance Big Table
could use it, and so I got to fly over
to Seattle drive the car back, and a week later
we got to show up at Nicole's house to give
her this car, and she comes running out the front
door with her three little kids, and her oldest son said, hey, mom,
(23:58):
try our try are and see if it works. And
so the four of them piled into the car, backed
up three ft and then drove forward three ft. That
was the beginning of the story with Nicole. But the
really why I love the story so much is two
years later Nicole told me, she said, Kevin, you know
(24:21):
that car that you gave us allowed me to stay
in school, get the kids to school, continue to work.
But I would have traded that car in an instant
for the chance to have been in relationship with you.
That's what changed my life. And that's our whole premise
with the table is what changes our lives. Isn't a
(24:42):
rent payment that keeps us from getting it. It isn't
It isn't a new tooth. Those things are critical and important,
But what changes people's lives as relationships. It's to maybe
use some of what I hear from your podcast, it's love,
it's reaching out and caring for someone and be willing
to enter a person's life and stay there. And that's hard.
(25:05):
People don't understand how hard that is, because when you're
entering into somebody's life who's broken, who suffered trauma, who
suffered abuse, oftentimes they're abusive and and they're broken, and
it's messy. Love is so stink and messy it is.
And I can't tell you how many of our care
(25:26):
coordinators is what we call them, with these folks will
set up appointments to meet with them, to sit in
the copy shop, and no one shows up, not because
their intentions aren't good, it's just because their lives are
in such champs, so let's reschedule and do it next week.
And it's I think, in some ways what love looks like,
(25:47):
what relationship looks like, is just continuing to show up
for people. And so many of the folks in this
industry whose lives are so broken have never had someone
who was willing to keep showing up. Um. And that's
what Big tables about is continue to show up for
them and ask good questions, ask challenging questions, but communicate
(26:11):
that the reason we're asking those is because we love them.
That's what love is. It is and I think that's
where God shows up. And I think that's where we
as people are our best selves is when we are
willing to make space for someone else rather than just
try to kind of protect our own little piece of property.
(26:34):
But our our world is so counter that, our world
is so society, you know, social media, TikTok, you name it,
basically tells us that it's all about us. It's all
about the selfies, it's all about how much you can amass,
it's all about how good you look. And there's very
little encouragement to show up and to do the heavy lifting,
(26:55):
to lift a heavy table for goodness sakes. That's what
people remember though. Um, if you ask most people where
their best memories of community are, they're going to say
it's around a table. One of the fun things I
love is when people look at our big table logo.
It's got a bottle of wine and a loaf of
bread sitting on a table. And anyone who's been a
(27:17):
part either currently or in the past, has had some
connection to Christian faith, looks at that and goes that
kind of looks a little bit like communion. Um, anyone
in the restaurant and hospitality industry who has no connection
to faith, says, that looks like a party. And if
we can be a place where real community and communion happens,
(27:39):
and we can create a party, that's where people's lives
get changed and we have some fun in the process.
Fishes and loaves. I told a friend who was an
atheist who I was talking to about the table, I said, look,
here's the deal. If God exists, I think this table
(28:00):
is exactly the kind of place where God would show up.
If God doesn't exist, we're going to have an amazing
meal with all kinds of people who maybe have never
eaten food like this before. And then we're going to
care for folks who are in crisis. Where's the downside
of that? And she looked across the table and that
(28:22):
I don't see one, which one of the joys of
what we do is we truly care for everyone. And
I make it very clear that there's not a hidden
agenda of faith. If you want to have a conversation
about God, nothing would honor me more. But if you
want nothing to do with God, if you've been burned
(28:42):
or hurt by religion, you are completely welcome at this
table because everyone is, and how can somebody get involved
as somebody's listening and says, oh, my gosh, I was
a server years ago. Oh my gosh, I remember when
I was washing dishes. I mean I had a job
at Posy's Bakery when I was fifteen years old, washing
(29:03):
dishes in the back room. And how can somebody step
up and say, oh, pick me. I want to help,
I wanna, I want to donate, I want to provide.
I want to be the person who steps in when
the world steps out. Well, the simplest place to start
would be to get to our website and reach out
to us. We've got some amazing resources that are not
(29:26):
limited to the cities where Big Table has a care
team in place, that anyone anywhere in the country, anywhere
in the world, can immediately begin to do. We've got
something called Unexpected Twenties, which are little tip envelopes that
we can send to people, or we've even got a
template on the website. You can print it out and
make it yourself at home with your kids. The idea
(29:48):
is you put a twenty dollar bill in that and
the next time you're in a restaurant, you're in a hotel,
you're going through a drive through, you just hand that
to a person and say this is a gift. It's
not a tip. Make sure you look inside the little
envelope says a gift, strings attached. And it's amazing what
(30:09):
that does, not only for the person who's working minimum
wage who gets a twenty dollar bill that they didn't
expect um. We've had people say, this allows me to
get home tonight. I had no way to get home
to pay for my bus. But what it does for
the person who hands it out is it allows them
to see people that were invisible to them before. Little
(30:32):
kids have so much fun trying to figure out who
to give it to in a restaurant, in a hotel,
or it's just so much fun. And we've got a
whole list of ideas like that that we can share
with anyone about. Here's what you can do today, tomorrow,
for the rest of your life, wherever you're at. Because
what we're interested in is not growing Big Table as
an organization. We want this to become a movement. There's
(30:55):
no way we could hire enough people to care for
the largest industry in the nation with the highest rates
of vulnerability. But if we challenge people to be a
part of this wherever they're at. We could change that nationwide.
Where do folks go to find all this out, to
find these tips, to find out how they can participate.
(31:17):
It's Big dash Table dot com. That's the website, and
we would love to strike up a conversation with anyone
that wants to be a part of the movement and
care for folks, many of whom would probably be the
most vulnerable people in each of our communities. But because
they have smiles on their faces, no one notices Big
dash Table dot com. If you have ever worked in
(31:42):
the food industry, if you have ever been served by
somebody in the food or hotel industry, if you've ever
stayed in a hotel room where somebody served you, if
you ever went through and drive through. I mean, every
human being I think in our country has been blessed
and touched by this industry that, as you say, has
(32:07):
a lot of heartache. So I would do that resonate
with you from you said you owned a restaurant at
one point, Oh my gosh, I owned a restaurant. But
because we were kind of the big table in the community, Uh,
it became which I was happy about it just became
a vehicle for people to gather and be blessed. Unfortunately,
(32:27):
we we were giving away far more food than we
were selling, and after three or four years, my accountant said, dum,
you can't sustain this, and so it you know, it
was no more. But oh my goodness. We had a
piano in the restaurant and so people would just come
in off the street and start playing, and so many people.
(32:49):
I mean, one story, I'll never forget it. An elderly
woman was having her birthday party there and she seems
so sad, and I was waiting to bulls and and I,
you know, tried to cheer her up, and she just
looked so broken. And one of her girlfriends pulled me
aside and said, it's her birthday, but she just lost
her husband a few days ago, and so we're just
(33:11):
trying to lift her spirits. So I asked her, when
I served her desert her birthday cake, can I pray
for you? And we had a quick prayer, and she said,
my stepson, his son is evicting me from the house
that we shared together and I've got no place to go. Ye.
(33:33):
I was dumbfounded. I was speechless. I'm like, what happened
to care for the orphans and the widows? What? I'm like, this, no,
your this cannot be possible. So I call my husband.
I'm like, we gotta we gotta take this lady into
our house. And he's like, okay, well, find we'll make space.
And as God would have it, somebody in her family
(33:55):
and NI stepped up and said no, no, we're going
to take her, and they moved her out of state.
But that was like a daily occurrence. Somebody would come
in that had that level of trauma and heartache, right, yeah. Well,
and what we've certainly seen is that's true in the industry.
And I mentioned that any time anyone found out I
(34:17):
was a pastor in the restaurant industry, no one would
talk to me. I went to a woman who was
a server after that happened multiple times, and I said,
who I knew she was a Christian. I knew she
was a server. I said, Annie, why is it that
no one will talk to me when they find out
I'm a pastor? And she goes, oh, that's easy, she said,
is a server? I hate Christians. They're the most demanding
(34:39):
customers that walk into the restaurant are the stingiest tippers
that ever sit at my table, and they take the
tables for too long, often to study the Bible. We
beg not to work on Sundays, it's the worst shift
of the week. And she is a Christian herself. And
obviously there are people of faith that that's not true for,
but they don't tend to be the ones who announced
(35:00):
that they're a Christian. They just live differently. Yeah, and
so for so many folks that work in the industry
who work weekends and nights and have no connection to
the church, the biggest hypocrites they see are folks that
they would connect to Christianity. So, um, if you look
at our website, there's not a lot about faith up there,
(35:21):
because we want to care for everyone and not put
any barriers in front of them. Folks that we're caring for,
and if that's going to be a barrier, let's just
love them straight up. And then if and when they
want to talk about deeper things, it's a privilege to
have that conversation. But if we can care for them first,
that's what we want to do. So Big dash Table
(35:44):
dot Com gonna send folks there, and I pray that
your ministry is blessed to be able to serve as
many people as are hurting, which is a big order. Well,
it's it's such a privilege to do it, um and
it's so much fun to care for people who, some
of them have never had someone tell them they're worth anything,
get to just say you are, You're of infinite value.
(36:08):
So I love what we get to do. Thanks for
taking time to talk to me about it. Thank you,
thank you, thank you, thank you. I've always been told
the fastest way to someone's hearts is through their stomach.
Kevin must have heard that too. He's feeding many, many,
many needs at his Big Table, and it all started
(36:29):
with a great idea that he cooked up one day.
Here's another great idea. Go to www dot big dash
table dot com, big dash table dot com and learn
how you can become involved in this worthwhile organization. There
seems to always be room for more helpers at the
(36:51):
Big Table. Den I know
Great ideas are born every minute, but rarely do they
actually come to fruition. But this one did. Welcome back
to love someone with Delilah. I have such a fun
story that I want you to feast on today. Pastor
(00:28):
Kevin Finch, a one time food editor and food critic
for a Spokane Washington magazine, was a trained observer. Over
the years of doing his work, the focus of his
attention became not only about the food that was set
before him, but also on those setting the food before him,
(00:53):
the chefs, the kitchen and waite staff, the hostess and
the bartenders. He wanted to know their stories, and we
want to know his. It started with an idea. Kevin
Finch wanted to invite all of those folks who are
normally busy working, sweating, frustrated, exhausted serving others. He wanted
(01:19):
them to sit down at a big table and enjoy
a meal made by some of the world's very best chefs,
served to them by those they normally cater to. First
things first, he had to get a custom table. A
custom table that seats forty eight was made. Kevin is
(01:40):
here with us today to tell us the whole story
why he serves who he serves and how he serves
at the Big Table. Right after, we give a moment
to our sponsor, our incredible sponsor who makes this podcast possible,
who could also help you make a really big table
if you decide to do that. This podcast is sponsored
(02:02):
by our friends at the Home Depot. It's where the
people who love to be organized are flocking to this month.
After all, it's the Home Depots Pack, store and save event.
The Home Depot has a line on exclusive h d
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(02:26):
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one place, the Home Depot. How doers get more done?
Welcome Kevin Finch. Thank you for spending some time with
(02:49):
us today to talk to us about the work of
the Big Table, mostly the work of your heart that
is translated into to the Big Table. That's I guess
that's true. Yes, great ideas are born every minute, but
rarely do they actually come to fruition. This one did
(03:12):
this is the first time my listeners have probably heard
about Big Table. Was the first time I heard about it.
My sister Diana, who is the producer of the podcast,
brought me the story and I said, whoa, this is amazing.
And I used to own a restaurant, so I know
firsthand how challenging it can be. What exactly is Big
(03:34):
Table and how is it being a blessing to others? Well? Um,
Big Table cares for those that work in crisis, where
a nonprofit cares for those in crisis who work in
restaurants and hotels, which is pretty much everybody who works
in restaurant and hotels right now. Absolutely, overnight in March,
(03:57):
the whole industry of shattered, top to bottom. So tell
me how how it started, how it was birthed, what
your vision was, and how you decided, Hey, you know what,
I want to be a blessing to those who are
constantly blessing others. How did that happen? Well? Um, I
in early two thousand's was moonlighting as a restaurant critic
(04:18):
in eastern Washington. My day job during that time was
I was a pastor in a church, and I've been
a pastor for about fifteen years. But no one who
knew me as a restaurant critic or a food writer
knew that I was a pastor. I was just the
guy who was writing restaurant reviews. As I was doing that,
(04:39):
my spiky sense and it took a couple of years,
but my spighty sense started to go off thinking that, gosh,
it seems like there's a higher percentage of folks in
crisis behind the smiles of folks who were in the
hospitality industry. And that wasn't just an overnight kind of
lightful It was a slow process of just going seems
(05:00):
like there's a lot of folks hurting here. Give us
some facts because I know some of the statistics about
the food industry. Yeah, highest grades of drug and alcohol
abuse of any industry in the nation. Um and first off,
at least pre COVID. It's by many counts, it would
be the largest industry in the nation when you put
(05:21):
restaurants and hotel workers together. So it's a huge group
of people. It's a group of people, a lot of
whom are in transition or coming out of crisis themselves
in other areas of their life. But because the industry, um,
there's no barriers to entry. If you're willing to work,
you can get a job. Um. The industry tends to
(05:43):
collect all of the folks who are kind of most vulnerable,
who are still able to work. So think at risk teams,
single parents, folks who were formerly incarcerated who can't get
a job anywhere else because of background checks, new immigrants
to the country who may not have a firm grasp
of English yet, income insecure seniors. We put all those
(06:07):
groups together, and it's not rocket science that this industry
would be the industry with the most crisis and need
in one place. So here you are a restaurant critics
sitting down to a plate of waffles and gravy or whatever,
and you're you're the pastor, and you the person that
(06:27):
loves people and loves God. Said, wait a minute. This
girl who's standing here smiling at me, handing up these
serving up these waffles, looks like she's been crying all
day long. Well, let me tell you one story, true story. UM.
I was with a friend who was has been part
of Big Table for many years too, and we went
(06:50):
out for sushi late night and the woman who was
serving us just did a horrible job of kind of
tracking our order, got our drink order wrong, And the
typical response of the customer is to kind of say,
what's wrong with this person? Um years of kind of
caring for the industry, who made me ask a different question?
(07:10):
When she came back to the table, I asked her,
are you all right? Are you okay? And her response
was to like freeze, and then she almost started to cry,
and then she literally ran away from the table without
saying anything. She left. When she came back, I asked
her again. I said, no, I really wanted to know
(07:32):
the answer to that question, and she said, I have
to go to court tomorrow to find out if I
have to go back to prison. And in that instance,
I realized I knew exactly why she messed up our
drink order. It wasn't because she was a bad server.
It was because the brokenness in her life had just
overwhelmed her and she was doing her very best just
(07:54):
to be in the restaurant that night. I think so
often as customers, we expect these folks, it's part of
the social contract to say, get me my food, get
it correct, and we forget that these are people. And
what Big Table has done is say I think this
is the place where there's the highest concentration in need
(08:16):
in the nation. We could care and do something about that.
And how did you start this? What was the first
step you took after you had that revelation? And that
must have felt like one of those, as Oprah calls them,
aha moments where God kind of part of the clouds
and let you see, this is the destiny I'm calling
you to. This is why you've gone through all this.
(08:39):
So Delilah, do you want the rotary version of the
story or do you want the past your version of
the story. I want the real version. I want your
heart version. I don't want an edited I don't want
to Well, I gotta talk to my audience. I want
to know how that happened. Yeah, all right, Well I'll
give you the real version. So I noticed all these statistics.
(09:01):
I'd realized that there was a sense that it was
kind of a little of a kind of an Emperor's
new clothes moment for me, when I realized that there
was so much need concentrated in this industry, and I
researched it and even looked at the I R. S
website and realized because my goal wasn't to start an
organization or to start a movement. My goal was to
(09:23):
just avoid a little bit of my personal guilt. So
I was looking for an organization that was already caring
for the industry online that I could give to. And
I couldn't find anything. This is two thousand and six,
and there were a million and a half nonprofits registered
with the i r S. Not a single one out
of a million and a half was caring for the
(09:44):
largest industry in the nation, with the highest risk factors.
It just made no sense whatsoever. But I was a pastor.
I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur, so I
just didn't know what to do. But I was asleep.
This is the fall of two thousand and six. I
was asleep. The family was all gone, so I was
(10:06):
all by myself in the home the middle of the night,
about two in the morning, I went from completely asleep
to fully wide awake instantly, And it was so abrupt
that I got out of bed and walked to the
foot of the bed in the dark, listening for what
had woken me up. And I thought maybe the doorbell
had run, maybe a window it broke. Someone was trying
to get into the house, and I just was standing
(10:27):
there in the dark, listening for what had woken me
app and I heard a voice. Um. I don't know
if it was in my head or it was allowed
in the room, but the boy said, Kevin, I need
a pastor for the restaurant industry. Are you interested? And
it was a statement and then a question, and I
knew I had to say something, UM, so I said yeah.
(10:51):
But then I asked the question myself, and I said,
what would that look like? And the reason I asked
the question was after five years of moonlight as a
restaurant critic, any time anyone in the industry found out
I was a food critic or a writer, everyone wanted
to talk to me. But the instant anyone asked what
else I did, and they found out that I was
(11:12):
a pastor. It was the end of the conversation. In
I could clear a table in thirty seconds. It was
like cockroaches when you turn on a light at just instantly,
no one wanted to talk to you. So in the
middle of the night, I felt like I had just
been offered a job that was a guaranteed failure, to
be a pastor to an industry that didn't want a pastor,
(11:34):
so I said, what would that look like? And again
not sure what the physics of this word, but in
a pitch flak bedroom, I saw a Bible that was
open to acts chapter two in the New Testament, which
is a passage where Luke describes the early Church forming initially.
(11:54):
And as I'm reading a passage of scripture that I
don't think physically existed on a page that didn't physically exist,
two phrases jumped out at me. The first was they
ate together, and the second one was they took care
of each other. And then the voice said, well, that's
how you had passed through this group of people. And
(12:15):
then the voice was gone, the Bible was gone. I
was just in a black room again, and I wasn't
sure what had just happened, but I knew it was important.
So I went downstairs and turned on a light and
wrote down everything I could remember. The really cool part
of Big Table is that's exactly what we do. We
create community around shared meals and over cups of coffee,
(12:39):
and then we care for books without any strings attached.
And it really is amazing. I'm speechless, speechless and in
awe and how cool is that it's well for me. UM,
it's where you started. A lot of great ideas happened.
Rarely do they come to fruition. And I also say
(13:03):
that there's no way I could have done this. People go,
how did you have the guts to do that? And
it was in the middle of the last procession that
this started, which is a horrible time to start a
nonprofit UM in the middle of recession. Other than that's
exactly when nonprofits are most needed, because who hurts the most.
It's the folks who are kind of on the bottom
(13:25):
runs of the ladder, who don't have resources. But such
an incredible team, and I would say God has brought
together with the skills that I don't have to make
this what it is. How many people on the Big
Table team? First off, who made the Big table? Because
I heard it it seems like fifty people. Forty eight people.
(13:45):
Forty eight people. Yeah, it's cheaps, forty eight people. Um.
There was a local architect in town that we approached
and said, we have no money, we want to make
a really cool table, could you design one? And basically
it came up with a design where I went to
home depot and we bolted together two by four's on
edge and then put legs on it, and then different
(14:09):
sections enough to see forty eight people. It was so
heavy that anyone that tried to pick the thing up
needed to see the chiropractor the next day, so we've
had to re engineered over the years. But it's this
very fun, very simple table. We had a small dinner
for some restaurant owners last night with four sections of it,
(14:30):
and then there's a separate table that we built for
our Big Table team in Seattle, and a separate one
for San Diego, which is our third location. Where are
they stored? Where do you keep them? Like? Where where
does this happen? So the Big Table dinners function kind
of like an underground restaurant, so we pop up all
over town. We've done them in barns in agricultural districts.
(14:52):
We've done them in banquet halls. We've done them outside
in backyards. How do you move this thing? It breaks
down into sections. Um. That was one of the instructions
we gave to the architect originally, is we've got to
be able to move this thing from location to location.
So it all breaks down, But it's so fun. The
pictures of the dinners are just amazing. The one in
(15:15):
Spokane lives in a kind of a horse trailer, the
one in Seattle lives in a refrigerator truck, and the
one in San Diego lives in kind of a storage
facility and we just pick it up for each dinner
in the back of a pickup truck. Wow. How fun.
How many of these Big Table meals do you average
a year in each city? We do three to four um,
(15:39):
where it's bringing the community together, but day in and
day out, which is kind of really what our heart
is is that what we're doing is caring for folks,
and some of those are people that were guests at
the dinner. Many of the people that come to the
dinner then would refer someone else that they know that's
in trouble. And initially all of the referrals came from
(16:02):
a dinner where someone would put down on a three
by five card, here's someone that needs help. But the
referral piece is one of the most unique things about
Big Table that we just stumbled onto that we I
don't feel like I can take credit for. But when
I was a pastor, there was a stream of folks
who would come in the doors of the churches that
I served, since they were kind of center city churches
(16:23):
asking for help. All of those people needed help. Very
few of those people needed the help that they were
asking for. What they were doing was kind of working
the system, and whether our church said yes or said no,
they would go to the next church with the same story,
or go to the next social service agency. So you're
talking about people who would come and say, I'm being
(16:45):
evicted from my apartment and I need a thousand dollars
to pay my rent. And if you said yes to
the request, you knew that all you were doing is
prolonging the addiction. And if you said no, you felt
like a bad person because they're going to be out
on the street. Absolutely, And so when I started Big Table,
(17:05):
I was saying, how do we not create a cycle
of dependency for folks who are right on the edge.
And the very first dinner that we did, I thought, gosh, um,
just as I was walking out the door, I grabbed
the stack at three by five cards and brought them
along to the dinner and then just handed them out
(17:25):
to the people who were in the industry that we're
sitting at the table and asked them who do you
know that's hurting that we could care for. Uh. What
has happened is that's developed into a system where all
of our referrals come from someone who knows a person.
It could be a person who just eats in a
restaurant who has gotten to know a server like you mentioned.
(17:46):
It could be a coworker, it could be a manager
or an owner who sees someone who's starting to spire
a lot of control. But what that does is it
gets us to the folks most in need rather than
the folks who are most vocal or who are working
the system, And it totally changes the dynamic of how
(18:07):
we care for people because they're not asking us for help,
which is really hard for people to do in most cases,
We're reaching out to them and just saying a friend
of yours said that you're going through a tough time.
We would love to see if there's a way we
could help, which completely changes the dynamic of the relationship
(18:28):
from that first phone call. And how many people on
an average a year do you think your your ministry
is touching? Again that COVID has totally skewed that because
it's just been a tidal wave of need through the
pandemic as people lost their jobs. Essentially the whole industry
(18:48):
lost their jobs, and most of the restaurant groups and
hotel groups they laid off anywhere from their employees within
a couple of weeks. I wish I had the numbers
right in front of me right now. But in each
city we're impacting between three and five family units with
kind of ongoing mentoring care. And the goal would be
(19:13):
at the end of ten years, with ten cities across
the country, that's our vision to be impacting five thousand
people a year directly, and then by extension that's twenty
thou people in terms of the kind of ripple effect
for those families. So where does Big Table get funding
to be able to say, listen, you know we can
put you over an apartment or do you say, hey,
(19:34):
move into my house. How do you do that? Um?
A lot of the funding, the first a lot of
the original funding came from folks who just knew me.
Um So folks from the church that I left, or
people who knew me that I shared the story with.
Often these would be people who love to eat out
or love to travel and go, oh my gosh, I
(19:55):
didn't realize there was such a need. Um a number
of those people will give to us monthly. Also, we
get money from businesses that are connected to the restaurant
hospitality industry who realized that we're caring for the people
that keep them in business. That would be the food
supply companies like Cisco and US Foods and Performance Food
(20:15):
Group in different parts of the country, or bar garin Ellingson,
which in the Seattle area and in other parts of
the country is one of the major restaurants suppliers. So
it's companies like that that give restaurant groups where we
start to care for their employees and they go, oh,
my goodness, how can we help. I've never come across
(20:36):
the more generous group of people than the folks who
work in restaurants and hotels. In a lot of ways,
they put many of the folks from the faith community
to shame in terms of how generous they are. If
someone's rent is due today and my rent isn't due
till tomorrow and they don't have enough money, it's amazing
how many people say, hey, here, I'll help you pay
(20:58):
your rent and hope that someone will do the same
for me tomorrow. I just it's amazing, and so it's
so fun to care for those kinds of people. So
give me a story, Share a story or two some
of your favorites. I know, yeah, you won't share real
names for anonymity reasons, but some of the stories of
people whose lives have been impacted either by sitting around
(21:20):
the big table or simply by association with the big table.
I've got so many stories. Let me do a short one.
Just recently, our director in San Diego, Jesse, just got
to deliver a huge care package to a family that
English would be the second language, Spanish would be their
(21:40):
first language. Um, the father and the family. When they
came out to deliver all these gift cards and things
to just help this family get through the next couple
of months, he literally said, I have nothing to give
you to thank you, but could my family and I
pray for you. And so his gift back was to
(22:03):
pray for Jesse and our team, and our whole team
ended up crying at that. Let me tell you though,
maybe one of my favorite stories is the story of Nicole,
and she's given me permission to use her name. She
was a single mom three little kids, interviewed as a
bartender at an event venue in Spokane. She was given
(22:27):
the job. As she was leaving, the manager who had
just hired her saw her outside trying to push her
car out of the parking spot and went out and said, Uh, Nicole,
are you okay? And she goes, oh, yeah, it's my car.
It doesn't have reverse, so anytime I parked in the spot,
I have to push it out. So she helped her
push her out and noticed that it was also a
(22:49):
convertible and Nicole goes, oh, yeah, the top doesn't go up,
so anytime it rains or snows, which happens fairly regularly
in Spokane, the car turned into a bathtub. This is
a single mom with this kind of car, and so Desiree.
The manager called me as Nicole was driving off and
sent Kevin, I just hired a bartender. Could Big Table
(23:13):
provide a car for her? At that point we had
almost no money? But my answer in the situation, of
course we can, right well, I said, let me see
what I can do. Uh. Literally forty eight hours later
I got a phone call from Seattle, someone who knew
(23:35):
about Big Table said Hey, Kevin, I've got a car
I want to donate. Is there any chance Big Table
could use it, and so I got to fly over
to Seattle drive the car back, and a week later
we got to show up at Nicole's house to give
her this car, and she comes running out the front
door with her three little kids, and her oldest son said, hey, mom,
(23:58):
try our try are and see if it works. And
so the four of them piled into the car, backed
up three ft and then drove forward three ft. That
was the beginning of the story with Nicole. But the
really why I love the story so much is two
years later Nicole told me, she said, Kevin, you know
(24:21):
that car that you gave us allowed me to stay
in school, get the kids to school, continue to work.
But I would have traded that car in an instant
for the chance to have been in relationship with you.
That's what changed my life. And that's our whole premise
with the table is what changes our lives. Isn't a
(24:42):
rent payment that keeps us from getting it. It isn't
It isn't a new tooth. Those things are critical and important,
But what changes people's lives as relationships. It's to maybe
use some of what I hear from your podcast, it's love,
it's reaching out and caring for someone and be willing
to enter a person's life and stay there. And that's hard.
(25:05):
People don't understand how hard that is, because when you're
entering into somebody's life who's broken, who suffered trauma, who
suffered abuse, oftentimes they're abusive and and they're broken, and
it's messy. Love is so stink and messy it is.
And I can't tell you how many of our care
(25:26):
coordinators is what we call them, with these folks will
set up appointments to meet with them, to sit in
the copy shop, and no one shows up, not because
their intentions aren't good, it's just because their lives are
in such champs, so let's reschedule and do it next week.
And it's I think, in some ways what love looks like,
(25:47):
what relationship looks like, is just continuing to show up
for people. And so many of the folks in this
industry whose lives are so broken have never had someone
who was willing to keep showing up. Um. And that's
what Big tables about is continue to show up for
them and ask good questions, ask challenging questions, but communicate
(26:11):
that the reason we're asking those is because we love them.
That's what love is. It is and I think that's
where God shows up. And I think that's where we
as people are our best selves is when we are
willing to make space for someone else rather than just
try to kind of protect our own little piece of property.
(26:34):
But our our world is so counter that, our world
is so society, you know, social media, TikTok, you name it,
basically tells us that it's all about us. It's all
about the selfies, it's all about how much you can amass,
it's all about how good you look. And there's very
little encouragement to show up and to do the heavy lifting,
(26:55):
to lift a heavy table for goodness sakes. That's what
people remember though. Um, if you ask most people where
their best memories of community are, they're going to say
it's around a table. One of the fun things I
love is when people look at our big table logo.
It's got a bottle of wine and a loaf of
bread sitting on a table. And anyone who's been a
(27:17):
part either currently or in the past, has had some
connection to Christian faith, looks at that and goes that
kind of looks a little bit like communion. Um, anyone
in the restaurant and hospitality industry who has no connection
to faith, says, that looks like a party. And if
we can be a place where real community and communion happens,
(27:39):
and we can create a party, that's where people's lives
get changed and we have some fun in the process.
Fishes and loaves. I told a friend who was an
atheist who I was talking to about the table, I said, look,
here's the deal. If God exists, I think this table
(28:00):
is exactly the kind of place where God would show up.
If God doesn't exist, we're going to have an amazing
meal with all kinds of people who maybe have never
eaten food like this before. And then we're going to
care for folks who are in crisis. Where's the downside
of that? And she looked across the table and that
(28:22):
I don't see one, which one of the joys of
what we do is we truly care for everyone. And
I make it very clear that there's not a hidden
agenda of faith. If you want to have a conversation
about God, nothing would honor me more. But if you
want nothing to do with God, if you've been burned
(28:42):
or hurt by religion, you are completely welcome at this
table because everyone is, and how can somebody get involved
as somebody's listening and says, oh, my gosh, I was
a server years ago. Oh my gosh, I remember when
I was washing dishes. I mean I had a job
at Posy's Bakery when I was fifteen years old, washing
(29:03):
dishes in the back room. And how can somebody step
up and say, oh, pick me. I want to help,
I wanna, I want to donate, I want to provide.
I want to be the person who steps in when
the world steps out. Well, the simplest place to start
would be to get to our website and reach out
to us. We've got some amazing resources that are not
(29:26):
limited to the cities where Big Table has a care
team in place, that anyone anywhere in the country, anywhere
in the world, can immediately begin to do. We've got
something called Unexpected Twenties, which are little tip envelopes that
we can send to people, or we've even got a
template on the website. You can print it out and
make it yourself at home with your kids. The idea
(29:48):
is you put a twenty dollar bill in that and
the next time you're in a restaurant, you're in a hotel,
you're going through a drive through, you just hand that
to a person and say this is a gift. It's
not a tip. Make sure you look inside the little
envelope says a gift, strings attached. And it's amazing what
(30:09):
that does, not only for the person who's working minimum
wage who gets a twenty dollar bill that they didn't
expect um. We've had people say, this allows me to
get home tonight. I had no way to get home
to pay for my bus. But what it does for
the person who hands it out is it allows them
to see people that were invisible to them before. Little
(30:32):
kids have so much fun trying to figure out who
to give it to in a restaurant, in a hotel,
or it's just so much fun. And we've got a
whole list of ideas like that that we can share
with anyone about. Here's what you can do today, tomorrow,
for the rest of your life, wherever you're at. Because
what we're interested in is not growing Big Table as
an organization. We want this to become a movement. There's
(30:55):
no way we could hire enough people to care for
the largest industry in the nation with the highest rates
of vulnerability. But if we challenge people to be a
part of this wherever they're at. We could change that nationwide.
Where do folks go to find all this out, to
find these tips, to find out how they can participate.
(31:17):
It's Big dash Table dot com. That's the website, and
we would love to strike up a conversation with anyone
that wants to be a part of the movement and
care for folks, many of whom would probably be the
most vulnerable people in each of our communities. But because
they have smiles on their faces, no one notices Big
dash Table dot com. If you have ever worked in
(31:42):
the food industry, if you have ever been served by
somebody in the food or hotel industry, if you've ever
stayed in a hotel room where somebody served you, if
you ever went through and drive through. I mean, every
human being I think in our country has been blessed
and touched by this industry that, as you say, has
(32:07):
a lot of heartache. So I would do that resonate
with you from you said you owned a restaurant at
one point, Oh my gosh, I owned a restaurant. But
because we were kind of the big table in the community, Uh,
it became which I was happy about it just became
a vehicle for people to gather and be blessed. Unfortunately,
(32:27):
we we were giving away far more food than we
were selling, and after three or four years, my accountant said, dum,
you can't sustain this, and so it you know, it
was no more. But oh my goodness. We had a
piano in the restaurant and so people would just come
in off the street and start playing, and so many people.
(32:49):
I mean, one story, I'll never forget it. An elderly
woman was having her birthday party there and she seems
so sad, and I was waiting to bulls and and I,
you know, tried to cheer her up, and she just
looked so broken. And one of her girlfriends pulled me
aside and said, it's her birthday, but she just lost
her husband a few days ago, and so we're just
(33:11):
trying to lift her spirits. So I asked her, when
I served her desert her birthday cake, can I pray
for you? And we had a quick prayer, and she said,
my stepson, his son is evicting me from the house
that we shared together and I've got no place to go. Ye.
(33:33):
I was dumbfounded. I was speechless. I'm like, what happened
to care for the orphans and the widows? What? I'm like, this, no,
your this cannot be possible. So I call my husband.
I'm like, we gotta we gotta take this lady into
our house. And he's like, okay, well, find we'll make space.
And as God would have it, somebody in her family
(33:55):
and NI stepped up and said no, no, we're going
to take her, and they moved her out of state.
But that was like a daily occurrence. Somebody would come
in that had that level of trauma and heartache, right, yeah. Well,
and what we've certainly seen is that's true in the industry.
And I mentioned that any time anyone found out I
(34:17):
was a pastor in the restaurant industry, no one would
talk to me. I went to a woman who was
a server after that happened multiple times, and I said,
who I knew she was a Christian. I knew she
was a server. I said, Annie, why is it that
no one will talk to me when they find out
I'm a pastor? And she goes, oh, that's easy, she said,
is a server? I hate Christians. They're the most demanding
(34:39):
customers that walk into the restaurant are the stingiest tippers
that ever sit at my table, and they take the
tables for too long, often to study the Bible. We
beg not to work on Sundays, it's the worst shift
of the week. And she is a Christian herself. And
obviously there are people of faith that that's not true for,
but they don't tend to be the ones who announced
(35:00):
that they're a Christian. They just live differently. Yeah, and
so for so many folks that work in the industry
who work weekends and nights and have no connection to
the church, the biggest hypocrites they see are folks that
they would connect to Christianity. So, um, if you look
at our website, there's not a lot about faith up there,
(35:21):
because we want to care for everyone and not put
any barriers in front of them. Folks that we're caring for,
and if that's going to be a barrier, let's just
love them straight up. And then if and when they
want to talk about deeper things, it's a privilege to
have that conversation. But if we can care for them first,
that's what we want to do. So Big dash Table
(35:44):
dot Com gonna send folks there, and I pray that
your ministry is blessed to be able to serve as
many people as are hurting, which is a big order. Well,
it's it's such a privilege to do it, um and
it's so much fun to care for people who, some
of them have never had someone tell them they're worth anything,
get to just say you are, You're of infinite value.
(36:08):
So I love what we get to do. Thanks for
taking time to talk to me about it. Thank you,
thank you, thank you, thank you. I've always been told
the fastest way to someone's hearts is through their stomach.
Kevin must have heard that too. He's feeding many, many,
many needs at his Big Table, and it all started
(36:29):
with a great idea that he cooked up one day.
Here's another great idea. Go to www dot big dash
table dot com, big dash table dot com and learn
how you can become involved in this worthwhile organization. There
seems to always be room for more helpers at the
(36:51):
Big Table. Den I know
Host
Delilah
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