OUR STORY

Navigating faith with questions instead of answers.

Where It Started

We met on staff at a megachurch. Jacob was the college pastor; Sam was a ministry resident just starting to build a faith that wasn’t borrowed. College ministry tends to attract people like that — right at the edge of everything they’ve been handed, brave enough to hold it up to the light and ask is this actually mine? That kind of honesty is hard to be around and not catch.

Most people at that church couldn’t have told you where Portable 8B was. But on Sunday mornings, while thousands filled the auditorium, a few of us gathered there for conversations that couldn’t happen anywhere else. We called it Table Talk. Around that same time, Jacob started teaching through the Sermon on the Mount — and actually taking Jesus at his word began reshaping what all of us thought faithfulness looked like to begin with.

“It was like I’d been reading the sheet music all my life but had never heard the song.” — Bryant Russ

Eventually, Jacob clocked out of certainty and left his career as a pastor. Sam’s capacity for love outgrew his job description. We both moved on from that megachurch. The Sunday morning table dissolved. The friendship didn’t — and neither did the questions.

Table Talk is the conversation that wouldn’t end. Pull up a chair.

Meet the Hosts

Jacob

Jacob spent seven years in vocational ministry before following Jesus right out the door. What started as deconstructing certainty has become something more generative — a path, not a problem. These days his project is contemplative practice and the slow work of integration — a wannabe mystic exploring the outer reaches of Christian spirituality. This territory, he’s finding, is surprisingly simple: showing up at the local United Methodist church with his neighbors, sitting in silence without needing it to deliver, and learning to love with his whole presence, not just his mind.

Sam

Sam grew up on the mission field, shaped by a life in ministry. The longer he walks with Jesus, the more he marvels at how much he doesn’t know — and that’s become one of his favorite parts of the journey. He loves the Church deeply while honestly wrestling with what it means to be the bride of Christ today. That curiosity shapes how he engages Scripture and theology — less about landing on answers, more about asking better questions. These days he’s part of a house church, learning that faithful living is often found in the quiet, ordinary moments most people walk right past.

Patchwork Spirituality

Everyone starts with a quilt they didn’t make. Doctrines, assumptions, interpretations — handed down by the communities that formed us. Some patches hold. Some need pulling. The wisdom is knowing which is which.

We call this patchwork spirituality. Not a system. Not a theology. A posture — the willingness to sit with what you’ve inherited and let curiosity do what certainty never could.

Table Talk is a lab, not a lecture. We’re not here to admire the quilt or tear it apart — we’re here to get our hands on it, try new patterns, and see what holds. It’s a sacred space honest enough for us to do this quilting out loud.

We’re not trying to finish the quilt — we’re letting the quilting finish us.