Crowded Table

In 2019 my wife Sara and I said yes to care for three foster children for one weekend. Eighteen months, two Christmases and one pandemic later, those foster children finally moved to a permanent placement. During their time with us, those kids learned to ride bikes, tie their shoes, went to their first movie, consistently attended school for the longest period in their lives, and the eldest got a job that paid more than he’d ever dreamed. Even though we had not planned on caring for two teenage boys and their little sister, and even though they had a revolving door of caseworkers from the Department of Children Services, today those three kids are a foster-care success story. How did it happen? Short answer: the support of friends and faith communities. People from Nashville churches as well as a network of friends brought us meals, donated bikes, connected therapists and foster care support organizations, fundraised for counseling, provided mentoring, and that’s just scratching the surface. One friend sent us Costco goodies on a monthly basis - for over a year! Were it not for the sustained tangible support of that community, we would have burned out and given up long before our three foster kids received a permanent placement. I don’t remember when it happened. At some point we started to wonder, what if every foster family in Nashville had a community of support like ours? I wondered, could we scale this support by pairing all the churches in Nashville with a foster family? And just like that, the seeds of Crowded Table were firmly planted. Crowded Table's mission is to equip local churches to provide practical support to Davidson County foster families and their caseworkers, in order to increase and sustain the network of people who care for foster children in Middle Tennessee. As of the fall of 2025, Crowded Table has launched Table Teams at 15 local churches from a diversity of denominations.

Tennessee ranks among the worst states when it comes to foster parent retention. When foster families receive relational support, their retention rate jumps to 90%. Nashville has more churches that foster families. Crowded Table seeks to pair every church in Davidson county with a foster family in order to respond to the foster care crisis in Middle Tennessee. Crowded Table equips local churches to provide practical support to Davidson County foster families and their caseworkers, in order to increase and sustain the network of people who care for foster children in Middle Tennessee.