WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.020 So realize, oh, okay, so we need to like do what Jesus did and not stick up a building and say, 00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:11.600 hey, come and meet us here because Jesus never did that. We need to go out with people in the 00:00:11.600 --> 00:00:17.380 midst of normal life and cultivate communal life in Jesus with people where they live around things 00:00:17.380 --> 00:00:23.040 that they already do. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast, we'll 00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:27.860 talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than Tech for Tech itself, 00:00:27.860 --> 00:00:33.300 we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the 00:00:33.300 --> 00:00:37.980 digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? Oh, and where 00:00:37.980 --> 00:00:43.880 does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small 00:00:43.880 --> 00:00:49.140 church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church 00:00:49.140 --> 00:00:55.820 digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed. Hey, welcome to the Church Digital 00:00:55.820 --> 00:01:06.120 podcast episode 305. We're in season eight here of, wait, that's a church. Joey, was that inflection 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:13.320 good? Fantastic. Sounds so good. I feel like I'm getting better. Like it's becoming more natural to do 00:01:13.320 --> 00:01:21.740 that. So in this season, we're exploring unique expressions of church. Joey Santos, Church at a Bar, 00:01:21.820 --> 00:01:29.040 has been the co-host here with me this season. We've talked, we did a deep dive for three episodes or so, 00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:37.480 really exploring the idea of church at a bar, minimal ecclesiology, a lot of what church can look 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:44.220 like. And as we're talking about moving away from, you know, the church at a bar and starting to talk 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:51.480 about others, you know, the idea came up, hey, let's bring Michael Beck into the conversation. Michael 00:01:51.480 --> 00:02:00.440 Beck has been honestly one of the leaders, if not the leader in fresh expressions and really exploring 00:02:00.440 --> 00:02:06.280 unique expressions of church, I guess primarily within the United Methodists, but some other 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:12.880 denominational and organizational work as well. And so, Michael, thank you very much for jumping on this 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:18.920 podcast with us. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I'm honored to be on. Michael, just to maybe set the stage 00:02:18.920 --> 00:02:26.780 a little bit and tell the group here a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so Michael Beck, I'm a follower of 00:02:26.780 --> 00:02:34.940 Jesus and a husband of Jill. Together, we have eight kids in a blended family. Just added my eighth grandchild 00:02:34.940 --> 00:02:44.420 this week. Juniper Jean was born, healthy little girl. And my wife and I have co-pastored churches, 00:02:45.300 --> 00:02:50.500 and we've been doing this fresh expression thing for about 17 years where we plant churches with people 00:02:50.500 --> 00:02:57.360 outside the church. So our two local churches are old United Methodist congregations that were in decline 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:05.440 for several decades. We kind of went in and work with the existing congregation, and then we plant new expression of church 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:16.240 out of those. And our two churches are also, we converted the buildings into sober housing. So we have men's 00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:22.560 sober housing over at St. Mark's, women's sober housing over at Compassion. And then we have church in a tattoo parlor. 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:29.440 We have church in a dog park. We have church in a burrito place called Burritos and Bibles. We did a 00:03:29.440 --> 00:03:36.360 church in VR for a long time called Living Room Church VR. We have church in a Tesla supercharger. We 00:03:36.360 --> 00:03:45.360 gathered the supercharger, talk about eco-theology and creation care. We have church in the local rehab, 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:53.200 the substance abuse inpatient detox place. It's called Higher Power Hour. So we go in there every 00:03:53.200 --> 00:04:01.440 week and do that. We have church in a senior assisted living facility. So my older saints were kind of 00:04:03.040 --> 00:04:08.240 going to live in this one facility called Brookdale. And so we said, "Hey, we're not going to just say, 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:13.040 hey, thanks for the memories. See you in the new creation. We're going to come in and be church with 00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:18.320 you." And so we started a little thing in there called Shenanigans, where we gather and have a 00:04:18.320 --> 00:04:24.240 little Jesus story and some prayer. So we have a bunch of those. And then I kind of direct that work 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:29.840 for my denomination. So I travel around and help other people do this kind of stuff. And then I teach 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:35.520 you to a couple of seminaries. Oh, so just a little work there. I want to totally get into this, 00:04:35.520 --> 00:04:41.680 including Tesla Church. That was intriguing, but let's back up and let's really discuss the important 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:49.680 part. What do you use to color your hair? Because eight kids, eight grandkids. I mean, I got two kids 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:57.360 and I got no hair and nothing but gray. Man, you don't look old enough for eight and eights. What's the secret? 00:04:57.360 --> 00:05:03.600 Well, I don't recommend this to our listeners, but I had my first daughter when I was 15. 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:12.720 And my BC life was pretty rough. I was mixed up in drugs and incarceration and lots of trips to 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:19.120 juvenile detention and then later jail. So I kind of grew up in that space. I actually encountered Jesus 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:26.320 in a solitary confinement cell. And that encounter with him kind of turned my life around. 00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:33.280 Um, and just funny, quick, full circle. So I went, I got out of jail the last time and I went to this 00:05:33.280 --> 00:05:38.880 little church called St. Mark's and became the assistant pastor. I was a youth pastor, all that. 00:05:38.880 --> 00:05:43.280 So the church had actually baptized me when I was a baby. It was kind of my orphanage. I was born 00:05:43.280 --> 00:05:49.280 addicted and didn't have any parents. And so now I'm back as the pastor of that church. 00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:56.240 So I have people that were present at my infant baptism that are now my congregants. 00:05:56.880 --> 00:06:01.040 And, uh, I've preached to them every Sunday in the place where I was baptized as a baby. 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:08.160 Wow. So yeah, that I ended up having a big family, very young. So now I get to enjoy grand grandfather 00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:14.000 life young. So pre preaching at the church, which you grew up at a prophet does have honor in his, 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:19.040 in his hometown. You've, you've been able to manage that well. Well, typically, you know, I, I more 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:24.480 resonate with the dude that's sitting out, uh, the crazy guy, you know, that has the legion of demons 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:28.320 and Jesus casts them all out. And they go off the side of the hill and the pigs, you know, 00:06:28.320 --> 00:06:32.080 and he's sitting there in his right mind and everybody's like, that's that dude that was like 00:06:32.080 --> 00:06:37.200 cutting himself and acting crazy. Um, and Jesus, he's like, Hey, I want to follow you. I want to, 00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:42.560 you know, join your squad. And just like, no, you go back to your city and tell everybody what I've 00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:49.600 done for you. And I feel like that's kind of my calling, uh, is, is to be back in that place where 00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:55.600 the city I used to sell drugs in and, and, um, got incarcerated a lot. And now I'm back 00:06:55.600 --> 00:07:03.120 telling everybody I can about Jesus. Hmm. So good. So yeah, I want, I want to know this in Joey, 00:07:03.120 --> 00:07:08.320 I'll hand it off to you in a second. How, how did you get started in fresh expressions? You rattled 00:07:08.320 --> 00:07:14.560 off a bunch of unique expressions. It never occurred to me to do echo church, um, at a, at a Tesla 00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:20.400 supercharger. I mean, that's, that's really interesting. Like where, where did the idea to 00:07:20.400 --> 00:07:27.840 really explore the space come from? Well, it's the gift of desperation. I, my first church, um, 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:34.960 just kind of failing forward in the Holy spirit. I guess probably it's part of my own experience of 00:07:34.960 --> 00:07:41.280 having a season of my life where I was very far from the church. Um, and I, I, I write about this 00:07:41.280 --> 00:07:47.120 in a book called painting with ashes that, uh, there's no church in the wild, but we need to 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:54.160 plant churches in the wild. That's a Jay Z and Kanye West song. But, um, so I realized I'm going to 00:07:54.160 --> 00:07:58.400 churches where there's seven people, there's eight people and they're like, Hey, you know, go pastor 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:05.600 these things. And, um, just people are not connecting with that and haven't been for generations. So 00:08:06.480 --> 00:08:12.400 I try to sustain that and, and nurture people and pastor people in that space. But then that's about 00:08:12.400 --> 00:08:16.640 half my work. The other half, I'm out in the community trying to connect with people. So the 00:08:16.640 --> 00:08:20.960 first thing we ever started was a recovery, fresh expression. We didn't know that's what it was back 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:26.320 then. We were just like, Hey, there's a bunch of people that are exploring a higher power. Why don't we 00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:31.680 get together and explore for those who maybe that could be Jesus, what that could look like and connect 00:08:31.680 --> 00:08:37.600 that to the 12 steps. And then we started a church in a rural place where I had like eight congregants 00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:42.880 in a barbecue, uh, restaurant because people wouldn't come to church, but they would gather. 00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:50.160 And this one, it was like a one town, uh, one diner town up the road from us, you know, no stoplights, 00:08:50.160 --> 00:08:55.120 no pasta, no post office. We didn't have a dollar general, which in Florida, that's like, if you don't 00:08:55.120 --> 00:09:00.000 have a dollar general, you know, you're pretty, pretty rural. But, uh, so that's where we were. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:05.680 We started this thing in the barbecue joint. We'd have 30 to 40 people some nights come and eat and 00:09:05.680 --> 00:09:10.880 barbecue talking about Jesus. And then I got a church, you know, my 12 people on Sundays. 00:09:11.600 --> 00:09:17.520 So realize, Oh, okay. So we need to like do what Jesus did and not stick up a building and say, 00:09:17.520 --> 00:09:23.440 Hey, come and meet us here. Cause Jesus never did that. We need to go out with people in the midst of 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:29.120 normal life and cultivate communal life in Jesus with people where they live around things that they 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:33.840 already do. And then I learned about fresh expressions and that there was a language for 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:40.800 this over in the UK. And then I was part of a team who tried to help bring that UK stuff over 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:42.000 here to the United States. 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:44.000 Joey. I'm sure that's something you can relate to. 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:44.720 I know. Right. 00:09:46.240 --> 00:09:53.280 I remember, uh, Michael, I was in like in Tampa two years ago, uh, when I first met you and we're 00:09:53.280 --> 00:10:00.640 having this meeting cohort on talk about church expressions and you, you, you had this incredible 00:10:00.640 --> 00:10:10.000 presentation. And what I remember vividly that your, your, your point was about the coexistence of the, 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:15.680 you know, the inherited church, the traditional church with this fresh expressions. That was, 00:10:15.680 --> 00:10:20.880 tell us a little bit about that. Cause I thought that was, that was incredible. Like we've been 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:26.000 talking about this here, Jeff and I, and about this opportunity that, you know, the established church 00:10:26.640 --> 00:10:32.160 can see on this fresh expressions to create a connection and then actually expand the ministry. 00:10:32.160 --> 00:10:33.280 Tell us a little bit about that. 00:10:33.280 --> 00:10:39.200 Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And Joey, I'm just remembering that, that event that we were together. 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:46.880 Um, it's called, we call that a blended ecology of church. So I guess call me a traditionalist or 00:10:46.880 --> 00:10:52.800 whatever, but I'm not ready to give up on the inherited church. Um, the inherited church saved my 00:10:52.800 --> 00:10:58.800 life. There's lots of problems with it. There's a lot of colonialist things. There's a history of slavery, 00:10:58.800 --> 00:11:05.600 racism, uh, exclusionary practices. There's just a lot of things, but also for 2000 years, 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:11.040 that same bride of Christ has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the stranger and 00:11:11.040 --> 00:11:18.640 done more good in the world than any other body of people. Um, so I'm a little United Methodist 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:27.280 church. You know, when I was an orphan born addicted drug addict, um, they gave me food right at their 00:11:27.280 --> 00:11:33.760 never ending potlucks. They, they nurtured me, they cared for me. So I have a deep love and appreciation 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:41.200 for that inherited stuff. I, I don't mind putting on my bathrobe and my stole on Sunday mornings and, 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:47.280 you know, having some liturgy and lighting some candles and all that stuff. I'm fine with that. 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:53.040 Um, but also realize that's not going to connect with the vast majority of people. 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:58.960 Um, but I think we, we set up a false dichotomy. If we try to make it an either or thing, 00:11:58.960 --> 00:12:02.960 I think it's a both and thing. And I think that's actually most faithful to scripture 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:08.960 because in the book of acts, we see this unfolding thing. There's like Jerusalem and Antioch. 00:12:08.960 --> 00:12:14.880 You know, there's the very centered traditional kind of Jewish expression of the church. And then there's 00:12:14.880 --> 00:12:19.680 this really crazy Gentile thing happening on the edge. That's very different and weird, but they're 00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:25.760 learning how to live together. And I think that applies to the onsite in the online too, that, um, 00:12:25.760 --> 00:12:32.640 the, the anchor church or the, the centering kind of inherited brings some value and some benefits to 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:37.200 the stuff that we're trying to do on the edge. I think the problem is a lot of times the center wants 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:45.280 to suffocate or exile or diminish the stuff that's happening on the edge. So learning to live with, 00:12:45.280 --> 00:12:48.800 in that kind of tension is kind of my day to day. 00:12:48.800 --> 00:12:55.440 And I think, so there's something powerful about that. And tell me a little bit about, 00:12:56.400 --> 00:13:04.160 you know, did you face any obstacles from the traditional church, uh, seeing you going, 00:13:04.160 --> 00:13:09.840 also giving attention to all these expressions or did they like, we're okay with it? We think that's 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:13.360 great. Like, did you, what was the dynamic there from the beginning? 00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:18.640 Yeah, that's a great question. And it continues to be a struggle today. 00:13:19.360 --> 00:13:25.200 So don't let me put off this image, like everything's solved. Because like just last 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:29.840 week I had people in my inherited group saying, who's paying for that food? You know, we have 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:34.880 this dinner church at St. Mark's and it's about a hundred, it's a hundred people that come on a 00:13:34.880 --> 00:13:39.680 Wednesday night for a Jesus story and a meal. And we do some prayer and then a Bible study after. 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:46.480 And those are a hundred people that don't go to church and they're messy. They, they drop F 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:53.360 bombs. They leave cigarettes, um, in the parking lot. So my church folks, they're like, who's paying 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:58.400 for that? Can they be more clean? Can they clean up better after, you know, those kinds of things 00:13:59.040 --> 00:14:03.840 rather than saying, wow, we have a hundred, you know, our church had 12 people in it four years ago. 00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:08.240 Now we have these hundred people that are coming to worship Jesus around a meal. 00:14:08.880 --> 00:14:13.840 So that's an ongoing thing. But the, one of the benefits I've had, and this may be a rabbit 00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:19.200 trail you guys don't want to go down, but I'm, I'm not, the church can't afford to pay me. So 00:14:19.760 --> 00:14:25.840 I've always been by or co-vocational in my ministry. When I first became ordained, you know, 00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:29.760 when you sign up for that in the United Methodist Church, you have to actually only have one source 00:14:29.760 --> 00:14:34.480 of income. So I sold a business that I ran for 10 years and went into ministry and then 00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:39.840 got to churches and they're like, Oh, we can't actually afford to pay you. So then I was like, 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:45.200 Hey, denomination, do you mind if I go start businesses again? Cause I have to feed my family 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:50.960 too. Um, so they gave me special permission to do that. And I have lots of different employment 00:14:50.960 --> 00:14:56.240 so I can change that social contract with the church. And I can say, Hey, I'm not going to be 00:14:56.240 --> 00:15:02.400 in that office sitting there waiting for people to come in. You know, those days are over. Um, 00:15:02.400 --> 00:15:08.000 and we, we have in our history as Methodists, this idea of John Wesley, the world is our parish. 00:15:08.880 --> 00:15:12.960 And so I can, I can say, Hey, here's the things I can do. I'm going to visit you. I'm going to love 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:18.320 you. I'm going to preach and do all those things. But that is a small part of my job. 00:15:19.920 --> 00:15:23.200 Because this community really is our, is our, our parish. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:30.560 Yeah. A lot of the, uh, planters, uh, and, uh, missionaries we work with are, are bivocational. 00:15:30.560 --> 00:15:35.520 And so that's, that's a common deal. And, and, um, you know, there's probably some fundraising 00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:40.000 conversations that we could, we could have. It's interesting. You're running multiple businesses. 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:45.680 That's I'm the same way where I've got probably four or five different streams coming in from 00:15:45.680 --> 00:15:49.040 different places. Um, and it's like, okay, this contract's coming up. 00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:53.360 I really need to find something else, you know, that that's going to cover it. So that's an 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:59.440 interesting life. Um, but one, one that I can relate to. How do you, well, while we're talking 00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:07.760 about like relationships with churches and denominations, I, um, I felt like I am, uh, 00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:15.280 you know, a lot of what we do with digital is, um, it's different than what a physical church is. Like 00:16:15.280 --> 00:16:21.360 you, you did the living room VR for, for a while. And so I know you can't relate and kind of understand 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:30.400 that. Um, um, I find it's, um, you know, there are churches that because I'm doing unique expressions 00:16:30.400 --> 00:16:37.520 in digital and not in physical space, churches will assume the worst, uh, of, of that. And, uh, 00:16:37.520 --> 00:16:45.600 it's a lot of judgment. Um, or even, you know, I find myself not intentionally disrespecting the model, 00:16:45.600 --> 00:16:53.680 but perceived to be disrespecting that, like specifically, how did you manage that tension? 00:16:54.160 --> 00:16:59.360 Because I know you're doing so much work denominationally. Um, where did, were they 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:05.680 more open to like, is that something that, you know, the, um, the, uh, they're, they're more 00:17:05.680 --> 00:17:10.720 receiving for like, what, what did that, what did that look like? Some of, did you feel that tension 00:17:10.720 --> 00:17:16.120 of, of disrespecting what their perceptions were? Like, talk to me a little bit about that. 00:17:17.460 --> 00:17:22.920 Yeah, there's definitely been some of that. Um, when we, when we started tattoo parlor church 00:17:22.920 --> 00:17:28.880 11 years ago. Oh yeah. I mean, I would, that would be a field day. Oh my gosh. 00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:35.440 Yeah. One of, one of my key leaders at my church, who was my church council chair. So she's like the 00:17:35.440 --> 00:17:40.600 head lady of the church. And she was like, you're going to do what y'all are doing what in the tattoo 00:17:40.600 --> 00:17:44.740 product? She says, you know, you're going to go to hell for that. Right. So she was, she was not 00:17:44.740 --> 00:17:50.960 super supportive of it, but believe it or not, she came and, um, you know, I just kept saying, 00:17:51.080 --> 00:17:56.480 Hey, just come and see this. You know, we got millennials and Gen Z sitting around the tattoo 00:17:56.480 --> 00:18:01.060 parlors. Some of them are getting tattoos. Some are not. We're worshiping Jesus. We're 00:18:01.060 --> 00:18:07.580 studying scripture. So she came and experienced that for herself. And by immersing herself and 00:18:07.580 --> 00:18:12.140 seeing the Holy spirit at work in that space, she actually became one of my biggest advocates. 00:18:12.760 --> 00:18:17.860 So my, my thing is if you're going to change the social contract, you have to build healthy 00:18:17.860 --> 00:18:23.820 teams and then you have to get leaders in the inherited space that are on board with what 00:18:23.820 --> 00:18:29.420 you're, what you're trying to do, that become kind of your advocates for it, that they're 00:18:29.420 --> 00:18:36.760 respectable, you know, church leaders in the congregation who can help change the conversation. 00:18:37.760 --> 00:18:47.300 So like we have, um, a preaching team that we have six lay people and my wife and I, and 00:18:47.300 --> 00:18:52.780 we all share the preaching. We create the sermon series together in a democratic process. Everybody 00:18:52.780 --> 00:18:58.280 brings their series ideas. We, we share the care shepherding ministries of the church. So 00:18:58.280 --> 00:19:03.760 different people handle visitations on different days. Uh, we have, you know, a team that focuses 00:19:03.760 --> 00:19:09.960 on like the administrative kind of stuff. So you can't just say, Hey, I'm just going to do all this 00:19:09.960 --> 00:19:15.640 fun stuff out here and you know, whatever. But if you build strong teams that, that cover all those 00:19:15.640 --> 00:19:21.540 vital areas of church life, then you create teams that are doing the fresh expression stuff. Then it 00:19:21.540 --> 00:19:28.360 gets us out of this heroic solo leader, the pastors, the, you know, the pastor cult, and it becomes a 00:19:28.360 --> 00:19:33.580 priesthood of all believers the way that Jesus intended it to. So I can go on vacation for three 00:19:33.580 --> 00:19:40.920 weeks. And yeah, some things we've had some stuff over, but for the most part, the church is still 00:19:40.920 --> 00:19:47.540 there. Everybody's using their gifts. And, uh, it creates a really different discipleship ecosystem 00:19:47.540 --> 00:19:54.140 because people have space to use their gifts and they have space to, you know, explore and realize, 00:19:54.300 --> 00:20:01.300 oh, I can do a lot of this stuff. Um, it's not to pastor doing it for me. Um, so yeah, sorry. That 00:20:01.300 --> 00:20:06.880 was a long answer. Yeah. You, you mentioned this idea of, of fresh, uh, excuse me, of priesthood of 00:20:06.880 --> 00:20:13.000 all believers. Um, and that's, it's interesting. Sometimes that's controversial within, within 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:19.780 established church here in the U S. Um, you know, I, I, I've been kind of, uh, chewed up and down 00:20:19.780 --> 00:20:29.780 for, in some context, talk, talking about that. Um, when you, like, what, what is your, uh, take for 00:20:29.780 --> 00:20:34.240 that? Like when, when you say, when you say priesthood of all believers, what does that look like? And 00:20:34.240 --> 00:20:41.020 I would love, what's your biblical reference, um, for, for why you believe that's, that's in place. 00:20:41.020 --> 00:20:47.960 Like, I know, I know a lot of us, um, stand on that line. Um, but what's the, uh, what's your, 00:20:48.140 --> 00:20:51.960 what's your opinion? And like, what's your, what's your reason why you believe that? 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:57.700 Yeah. If I can start with the Bible and then go to church tradition, uh, forgive me, I'm a Methodist. 00:20:57.780 --> 00:21:04.900 So I'm going to go quadrilateral, quadrilateral here. Um, the scriptures, right? So Jesus wasn't a 00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:13.700 priest, um, by any, you know, standard, he didn't go through the, you know, he wasn't part of the 00:21:13.700 --> 00:21:18.700 temple establishment or any of those things. So we would call him today a lay person. And most of 00:21:18.700 --> 00:21:25.380 the people that he selected or that were part of a church were ordinary, normal, they weren't Levites. 00:21:25.500 --> 00:21:31.000 They weren't from the priestly families. Um, he did have some Pharisees and some followers that were 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:35.420 part of the religious establishment. I think it's good to have that mix. So there's that. And then 00:21:35.420 --> 00:21:40.500 you get to first Peter and you get, you know, reaching back to Exodus, which was always the plan 00:21:40.500 --> 00:21:46.280 for God's people that you'd be a holy nation, a royal priesthood. It would mediate God's presence 00:21:46.280 --> 00:21:57.640 to the world. Welcome back, Joey. Welcome back. And then you get, um, you know, that's the early 00:21:57.640 --> 00:22:03.740 church's model for 300 years until Constantine. You didn't have priests in the way that we think of 00:22:03.740 --> 00:22:10.140 it today. You, uh, you know, Episcopos and Diaconos, and those are more missional functions as the 00:22:10.140 --> 00:22:15.600 church grew that certain people had to take on certain responsibilities. It was really a pest. You 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:19.420 know, our friend Alan Hirsch writes a lot about this apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, 00:22:19.480 --> 00:22:25.200 teachers. We've collapsed priests into just one identity, just the pastor shepherd person. 00:22:25.460 --> 00:22:29.980 We pretty much have exiled the, the other, you know, especially the apostles and the prophets 00:22:29.980 --> 00:22:37.080 and the evangelists. So all of that biblically, that's the church that is expressed in the 00:22:37.080 --> 00:22:43.520 scriptures. It is a priesthood of all believers with everybody ordained in the waters of your 00:22:43.520 --> 00:22:50.100 baptism to follow Jesus and be a priest who mediates God's presence. Um, and then, you know, 00:22:50.220 --> 00:22:54.100 you can get to Hebrews with Jesus, the great high priest in the order of Melchizedek, who 00:22:54.100 --> 00:22:59.780 we're all priests and he's the high priest and all that imagery is really helpful. But then, 00:22:59.780 --> 00:23:03.540 so I get a lot of stuff from this. I've had Methodist pastors say to me, 00:23:04.140 --> 00:23:08.580 my lay people are going crazy with this. You know, they're reading your books and they're 00:23:08.580 --> 00:23:14.720 talking about this idea and they're basically just starting things. And, um, they have some valid 00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:21.440 concerns like an unhealthy lay person could, you know, go off and do some crazy stuff. But for the 00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:28.700 most part, it's about control and it's about an unwillingness to release people. So I always pull 00:23:28.700 --> 00:23:32.460 it back to like, whatever your tradition is, whether you're Lutheran, whether you're Catholic, 00:23:32.600 --> 00:23:38.160 whether you're Baptist, whatever, embedded in each one of our traditions, those of us who come from 00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:44.680 some stream of Christianity, uh, in those that, uh, today we would say the diversity of denominations 00:23:44.680 --> 00:23:51.500 there, if you look deep enough, that idea is there. So for example, the Methodist movement in the 00:23:51.500 --> 00:23:57.860 beginning was about lay empowerment. Susanna Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley started a 00:23:57.860 --> 00:24:03.980 fresh expression in her kitchen. Uh, it was the first fresh Methodist fresh expression with a couple 00:24:03.980 --> 00:24:09.600 hundred people meeting outside the inherited church. John Wesley was doing field preaching and societies 00:24:09.600 --> 00:24:16.280 and classes and bands and empowering lay people, men and women to serve in those functions. 00:24:17.060 --> 00:24:23.880 So now if you look at Methodism today, you're back to this hierarchical kind of priestly kind of idea. 00:24:24.660 --> 00:24:30.080 So I try to call people back to the origin of our movement. Like the thing that made us distinct 00:24:30.080 --> 00:24:35.520 and helped us thrive and flourish was how we empowered and equipped the whole people of God. 00:24:36.420 --> 00:24:42.300 Uh, that priesthood of believers idea was deeply part of how Methodism thrived and became a global 00:24:42.300 --> 00:24:46.780 movement in the Holy Spirit. So yeah, that's how I try to frame it. 00:24:47.620 --> 00:24:55.800 So like the, the, your denominations were open to, um, to it, I think than some, I, you know, 00:24:55.800 --> 00:25:00.220 I'm, I don't want to call out my SBC friends, but you know, and, and, and actually I think 00:25:00.220 --> 00:25:05.880 denominationally, they may be more open to it, but individuals within kind of struggle to, to see 00:25:05.880 --> 00:25:11.240 things kind of outside of that box. Um, it's interesting where it feels like there's just 00:25:11.240 --> 00:25:16.420 limitations, you know, it's, it's, um, go with what works, but when it stops working, 00:25:16.420 --> 00:25:21.880 well, let's just work harder to get it to work. I don't know. Um, what makes things, 00:25:21.880 --> 00:25:27.320 you know, it's interesting. You've talked tattoo church, you've talked Tesla church, um, 00:25:27.880 --> 00:25:29.800 for you, what makes a church a church? 00:25:31.420 --> 00:25:38.760 Yeah, I, for me, my, my minimal ecclesiology goes back to Jesus. Um, when he said we're two 00:25:38.760 --> 00:25:44.880 or more gathered in my name, there I am in the midst. So that's a pretty powerful, you know, 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:49.960 minimal ecclesiology for me where there's a community of people gathering around the risen 00:25:49.960 --> 00:25:59.800 Jesus and worship and, uh, growing as disciples. That's a church. I try to think of, um, then I 00:25:59.800 --> 00:26:04.520 see in creed to give us a little helpful framework for that. So in that creed, you know, you got 00:26:04.520 --> 00:26:09.840 quite a bit about God, the father, God, the son, little tiny bit about the wild child, the Holy 00:26:09.840 --> 00:26:16.200 spirit, but then you get to the church and it's four words. The church is one, holy, Catholic, 00:26:16.200 --> 00:26:24.280 and apostolic. Those four words really describe for interlocking relationships. So the church is one 00:26:24.280 --> 00:26:31.720 koinonia there. There's a in this and a community. The church is holy. So it worships a holy God. 00:26:32.200 --> 00:26:37.560 And as we worship and interact with that holy God, we get transformed to love God, to love neighbor, 00:26:37.560 --> 00:26:45.000 to grow in holiness. There's a of word mark, the Catholicity. And that's why I feel like some 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:50.600 movements go too far with like, let's just throw the whole inherited system away because that of 00:26:50.600 --> 00:26:55.560 this mark is that we're connected to a historical church of many expressions all across history. 00:26:56.280 --> 00:27:02.760 And we belong to that little C Catholic connection, universal church. And then there's the apostolic 00:27:02.760 --> 00:27:07.960 mark, which is the outward reaching people currently that aren't currently connected. So you got an 00:27:07.960 --> 00:27:11.800 inward, upward, outward and upward relationship. If you have those four things, people are connecting 00:27:11.800 --> 00:27:19.160 with each other in a deep way, growing in Christ, worshiping God in some way. If we are staying 00:27:19.160 --> 00:27:24.520 connected to the larger church, so we don't become some little like cult kind of thing. And then we're 00:27:24.520 --> 00:27:30.200 constantly reaching out and new people are kind of coming into the life of that. And I'd say, 00:27:30.200 --> 00:27:34.680 you've got a pretty good framework for a church there if you see those four marks. 00:27:34.680 --> 00:27:40.360 So tell me this, like, I mean, let's pick it apart here a little bit. Holy, 00:27:42.120 --> 00:27:52.760 tattoo parlor. I mean, that's an interesting pairing. How do you get holiness out of a 00:27:53.640 --> 00:27:56.360 tattoo parlor? Like what does that actually look like? 00:27:56.360 --> 00:28:05.720 So when I use the term holiness, I follow the stream of God's revelatory kind of unfolding throughout 00:28:05.720 --> 00:28:13.560 the scripture. So God is chesed, God is unfailing love. The Old Testament talks about God is filled 00:28:13.560 --> 00:28:19.960 with rachum. He's filled with compassion. So if you like poke a hole in the heart of God, compassion 00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:26.200 pours out. So when I think of holiness, I'm not going, you know, 613 Levitical restrictions, 00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:33.320 holiness. I'm going God's essence and nature is holy, that God is love. The New Testament talks about, 00:28:33.960 --> 00:28:40.040 you know, that God is agapeo, God is love. And Jesus really summarizes, right? All the law and 00:28:40.040 --> 00:28:44.040 prophets hang on these two things that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, 00:28:44.040 --> 00:28:47.960 strength, strength, love your neighbors yourself. Then you get to a bunch of stuff with Paul who's 00:28:47.960 --> 00:28:54.120 like, hey, some people eat food sacrificed to idols, some don't. If the Holy Spirit's poking 00:28:54.120 --> 00:29:00.040 your heart and saying, don't do that, you shouldn't, right? But we can't hold the Gentiles to the 613 00:29:00.040 --> 00:29:06.120 Levitical restrictions that we ourselves have disobeyed for thousands of years, right? So there's freedom 00:29:06.120 --> 00:29:12.200 and grace and holiness as a journey of sanctification and growing in love with God and neighbor. 00:29:13.160 --> 00:29:22.200 So I feel like holiness is not about, it can't just pour out anywhere, like in a tattoo parlor, 00:29:22.200 --> 00:29:28.840 because wherever God's presence is, his holy living self is going to saturate that place and make it 00:29:28.840 --> 00:29:35.400 holy, not because of our behaviors, right? So people, just since you went here with the tattoo thing, 00:29:36.120 --> 00:29:40.840 like we can look at the people say, the Bible says, you know, Leviticus, 00:29:41.080 --> 00:29:49.240 do not tattoo yourselves for the dead or mark yourself for the dead. So right before that statement 00:29:49.240 --> 00:29:54.600 and after that statement, it says, do not eat meat, do not eat shellfish, do not trim your beard, 00:29:54.600 --> 00:30:01.760 do not cut your bangs, do not wear any clothing with mixed fabrics, don't eat fruit that hasn't laid 00:30:01.760 --> 00:30:06.640 fallow for so long. So all these things that we do every day, right? I shaved this morning. 00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:14.080 We'd all be walking around males looking like Hasidic Jews, you know, with the locks and the beards and all that. 00:30:14.880 --> 00:30:19.760 So we'll, we'll ignore all that stuff, right? But then we get this tattoo thing and we go 00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:27.120 that, that one. So when we're sitting in that tattoo parlor with people that have been traumatized by the 00:30:27.120 --> 00:30:32.160 church that are never going to come to Sunday morning, the question I'm asking myself is, 00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:39.280 do I love those people enough to go and incarnate and be with them in their normal life and their normal 00:30:39.280 --> 00:30:46.720 space and try to be the aroma of Christ in that space? And a lot of people consider their tattoos to be 00:30:46.720 --> 00:30:52.560 sacramental. So it's an outward sign of an inward grace. So people that are getting tattoos at Tattoo 00:30:52.560 --> 00:31:00.400 Parlor Church, they're not getting like, um, you know, uh, random things like, you know, poop emojis or, 00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:06.880 or, or, you know, their favorite football team. We're getting scripture, we're getting Jesus iconography, 00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:14.240 we're getting Christian symbolism that's meaningful to us. And so we do this thing called Tattoo Talk, 00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:18.960 where everybody goes around and they share the story behind their tattoo. And so people will share 00:31:18.960 --> 00:31:24.640 about, you know, when I almost committed suicide, I got this Jesus fish over the scars on my wrist 00:31:24.640 --> 00:31:31.680 to remind me that God loves me. Or, you know, I got my kid who overdosed on fentanyl. I got their 00:31:31.680 --> 00:31:37.040 handwriting tattooed on my forearm. So I can, these are the kinds of things that come out and then we're 00:31:37.040 --> 00:31:44.800 just inviting Jesus into that conversation and healing is happening. And people really disconnected 00:31:44.800 --> 00:31:50.480 from the church in every way are starting to say, Hey, I think I want to follow this Jesus guy, you know, 00:31:50.480 --> 00:31:56.880 tell me how to pray. What is the Bible mean about this or whatever? So it's a little church forming 00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:02.240 there in the tattoo parlor and it's God's holiness, you know, transfiguring that space 00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:04.640 with God's presence. Yeah. 00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:10.960 Is the, is the goal of Tattoo Parlor, and I'm, I'm, I'm picking on Tattoo Parlor and I'm, 00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:14.800 and I'm not even picking on it. I'm just, it's, it's an example, right? And so, but is, 00:32:14.800 --> 00:32:20.240 is the goal of Tattoo Parlor or Tesla, Tattoo Church or Tesla Church or any of these, 00:32:20.240 --> 00:32:26.960 is, is, is, is, are they, are they self-sustaining where it's like, you know, the goal is to see 00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:35.760 somebody two, three, five, 10 years still involved in, in Tattoo Church? Is it designed to hand off to 00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:42.720 a larger, more corporate, uh, expression with, with other believers that aren't as aligned to, 00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:49.840 to tattoo lifestyle? Like what, how, what, what is, what does longevity look like, uh, 00:32:49.840 --> 00:32:51.840 with some of these fresh expressions that you're working with? 00:32:53.360 --> 00:32:59.760 Yeah. So longevity, the, the beautiful thing about fresh expressions is it kind of recaptures 00:32:59.760 --> 00:33:06.080 this, what longevity look like in the book of Acts. So typically when we, we use the word 00:33:06.080 --> 00:33:11.600 sustainability, we're like, can we build something that lasts 50 years? When the Bible talks about 00:33:11.600 --> 00:33:17.840 sustainability, it talks about, can a group of disciples flourish and multiply in this area and 00:33:17.840 --> 00:33:23.520 then move out from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. And so multiplication and 00:33:23.520 --> 00:33:29.120 discipleship formation popping up in Jerusalem for a while, then it moves out to Antioch and really 00:33:29.120 --> 00:33:33.680 flourishes there, goes underground in Jerusalem for a while. Then it's out in the seven churches in Asia 00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:39.920 Minor. And then Philip, the Ethiopian eunuch going down to Ethiopia, the oldest continuously existing 00:33:39.920 --> 00:33:46.880 church in the world. So that is what we're thinking about as far as sustainability multiplication. 00:33:46.880 --> 00:33:51.680 You don't have to pay people to do these things. They don't cost anything. Most of them, you know, 00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:56.560 dinner churches, messy churches have some costs. They're usually lay led. So you don't have to 00:33:56.560 --> 00:34:02.560 have a clergy on a salary to start a tattoo parlor church. So in some sense, it's much more sustainable 00:34:03.120 --> 00:34:09.920 than our current models of church because it's organic and it's mobile. Now, I did not think 00:34:09.920 --> 00:34:14.560 when I started Tattoo Parlor Church 11 years ago that we'd still be doing it. Like, I'm literally 00:34:14.560 --> 00:34:21.360 running out of place on my body to get tattoos. But it's still going, right? And it's formed so many 00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:27.840 disciples who like spun out and started these new little things all over the place because, yeah, 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:32.960 because it formed them and then they found their calling in Jesus. And then they went and started 00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:41.440 this thing like a runner's church. So life is seasonal. Some of the fresh expressions like with 00:34:41.440 --> 00:34:47.520 soccer parents, like, you know, we're sitting around while our kids play soccer or whatever. We probably 00:34:47.520 --> 00:34:53.440 won't do that forever. But the relationships that we form, we can start a little Christian community on 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:59.680 tailgate of our vehicles while our kids play soccer and pray and study scripture and do those kind of 00:34:59.680 --> 00:35:04.960 things. Will that last forever? No. But will it form us? Will it create disciples who will go on and then 00:35:04.960 --> 00:35:12.240 start other kinds of things like that in different spaces in season of life? Yes. So that's honestly why 00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:18.400 I think a lot of institutional churches and denominations kind of reject it. Or they're like, 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:24.160 okay, we don't really want to invest in this because it's not going to like make our our institution, 00:35:25.040 --> 00:35:31.520 you know, financially viable or it may not pack butts back in pews. But they can't get they can't get 00:35:31.520 --> 00:35:37.440 past the vision of but it's unleashing people in Christ to share the gospel and plant these little 00:35:37.440 --> 00:35:43.520 communities all over the all over normal the normal life. So but we want to see people butts 00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:49.520 and bucks and money in the offering plates to sustain this thing we've built. So it's not sustainable in 00:35:49.520 --> 00:35:54.320 that way. Like, is it gonna? Oh, now my church is gonna have thousands of dollars coming in because 00:35:55.280 --> 00:36:00.480 maybe that could happen. But that's probably not the goal of it. It really is to form new Christian 00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:05.360 communities with people outside the church that probably church is not even on their radar and 00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:10.320 walking in on a Sunday morning. It's certainly not something that they're even thinking about. 00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:13.520 This is so interesting. Where where do you get? 00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:19.360 Let me ask this question first. Um, 11 years tattoo 00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:26.160 church tattoo parlor church. I'm gonna ask a Southern Baptist number and I apologize. 00:36:27.440 --> 00:36:35.680 How many people have have you influenced? Like, um, what do you have any idea? Um, 00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:42.240 uh, how many have you spun off? Like, I'm, I'm kind of curious what the ROI is on a decade 00:36:42.240 --> 00:36:46.000 plus of tattoo parlor church. Like what's happened as a result of that? 00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:54.320 Yeah. Here's, here's, here's the exciting number for me around 300 baptisms in a decade, 00:36:55.040 --> 00:37:00.320 not just tattoo parlor church. Um, but, uh, and all the fresh expressions we've done over the past 10 00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:09.040 years, all of those baptisms occurring outside the inherited space. So when someone comes to faith 00:37:09.040 --> 00:37:14.000 in tattoo parlor church, we baptize them, right? By the way, we take the Lord's Supper and Holy 00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:17.360 Communion at tattoo parlor church. We have a movement of confession and repentance. And then 00:37:17.360 --> 00:37:21.920 we take the Lord's Supper. I break the bread and give it to everybody. You know, we do that. So, 00:37:21.920 --> 00:37:28.400 um, but that's, for me, that's the return on investment. It's new Christians. And then, 00:37:29.040 --> 00:37:33.840 you know, all the things that I described, that whole ecosystem that started with like burritos 00:37:33.840 --> 00:37:38.960 and Bibles and tattoo church. And then that spun out, you know, connect and then MLK, and then that 00:37:38.960 --> 00:37:45.680 spun out, um, you know, Tesla church and all these things. So people get connected in those and they're 00:37:45.680 --> 00:37:52.160 like, Hey, my thing is taking my dog to the dog park on Saturdays. So pause appraise was born out of 00:37:52.160 --> 00:37:59.680 that dog park church. So dozens of little communities springing out of that. That's the return on 00:37:59.680 --> 00:38:08.560 investment. Do, are all of these, um, fresh expressions, are they connected in any way networked 00:38:08.560 --> 00:38:16.080 together where it's part of something larger? Or do you try to keep everything? Um, I mean, 00:38:16.080 --> 00:38:20.480 I'm saying the word isolated. I don't mean a negative, but like, is there, is there a larger 00:38:21.360 --> 00:38:29.840 umbrella connectivity to all of these? Um, uh, like how do you network them? Yeah. Do you network them? 00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:35.760 We do. So that's where the, um, inherited church comes in the kind of the center of all this. 00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:41.760 So we have a new worship experience we've created called fresh worship. And then we have vintage 00:38:41.760 --> 00:38:47.600 worship. So anybody who's open to like, I think I'll check out what a more inherited kind of thing 00:38:47.600 --> 00:38:53.120 looks like. So it's very different. Like we have a rap song every week and kind of like a little 00:38:53.120 --> 00:39:00.800 poetry slam type thing. We have food at that and dance breaks and coffee toast. So it's not like a church 00:39:00.800 --> 00:39:08.000 you would think, uh, conventional. And then we have a monthly gathering in our home. So we get all the 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:13.680 different fresh expression leaders and their core kind of team people that are their team. They all 00:39:13.680 --> 00:39:20.000 come to our house. We got a big old table. We get everybody around for a meal. And then we break out 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:25.360 men with men, women with women. And we do these little discipleship groups or what we call band meetings 00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:31.280 where we go deep on how it goes with your soul. How are you doing with prayer? How are you studying 00:39:31.280 --> 00:39:37.520 scripture? Did you sin since we met last time? That kind of stuff. So we're bringing all those people 00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:42.160 together and helping them understand that they're part of this larger thing. 00:39:43.040 --> 00:39:48.160 Some people that are in the different expressions, they'll never participate in that, that wider kind 00:39:48.160 --> 00:39:54.640 of thing. Like, and that's fine. Uh, but a lot of them are kind of networking, connecting. 00:39:55.840 --> 00:40:01.760 Yeah. It's interesting. You, you provide, I'm guessing like a vision at that, you know, uh, reinforcing 00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:08.320 that. Um, and then the, the holiness aspect of it, the, you know, did you sin and giving it an 00:40:08.320 --> 00:40:13.520 opportunity? Like it didn't, um, to be honest, that's something that hadn't occurred to me kind 00:40:13.520 --> 00:40:22.240 of wrestling with this. Um, what is the, like, where do these ideas come from? I mean, tattoo parlor. 00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:27.600 Okay. Look, you got, you got tattoos, but like, are you walking around saying, Hey, let's start dog 00:40:27.600 --> 00:40:33.520 parlor church. Does somebody come up and say, Hey, or a dog, uh, dog park church is somebody else saying, 00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:39.200 Hey, I, there's this dog park over here. Let me do church over. Like how, how does that even like 00:40:39.200 --> 00:40:44.960 start? Great question. So now it's kind of like a runaway train where people just have imaginations, 00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:49.840 ideas, because they're seeing all these other things that are going. So what's my thing? Like, 00:40:49.840 --> 00:40:57.680 who do I hang out with every week? What do I do? So we follow this like Luke 10 blueprint. So Jesus 00:40:57.680 --> 00:41:03.920 says, go out two by two, find the person of peace. That person welcomes you. You do life at their 00:41:03.920 --> 00:41:09.120 table. They open that neighborhood, that space, that network to you. So we're always looking for 00:41:09.120 --> 00:41:14.000 those people, praying for those people. Um, so I can, I can walk you through a couple of stories 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:21.440 of like how they evolved to help put some flesh on it. But so we're looking for those people, um, 00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:28.080 that are opening those spaces. And then I'm asking people like, I already know your life is busy. 00:41:28.640 --> 00:41:33.440 It's already crazy. Um, you don't want to add anything to your life. So these are the kind 00:41:33.440 --> 00:41:40.240 of questions we ask. What do you already do every week? Who do you do that with? What are the things 00:41:40.240 --> 00:41:45.520 that you all do together? And then can you think about how those things could become a form of church? 00:41:46.560 --> 00:41:50.000 Because the inherited church, it's a lot of, Hey, come serve on the committee, 00:41:50.560 --> 00:41:53.600 you know, or join the care shepherd team or whatever. Those are great things, 00:41:54.240 --> 00:41:59.280 but this is asking a different question and helping them be a missionary to their normal 00:41:59.280 --> 00:42:04.080 coworkers and family and friends. So for instance, the rehab church I talked about, 00:42:04.720 --> 00:42:09.280 that is, uh, our person of peace is the director of that rehab. Her name's Megan. 00:42:09.920 --> 00:42:14.720 And she had, she asked me to come in and do like a spiritual kind of talk and 00:42:15.360 --> 00:42:20.640 try to get the residents open to that. So I did at one time, they were really receptive to it. She's 00:42:20.640 --> 00:42:27.120 like, Hey, how regularly could you do that? And we were like every week, does that be, does that be good? 00:42:27.120 --> 00:42:31.520 And she's like, yes. She's like, you can't call it church because we're a state facility and some 00:42:31.520 --> 00:42:36.560 people are court ordered to be here and all that. So we call it a higher power hour, but she's our 00:42:36.560 --> 00:42:42.800 person of peace. She's opened that up. Now we can go in, we do church there every week. Larry was a 00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:50.400 70 year old church member who went to church his whole life. Dog park church. I like that you call 00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:56.800 it a dog parlor church. That was cool. That was a remix. But it's called, he called it pause of praise. 00:42:58.000 --> 00:43:02.240 That's his thing. He goes on Saturdays. He hangs out with his friends. They talk about sports and 00:43:02.240 --> 00:43:06.800 the weather, their dogs running around and play. So he started a little church there. Denise, 00:43:06.800 --> 00:43:13.920 she started church 3.1 because she's a runner. She does these 5Ks, mud runs, marathons. So we do 00:43:13.920 --> 00:43:19.280 church 3.1. We circle up. Denise takes out her phone, reads a little scripture or Jesus story, 00:43:19.840 --> 00:43:23.280 ask some questions. We run a 5K. We come back, pray out. 00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:30.400 So you can see how those intrinsic motivation questions lead to all kinds of possibilities. 00:43:31.240 --> 00:43:37.120 Yeah. When did you lose control of it? I mean, because, cause I mean, something like this, 00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:43.840 at some point you said Denise is the 5Ker, right? And so like Denise needs to own the vision to be able to 00:43:43.840 --> 00:43:55.440 do that. Um, at what point did you go from you manufacturing vision at tattoo church and others 00:43:55.440 --> 00:44:02.720 of those to where it became viral? It became catching. It had a life of its own outside of 00:44:02.720 --> 00:44:09.280 you manufacturing it. Yeah. Uh, I, I think a couple of years into it, sometimes you have to start by 00:44:09.280 --> 00:44:15.840 modeling the behavior that you want to see. And that whole Jesus model of, uh, I'm going to do, 00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:20.880 you watch, let's talk about it. You do, I'll watch, let's talk about it. So there's some of that in 00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:26.080 the beginning that you do have to, in my context, if you're coming to a church with, you know, 12, 00:44:26.080 --> 00:44:32.880 80 year olds, um, then there's not a lot to work with there. So you have to go outside the camp, 00:44:32.880 --> 00:44:37.520 kind of find those person piece, start doing things. And then that opens up every relationship, 00:44:37.520 --> 00:44:43.600 opens up possible networks and more relationships. So that's how I kind of start. But once we have a 00:44:43.600 --> 00:44:49.280 little bit of energy and a kind of a core team, I start asking those questions. Like, what is your 00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:55.840 vision? What is your God dream? Who, who in your life, does it break your heart that they don't know 00:44:55.840 --> 00:45:01.600 this precious gift of communal life in Jesus? That God's calling you to be that person that's 00:45:01.600 --> 00:45:06.320 going to bring it, you know? So for Denise, that's her runner friends. That's for Larry, 00:45:06.320 --> 00:45:12.800 that's his dog park buddies. Um, but yeah, and you're right. It's totally out of control. Like, 00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:19.040 and I'm totally fine with that. And that's where there is, there is a different kinds of personalities. 00:45:19.040 --> 00:45:25.520 Right. And I love my clergy siblings where we're covenant there. Some of them are beautiful, 00:45:25.600 --> 00:45:31.840 amazing people. But if you try to do this kind of stuff like this, you know, with your fists clenched, 00:45:31.840 --> 00:45:36.400 holding on, it's not going to work. You have to do this and you have to trust the spirit and you 00:45:36.400 --> 00:45:44.320 have to trust people. Like my lay person's going to preach Sunday and I'm not, and I'm totally fine 00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:50.960 with that. And you know, she's going to do a great job and I'm going to show up, be supportive, 00:45:50.960 --> 00:45:56.000 encourage people. But I'm fine. Like some people are not fine with that. They, they need to be the 00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:02.240 person bringing the preaching, doing the, doing the stuff. So it's the shift from growing fruit on my own 00:46:02.240 --> 00:46:08.160 tree to growing fruit on other people's trees. I think it's how Jesus did ministry. Cause he was 00:46:08.160 --> 00:46:12.720 like, Hey, watch how I do this. Cause next time you're going to do it. Like I'm going to heal these 00:46:12.720 --> 00:46:16.720 people, but then I'm gonna send you out to do that. These people are hungry. I fed them last time. 00:46:16.720 --> 00:46:23.440 You give them something. What if there are lots of people that, that I work with that want to go from 00:46:23.440 --> 00:46:33.520 this, from clenching to releasing, to holding on, squeezing, making, and instead releasing, uh, 00:46:33.520 --> 00:46:38.800 releasing, losing control. Like, you know, I talk so much about, you've got to release, 00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:44.480 you've got to lose control of, of something, you know, the, the tighter you hold on, uh, the more that 00:46:44.480 --> 00:46:49.040 you try to control, the less that you're going to do, um, you're less you're going to see happen. 00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:50.400 Absolutely. 00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:58.240 Give some advice, give some coaching. Um, how do we go from this to this? Uh, somebody wants to, 00:46:58.240 --> 00:47:03.920 they're not able to, or their boss, you know, they're, they're at a, uh, a structured church that, 00:47:03.920 --> 00:47:09.360 that isn't willing to, to let go. Um, they've been trained to do this. They've been trained to 00:47:09.360 --> 00:47:14.240 clinch. They don't know how to release, like, how, how do we take those steps to actually 00:47:14.240 --> 00:47:19.520 release or even the patience to wait a couple of years to see fruit happen? Like there's a couple 00:47:19.520 --> 00:47:24.640 of things there. Coaches through that. Yeah. Well, you know this better than anybody, Jeff, 00:47:24.640 --> 00:47:31.840 the entrepreneurial mindset is a little bit different than the managerial mindset. Um, 00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:37.920 so like there's Sarah, Sarah Svosky has done all this research on how entrepreneurs think and 00:47:37.920 --> 00:47:42.640 versus managerial thinking. And it's like effectual reasoning. You just start stuff, you pass it off, 00:47:42.640 --> 00:47:47.200 you iterate, see if it works, we'll experiment with it. And then you, if it does, that's great. 00:47:47.200 --> 00:47:52.400 But if not correct course correction, managerial thinking is that here's a target vision, 00:47:53.120 --> 00:47:59.120 steps to fulfill the goal. We want to see this by this many years. So all I'm a seminary professor, 00:47:59.120 --> 00:48:04.560 so I'm throwing rocks at myself here, but all of our seminary education, all of our ordination 00:48:04.560 --> 00:48:11.360 processes, all those things are managerial logic. We're teaching people to control. We're teaching 00:48:11.360 --> 00:48:17.360 people to manage the system where it's that McDonaldized church, right? Where you're like 00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:24.000 the manager of McDonald's, you're serving Big Macs and fries to a consumer Christian culture and you got 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:32.640 a system to manage. It's a total mindset shift of metanoia and repentance to basically unlearn all of 00:48:32.640 --> 00:48:38.000 our training. And a lot, a lot, I'm not going to say all seminaries do this. I don't know all of them, 00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:43.760 them, but a lot of them do. We're like totally preparing people for that. So there's an unlearning 00:48:43.760 --> 00:48:51.360 process that has to take place. And some people are just more wired for that than others. So I say, 00:48:51.920 --> 00:48:57.520 go hang out with some entrepreneurs, learn how they think, check out what they do differently, 00:48:57.520 --> 00:49:03.200 try to learn from that and bring some of that kind of thinking into your ministry. It doesn't 00:49:03.200 --> 00:49:08.720 mean you have to totally like turn everything over and you have no control at all. Like you still have 00:49:08.720 --> 00:49:13.200 committees and you still preach and, you know, run meetings and all that stuff. You can do that. 00:49:14.240 --> 00:49:19.760 And you can have this little experimental kind of, you know, uh, disruptive innovation department 00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:26.720 in your church too. Um, and do that. I think when I have people come to me that it comes down to this, 00:49:26.720 --> 00:49:33.120 like I have these questions of, is it a good idea or a God idea? And there is a difference. 00:49:33.120 --> 00:49:39.440 Sometimes. So I'll say, first of all, do you have a team? If this person has an idea and they don't 00:49:39.440 --> 00:49:47.760 have a team, that's usually telling about the person's spiritual capacities. I say, do you have 00:49:47.760 --> 00:49:53.520 a person of peace? So do you just have an idea to go do some stuff in a tattoo parlor? Or do you 00:49:53.520 --> 00:50:00.720 know the owner, Brian, who's inviting you to come in and do that? Um, and are, what I'm really trying 00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:08.160 to find out is, are they teachable, but can I help shape coach cheerlead, encourage them? 00:50:08.880 --> 00:50:14.080 Um, so do I have the relational capacity with them that I can speak into it? 00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:19.280 So if it's a person who's like one of those, they always have the best idea in the room 00:50:19.920 --> 00:50:25.200 and they don't seem like they're very, you know, you can have a lot of problems down the road. 00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:32.400 So if you're going to do this, you have to have some kind of framework of how you're helping people. 00:50:32.400 --> 00:50:38.720 So those things like working through team, having actual incarnational presence in the community and 00:50:38.720 --> 00:50:45.120 connecting with people, building those relationships, having people that are teachable, coachable, 00:50:45.120 --> 00:50:50.080 that you can say, hey, that worked really good. Did you see how this kind of went off the rails here? 00:50:50.080 --> 00:50:56.080 I wonder if we tried that next time. And then say there's this co-created process that's happening. 00:50:56.080 --> 00:51:00.480 That's how I do the, the open handed releasing part. 00:51:00.480 --> 00:51:08.080 That that's fascinating. Um, the idea of, of seminaries teaching managerial and not like, 00:51:08.080 --> 00:51:14.000 I mean, it makes perfect sense. I don't know that I had, had put that together. Um, 00:51:14.800 --> 00:51:22.480 do you, at the seminary level, do you feel that tension? Like, have, have you had this conversation with, uh, 00:51:23.600 --> 00:51:30.240 powers that be in the educational fields? Like, are they, are, do they see that? Are they okay with 00:51:30.240 --> 00:51:36.240 that? Is there, is there growth towards fresh expressions, ideas in, in seminaries now? What's 00:51:36.240 --> 00:51:42.560 the educational front look like? Yeah. So without, um, putting myself out of a job, um, here. 00:51:42.560 --> 00:51:47.040 Yeah. Sorry. I don't want to do that, but no, no, I feel you've got other revenue streams to come. 00:51:48.320 --> 00:51:54.640 I got, I got backup jobs. Um, I do, I do feel like there's a lot more openness now. 00:51:55.520 --> 00:52:00.080 There's a, definitely a shortage of students, right? Um, 00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:05.680 ministers are quitting in drobes, not a lot of people signing up for seminary. 00:52:06.640 --> 00:52:11.200 So there is a lot of openness to change curriculum, to rethink, like, 00:52:11.200 --> 00:52:17.920 could we do more stuff around praxis? And like, we have definitely prepared people for a 00:52:17.920 --> 00:52:22.000 world that no longer exists. So that whole managerial thing is like, you're going to go 00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:26.960 to a system. There's going to be people there. If you just manage it well, you know, that's a 00:52:26.960 --> 00:52:32.240 Christendom idea, but there's very few churches where you're going into a healthy system. It's 00:52:32.240 --> 00:52:37.280 mostly you're a missionary church with eight people, 12 people, 10 people, 20 people. If you're lucky, 00:52:37.280 --> 00:52:42.880 you know, you get a 30, 40, 50 and Methodism, you know, you get a 30, 40, 50 people. That's a good 00:52:42.880 --> 00:52:49.280 start. And of course there's anomalies. There's a Methodist mega churches. And, but, um, so like we 00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:56.000 have a house of studies at United specifically for fresh expressions. We have demon masters and 00:52:56.000 --> 00:53:04.240 certifications. I teach a course at Emory on fresh expressions now and Duke, uh, divinity school. 00:53:04.800 --> 00:53:11.760 I've got a conversation with going, going with SMU Perkins. So these are a lot of seminary saying, 00:53:11.760 --> 00:53:15.840 okay, we think maybe we need to include this kind of entrepreneurial, 00:53:16.720 --> 00:53:19.360 fresh expression, missional kind of thinking stuff. 00:53:20.400 --> 00:53:26.400 They have not said we'll not do some of the other core curriculum stuff. So we haven't got that far 00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:32.800 down the road with it, but as far as it can be electives, it can be specific tracks or focuses 00:53:32.800 --> 00:53:39.040 that people take on. So that's happening in seminaries across the country, which I feel is a 00:53:39.040 --> 00:53:45.120 really positive sign. Now figure out the economic model and all that. We, we haven't even really, 00:53:45.680 --> 00:53:52.160 we haven't made much, um, headway there. Yeah. I mean, the, the economics of all this is, um, 00:53:53.520 --> 00:53:58.000 it changes, but, and that's, that's one of the challenges of bivocational ministry. And it's, 00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:03.680 you're not paying salaries and you're not paying mortgages. And so like it's, um, money just looks 00:54:03.680 --> 00:54:08.240 different. Right. And so at least the, you know, especially in digital space, we can relate to that. 00:54:09.040 --> 00:54:12.640 Um, well, well, Michael, this has been, I mean, I always love hanging out with you and 00:54:12.640 --> 00:54:18.160 talking fresh expression. This has been so good. Um, yeah, man, Joey has been, uh, Joey had some 00:54:18.160 --> 00:54:24.640 tech issues, God bless him. And so, uh, he, he cut, cut bait and, um, was like, I'm going to restart 00:54:24.640 --> 00:54:29.440 my computer. And we never heard from Joey again. So I don't know what's going on in his world, but, 00:54:29.440 --> 00:54:36.800 um, it's been good. I mean, I always, I always feel like it's, um, you know, somebody who understands 00:54:37.360 --> 00:54:42.080 how I think you were actually one of the first guys that, that I talked with that I was like, 00:54:42.080 --> 00:54:48.400 oh my gosh, this guy is me. He understands this. He thinks the way that I think. And so like, it's, 00:54:48.400 --> 00:54:52.880 it's just been so, uh, I'm so thankful for you and the work that you're doing in this space and, 00:54:53.520 --> 00:54:59.120 and carving it out. Um, and so, Hey, but we're going to land a plane because I have another meeting to go 00:54:59.120 --> 00:55:06.160 to, Hey, heads up. Um, we've got, um, uh, wait, that's a church is going to be spinning off into 00:55:06.160 --> 00:55:15.040 its own podcast and show starting August 7th. And so you can look for that August 7th. I'm sure we'll 00:55:15.040 --> 00:55:20.800 communicate out the podcast subscription links and it'll be on the church digitals, YouTube. And so 00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:27.200 look for that. Uh, hopefully Joey gets his tech stuff figured out by then. And, um, and we'll be good. 00:55:27.200 --> 00:55:32.320 Uh, I don't know if we know this and I don't know that I can confirm this, but my hope was to 00:55:32.320 --> 00:55:37.840 interview Whitebeard, uh, on, uh, for that August 7th show and Whitebeard is actually in the audience 00:55:37.840 --> 00:55:41.280 right now on discord. And so I don't know that he got that email, but Whitebeard, we got to talk 00:55:41.280 --> 00:55:46.480 because I want to interview you soon. And so no, uh, no pressure though. He says Okie's on discord. 00:55:46.480 --> 00:55:52.080 So we're good. So we will look for a Whitebeard, uh, coming soon, launching it in the next episode. 00:55:52.080 --> 00:55:56.280 But once again, Michael, thanks for hanging out with us today. And we're going to land a plane for 00:55:56.280 --> 00:56:01.640 Michael and the disembodied Joey Santos, wherever he is. This is Jeff with the church digital. 00:56:01.640 --> 00:56:19.960 Thanks for hanging out with us today. And, uh, we'll talk soon. Have a good one.