Why Most Churches Fail at Discipleship (And How to Fix It) | Jonathan Moynihan

00:00:01 [Speaker 1]
Why is it that we hide our true selves in church when it is the one place where we should know better than anyone that we are loved unconditionally?
00:00:11 [Speaker 1]
In this episode, we talk about that exact weird reality where the perception from the outside looking in is that we either have it all together and so are unwelcoming to people who struggle or that we fake it like we have it all together and so people have no interest in being part of a phony community.
00:00:29 [Speaker 1]
So that's what David, Chad and I talk about.
00:00:31 [Speaker 1]
You're gonna love it.
00:00:32 [Speaker 1]
Check out the entire thing.

00:00:34 [Speaker 1]
Just a reminder, please consider checking out Steiger, the mission that this podcast is a part of.
00:00:39 [Speaker 1]
It is why we do what we do and really it gives a lot of authority to what we do because we have an entire mission around the world active in over 200 cities reaching and discipling those who would not ordinarily come into a church.
00:00:52 [Speaker 1]
But as I say, every single time, we cannot do this without you.
00:00:56 [Speaker 1]
If you go to steiger.org, that's steiger.0rg, you can find out more info in how to get involved.
00:01:04 [Speaker 1]
And then lastly, I just wanna thank you for your support.

00:01:07 [Speaker 1]
I know a lot of you have been listening from the very beginning and you have stuck with us and you have shared this and you've been an advocate on our behalf and we are so grateful for you.
00:01:17 [Speaker 1]
If you're new here, thank you as well.
00:01:19 [Speaker 1]
We love the community that is forming around this podcast and that really is our heart that this would not just be conversation, but a group of people who desperately desire to know what Jesus thinks and to live as he would have us live in this world.
00:01:33 [Speaker 1]
So thank you for your support.
00:01:34 [Speaker 1]
Thank you for joining us.

00:01:35 [Speaker 1]
If you wanna go a little deeper, you can jump on Instagram, follow us there, Provoke and Inspire Podcast and then join our broadcast channel, which is just a way to go a little bit deeper.
00:01:44 [Speaker 1]
You can interact with some of our more exclusive content.
00:01:46 [Speaker 1]
You can answer polls, react to comments and questions, and just start to engage with us a little bit more.
00:01:52 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:01:53 [Speaker 1]
That's it.

00:01:53 [Speaker 1]
I hope you enjoy it.
00:01:54 [Speaker 1]
David, Chad, and I as we discuss how can we be authentic and stop baking it in church.

00:02:01 [Speaker 2]
You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast.

00:02:07 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:02:08 [Speaker 1]
Well, we're going.
00:02:09 [Speaker 1]
I came in with a million things to talk about, but also trying to just clear all that because I knew from looking at the things that you put out there that we got a lot in common, and I love the way you speak and communicate.
00:02:23 [Speaker 1]
And so, man, I got a whole list of things.
00:02:25 [Speaker 1]
But before that, just maybe a brief introduction and what's on your heart, what have you been feeling lately, and then we'll just we'll see where it goes.

00:02:33 [Speaker 2]
Yeah, man.
00:02:33 [Speaker 2]
Honored to spend time with you.
00:02:35 [Speaker 2]
I'm already feeling sharpened by you, so this is great, dude.
00:02:38 [Speaker 2]
So the story of how I came into ministry and how I came to take Jesus seriously, I grew up in youth group, really healthy bible believing church, great parents, got saved at Young Life, and, went to a camp at 13, made a decision for Christ.
00:02:54 [Speaker 2]
They did, like, the Jesus in the wheelbarrow, will you get in the wheelbarrow illustration, and I'm bawling my eyes out.

00:02:59 [Speaker 2]
I was so on fire for Jesus, I actually listened to Christian radio for a couple weeks.
00:03:05 [Speaker 2]
And then, life happened.
00:03:07 [Speaker 2]
I was the prince of youth group, dated the queen of youth group.
00:03:11 [Speaker 2]
We were not really doing things right, but we weren't doing the deeds, so we felt righteous.
00:03:16 [Speaker 2]
Sure.

00:03:17 [Speaker 1]
Yep.
00:03:18 [Speaker 1]
And then a bunch of things that

00:03:19 [Speaker 2]
I thought were God owed me related to where I got into college.
00:03:22 [Speaker 2]
I was playing baseball at the time, the team I was supposed to be on.
00:03:24 [Speaker 2]
None of those things worked out.
00:03:26 [Speaker 2]
So I realized in that moment, like, God didn't deliver, so I'm gonna do what I want.
00:03:31 [Speaker 2]
And, I viewed I viewed the scriptures as rules that bound me instead of a word that set me free.

00:03:38 [Speaker 2]
So for about a year, I lived in hedonism and just, did whatever I wanted, drugs, girls, drinking.
00:03:43 [Speaker 2]
I would drink to hook up, and if it didn't work out, I would drink to blackout.
00:03:46 [Speaker 2]
That was pretty much my life script.

00:03:48 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:03:48 [Speaker 2]
Long story short, I was I was broken, alone, depressed.
00:03:52 [Speaker 2]
I was playing men's volleyball at the time.
00:03:54 [Speaker 2]
I was basically starting, which you would have thought would have affirmed all of the things that I graded myself upon because baseball no was no longer a thing.
00:04:01 [Speaker 2]
I was playing volleyball now.
00:04:03 [Speaker 2]
And I was just super, super dark.

00:04:05 [Speaker 2]
And, through a series of events, I felt the lord like, the wrath of god, like a warning of God saying, how dare you?
00:04:11 [Speaker 2]
You know better.
00:04:12 [Speaker 2]
What are you doing?
00:04:13 [Speaker 2]
And so I investigated the Quran a little bit.
00:04:17 [Speaker 2]
I saw Muhammad as a giant hypocrite and doesn't even do what he tells people to do.

00:04:21 [Speaker 2]
I saw that that faith spread by the sword and not under the sword like the Christianity did.
00:04:26 [Speaker 2]
And so then I started pursuing Jesus of Nazareth again with greater intensity, and I was a journalism major.
00:04:30 [Speaker 2]
So I was using all of my tactics to investigate the person of Christ.
00:04:34 [Speaker 2]
And I got baptized at 19 and was super involved in Campus Crusade for Christ at my college campus.
00:04:40 [Speaker 2]
Student led, no no staff, 350, 400 kids every Thursday night, growing in faith.

00:04:46 [Speaker 2]
The president of the atheist club came to Christ Center University during that time.
00:04:51 [Speaker 2]
And, yeah.
00:04:53 [Speaker 2]
So then I did ministry for a little bit with CREW, and then I worked for CNN and then AOL.
00:04:59 [Speaker 2]
I was a reporter for

00:05:00 [Speaker 1]
Interesting.

00:05:01 [Speaker 2]
About three three and a half years.
00:05:02 [Speaker 2]
So I covered Obama's run-in 2000 '8 as a contractor with CNN, continued to do freelance work with them, got hired by AOL as a subsidiary company that they launched to do, like, hyper local journalism and covered crime, state politics, agriculture, but I was a reporter.
00:05:19 [Speaker 2]
And then I met a church planner at a party, like a board game boring adult party, not like a fun college ruckus party.
00:05:28 [Speaker 2]
And he wanted to meet up, so we met and I was he heard I was really passionate about evangelism.
00:05:33 [Speaker 2]
So because I was reporting and going to parties with friends who were not saved, seeking to engage them on my own.

00:05:39 [Speaker 2]
And the church planner buddy said, hey.
00:05:40 [Speaker 2]
What did your friends think when you tried to bring them to your church?
00:05:43 [Speaker 2]
And at the time, I was going to a very strong bible believing church, but I I kind of equate it to being like the Panera Bread of of churches.
00:05:50 [Speaker 2]
And all my friends who were very far from God, bringing them to a Sunday gathering would have been an off ramp, not a benefit.
00:05:58 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:05:58 [Speaker 2]
And, my church planner, pastor at the time, who I just met over my first meeting at Chipotle, he said, if if you're this passionate about reaching the lost and you're going to a church that you can't leverage for that pursuit, he said, quote, I don't know what they ate you're doing there.
00:06:14 [Speaker 2]
And I'd never heard a pastor talk like that.
00:06:16 [Speaker 2]
And I I was really convicted of, like, okay.
00:06:18 [Speaker 2]
You know, I've been fishing on my own, but never thought that the church could be a net that could be utilized, and not in the sense of lowering the bar to what discipleship and apprenticeship to Jesus is.
00:06:28 [Speaker 2]
But so, I started attending his church.

00:06:32 [Speaker 2]
It was, like, a 180 people.
00:06:34 [Speaker 2]
Nine months later, he offered me a job.
00:06:37 [Speaker 2]
They couldn't pay me, so I had to raise $50,000 to cover my salary, health, and benefits for eighteen months plus.
00:06:45 [Speaker 2]
And God brought it in forty two days, and I joined staff at the end of twenty twelve.
00:06:50 [Speaker 2]
I became campus pastor, groups leader, all these things over time.

00:06:54 [Speaker 2]
I was a communications, guest experience in groups, then I became a campus pastor, then I became a teaching minister.
00:06:59 [Speaker 2]
And then I was on the journey to church plant in Boston with the organization we work with called the Orchard Group when in about a three month span, God made it clear, I'm not sending you out.
00:07:09 [Speaker 2]
I'm calling you to stay.
00:07:10 [Speaker 2]
The founding pastor, I'm sending out to a new assignment.
00:07:13 [Speaker 2]
And so I became the senior pastor of my home church, Mosaic, three years ago.

00:07:18 [Speaker 2]
So I've been the senior guy for three years now.
00:07:20 [Speaker 2]
So Wow.
00:07:22 [Speaker 2]
I think if if you've consumed some of the content Ben to see me preach, you can kind of get a glimpse of, like, where the journalism comes online.

00:07:28 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:07:28 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:07:29 [Speaker 2]
Preach.
00:07:30 [Speaker 2]
But, yeah, that's the story, of how I got here.

00:07:34 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:07:34 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:07:35 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:07:35 [Speaker 1]
I can definitely feel the interest in the real world.
00:07:40 [Speaker 1]
Right?

00:07:40 [Speaker 1]
And I know that sounds like it should be counter or it should be intuitive as opposed to counterintuitive, but you feel that sense of how do we make this relevant out here as opposed to maybe this dichotomized reality that we find ourselves in in in that vein on that line.
00:07:56 [Speaker 1]
Like, what is your sense of the church in America?
00:07:58 [Speaker 1]
Like, there's so many places we could go with this, but what are you feeling like, man, if I could just get this through or this is the barrier specifically as it relates to your congregation, but then maybe the larger conversation of the American church.
00:08:13 [Speaker 1]
Where do you think we're at?
00:08:14 [Speaker 1]
What's the climate?

00:08:15 [Speaker 1]
What are our barriers?
00:08:16 [Speaker 1]
What are the opportunities?

00:08:17 [Speaker 2]
Man, that's a huge question.
00:08:19 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:08:20 [Speaker 2]
And I, you know, I I also wanna be clear.
00:08:22 [Speaker 2]
Like, I am very much the product of being a disciple of other great men of God.
00:08:27 [Speaker 2]
So pretty much most of what I say will be a metabolized processing of wisdom I've gained from other people.

00:08:33 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:08:34 [Speaker 2]
So,

00:08:35 [Speaker 1]
All my wisdom is just self originated and, like, completely devoid of influence.

00:08:40 [Speaker 2]
So, you know, a lot of this this isn't original necessarily from me.
00:08:44 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:08:44 [Speaker 2]
But, I'm from the Northeast.
00:08:46 [Speaker 2]
I'm from Baltimore.
00:08:48 [Speaker 2]
Okay.

00:08:48 [Speaker 2]
Been here my whole life.
00:08:49 [Speaker 2]
Worked in DC briefly.
00:08:50 [Speaker 2]
Worked in Florida for one year, but Baltimore's been home.
00:08:53 [Speaker 2]
It's the Northeast.
00:08:54 [Speaker 2]
There's about 60,000,000 people between DC and Boston.

00:08:57 [Speaker 2]
Of the top 100 fastest growing churches, I think there's only six in that area.
00:09:01 [Speaker 2]
Baltimore is top 10 least religious cities in the country, number three most stressed according to USA Today, and number three most educated.
00:09:08 [Speaker 2]
There's 49% of our state has a master's degree or higher.
00:09:12 [Speaker 2]
Oh, wow.
00:09:12 [Speaker 2]
So highly cerebral, highly skeptical, deeply unchurched.

00:09:16 [Speaker 2]
The the shadow of the Catholic church and the the priest scandal of 2001 and beyond just continues to influence how people view the institution of church even if you're not Catholic at all.
00:09:28 [Speaker 2]
So that's our context, and so I can speak to that more than I can speak to the national stuff.
00:09:33 [Speaker 2]
But I will say, for decades leading up to COVID, we taught people a plus b plus c equals d.
00:09:41 [Speaker 2]
D meaning disciple.
00:09:42 [Speaker 2]
A is attend church, b be in a small group, and c is contribute with your time and your money.

00:09:48 [Speaker 2]
And we taught if you attend and you're in a group and you give and you're on a team, that equals disciple.

00:09:53 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:09:53 [Speaker 2]
And COVID exposed the flawed faith formula because everyone who did all those things then instead of disciple, they deconstruct it.
00:10:01 [Speaker 2]
They they fell away.
00:10:02 [Speaker 2]
They fell apart.
00:10:03 [Speaker 2]
And it wasn't just COVID or the racial tensions of of the nation or just the obsession we had with social, but it was a flawed faith formula.
00:10:13 [Speaker 2]
And, and Dallas Willard says the only two questions pastors really need to ask is how are we making disciples, and is it working?

00:10:21 [Speaker 2]
And I'm not the guy who's like, discipleship discipleship all the time.
00:10:24 [Speaker 2]
You gotta be in a group, and it can only be three people, and you have to memorize the word, and you have to be fasting.
00:10:28 [Speaker 2]
Like, I'm not that guy, but our definition of what made a disciple, I think, was very incomplete.
00:10:34 [Speaker 2]
And those things are still really beautiful, but those are discipleship one zero one, not three zero one, four zero one graduate level.
00:10:41 [Speaker 2]
And, and so I think we're now coming out what you're seeing at least in churches that I see are be that are very healthy.

00:10:48 [Speaker 2]
What I see coming out of voices like John Tyson or the increased hunger in voices from people like John Mark Homer or Tyler Staton or Rich Filotis, those are some circles, I align with in tenacity and intention Yeah.
00:11:01 [Speaker 2]
Is like a deeper hunger for, not earning discipleship.
00:11:07 [Speaker 2]
You know, Dallas says grace is opposed to earning, but not effort.
00:11:11 [Speaker 2]
But how do you take the effort angle and leverage people to have a deeper hunger?
00:11:15 [Speaker 2]
And so I think coming out of that, the opportunity for us as a church has been, we are going to be ruthlessly intense about seeking and saving lost people.

00:11:27 [Speaker 2]
I'm not saying everyone has to be that, but there's this famous poem by this guy, Sam Schumacher, called I Stand by the Door, that some people go deep into the house of God, but my job is to stand by the door and help those who are blind find the handle so that they may enter through Jesus.
00:11:40 [Speaker 2]
Like, that is our posture.

00:11:41 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:11:41 [Speaker 1]
It's powerful.

00:11:42 [Speaker 2]
But in but in order to do that, bro, there's gotta be a potency, and we've gotta be building compelling, resilient, missional disciples with their redemptive edge that can follow Jesus as good Monday through Saturday as they display on Sunday.
00:11:57 [Speaker 2]
And so one of the taglines of of, Mosaic and our preaching is your everyday life is the main event of your faith.
00:12:04 [Speaker 2]
And I think so, unintentionally, we implicitly communicated Sunday is the main event of your faith.
00:12:09 [Speaker 2]
And when Sunday was stripped, nobody knew what to do.
00:12:12 [Speaker 2]
So there's some great books I remember in college, like the master plan of evangelism, and it was actually about discipleship.

00:12:18 [Speaker 2]
The master plan of discipleship was all about evangelism.

00:12:21 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:12:21 [Speaker 2]
So we're you know, our our goal is to be a church where, like, the prayer room is filled and the front row is filled with people who are taking Pedialyte because they're hungover and they're far from God, but they know the one place to go to get answers to life's biggest questions is the church.
00:12:35 [Speaker 2]
So we we try to occupy a nomadic state of we're a little bit too evangelistic for this formation people, and we're too contemplative and into formation for, like, the secret sensitive evangelism people.
00:12:49 [Speaker 2]
And I I love that.

00:12:50 [Speaker 1]
I mentioned this quote a lot from Braveheart that says if you make enemies on both sides, you end up dead.
00:12:55 [Speaker 1]
And, I feel like we we often straddle the middle of these things.
00:12:58 [Speaker 1]
And like you said, you end up kind of in the middle, but I think you mentioned this before we were recording.
00:13:03 [Speaker 1]
Jesus often offends, those that they think align with him, and yet he seems to offend both sides.
00:13:11 [Speaker 1]
How so okay.

00:13:12 [Speaker 1]
That's an awesome concept.
00:13:14 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:13:14 [Speaker 1]
And and the idea of, okay, we need to live out our faith, but but I feel like that's a not not in a pejorative sense, but that's a trope you always hear.
00:13:23 [Speaker 1]
So what have you found has gotten people to grab hold of that, and have you seen evidence in your own church of that taking hold and why?
00:13:32 [Speaker 1]
Because I feel like that's the million dollar question, right, to take that concept and to see that working out in the lives of those that are coming to your church.

00:13:40 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:13:41 [Speaker 2]
There's an illustration that resonates with me.
00:13:44 [Speaker 2]
I forget who said it first, but we often think of, like, living on a Christian walk and we we say it should happen from overflow.
00:13:52 [Speaker 2]
You know, you fill up a cup, you fill up this cup, and then out of the overflow of this cup is the ministry that God uses you to do.
00:13:58 [Speaker 2]
And I think that's a little incomplete.

00:14:00 [Speaker 2]
I I think someone said to me, there's a cup, and then underneath that cup is a saucer.
00:14:04 [Speaker 2]
Because, like, when you're drinking fine tea, there's a cup with a saucer.
00:14:07 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:14:07 [Speaker 2]
Our job is to minister from the saucer, not from the cup.
00:14:12 [Speaker 2]
And that that illustration has helped me because we tend to tell people, like, in our churches, hey.

00:14:19 [Speaker 2]
Go do x.
00:14:19 [Speaker 2]
Go do x.
00:14:21 [Speaker 2]
But we've not taught them how to fill up the cup to the point that it then genuinely overflows into the saucer, and we then we give from the overflow.
00:14:30 [Speaker 2]
And so I we'll teach on, like, giving and serving and having proximity to the poor, and most people, bro, don't know how to pray.
00:14:37 [Speaker 2]
They they don't know how to read the Bible, not as a book of, like, western education, but as, like, a Sure.

00:14:43 [Speaker 2]
A library of writings filled by the Holy Spirit that points to a unifying story about the person of Jesus.
00:14:48 [Speaker 2]
They don't know how to do that.
00:14:50 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:14:50 [Speaker 2]
And so we've we've made people pursue spiritual discipline out of effort instead of overflow.
00:14:56 [Speaker 2]
So at our in our context, you know, my senior pastor was so gracious to me.

00:15:01 [Speaker 2]
He we were up in front of the church, and he told everybody, hey.
00:15:04 [Speaker 2]
With Jonathan being the senior pastor now, you're gonna be a church that learns how to pray because he's been teaching me that, but I still am working on it.
00:15:11 [Speaker 2]
So he set me up to really lean on prayer.

00:15:14 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:15:14 [Speaker 2]
And, I think we try to tell people to go do a bunch of stuff, to live out their faith, to use your language.
00:15:21 [Speaker 2]
But if you were to ask them, hey.
00:15:22 [Speaker 2]
What's your prayer life?
00:15:23 [Speaker 2]
It's nothing more than a grocery list.
00:15:25 [Speaker 2]
It's not a tool of relationship.

00:15:27 [Speaker 2]
It's a task list.
00:15:29 [Speaker 2]
And no relationship that I wanna have long term is just me getting asked for things or me constantly asking for things.

00:15:36 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:15:37 [Speaker 2]
And not that god's gonna get tired of us.
00:15:38 [Speaker 2]
He he won't be.
00:15:39 [Speaker 2]
He's enduring, you know, his most common identification as he's slow to get angry, filled with unfailing love, exes 34.
00:15:45 [Speaker 2]
But I don't wanna be with someone I constantly have to ask things up all the time.
00:15:49 [Speaker 2]
I want someone who I can rest with and be with.

00:15:51 [Speaker 2]
And so Yeah.
00:15:52 [Speaker 2]
Prayer and stillness and quiet before God, the hidden life with Christ.
00:15:57 [Speaker 2]
When I say your everyday life is the main event of your faith, I'm really talking about, like, that first hour of your day Mhmm.
00:16:03 [Speaker 2]
And building a interior castle, as Saint Teresa of Avila would say.
00:16:08 [Speaker 2]
And I think if you do that, you kind of teach people to no longer depend on the mountaintop moment of a Sunday or a conference or camp or a mission trip, and instead come to see, like, that rhythmic hiddenness of Jesus where he constantly would embed his life with stillness with the father and then also deep proximity to the poor and the ministry.

00:16:30 [Speaker 2]
So for us, it's been that emphasis, bro.
00:16:32 [Speaker 2]
Like, how do you how do you teach people how to have a quiet time?
00:16:36 [Speaker 2]
Removed from, like, the nineteen nineties, gotta have a bible plan all the time.
00:16:40 [Speaker 2]
I actually discourage people from YouVersion.
00:16:42 [Speaker 2]
You know, I have no nothing against it, but I I think most people are not mature enough with their devices to use the device to connect with God.

00:16:49 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:16:50 [Speaker 2]
So I I tell people don't do it.

00:16:52 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:16:52 [Speaker 1]
You're completely right.
00:16:53 [Speaker 1]
And I I think I just before this, I was walking and, you know, feeling this urgency in my my heart and spirit about the action or inaction of my life, and I really did feel reminded about the idea that, man, I'm called to be a branch.
00:17:10 [Speaker 1]
Like, I'm called to cultivate intimacy with Jesus.
00:17:14 [Speaker 1]
And I don't think it's a cop out to say that for all the things I could or could be doing or I'm not doing, if I would devote myself to cultivating that intimacy with the vine, I can trust that that's going to lead the Holy Spirit to lead me out and to and I have many examples when I think about my life of times when I've just felt like you you gotta step out here.

00:17:37 [Speaker 1]
You're you're you're being too silent here or you gotta deal with this part of your life, but it's it's been an inside out process.
00:17:43 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:17:43 [Speaker 1]
And it kind of as you talk it, it makes me think like, man, we got a church that knows all about fitness but never goes to the gym.
00:17:51 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:17:51 [Speaker 1]
Like Right.

00:17:52 [Speaker 1]
And that's really what it's about.
00:17:53 [Speaker 1]
It it sounds so simple, but it's like, do you actually have a relationship with Jesus?
00:17:59 [Speaker 1]
Like, a real genuine relationship.
00:18:02 [Speaker 1]
Because I think as you said, if we would, man, we'd live it out imperfectly, but there would be this natural consequence of that would be a life that would reflect him to the world that we live that we're living in.

00:18:13 [Speaker 2]
And I think, it doesn't necessarily answer how do you touch on the the polarization of politics.
00:18:20 [Speaker 2]
You know?
00:18:21 [Speaker 2]
And Right.
00:18:21 [Speaker 2]
That's not necessarily gonna train somebody on, like, how do you have a healthy frame of masculinity as as you and I have briefly touched on in our correspondence.
00:18:31 [Speaker 2]
But there there is a, a resistance to the oversimplification that we see in culture.

00:18:37 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:18:38 [Speaker 2]
And there's a centeredness of integrity before the father, that I do I do think makes it also shifts your preaching because you no longer have to prescribe techniques or tricks.
00:18:51 [Speaker 2]
You set the table for the spirit to move, and then you trained your your congregation to contextualize to their own environment.
00:18:58 [Speaker 2]
Dallas Willard, obviously, I I'm quoting him a lot.
00:19:01 [Speaker 2]
He says, everyone asks what would Jesus do.
00:19:03 [Speaker 2]
The better question is what would Jesus do if you were me?

00:19:06 [Speaker 2]
What would Jesus do if he was a mother with three children?
00:19:08 [Speaker 2]
What would Jesus do if he was a engineer for NSA who can't talk about his faith at his job, but he still called to resist that policy, but also submit to his bosses?
00:19:20 [Speaker 2]
And, like, the government he's serving.
00:19:21 [Speaker 2]
Like, what does that look like?
00:19:23 [Speaker 2]
And so that question demands more of us.

00:19:26 [Speaker 2]
So to to your question, all that to say, like, a plus b plus c equals d, I think I still when people come to our church and like, hey, man.
00:19:33 [Speaker 2]
I wanna get involved.
00:19:34 [Speaker 2]
How does it look like?
00:19:34 [Speaker 2]
I was like, man, Commit to being here every week.
00:19:37 [Speaker 2]
Get in the group.

00:19:37 [Speaker 2]
Be on a serving team.
00:19:39 [Speaker 2]
Choose to give.
00:19:40 [Speaker 2]
Those are baselines, but all that should be happening out of the overflow of your quiet hiddenness with Christ because that hiddenness is what produces holiness, and the holiness is what enables you to stand up, stand out, stand strong over the long haul as your own sin or culture tends to force you to compromise.

00:20:01 [Speaker 1]
I wanna talk about the idea.
00:20:02 [Speaker 1]
This, again, was not preplanned here, but what what the role of how do I put this?
00:20:08 [Speaker 1]
Like, risk plays or just taking that step.
00:20:12 [Speaker 1]
You know, often there's this idea that I'll do the things I feel like I should do.
00:20:16 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:20:17 [Speaker 1]
And I know for me growing up, the most formative thing in my life was well, first of all, living in a house where I saw genuine faith in Jesus modeled.
00:20:27 [Speaker 1]
Like, I tell this story all the time on the podcast, but I would say one of the most profound moments in my life was when I was a late teen.
00:20:34 [Speaker 1]
You know, I'd kind of inherited this faith, seen extraordinary things.
00:20:38 [Speaker 1]
But then it was my dad saying, hey.
00:20:40 [Speaker 1]
Let let's let's go on prayer walks.

00:20:42 [Speaker 1]
You know, we talked about flat whites at the beginning.
00:20:43 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:20:43 [Speaker 1]
So I'm in New Zealand Yeah.
00:20:45 [Speaker 1]
On the beautiful beach, and my dad's like, hey.
00:20:47 [Speaker 1]
How about while you're here over the the break?

00:20:50 [Speaker 1]
Let's just go on a long walk every day.
00:20:52 [Speaker 1]
Let's go to this coffee shop.
00:20:53 [Speaker 1]
But while we're on the way, let's just talk to God together.
00:20:55 [Speaker 1]
Like, let's just pray.
00:20:56 [Speaker 1]
Wow.

00:20:57 [Speaker 1]
And it was this apprenticeship to prayer.
00:21:00 [Speaker 1]
I mean, really, it was like and it unlocked something in my own mind in the sense that, woah.
00:21:05 [Speaker 1]
I I I need to move when I pray.
00:21:07 [Speaker 1]
Like, I can't I'm not a sit still kinda guy.
00:21:09 [Speaker 1]
And

00:21:09 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:21:09 [Speaker 2]
So good.

00:21:10 [Speaker 1]
And you know what?
00:21:11 [Speaker 1]
It doesn't have to be stuffy and rigid.
00:21:13 [Speaker 1]
My dad would we'd talk together, then we'd talk to God, and we'd be honest.
00:21:16 [Speaker 1]
And we and we did this every day, and it's it set in motion a pattern in my life Yeah.
00:21:20 [Speaker 1]
That was so profound.

00:21:23 [Speaker 1]
And to this day, I mean, till, like, two hours ago, I still do that exact thing.

00:21:27 [Speaker 2]
It's so good.

00:21:29 [Speaker 1]
And so how much of this is okay.
00:21:32 [Speaker 1]
I I started with one question, but then what I just said, I think, is an even better question, which is how much of this is about having someone in your life who models this for you, not necessarily from the pulpit, but the way my dad did that for me?
00:21:46 [Speaker 1]
Because I don't know if a preacher or a podcast would have ever convinced me to do that or modeled that for me the way my dad did in that context.

00:21:55 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:21:56 [Speaker 2]
I think you're right.
00:21:57 [Speaker 2]
I think one of the shortcomings of digital Christian content is it lacks the humanity to really come alongside you.
00:22:05 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:22:07 [Speaker 2]
You know, even with the advancements of of AI, which I I'm a big fan of utilizing them as a tool.

00:22:12 [Speaker 2]
But, you know, you can have an AI model give you all the reminders on the world, but it doesn't produce the same emotional response as looking across and seeing another person with their very presence hold you accountable to your stated goals and desires.

00:22:27 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:22:27 [Speaker 2]
So that's why I think being in a group is crucial.
00:22:29 [Speaker 2]
I tell people that small groups of churches are really weird blind dates.
00:22:33 [Speaker 2]
You don't know what you're gonna get, but you gotta go through a bunch in order to find someone that you're gonna latch onto.
00:22:38 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:22:38 [Speaker 2]
I don't like forced discipleship.

00:22:40 [Speaker 2]
I don't like pick randos.
00:22:42 [Speaker 2]
I also think you can just pick someone based on their maturity and say I wanna be like you, and it can work.
00:22:47 [Speaker 2]
But you do have to have people in your life.
00:22:49 [Speaker 2]
You need to have a Paul.
00:22:50 [Speaker 2]
You need to have a Barnabas.

00:22:51 [Speaker 2]
You need to have a Timothy.
00:22:54 [Speaker 2]
But, again, bro, like, we there's this there's this great book by a rabbi and family systems therapist called failure of nerve.
00:23:03 [Speaker 2]
His name's Edwin Freeman.
00:23:04 [Speaker 2]
He died in the nineteen nineties.

00:23:06 [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.

00:23:06 [Speaker 2]
But it's one of, in my opinion, one of the best books on pastoral ministry and leadership.
00:23:14 [Speaker 2]
He says, we are grossly overeducated beyond our capacity to execute, and we don't need new tricks or tips.
00:23:21 [Speaker 2]
We usually just have a will and a a relational centeredness to do what we know we ought to do.
00:23:27 [Speaker 2]
And I don't think people need, like, 19 different new brand new strategies on how to be a disciple.
00:23:33 [Speaker 2]
I think they just need to pick people and do life with them over a long haul.

00:23:37 [Speaker 2]
And my deepest friendships haven't always come from, like, the personalities I thought they would.
00:23:42 [Speaker 2]
It's through presence, pain.
00:23:44 [Speaker 2]
You know, I could I could talk about you said risk.
00:23:46 [Speaker 2]
We could dive into that because I've I've something to share there.
00:23:48 [Speaker 2]
But, yeah, I think how do you how do you make people want it is the real difficulty because you can't force it.

00:23:56 [Speaker 2]
And the the margins of our life have never been less from social media taking up eight hours of our day, extracurricular sports, commutes.
00:24:05 [Speaker 2]
The average commute in our area is about fifty minutes, like five zero.

00:24:08 [Speaker 1]
Jeez.

00:24:10 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:24:11 [Speaker 2]
Swallowed.

00:24:12 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:24:13 [Speaker 1]
That's a convicting idea of the the gap between what I know and what I do.
00:24:19 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:24:19 [Speaker 1]
And I think we live in a culture and a day where it's just it's ridiculous.
00:24:23 [Speaker 1]
I mean, the amount of compelling interviews and books and the stimulus that I'm, there's just no way.

00:24:32 [Speaker 1]
There's just no way I could possibly act on the 4,000,000 things that I'm

00:24:36 [Speaker 2]
Right.

00:24:36 [Speaker 1]
Challenging myself with and inspiring myself with.
00:24:39 [Speaker 1]
And and so you're right that that to be able to put it into practice, I think that probably is would be, in my mind, the number one thing that would separate you from the masses is someone who can actually do something.

00:24:50 [Speaker 2]
Like, to

00:24:51 [Speaker 1]
make the things you learn and do something about it.

00:24:53 [Speaker 2]
I I don't know if it's James Clear or Craig Groeschel because they quote each other so much now.
00:24:57 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:24:57 [Speaker 2]
But they say successful people do regularly what everyone else does occasionally.

00:25:03 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:25:03 [Speaker 1]
I tell my son that all the time.

00:25:04 [Speaker 2]
But yeah.
00:25:05 [Speaker 2]
No good.
00:25:05 [Speaker 2]
It's it's it's true.
00:25:06 [Speaker 2]
But, you know, like, I'm I'm sitting here like, okay.
00:25:09 [Speaker 2]
How do I maximize my diet?

00:25:10 [Speaker 2]
What supplements can I get?
00:25:11 [Speaker 2]
Blah blah blah.
00:25:12 [Speaker 2]
Meanwhile, I just need to make lunch in the morning and bring it so I don't eat Chick fil A.
00:25:19 [Speaker 2]
Like, it's not hard.
00:25:20 [Speaker 2]
Just do it.

00:25:21 [Speaker 2]
Like, Nike got it right all those years ago.
00:25:25 [Speaker 2]
Just do it.

00:25:26 [Speaker 1]
Just do it.

00:25:27 [Speaker 2]
But if you stand on the pulpit and say it, you motivate people for three, four hours.
00:25:31 [Speaker 2]
And then if you don't restructure the habits of their life and the scaffolding of their daily rhythms, it falls.

00:25:39 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:25:39 [Speaker 1]
So that's

00:25:40 [Speaker 2]
where it

00:25:40 [Speaker 1]
all and

00:25:40 [Speaker 2]
that's all where it ties back.

00:25:42 [Speaker 1]
It's crazy.
00:25:43 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:25:43 [Speaker 1]
I mean, I'm I'm just I feel like we're similar in a lot of ways, and so I'm just constantly being, like, inspired.
00:25:47 [Speaker 1]
I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get in really good shape, and then, like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna learn this.
00:25:51 [Speaker 1]
I'm at social media is just this it's too much.

00:25:53 [Speaker 1]
It's too much.
00:25:53 [Speaker 1]
I can't.
00:25:54 [Speaker 1]
I got so many dreams in my head right now.
00:25:56 [Speaker 1]
I can't possibly fulfill even a quarter of them.
00:25:58 [Speaker 1]
So and, yeah, I think it it does tie back to to the question I started and then lost my I didn't really lose my train of thought, but I just got inspired by something better.

00:26:07 [Speaker 1]
But the idea of risk, it's been a big part of our ethos as a mission because we're a mission of bold proclamation evangelism, and it's been part of our DNA.
00:26:19 [Speaker 1]
Prayer is a big one.
00:26:21 [Speaker 1]
It's probably if there's gonna be three, it's gonna be prayer.
00:26:24 [Speaker 1]
It's gonna be preaching the gospel.
00:26:26 [Speaker 1]
The other one, I'm not sure.

00:26:27 [Speaker 1]
There's five technically.
00:26:28 [Speaker 1]
But the the point the point is taking risks and stepping out specifically in the realm Right.
00:26:38 [Speaker 1]
Opening your mouth, which is so hard, and sharing your faith.
00:26:42 [Speaker 1]
I'm not sure if there's ever been a more consistently revitalizing practice in my life than stepping beyond my comfort zone.
00:26:51 [Speaker 1]
There's a guy in this podcast.

00:26:53 [Speaker 1]
His name's Chad Johnson.
00:26:54 [Speaker 1]
He says you gotta punch through the awkward.
00:26:56 [Speaker 1]
It's like every every major move of God is on the other side of awkward.
00:26:59 [Speaker 1]
Talk to me about the idea of taking this all of this information and and the powerful results of doing something, especially outside of the church context, which I think so enlivens your faith.
00:27:13 [Speaker 1]
I don't know if that's a word, but you know what I mean?

00:27:15 [Speaker 1]
That just literally takes all the things you read and goes and and just pours fuel into that fire.

00:27:20 [Speaker 2]
First, I wanna make sure I answer your question because I think it's an important one.
00:27:25 [Speaker 2]
But it's gonna be really difficult to call people to bold faith if they are unfamiliar with confessing sins to a brother and sister in Christ.

00:27:34 [Speaker 1]
Interesting.

00:27:35 [Speaker 2]
And I don't think many people practice the act of, like, true authentic confession and vulnerability before each other.
00:27:42 [Speaker 2]
And if you can't confess your sin in the safety of grace and grace centered gospel community, if you can share what you said, what you watched, what you thought, what you did in the dark, if you can't do that, bro, don't don't even talk to me about trying to share the gospel at work because that is exponentially more hostile and more risky to your bottom line, which is dollars and cents in America.
00:28:08 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:28:08 [Speaker 2]
So, I think in the same way that those who have been forgiven much, they live with boldness.
00:28:17 [Speaker 2]
I think one of the starting points of calling people to radical faith is, are you getting authentic and real about your radical brokenness?

00:28:25 [Speaker 2]
Like, the the depths of which Christ already died to save, so there's no shame.
00:28:29 [Speaker 2]
But, you know, when was the last time?
00:28:30 [Speaker 2]
And at Mosaic, we say confession is telling you the truth.
00:28:34 [Speaker 2]
I don't want you to know about me.
00:28:36 [Speaker 2]
Because I'm willing to talk about how I did shrooms in college.

00:28:39 [Speaker 2]
I don't wanna talk about how I fudged on that survey because I was four responses short.
00:28:45 [Speaker 2]
So I anonymously filled it out as if I hit my mark, but I did it, so that didn't look like a failure.
00:28:50 [Speaker 2]
But and one, culturally, seems way more dramatic than the other.
00:28:54 [Speaker 2]
But you know what's in you know, Psalm 19, who can know all the sin lurking within my heart?
00:29:01 [Speaker 2]
Cleanse me of these hidden faults.

00:29:03 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:03 [Speaker 2]
That's a very noble prayer.
00:29:04 [Speaker 2]
But a lot of times, there is sin lurking within us that we are aware of, you know, of of how we we like that that girl laughed at our joke a little bit too long, and it did something for us.
00:29:12 [Speaker 2]
You gotta bring that to light and share with the brother because that's how Hillsong, New York City starts.
00:29:19 [Speaker 2]
So, you know, first, yes, we can talk about the risk stuff.

00:29:22 [Speaker 2]
But first, I think it begins with deep vulnerability and confession.
00:29:25 [Speaker 2]
And at Mosaic, when people are like, I wanna go deeper, my question is always, well, when was the last time you did something that scared you?
00:29:31 [Speaker 2]
Because the depths should scare you.
00:29:33 [Speaker 2]
Not you know, I wanna know more in Greek.
00:29:35 [Speaker 2]
That can be helpful, but you don't obey in English.

00:29:37 [Speaker 2]
So don't even ask me about what the Hebrew says.
00:29:40 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:41 [Speaker 2]
But I think it starts with stuff like that.
00:29:43 [Speaker 2]
And so building up people who are open and willing to confess their sin to each other, then we can start talking about how do you position yourself to get to know your neighbor.
00:29:53 [Speaker 2]
So for to go with your example, I saw coming out of COVID, we had been conditioned to isolate.

00:30:01 [Speaker 2]
I never would do pull up, pick up for groceries until after COVID.
00:30:07 [Speaker 2]
And my wife and I would use Target.
00:30:10 [Speaker 2]
I'd roll up.
00:30:12 [Speaker 2]
I would say that I'm here, and a stranger would open my trunk, throw everything in, and I drive away without eye contact.
00:30:18 [Speaker 2]
And we were seeing this more and more in our society.

00:30:20 [Speaker 2]
And so as a church, we resolved to get back to humanity, and we hosted we all we committed to hosting a thousand dinner parties with our neighbors with no agenda other than creating an environment, excuse me, for us to be basically gospel outposts in our streets.

00:30:38 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:30:38 [Speaker 1]
It's good.

00:30:39 [Speaker 2]
We said you can't love your neighbor if you don't know your neighbor, and most of us don't know our names, especially in America.
00:30:45 [Speaker 2]
And that was a huge risk, but the response was really overwhelming.
00:30:49 [Speaker 2]
People want to be challenged.
00:30:52 [Speaker 2]
And so we we ended up hitting about eight hundred and twenty eight hundred and twenty dinner parties where we're not allowed to have more than 30% Christians there, and they happened from August to December of twenty twenty three.
00:31:06 [Speaker 2]
And thousands of people were exposed to Christians that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

00:31:09 [Speaker 2]
And it took about seven months, but we had our first baptism coming out of that.

00:31:12 [Speaker 1]
That's so wild.

00:31:13 [Speaker 2]
But it's like, preach the share the share the gospel and leave the results up to god.
00:31:18 [Speaker 2]
It's it's scary, though.
00:31:21 [Speaker 2]
But it's it's much easier when you have them over multiple times.
00:31:24 [Speaker 2]
You know, you do a cookout.
00:31:25 [Speaker 2]
You you know, I don't wanna sip on my toes here, but, like, when you we have someone at our church who buys a mini keg on Halloween and has beer for the parents that come around, and they hand out invite cards to our church.

00:31:36 [Speaker 2]
I love that.

00:31:38 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:31:38 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:31:40 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:31:40 [Speaker 1]
Again, I you know, we in Steiger, the vernacular we use is just being present in the scene.
00:31:45 [Speaker 1]
We we have a lot of art and music in our history, and, you know, I think too often, we're preaching at a scene rather than being a part of it.

00:31:54 [Speaker 1]
We really aren't a part of it.
00:31:55 [Speaker 1]
And and the fact is a scene is just a group of people gathering around a particular interest.
00:32:00 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:32:00 [Speaker 1]
So we all have a scene that we're a part of, and the neighborhood is obviously one of those scenes.
00:32:05 [Speaker 1]
But we need to have a missionary mindset.

00:32:07 [Speaker 1]
And, you know, missions historically has been seen as kind of you send people from your church over there.
00:32:13 [Speaker 1]
You maybe send a check to them every once in a while.
00:32:16 [Speaker 1]
That's great.
00:32:18 [Speaker 1]
But, man, I think in this culture, we all have to have the mindset that I'm a missionary in my context, which means I'm intentional.
00:32:24 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:32:25 [Speaker 1]
Like Paul before the Athenians, I'm learning the language of the people.
00:32:28 [Speaker 1]
I'm recognizing what resonates with them.
00:32:31 [Speaker 1]
I'm not asking questions they aren't answering, but I'm really or vice versa answering questions they aren't asking.

00:32:37 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:32:38 [Speaker 1]
But I'm really learning to become aware to understand their spiritual felt needs to then speak the love of Jesus into those places.
00:32:44 [Speaker 1]
And so I love it.
00:32:46 [Speaker 1]
But here's what I love about what you did is I feel, like, in a weird hyper individualized culture that is unfortunately permeated the church, what I feel like we often do is say first of all, we assume everyone's in that place of surrender that you mentioned, which I think is a massive assumption.
00:33:03 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:33:03 [Speaker 1]
But then assuming that whether that can even be done, we then give some rah rah speech about evangelism and then say, alright.

00:33:11 [Speaker 1]
Go for it.
00:33:12 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:33:13 [Speaker 1]
And I'm just like, what?
00:33:15 [Speaker 1]
Like, the average person is not gonna walk out of that building, enter into their giant workplace with no strategy, no approach, no ideas.
00:33:23 [Speaker 1]
Right.

00:33:24 [Speaker 1]
It's gonna take a very rare salesmen y entrepreneurial type person to just go, oh, I'll think of something.
00:33:32 [Speaker 1]
And so to give what I often say is evangelism is a team sport.
00:33:36 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:33:36 [Speaker 1]
And it should be a team sport because it can then draw on the full range of the body of Christ in terms of gifting.
00:33:42 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:33:42 [Speaker 1]
So how much of this is that we just need to create like you did more opportunities to put these things into practical practice, like me walking with my dad on the beach or you putting together, you know, a dinner party plan for your church.

00:33:56 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:33:57 [Speaker 2]
Well, and to to kinda build off some of where this conversation is circling, in order to, meet people where they are, you actually have to start going backwards in a way that you're gonna feel like you're losing when I think, in fact, you're just meeting people where they are.
00:34:14 [Speaker 2]
So Yeah.
00:34:15 [Speaker 2]
For example, we have, we've got a good number of 20 year olds on our staff now.
00:34:21 [Speaker 2]
We are and they're all super sharp people.

00:34:24 [Speaker 2]
But, and they're not the norm, but they tell us about their peers who get, like, anxiety making phone calls, don't know how to open a checking account, don't know how to, like, handle taxes.
00:34:35 [Speaker 2]
And in order to shepherd the next generation, we're gonna have to start further back than we'd like, but out of love.
00:34:43 [Speaker 2]
We are willing to put down our own emotional energy and self differentiate as leaders and meet them there so we can bring them to a place of maturity.
00:34:52 [Speaker 2]
I think the same thing happens with people, especially coming out of COVID.
00:34:57 [Speaker 2]
Most people are waking up and turning on YouTube or social from the moment they're awake.

00:35:02 [Speaker 2]
They live reactively throughout the day.
00:35:04 [Speaker 2]
They don't have any quiet.
00:35:06 [Speaker 2]
They're not engaging.
00:35:07 [Speaker 2]
The only time they talk to someone at Starbucks is if their order was incorrect.
00:35:12 [Speaker 2]
They they play less spot they have Spotify curated for them.

00:35:15 [Speaker 2]
They use DoorDash.
00:35:16 [Speaker 2]
They watch Netflix.
00:35:17 [Speaker 2]
They skip all their ads, and then they go to sleep.
00:35:20 [Speaker 2]
And everybody around them is languishing if they're apart from Christ, but our spiritual antennas have been brought in so much.
00:35:28 [Speaker 2]
And so you can beat yourself up like, oh, my church isn't doing evangelism.

00:35:32 [Speaker 2]
Like, if they don't even know the names of who lives next to them and across from them, why why on earth would you expect them to be a compelling missional disciple with a redemptive edge?
00:35:43 [Speaker 2]
You've gotta go back and meet them where they are.
00:35:45 [Speaker 2]
And we see that in Jesus in Philippians two, like, lowering himself to a status he did not deserve but willingly took to meet us where we are to call us into maturity and wholeness.
00:35:56 [Speaker 2]
And I think that's the work of, like, leaders is to have that self differentiation to there was a part of me that was almost like, man, am I lowering the bar?
00:36:05 [Speaker 2]
Am I gonna look like that shallow, weak pastor?

00:36:07 [Speaker 2]
Like, I'm not even telling them to share the gospel at these dinners.
00:36:10 [Speaker 2]
I'm just telling them to get around people.
00:36:13 [Speaker 2]
Now I called them to pray for an hour and fill the environment with prayer and invite the spirit of God to be moving before and then pray after.
00:36:20 [Speaker 2]
But during the time, there's no pitch.
00:36:22 [Speaker 2]
There's no resurrection x presentation to get people to make make a decision for Jesus.

00:36:28 [Speaker 2]
But I think you gotta meet people where they are and coming out of that environment.
00:36:33 [Speaker 2]
And I would argue still today, the increasingly hyper individualized life and atomized life is gonna require us to go back further, to get people to take those steps like you're talking about.

00:36:47 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:36:48 [Speaker 1]
We have such a profound opportunity to speak into a culture that I feel like has a worldview that is just setting itself up for increased loneliness, increased confusion.
00:36:59 [Speaker 1]
And I don't know.
00:36:59 [Speaker 1]
I I just think that I don't know if this is necessarily even a question, but, man, I I just feel so compelled to lean into these felt needs of loneliness, especially because I think that the church has a massive opportunity

00:37:13 [Speaker 2]
Right.

00:37:13 [Speaker 1]
To fill that gap in a way that how how could anyone else do that as effectively as as the church can?

00:37:21 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:37:21 [Speaker 2]
I mean, there's I I think most most Americans don't live with an interruptability, and I'm guilty of this too, so I'm not shaming anybody.
00:37:31 [Speaker 2]
But most of us don't live with the margin necessary to practice the way of Jesus when it comes to relationships.
00:37:38 [Speaker 2]
And it's young it's hard when you have young kids, especially.

00:37:41 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:37:41 [Speaker 2]
And that's one of the redemptive things of youth sports is if you're intentional, you can absolutely leverage that.
00:37:48 [Speaker 2]
But most of us are more preoccupied with our kid getting a scholarship than whether or not our friends know Christ.
00:37:56 [Speaker 2]
And that's just the pool of our culture for sure.
00:37:58 [Speaker 2]
It's so hard.
00:37:59 [Speaker 2]
There's a 25 year old British writer named Freya India.

00:38:03 [Speaker 2]
She did a substack about faith in her generation, And she said the reason Gen z doesn't have faith in anything isn't because they lost their faith.
00:38:12 [Speaker 2]
It's because they never learned it, and they were instead trained to doubt everything, which I would argue was the result of, like, sort of the postmodernist pull in society of, like, deconstruct everything and nothing really matters.
00:38:24 [Speaker 2]
But it was really interesting to to read her words about how you know?
00:38:28 [Speaker 2]
And Gen z, I think, is indicative of society at large.
00:38:32 [Speaker 2]
They're the largest purchasing group in the nation.

00:38:34 [Speaker 2]
All of marketing is angling towards that demographic, and then you've got Gen Alpha coming up after them.
00:38:39 [Speaker 2]
But I think most people, it's not that they lost faith as much as they never had it.
00:38:44 [Speaker 2]
And the foundation that they live on is doubt.
00:38:46 [Speaker 2]
So they doubt themselves, and they doubt their own meaning.
00:38:48 [Speaker 2]
They doubt what they're doing.

00:38:48 [Speaker 2]
They doubt that they matter.
00:38:50 [Speaker 2]
And to your point, Ben, like, that is the the the cry of the generation is that so the Christian should be empowered and moved to meet that need, which we can't be if you only know believers.

00:39:05 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:39:05 [Speaker 1]
And I I think you're right.
00:39:06 [Speaker 1]
I think busyness, self justified busyness Mhmm.
00:39:10 [Speaker 1]
Has gotta be one of the most pernicious schemes of the enemy.
00:39:13 [Speaker 1]
Right?

00:39:14 [Speaker 2]
Right.

00:39:14 [Speaker 1]
And and I what I get worried about is, you know, I got a four year old, a six year old, and a nine year old.
00:39:19 [Speaker 1]
And You're in it.
00:39:21 [Speaker 1]
I'm in it, man.
00:39:22 [Speaker 1]
I'm in it.
00:39:22 [Speaker 1]
And I I feel like what I get worried about is that sort of, well, you know, once then or if then or, you know, that kind of thing where I say, okay.

00:39:32 [Speaker 1]
As you already said and and fairly prefaced it, it's hard at this season.
00:39:37 [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.
00:39:38 [Speaker 1]
But in the same way that it's hard for me to work out in this season, I still make it work because I recognize that I have to commit to these things that my life needs to thrive.
00:39:48 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:39:49 [Speaker 1]
And so in other words, what does fighting back look like even in the midst of a season that provides ample excuse for not having the margin?

00:39:56 [Speaker 1]
Because I know if I don't fight to maintain that commitment to margin and seeing my neighbor and being able to be interrupted, that's not gonna just magically you know, it's the myth of having more time.
00:40:08 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:40:09 [Speaker 1]
We have to we have to basic if if we're always kinda blaming the season we're in, is that really not failing to deal with the root of the issue Yeah.
00:40:18 [Speaker 1]
Which is that there is a version of radical margin for me right now that I probably through the heart of the holy spirit need to reclaim.
00:40:27 [Speaker 1]
And I I think that that's that's part of it.

00:40:30 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:40:30 [Speaker 1]
Is we we have to not just look at this season of life we're in as an excuse to not be obedient to Jesus Totally.

00:40:36 [Speaker 2]
To put

00:40:36 [Speaker 1]
it really bluntly.

00:40:37 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:40:37 [Speaker 2]
I mean, how many college kids do you meet?
00:40:39 [Speaker 2]
I was one of them.
00:40:40 [Speaker 2]
I was like, man, I'm just so busy.
00:40:42 [Speaker 2]
And then you get your first job, and you're like, what did I do with my time?

00:40:45 [Speaker 2]
And then you have kids, and you're like, how did I ever complain about time before kids?
00:40:50 [Speaker 2]
And then you talk to someone with teens, and they're like, oh, man.
00:40:51 [Speaker 2]
When they're young, it's so easy.
00:40:53 [Speaker 2]
You know, it's just like you're you're always falling prey to your own self deception of why you can't do something.
00:40:59 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:40:59 [Speaker 2]
And that's where, like, community, the work of the holy spirit, self realization through the work of God and the word.
00:41:06 [Speaker 2]
And I think that's why time in the morning is so crucial.
00:41:08 [Speaker 2]
You give God forty minutes of stillness and quiet with no distractions, no device, and you watch that become the most redemptive and most satisfying time of your whole day.
00:41:17 [Speaker 2]
It kind of opens up the the scope of and frame of your life to breathe a little bit and really evaluate.
00:41:24 [Speaker 2]
You know, we have to spend as much time living as we do thinking about how we're living.

00:41:28 [Speaker 2]
And I think that morning time is, you know, I this is this I'm trying to get to a point here.
00:41:35 [Speaker 2]
I did six weeks on marriage earlier this year, and one of the there's a couple a woman in our church who, from that series, decided she was gonna leave her husband, which is not what I taught at all.
00:41:47 [Speaker 2]
But then we did we did sixty hours of prayer leading up to Easter, And it was like a massive prayer room, sixty hours of uninterrupted prayer, four people per hour.
00:41:55 [Speaker 2]
I mean, it was awesome.

00:41:56 [Speaker 1]
That's cool.

00:41:57 [Speaker 2]
She was there for one hour.
00:41:58 [Speaker 2]
And after that time with the Lord, she said, I've written off what God said is not dead yet, and I need to initiate it going on a date with my husband.
00:42:08 [Speaker 2]
So she initiated with him.
00:42:09 [Speaker 2]
They went on a date, and they came to Easter together.
00:42:13 [Speaker 2]
I spent a hundred and twenty hours crafting my sermons for that series.

00:42:18 [Speaker 2]
She spent one hour in prayer with the lord Yeah.
00:42:22 [Speaker 2]
And the prompting of the holy spirit, and she obeyed the word of god because of that hour in a way that she did not after my hundred and twenty for the sermons.
00:42:30 [Speaker 2]
So all that to say, the the mechanism of ministry is still redemptive and good and productive, and we still should do that.
00:42:37 [Speaker 2]
But it's really impotent if it doesn't come with, like, the potency in the quiet place because that woman's life has changed because of that hour.
00:42:45 [Speaker 2]
And I do think the Lord used stuff we did over here, but you get what I'm saying.

00:42:49 [Speaker 2]
Like, all Yeah.
00:42:49 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:42:49 [Speaker 2]
All the tactics in the world and all the techniques we give people can't overcome what the Lord can do in thirty minutes.

00:42:57 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:42:58 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:42:58 [Speaker 1]
And it becomes more information and more technique in a world where we are so saturated.
00:43:04 [Speaker 1]
And

00:43:05 [Speaker 2]
A 100.

00:43:07 [Speaker 1]
I've been really in a season of of praying for wisdom more intentionally, because I feel like, you know, it's so complex, right, to know what God is saying and even that's obviously a very some a big assumption.
00:43:21 [Speaker 1]
Obviously, we're always understanding God in a deeper way, but to know it is one thing, but to apply it to a complex world, to seasons, to challenges that I'm facing, it's been something I've been really wrestling with.
00:43:32 [Speaker 1]
Let me just end with this because, again, I could go in a million directions.
00:43:35 [Speaker 1]
I wanna be respectful of your time.
00:43:36 [Speaker 1]
But you mentioned Gen z.

00:43:38 [Speaker 1]
And one of the things I've been wrestling with is is I'm like you, I think.
00:43:42 [Speaker 1]
I really desire to meet people where they're at.
00:43:45 [Speaker 1]
I'm very interested in how to shape things in a presuppositional way and communicate the gospel in a relevant way.
00:43:53 [Speaker 1]
But I think one of the challenges I'm I'm feeling with Gen z is that I I think the whole attraction to meaning, to purpose, to community is definitely there, but then it's also simultaneously coupled with a real aversion to some of the church's stances on things like the LGBT and even hot button topics like masculinity or politics.
00:44:17 [Speaker 1]
And I know you don't wanna throw all that out in the name of attracting them to this thing.

00:44:22 [Speaker 1]
That's the opposite.
00:44:22 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:44:23 [Speaker 1]
They need to know what's true.
00:44:24 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:44:25 [Speaker 1]
How do you manage that balance, especially as it relates to Gen Z of loving them, meeting them, recognizing and attracting them based on their felt needs while saying, but there's truth here.

00:44:37 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:44:37 [Speaker 1]
And there's real standards here.
00:44:39 [Speaker 1]
And that's not my idea.
00:44:41 [Speaker 1]
That's God's idea.
00:44:41 [Speaker 1]
How do you manage that balance?

00:44:43 [Speaker 2]
Well, so a lot I can say here, I'm really, really passionate about talking about hard things.
00:44:47 [Speaker 2]
It's sort of like the reputation of our church, actually.
00:44:50 [Speaker 2]
A couple different things that'll get us to where I wanna go.
00:44:53 [Speaker 2]
I spent a day with Rosaria Butterfield, in Oh, wow.
00:44:57 [Speaker 2]
2023.

00:44:58 [Speaker 2]
And she said to me, it can't be loving if it's rooted in untruth.
00:45:03 [Speaker 2]
So I realized if if I allow people I wanna reach to languish in something that isn't true and from the father and producing flourishing for their good, then it can't be loving.
00:45:14 [Speaker 2]
So Right.
00:45:15 [Speaker 2]
My unwillingness to hit on certain topics is rooted in fear, but also a lack of love.
00:45:21 [Speaker 2]
So that's number one.

00:45:23 [Speaker 2]
Number two, we have found so in in in 2024, all in the span of about nine weeks, I taught on hell, doubt, diversity, abortion, nonviolence, sexuality.
00:45:47 [Speaker 2]
Year before, I'd done three weeks on gender.
00:45:50 [Speaker 2]
We did masculinity that fall.
00:45:52 [Speaker 2]
We did politics three weeks before that.
00:45:56 [Speaker 2]
I do a sermon on sex and porn probably twice a year.

00:45:59 [Speaker 2]
This year, we did, is the bible proslavery?
00:46:01 [Speaker 2]
Is the bible filled with contradictions?
00:46:04 [Speaker 2]
Is the Bible anti woman?
00:46:06 [Speaker 2]
Like, I think Gen z is longing for meaning.
00:46:11 [Speaker 2]
So Christianity is no longer the only seat at the table, but it still is a seat.

00:46:17 [Speaker 2]
But gen z tends to give up on Christians because everyone else is talking about this except the Christians.
00:46:22 [Speaker 2]
And so when a Christian speaks on it in a way that I would argue is prophetic, persuasive, and pastoral all at once, I think too often we see people that are one or the other.
00:46:32 [Speaker 2]
I think you can be all.
00:46:34 [Speaker 2]
This just just it just takes more work.

00:46:37 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:46:37 [Speaker 2]
But I we have found, we have a a ton of young people.
00:46:43 [Speaker 2]
You know, our average age is still probably in the young thirties, mid thirties maybe, and that's because we got a lot of college kids too in mid young twenties.
00:46:50 [Speaker 2]
But we have found it to be super helpful to hold up the topic, hold up why it makes sense to us at first, and then dig deep into why it's flawed and why it hurts us.
00:47:05 [Speaker 2]
And then once you help them understand you're not against them, you see what they see, you understand what motivates them to be drawn to it, but then you do the deep work to uncover how it's wounding them actively or how it's wounded our society, and then you elevate the way of Jesus and and how his way leads to flourishing even if it's through pain.
00:47:24 [Speaker 2]
We now are a place where people will be upset with what I said or disagree with it, but they understood how I got there, so they still respect me.

00:47:32 [Speaker 2]
And I think one of the knocks on Christian content is they operate on straw man arguments without any awareness of, like, the actual pain or motivating factors that leads people to have any number of positions.
00:47:42 [Speaker 2]
You know, like, I've I've talked to so many parents who, like, have feel like they have to choose.
00:47:46 [Speaker 2]
Do I want a dead son or a living daughter when their kid is trans?

00:47:49 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:47:50 [Speaker 2]
You have to you have to make space for that person to understand that you see them, you get it, and who knows what you would do in that position as well.
00:47:57 [Speaker 2]
But that doesn't change the word of God that it leads to life that is for our benefit and that the creator of the cosmos has his fingerprints on your life and on your child, and there's something here for them.
00:48:07 [Speaker 2]
Now I'm also a journalist, so I I think one of the tools that I use a lot is I use secular, non Christian research to affirm the word of God because I think all the ologies point to theology.
00:48:18 [Speaker 2]
All of biology is it astrology?
00:48:20 [Speaker 2]
Which one's the the one that's not true?

00:48:22 [Speaker 2]
Astrology is the one that's not real.
00:48:23 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:48:24 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:48:24 [Speaker 1]
Astronomy, astrology.

00:48:25 [Speaker 2]
Astronomy.
00:48:25 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:48:26 [Speaker 2]
Astronomy is good.
00:48:27 [Speaker 2]
But biology And

00:48:28 [Speaker 1]
then there's gastronomy, which is cooking.
00:48:30 [Speaker 1]
But, anyway, we're off track now.

00:48:32 [Speaker 2]
All of those all of those point to Christ.
00:48:33 [Speaker 2]
So, you know, my masculinity sermon, I referenced a massive study done by UVA that found the most violent men in the country are churchgoing men who don't actually follow Jesus.
00:48:46 [Speaker 2]
The least violent men, across all metrics are churchgoing, bible reading, faithfully serving in their church men.
00:48:56 [Speaker 2]
And so this lie that, like, conservative Christian men are the most harmful is actually unproven in the science.
00:49:01 [Speaker 2]
When I taught on abortion, I showed the study from Northwestern that when the sperm hits the egg, there's a flash of zinc, and you can literally see let there be light at our beginning.

00:49:10 [Speaker 2]
And so it it it's like, if you don't do anything, this will continue to life from here on out.
00:49:15 [Speaker 2]
So the more I can prop up their institutions of authority to affirm the authority of God's word, I undo their ability to have an objection because I'm meeting them in the heart and I'm meeting them in the head.
00:49:26 [Speaker 2]
So all of that, I think, is just it's paramount that we talk about it.
00:49:29 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:49:30 [Speaker 2]
But we do so with a from a place of heartbreak.

00:49:32 [Speaker 2]
And I think my criticism of some guys who do this is they come across angry at the culture instead of heartbroken for the person.

00:49:40 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:49:40 [Speaker 2]
And it's hard if you don't have any people in your life who are dealing with that.

00:49:44 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:49:45 [Speaker 1]
It feels like at the core of all all communication needs to be a broken heart because I I feel like I can be guilty on the other end of the extreme where I I feel a real compassion for those outside of the church, but I can become a Pharisee against Pharisees.
00:50:00 [Speaker 1]
Like, I can become self righteous in how much better I how superior my perspective is versus a lot of people in the church.
00:50:08 [Speaker 1]
I remember I do a lot quite a lot of preaching, and I I just had a season of feeling this intense conviction.
00:50:13 [Speaker 1]
God is really challenging me in terms of, do you actually love the church?

00:50:17 [Speaker 1]
Like, you speak to the at the church a lot.
00:50:20 [Speaker 1]
You gotta be doing this.
00:50:21 [Speaker 1]
You gotta be doing that.
00:50:22 [Speaker 1]
You're not seeing the culture.
00:50:22 [Speaker 1]
You're not preaching the but do you actually love the church?

00:50:26 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.

00:50:26 [Speaker 1]
And, man, it was I had become a, in my mind, I was, like, kinda going after after a Pharisaical attitude, but as a Pharisee, and and so doing was no less guilty than the the people I was claiming to judge in that sense.
00:50:39 [Speaker 1]
So yeah.
00:50:41 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:50:41 [Speaker 1]
This is a a very crucial topic.
00:50:44 [Speaker 1]
I say that we we need to have good answers to tough questions.

00:50:47 [Speaker 1]
And

00:50:48 [Speaker 2]
Right.

00:50:48 [Speaker 1]
There's sort of the fight or flight reactions that the church tends to have either the person who claim you know, claiming to do a loving thing avoids the topic altogether.

00:50:57 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:50:58 [Speaker 2]
I

00:50:58 [Speaker 1]
don't think that's helping, but the person who on the other end of the spectrum with no love in their hearts goes on the offensive, and they're gonna share all the things and all the posts and all the bumper stickers and all that.
00:51:07 [Speaker 1]
I think that there is a middle ground of of genuinely broken heart and and having done the due diligence of leveraging the extraordinary brilliance in our body.
00:51:18 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:51:18 [Speaker 1]
Because there is extraordinary brilliance in our body Right.
00:51:21 [Speaker 1]
Who have devoted their lives to giving good answers to these tough questions.

00:51:24 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:51:25 [Speaker 1]
Leveraging them and then taking that and and providing that.
00:51:30 [Speaker 1]
There's the quote I love as it relates to this whole thing, which is that, you know, apologetics are not the cross, but they're the shears that remove the bushes that obscure the cross.
00:51:39 [Speaker 1]
And that's what it is for me.
00:51:41 [Speaker 1]
It's I want that moment, right, in somebody where it's not that that has been the thing.

00:51:48 [Speaker 1]
That's what the holy spirit does, and they gotta see Jesus and their own sin and all that.
00:51:52 [Speaker 1]
But it is that moment of recognizing that, wow, there there is something to this.
00:51:57 [Speaker 1]
Even as you said, where secular biology, psychology, philosophy is is Right.
00:52:02 [Speaker 1]
Wow.
00:52:03 [Speaker 1]
Low and behold, bearing out evidence that this Jesus thing is is actually, I don't know, maybe in charge of wiring it in the first place.

00:52:11 [Speaker 1]
So

00:52:12 [Speaker 2]
I will say with your apologetics, angle you're hitting on, I do think in this moment, for a long time, pastors viewed their role as exegeting the text, and now they have to exegete their people in order to apply the hermeneutic.
00:52:27 [Speaker 2]
So with with Gen z, like, let's let's just go back.
00:52:30 [Speaker 2]
Like, doctor Craig, you had him on the show.
00:52:32 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:52:33 [Speaker 2]
He came to prominence in an age in response to the new atheist movement when boomers and gen x were really asking the question, what's true?

00:52:41 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

00:52:41 [Speaker 2]
But back then, objective truth was still a stated goal.
00:52:45 [Speaker 2]
That is no longer the case.
00:52:47 [Speaker 2]
We then came millennials where we were really asking the question, is it fair?
00:52:51 [Speaker 2]
You know, Tom's shoes came big.
00:52:54 [Speaker 2]
Everybody wanted everyone to have the same.

00:52:56 [Speaker 2]
Equality became a new stated goal, which there was virtue in for sure.
00:53:00 [Speaker 2]
But the the apologetic of the time was how do we help establish the justice and fairness of God to a questioning generation?
00:53:09 [Speaker 2]
And we captured people's hearts when we could like, the local the missions movement, I think, thrived reaching next generation because it was like, look at the good and justice of God that is on display through missions.
00:53:19 [Speaker 2]
Now we're in a time with Gen z and China alpha where I think their main question is what's authentic?
00:53:24 [Speaker 2]
What's real?

00:53:26 [Speaker 2]
And so they're Interesting.
00:53:27 [Speaker 2]
They're no longer interested in what's true because truth is even a thing to them, dude.
00:53:31 [Speaker 2]
Like, they're they're growing up in a time where their parents can't even discern what's real news and what's AI generated video.
00:53:38 [Speaker 2]
And and so the apologetic that we have to be putting out there is to meet them in their heart, expose the pain that they carry, and then point to, like, real displays of healing and hope.
00:53:49 [Speaker 2]
Because what's real in the a world of AI and everything, that's gonna become the prominent.

00:53:53 [Speaker 2]
And that's where I think confession, vulnerability, you know, the world of influencers can be undone by Christians who who instead of virtue signal, almost vulnerably signal where they suck, where they fall short because the the generation can't fathom being that okay with being broken.
00:54:13 [Speaker 2]
And the gospel gives us the capacity to do so.
00:54:16 [Speaker 2]
But you're talking about apologetics, so I think that's that's one of the great tensions I see of, like, the younger Jace.
00:54:21 [Speaker 2]
I think one of the reasons, like, Stuart and Cliff going to college campuses are so effective is because they're face to face.
00:54:28 [Speaker 2]
They're not just talking over people.

00:54:30 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:54:31 [Speaker 2]
But there's there's that, like, is this authentic?
00:54:33 [Speaker 2]
Well, they're looking at a real guy.
00:54:34 [Speaker 2]
He's answering the question.
00:54:35 [Speaker 2]
He's telling his story.

00:54:37 [Speaker 2]
You know, George Jenko, for better, for worse, he saw he's being real about his stuff.
00:54:41 [Speaker 2]
People are responding to that.
00:54:43 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:54:44 [Speaker 2]
You know, the the people that Gen z is latching onto has a common they have a common flavor that I think would be defined as authenticity in addition to wisdom and accuracy in the scriptures.
00:54:53 [Speaker 2]
God will.

00:54:54 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:54:54 [Speaker 1]
And every everything's gonna have its strengths and weaknesses.
00:54:59 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:55:00 [Speaker 1]
Of course.
00:55:00 [Speaker 1]
And and we're gonna we're gonna have a pendulum swing once again.

00:55:02 [Speaker 1]
Right.
00:55:03 [Speaker 1]
In the name of authenticity, people are gonna go too far, and they're not gonna elevate truth and standards, and then we're gonna have to course correct.
00:55:09 [Speaker 1]
And Yep.
00:55:11 [Speaker 1]
It's just a never ending thing.
00:55:12 [Speaker 1]
But but

00:55:13 [Speaker 2]
that's end.
00:55:13 [Speaker 2]
Until the end, the bride will have its stains, and then it will be white as snow, and all will be good.

00:55:19 [Speaker 1]
That's awesome, man.
00:55:20 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:55:20 [Speaker 1]
Well, then lots of flat whites.
00:55:22 [Speaker 1]
We'll enjoy flat white.

00:55:22 [Speaker 2]
I'm on the date.

00:55:23 [Speaker 1]
Don't have to hopefully, we don't have to wait that long.
00:55:25 [Speaker 1]
Hopefully, it's not you know?

00:55:27 [Speaker 2]
Well, it depends on I guess, it depends if you're pretrib dispensational and you think everything in Iran is, the end times So or not.
00:55:34 [Speaker 2]
I

00:55:35 [Speaker 1]
don't know.
00:55:36 [Speaker 1]
Fifty five minutes into this conversation, if we start there, we may never end.

00:55:39 [Speaker 2]
So I don't even

00:55:40 [Speaker 1]
I I

00:55:40 [Speaker 2]
don't even know what I mean.

00:55:41 [Speaker 1]
Appreciate you.
00:55:42 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:55:42 [Speaker 1]
I don't is it wrong to say I don't care?
00:55:45 [Speaker 1]
Is that wrong?
00:55:46 [Speaker 1]
Can I put that at the end?

00:55:47 [Speaker 2]
I don't.

00:55:48 [Speaker 1]
I don't either.
00:55:49 [Speaker 1]
Dude, this has been fantastic.
00:55:51 [Speaker 1]
I knew it would be.
00:55:52 [Speaker 1]
I'm so grateful for your voice.
00:55:54 [Speaker 1]
Keep doing what you're doing.

00:55:54 [Speaker 1]
Let's connect more.
00:55:56 [Speaker 1]
Damn.
00:55:56 [Speaker 1]
Let's have more conversations.
00:55:57 [Speaker 1]
I, you know, I wanna support you from afar.
00:56:00 [Speaker 1]
And, that's it.

00:56:01 [Speaker 1]
I gotta hit this end button, make sure that your file uploads.
00:56:04 [Speaker 1]
Sounds very technical for a live recording here, but I'm gonna do that.
00:56:08 [Speaker 1]
And, thanks, man.
00:56:09 [Speaker 1]
Appreciate it.

00:56:09 [Speaker 2]
Thanks, bro.