Living Beyond the System — http://thegodjourney.com/wordpress/2007/09/14/living-beyond-the-system/

It's now time to think outside the box of what we've always known. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord. I think that's a profound turning point in somebody's relationship with God. And our hope in starting this was that this would become an ever-expanding conversation. Just two real guys talking about life. That's a nice tagline. I'm Wayne Jacobson. And I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to another edition of the God Journey. So the Cummings household has two new kittens. Not one. We traded one shipper for two new kittens. You didn't trade shipper. You lost shipper. First of all. It's not a trade. Personally, I think he still may come back. And it will be a three-cat family. So I'm not welcome up there anymore. No, I don't think you are. You don't tend to like cats. So we'll see you later, Wayne. That's the asthmatic condition that follows my time with cats. Oh, because you hack up hairballs or something like that. People joke about me wheezing sometimes when we're laughing on the podcast. That's usually because I've been near a cat. I made the massive mistake, my wife, in searching for tripper. Tripper. Yes, that's what that thing is like. Do you name one of the cats, Tripper? No, I'm thinking of him and one of the little guys, Mohawk, because he just always has got his hair all frizzed out. He's so little, so funny looking. I think everything's so new. I mean, I think some people are like this, honestly. I really do. It's like he's searching around the house, but everything is so new. He's got every sensory thing just on overload. His hair is Mohawked everywhere. Nobody wants to call him Mohawk, but I'm going, that's Mohawk. That's the kitty. That's Mohawk. I really hate to see you go down this road. You know what? It's a massive mistake of my wife, I think, is at the animal shelter and she says, you know, so honey, what do you think? As opposed to like being the verboten, we're just doing dogs. I said, honey, you got to be the one that takes care of them. My plate's really full, so whatever you would like, I gave her the green light and she didn't just come back with the ones, she came back with two. This really is going to affect my relationship with Kelly. I have a lot of respect for the woman. I gotta tell you. Careful. She listens to these all the time. Oh, what? My wife doesn't. Why does your wife, my gosh, she can't wait for each one each week. Oh, man, there you go. No, Sarah listens to them too, but not quite that quickly. I think she's back. I think she's back in March now listening to them, trying to catch up with them. You ever know that I get feedback from a podcast of six months ago and you just go like, okay, I have the foggiest clue what I said. Yeah. Somebody called me yesterday and said, do you remember on some podcast when you said such and such and which one that is? Answers, no. Yeah. I guess we need an archivist. You know, somebody will do an archive of content. There are archives. No, that's just titles, man. That's titles and content, but no, it's not. No, we can't keep track of all the stories. So, Wayne, come over. You gotta play with the little kittens. I'm not coming over to play with kittens. I do gotta just snap a picture of Mohawk. I thought it was providence. I thought it was providence that your chipper moved on. Careful. Careful. I'm just saying. Careful. You're in deep water in the Cummings house right now. You're about to drown, Wayne. I used to love the Cummings household, but it's moving down the list. You're a fair weather friend? That's terrible. No, I'm a dog weather friend. Fair weather friend. I don't like fairs, actually. So, that's new for us. Two new kittens. One's named Mohawk. The other is nameless. Congratulations. That's funny. Today's a crazy day for me. I'm trying to pack up and get on a flight tomorrow morning to go up to Alberta, Canada. What is it with the Canadians? They're going nuts for the shack, man. I get two, three calls a day. Well, they're supposed to be calling Brad. Brad's got his own distribution up there now. A different Brad. Brad, not Cummings. Yes. But, man, yeah, Ontario in July headed for Alberta tomorrow and then up in B.C. in October. And then I got people writing from Saskatchewan and Manitoba say, what's wrong with us? How come you're not coming up here? You just have to do the whole tour of the Great White North. Three and four months. That's a lot. I tell you, I don't know how much Canadian stuff I can take, but I find out. Now that you've offended them, less and less. We'll see how the hospitality is. But the Carolina folks still want us to come down there. One of us. We've not been yet. So... I'm still threatening. One of these days. One of the next month. In the next month. Well, we have to do a whole bunch of promotional things for the Ten Commandments. It's coming out October 19th. In Carolina? It's going out nationwide. They're going to be able to see them in the Carolinas. Are you guys buying an ad on our website? Are you just going to use all this for all the free publicity you can get? I can see that. Got a great web banner for you to put up. No, you know what's really cool? I'm glad you don't know how to work the website. I know. I know. Thanks a lot. What's really cool is it's getting a lot of neat response from folks and I'm pleased with it because at the end of the day it presents the fact that God desires to have a relationship with each and every one of us and wants to talk to each and every one of us. So that's new for the Ten Commandments. Wow. So that would be cool. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. Do I get it on a premiere showing or something? Yeah. I'm sure there's one happening but all of that is in like the last minute. You know, they sort of save everything for the last month before it launches. So if there's a premiere, I'll let you come. Okay. Okay. With the Cummings household who are now my best friends? No. I think you'll have to sit out back with a dog, spouse. Hey, I don't mind that. I'd rather soon sit with the dogs than with a bunch of stupid arrogant cats. Oh, stop it. You're a cute little kitten. It's one with a mohawk. That's the only time a cat's good is when they're a cute little kitten. But that only lasts three months. We'll just keep them in kittenhood. You've got to take out their pituitary gland. That's not good. What? I'm not doing surgery on cats. Well, are you going to keep them kitten then? I don't have no idea. I just told you how you had to do it. I'm not recommending it at all. I'm not thinking they survived that, Wayne. I think I'm not sure that's what the system doesn't do at times. Take our pituitary gland out. Oh, now there you go down an interesting trail. Well, how about that little segue? We had a lot of reader listener reaction to the whole system thing. Well, just talking about it. The guy who even sent us the letter that we read from the district superintendent, he has big meeting with his local board the other last night, I think. Got email from him this morning and he just said, our conversation really helped him, but he ran to the same thing with his own board there as he read into the letter that, yeah, man, we love what you're hungry for and we appreciate your struggle and blah, blah, blah. But as a tribe, we do things. See, what's so amazing is individuals can be wonderful, but a system can't go there. No. A system almost becomes its own entity and has its own self-preservation instincts that are contrary to the growth of individuals, because that could be at the expense of the system. Yeah, because now we've got to stop treating you just like a friend, but now it's a rule and a policy. How you are going to affect this thing that we have that we've all agreed that we want to live this way and if you're a threat to that or if you don't like it, you, we love you, but you have to move on. Wow. We got a lengthy letter. Do you see the letter from one gal? I think it was in Australia. Terry? Yeah. Been through just a nightmare of things with some relationships and new people coming in and hungers that wouldn't be serviced inside of it all and now finds herself probably on the outs looking in but still has a passion for the people that are there. And I think that's the conflict that a lot of, see on the one side of it, people who defend the system at the expense of relationship and then the other risk on the other side is people who leave that system area and still want the relationships, but that's sometimes complicated too. Yeah, I think it's all a function of where people are at in this journey. I think I know that for, for folks that are just like all of a sudden getting excited about the Lord, but perhaps the person that's been a catalyst for that has been within the system. They don't just get excited about the Lord. It's you get excited about the Lord and fill in the blank and it's this, you got to come along and be a part of this whole thing. That's what excitement for the Lord plays out to look like. And if that's what someone has been fed in the early in the early ages, early days of kind of their relationship all of a sudden they're trained to look at the system. And so someone is challenging the system. Gosh, total disconnect and confusion for the young people like, well, I don't, I don't get that. But I think once you've been in it for a while and you recognize, wait a minute, this isn't what I was saying yes to. I wasn't buying a system. I was following a person that captured my heart. And then there's the whole disconnect of how come we can't just follow relationships? How come I can't just, how come if I'm not a part of the club, why do I have to then be in exile? Yeah, why can't we still be friends even if I'm not part of that whole deal? Yeah, I think everybody tries to maintain that. But I know for me, when I was in charge of managing one of those things, once people no longer came to what we were doing, I didn't feel a responsibility to them anymore because I couldn't keep up with the people who were there. But notice how distorted that sounds. I don't have a responsibility. So it was never friendship anyway. It was just a responsibility I had. And if you're not there, well, there's lots of people are here and we want to serve them obviously because that serves in a weird way. Serving them serves me and my sense of success or whatever. And it just instead of, yeah, we get to be friends and friends of friends and love each other and encourage each other to what God asks and not try to conform it to the same looking thing. Well, yeah, loving people in big quotes is an issue of what does it do for my bottom line that I'm building? And so it becomes a sort of purpose and goal oriented dynamic as opposed to just loving people for the sake that they're worthy of being loved. And that's what we're here to do. It's a love and care for each other. You get on some other kick where you're just going like, and it's really subtle. I mean, I remember I just, if someone wasn't a part of our group, I don't think I consciously understood the conclusions I was drawing from, but it's like, well, then I need to take care of the ones that are. Right, because if they're not, then I might be a sheepstealer and who wants to be a sheepstealer? You know, I'd rather be a cow kicker than a sheepstealer. And that's that accusation that gets everybody freaked out. No one wants to be a sheepstealer. It was just kind of the excuse to say, I just had to focus on these folks. But what's harder to give up, I think, is once you've got a group with a thing, and if it's a building or a program or a ritual or a creed, we got a thing that now, if anybody messes with that thing. You're there an enemy. They're a threat. Well, it's not even a nice enemy, but yeah, a threat. Just I don't know what to do with you. If you want to, I come here because I like this. I like this song service. I like being yelled at for 45 minutes, told what a lousy person I am. And going to my Dave Coleman friend who helped me write the Jake book, he will tell you that people, really religious people, need a good beating once in a while just because it feels good to their own sense of failure that yeah, I've been beat up again and yeah, I'm sorry. And yes, I got to try harder. Reaffirm my commitment. Yeah, and that reaffirms something. So when somebody says, Hey, maybe we could do this differently. I think it is the things whether particularly if it's money and buildings and property and program, don't mess with this stuff. We all come here because we like this stuff. So don't mess with it. And that's where the threat kicks in. We may really like you as a person, but you're messing with the thing that we like first of all, and then we have come to believe this is the way Jesus meant for his church to exist in the world. So if you mess with that, you're messing with Jesus. And I think that's the smoke screen. I don't know if, I mean, maybe there's a few diehards. I'd absolutely believe that. But I think the reality just take one step further behind the veil. I think the reality for most of the folks leading that this system, this thing is their anchor of security. This is where my paycheck, my sustenance, my resource comes from. Therefore, out of homage, I must care for it. Right. And you threaten that. You're threatening my security. And I don't think the math happens at a brainwave level of clearly seeing that, that that really is what's happened. I don't think you see it either because I think on the surface, the rationale is mentally, this is the way Jesus meant his church to function. This is the way leadership is. This is the way, the only right way. And surprisingly enough, we're the only group getting it right. All the other groups in town aren't getting it as right as we're getting it. But that being beside the point, I think the, you know, Hebrews 10, 25, the whole idea of this is the way it was meant to be. It is what the rationale is that keeps people from looking outside of it or even encouraging people who have hungers outside of it. Because you just, you can't mess with this. I do think it is because of their own personal security issues with it. I do think that's the bedrock thing, but that's covered over with this veneer of, but this is how Jesus told us to do it. And you know what's so strange is that Jesus seemed to always amidst the crowd. He always had time for the individual and it wasn't an authorized individual. It didn't matter whether they were quote in or out or could be defined as such. It could be Pharisees or sinners or yeah. He seemed to not lose the individual amidst the crowd. And I sat there going like, gosh, that was when I was passionate. I was one of the biggest challenges is I had to sort of care for this big throng. And that's that's that's a heady task. It's like maybe feel important. Being busy was a value. You know, absolutely. And it's like you're looking at a Christian sin and so I found myself scurrying around under the weight of that and losing touch with the individuals in front of me in terms of just their needs. And I just I made that that would not mean like you're just going like that is not what Jesus did. Jesus did the exact opposite. What am I missing here? That just that started to disquiet. I just I recognized. Wait a minute. That's if we had a model, if there was such a thing as a model, it would be the the man Christ Jesus. And so little of what I understood as professional ministry followed that example. And I sat there going like, what's wrong with this? That was the disconnect for me because if you think this is the only way Jesus wants us to do things lined up in rows 10 o'clock Sunday morning, mini concert, mini lecture, elder managed program, you can't find one iota of that in the teachings of Jesus to the disciples. You don't find it there. I was reading yesterday even just the birth of the church again in the book of Acts and here's a group of people that did not have a system to impose on what was happening. The Holy Spirit did something that brought a whole lot of people in contact with who Jesus the resurrected Christ and then you got disciples and everybody's kind of, well, you know, here's and also they seem to be doing those. We're trying to teach people who this Jesus is and how to follow him. Not we're trying to, we'll get a home. Yeah, we'll get a home church management task force going over there and depending on where you live, you got to go to this group or you don't find any of that. But you do find that out of that people ended up in homes with each other. They ended up caring about each other and selling goods to help people who were in need. You found a whole lot of care going on that didn't seem to be managed till later in Acts where there's some problems with that too. But you don't find the early angst was we've got to create a system to contain it. So much more was God's doing something. Let's be part of it and love the folks that God's bringing into our path as part of it. And so it was more the individual loving life than ever was, hey, let's start something and let's manage something. If you take a step back, what do you see going on? I mean, you know, yes, you could hold the time of deconstruction. I mean, you can talk about it in aeridate forms and all the different seminary language. But what do you think is going on? Because there was a sharp response to the whole system thing. It's like, you know, you pull back, they're like, oh, it's a system. Yeah. So what do you think is going on? In what way? It picks your context. What do you see happening? Is it just that people are becoming dissatisfied? Or is God got up to something that you can identify? Yeah, well, I had to get into that God's up to something because I think God's always up to something. I think God was up something 20, 30, 40 years ago. And I think it's up to something today. You know, it's not just now, the cutting edge. Yeah, I just, I think God's up to something all the time. Jesus said, my father's always working. But I do think we're seeing the implosion of religion as a system. Now, there are lots of groups that meet on Sunday morning that are more like families that have grown up together that don't have all this overlay of conformity and all that we talk about. I do know groups like that. And those are healthy and fine. I've been with groups like that. And I think that is fine. The system we're talking about is not people meet on Sunday morning. It's that whole religious obligation, conformity based. My life in Christ is now my conforming to a creed and a ritual not being equipped to know Him. And I do think we've seen in the last 30, 40 years an increasing number of these mega groups and whatever that in the end of it is I'm just a cog in a big machine. One of the things that Terry said was that she had been part of this thing for a long time but had lost her own relationship with Jesus in it. And that to me is when the system has become more important than anything else is we do, we get so involved managing things that we lose the life of Jesus. I think there's just a lot of hungry people that are turning around saying, I got into this because I love Jesus and I want to get back to the reality of that relationship. And that's then you start seeing through the system and yes, more and more people seemingly around the world are seeing through that and hungry for what's next? What can I find now? Yeah, and I don't want to get ookey-smookey here but I think so oftentimes the repetitive story is where people started out with good intentions. Their heart was kind of pure and responding to its passion. Then all of a sudden you dump some measure of number success and it almost seems like that's the undoing which is going, well, why should that be some kind of undoing? And it's as if once you create an it, there's something that can be inhabitable by something other than Jesus. And I'm not going to demonize the entire body but it's like as soon as you have something that is an entity it almost takes on a life of its own. And you can still have pure wonderful little hearts that are trying to do their best but they get sucked up into the surface of something other than what began everything. Yeah, absolutely, and I think you can do that without even trying to create something. I'll give you a good example. Some of those that have been on the forum this week and it's brought up some wonderful conversation about the forum that I hope we can talk about if we have time in this podcast. But there's a little bit of conflict and so I stepped in. The name calling going on. Yeah, I stepped in to say, you know, we don't need to talk that way here. I think we can be more adults in that. Plus there was a whole lot of people writing me saying, oh, you got to be in this person, you got it. And I'm just like, oh boy. Now see, we didn't mean to create a thing. We just hopefully had a place where people who... We didn't even create it. So we did create a forum. No, I created the forum. Well, somebody else helped me man it. They helped me put it together. But we just wanted to provide a place where people could interact about these podcasts and have a place to share their own journey and have a place to connect with people in their region. That was the whole desire of it. Well, now if a few people come in and they want to be rude and obnoxious in dealing with other people so that people who came here to kind of share their journeys feel like they've got to leave because I just, it's just so highly conflicted. It got to that point, just so highly conflicted that I was getting e-mail from people saying, we're leaving the list. And so now the deal is, so what do we do about it? If relationship can fix it, if you think it's a relationship, but it's saying, hey, here's what's going on. Can we throttle it back a little bit? And some of you, but does it mean that I have to actually throw people out? Yeah. And I just sit here and go, oh, yuck. Yeah, I'm not going there. Oh, I would close the forum first. I really would before I get the place of having to play policeman. Here's what I was asked today in an e-mail. This is a good friend of mine up from Idaho, Dwight. And he writes, he said, as a person who watched the forum start and grow, the recent developments have been troubling. I do appreciate your heart and desire in the matter. I also recognize that you're trying not to control or police the site. I don't blame you, but it does raise an interesting issue regarding freedom and structure. If a person's freedom is destructive to another, is it okay to restrict that freedom? I'm still sorting out the tension between a free, fully relational walk with Christ and how that often works together with a greater body. I do get together with different folks often, but I can't say it's a community as I think about it. Anyway, very grateful for your heart and desire to help. I think that really... That's a great question. Isn't that a fabulous thing? And I think that's what all the... Once people start getting together and if we're going to pool money, have facility or whatever, then the question is, what do we do with the problem people? As we talked about sometimes, the relationally challenged are one of those. The agenda-driven folks are another who now, and I think that's part of it with the forum. There's a lot of people who come to that forum and people who... I've got this bully pulpit agenda that they can't seem to find any outlet because none of their friends want to listen to them blather on about some of these things that I just think are weird. They find a bully pulpit and they can come on and no one says you can't post as much as you want. No rules about that because we wanted to have people have a free and open discussion. Well, for a number of years, that's been wonderful and a lot of good things have happened. We got a bump in the road here and there. And then lately it's just gotten more and more of people want to use the forum for their own deal rather than let it be what it's there for. Now the question is, can relationships handle that? See, I do think that that's the challenge because I think the impatient mistake would be to just throw up a rule or a policy and say, well, you know, and so you can ban an individual or you can kick that person off. And then it's like, you know what? It doesn't seem like that's how Jesus was relating to even trouble people that found him, you know? I think the call is to actually seek to engage in relationship and to create a dialogue amidst the problems. Who in their life doesn't have some? If you can, but see, it'd be so much easier if this were in my front room and a group of people and some people got rude and obnoxious and you could say, hey, let's go outside or next time we have folks over, I'm probably not inviting you because relationally that could be handled much easily. Technology like this, whereas it's not really that correct. Internet forum where you don't know people and you can't take them outside and say, hey, could we help you with whatever your issue is? Because all the rest of us aren't coming to hear you blather on from your bully pulpit. We're not. We're here to share the life of Jesus together and to grow in that. And I think relationships can handle that. I think on the forum, I think we've made some good adjustments in the last couple of days. So I'm hoping that, yeah, maybe we could just stop and do it relationally. But I think we even see signs and acts of the early church doing, and I think we even warned about it. I think everything that happens in acts didn't happen in acts, so we could follow it as an example. I think something- Be in a nice and survivor ministry. I was thinking more, let's appoint the deacons. The problem is we've got widows who aren't being fed. So here's what we need to do. We need to appoint seven people who will do it for us. And so we're going to do an institutional fix. Instead of, I think a relational fix would be to say to the body, hey, here's some people being ignored. Let's let Jesus check our hearts about that. And if God puts something on your heart, I want to encourage you to do it. And let's free that to the body to fix it rather than the apostle saying, like, we're too good for this. So let us give ourselves to the preaching of the word into prayer. And there is in the pastor, including you and me that didn't use that scripture to say, this ain't my job. All this practical garbage stuff. I'm gonna, I've got to be ready for Sunday morning sermon. But Philip was one of those guys they picked and he didn't see a few chapters later. He's not on table. He's not there anymore. I do- And I think that's a part of the hint from Acts to say, this wasn't a great fix. This was a problem. Yeah. My little flag there, I don't think it was an institutional fix with an institutional mindset that says you're elected from here to you die kind of approach. I think that they picked, they picked some people that could be trusted individuals to help facilitate a solution for that. Because disciples were too important for it. That was the reason. But two chapters. Like you said, it's Stephen, it's Philip. These are the guys in the cutting edge. They're not at the food bin anymore. No, they're not there, but it's the ones God's using. It's not the guys who've decided to closet themselves in prayer. They're having to chase down behind Philip, behind Stephen, to take care of things because they were kind of off the cutting edge because I think they really did say, let's institutionally fix something. And God said, I want to show him bigger than that. And I'm going to use Stephen and Philip in ways to go way beyond waiting on tables. And I think God moved it on that way. Whether or not, this is one question I have with Gail Irwin, author of Jesus Style One Day as a group I had helped planted was kind of imploding. I said, how long do you think a church should exist? And by that, I was using the old definition of a group of people who combined together on. And he said, I think about 12 years. I said, really, I was thinking seven because I think the planting of something with a lot of friendships, there's a lot of excitement about that. But I think over six, seven, eight years, you build in a bunch of rules and rituals and procedures just because well, we had this problem. So now to avoid this problem, we'll make this rule and to avoid that problem, we'll make this rule and hopefully you fix that. We'll do this. And by eight, nine years out, all you're doing is following all the rules you created. And that freshness of God leading us into friendships is gone. And it may be as it might be with the form at some point. If it degenerates into the kind of thing I thought it was headed for last week, I would someday say, let's just close it for a while. Yes, pull the plug. Other people can start other forms and it can grow again. The question is, how much does freedom for everybody involve restricting freedom for some? I think it does. I because families have to work like that. I got a couple of kids and say younger immature ones smacking the other. Do I as a parent go like, well, you know, I'm just all about freedom? No, you step in and you stop harm that's happening. But do I then install myself as the forever policeman? No, it's done in a context of an incident, a situation and instruction and love and direction that happens in a context. I think it's when you start to just say, well, I'm going to manage this by the imposition of rules. I think that's where you start taking a step down a wrong road. So you're offering to be dad of the forum? No, not at all. It's easier in a family where there's a dad and you've got young kids. It's different when your kids are adult aged, don't live here anymore. Then there's an, yeah, still not going to let somebody beat somebody up in my house. Yeah, you do this on the corner out there at the bus stop. If all of a sudden somebody was harming somebody else, I'll guarantee you Wayne Jacobson would step in and do something. Yeah, but at the same time I might step in and do something. I'm looking around saying, where's a policeman when you need one? Because I'd rather have the guy with the gun doing it than me. I'm getting old. People to beat me up. But in the context of life, I think that that's where it is the internal prompting and responding to a responsibility that the Holy Spirit would tug at. That says, you know what? You know something here. There's a maturity here that you have inside that can step in and bring help and healing to this. Now, there's no guarantee that it's going to turn out positive. Right. But to me, that's what eldering is. Yes. It's not, it wasn't elder in the body of Christ. It's a mature It's not a post. It's a function. It's a mature brother and sister that's willing to insert themselves between someone's abuse of freedom and someone getting hurt and trying to help the person who's the abuser and trying to help the one who's being abused. Helping the whole thing grow up. That's right. And helping people connect in a more meaningful way. And I think it's easier for us to say, I'd rather have a system fix that for me. I want to go a place that's more secure. Just make the rules. I decide who stands up on Sunday morning and says something. Other people don't get to decide that. So we don't have to risk the agenda stealing person coming into the room and using it for a bully pulpit. But I do think the cost of doing that robs the body of being a community that has to grow up, deal with their own differences and maturely has to handle a problem rather than saying, where's the cops? Let them see. That's where Christ is formed in us. Absolutely. In those situations, it's like, it'd be nice if you never had to deal with that. But guess what? You probably wouldn't grow and mature very much. It seems to me it's in all those kind of hassle arenas where you're just going like, gosh, how do I navigate that I am forced into a pen into a place of dependent leaning on Jesus on the Holy Spirit to say, help. What's wisdom in this moment? You can all y'all see the stuff for the ills of inaction. Yeah. We're just going like, okay, if we do nothing, this is what it degenerates and we all just, well, I'm out of here. That's probably what we're learning right now in terms of how to be there. Dwight said, I don't really have a hang up, but lots of people don't really have a community right now. And part of this because a community is a group of friends who connect in a way that provides a healthy life together. And I think we're still struggling with that. I think we still looking for somebody to manage a community. So I can just go and be a part of it instead of growing up and take some responsibility in it as well. To me, it's always been a helpful dynamic to put the overlay of how does a family function? Well, in the early years of raising children, it's clear who the mommy and daddy are. As a family grows up and matures and the children become adult children, adults of their own, the issues of authority and hierarchy dissipate and you don't relate. Ideally, they do. And you don't relate in the same dynamic. And then it's like the authority issues aren't the issues of the day. It is more relational on how you work that out. And it's when you bring people that are not part of a genetic family together. I'm not suggesting you vote on who's the daddy. Oh, that's good. Okay. But we got a father. Yeah, but but the dynamic is where there is relationships that are formed. You know, typically there is an initiator someplace. And a lot of times that person is a little more mature, a little, you know, farther down the road or a little more needy for a position which is often a problem. It often is. But if it's not, if there's a measure of health issues, you don't need to elect and identify. That's the guy in charge. If it's in his heart and there's the ability to bring it out, just bring it forth. I just wrote a new article for Body Life, first one in about eight months. I've been behind, but it's friends and friends of friends. And the last part of the article gets to, I think, what we're talking about now and I won't repeat it all here. But it talks about if we're friends and friends of friends and that's how we begin to gather and task together and do what God calls us to do. There's room for the kind of honesty in a room when somebody's doing stuff that's a little whacked where people just say, well, hold on a minute. That's not to take some more mature person. It just takes an honest person. I've seen so many home groups where somebody's hijacked the deal and no one's got the courage to speak up though everybody in the room knows it. I think that's true on the forum too. And somebody says something really stupid and then everybody feels like they get on and bash that person for being stupid. I think 90% of the people in the room know the first posting was a little whacked. Crazy. I won't say idiotic because we say when you use that word on the forum. But it and I think people if you just let it go, it'll die its own death. But when you jump on it and criticize it, it feels to the higher. It gives it life and it makes something valuable in us. Well, I wonder I know we're getting toward the end of this, but I want to read just a lot of it because it brought up some of this forum thing has brought me tons of email. I didn't have time to deal with this week but I have tried to. And I loved it because some people saying I popped in on the forum first time in ages and God continues to point me toward living it with others I actually see in touch rather than online which I and the guy told me you know the forum for me early on was like training wheels and I needed to learn how to live and think and live relationally. And now I just rarely go there because I'd much prefer the face-to-face thing which I that's wonderful. Love that. That's wonderful. Today the ideal the forum was never meant to be a substitute for people's relationships but it was a context that look if you find yourself kind of alone Yep. You're not. Yeah. And here's a communication tool that will help you process what's going on and there's probably interested others who will help do that with you. And there's probably a time when everyone else around you is not validating your hunger. There's a there's a deal to be with a larger room full of people who are validating your hungers and your passions and that's valuable. I like that training wheels analogy. It'll just come a time when I just don't have time for that because I'm face-to-face dealing with people that I really love and enjoy doing. Someone even came to that point about the podcast as a whole and I got this note from Hayden. First of all I just want to say thanks to Heaps for these podcasts. They've helped me too much oh so much and just making things simple helping me see through all the religious mindsets I once had. The crazy thing God has shown me in the past few months that when I left the church I began to replace my pastor with these podcasts and he has started to slowly lead me away. I just want to say thank you for finding some time in your busy lives to record these. They've helped me so much but he's he's on his way not just to the forum he's on the way saying I put those podcasts even in a place in my life that God didn't need him. Yeah there's this whole surrogate savior syndrome that people get into where it's like okay well gosh I was making that kind of a replacement for Jesus but then as opposed to really going on in the directness of an intimate fellowship with him you can fill that void with a whole myriad of religious substitutes. That's right and this podcast could be one of those the forum could be one of those I've never read a better reason to give up the podcast unsubscribe than that right there. I realize it was becoming my pastor. See you Hayden good job. Yeah bless you on the way out the door hope you come back for a visit once in a while. Here's another note for Stephen from Graham. Excuse me Stephen from Texas. Oh gosh. This is this a note from Stephen in Texas that just wanted to drop you a note and say thanks to you and Brad for the latest podcast on systems. It was a great help to me personally. I've been endeavoring far too long to try and change the institution or system from the inside when all the while God's been encouraged me simply to love people. Isn't it amazing that you can end up doing what the system does hurting people by trying to force them to see things the way you do outside the box relationally etc. Isn't that good? That's profound right now. He says I have a good friend who though he attends one of the institutional churches here in town has matured to the point where he can go week after week because of the people there whose lives he wants to touch. He says that he's not in bondage to the system. He stays out of the politics. I ask how you can sit and endure so much of the law that's uttered from the front and his reply was I'll stay for the praise and when then I go home if I feel like it wow I hope you guys are always saying or y'all have you guys ever considered doing more podcasts on such subjects as sonship not slavehood grace not law giving not tithing I mean slavehood law tithing are things that characterize most yes yeah we do we're against all those and yeah one day we might podcast I mean those themes will be around I'm sure fairly frequently but I love it I love how people are responding in real ways what I love about these last little bits of notes that I've read to you is just people are are looking beyond just finding another way to do things that someone tells them how to do yeah but I'm really looking to respond to Jesus wherever he places them going up in him yes and living that life and that being more fun than anything you can do on the internet absolutely see I think if we keep in mind that there are points of graduation and in leaps that you sort of take in this journey was wonderfully valuable and valid he's not necessarily going to use in another or not necessarily valid some things he uses that you know it's just junk we gave him junk he used junk because junk's okay with him and okay I think the reason I use the word valid is because I think so often times there's this desire to well is this okay is this not okay you know what it's what he used yeah it was valuable for what he used and what you got out of it don't make an it out of it just keep growing on and you wouldn't be where you were today if you didn't go through that yeah you wouldn't have been so be it good or you don't have to hate it you don't have to bash it just appreciate what God has done even beyond it even beyond some of the broken seven this from Jerry and Canada tell Brad I've been really enjoying listening you guys in the podcast I can really see how father uses our differences to compliment us and how you and Brad relate to one another so I guess we don't agree on everything I'm still hoping you'll grow wiser over time I'm just hoping you'll grow wiser over time that's all it is I'll try thank you all righty well I boy great emails great responses headed to Canada see y'all later bye