The Church Jesus Modeled (#809) — https://www.thegodjourney.com/2021/07/16/authentic-community-809/

Outside the box of religious obligation lies a road less traveled into the heart of the father's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place, this is the God Jan, the God Jan, the God Jan. So Kyle, I was playing golf on Friday with some pickup guys, just nobody I knew, just tagged in with the group. I had a fun time, you know, two guys I didn't know well and they were in a cart and I was walking, so we didn't cross paths a lot, but walking up to the 17th This one guy playing with me, his name's Bob and he's a big guy, retired, big tall guy. We go walking up to the green, waiting for the other guy to hit his shot, who's still off the green. He walks up to me, he goes, so are you a man of peace? Oh. Yeah, I said, what? Okay. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, I don't know. He said, I just have this phrase in my head that you're a man of peace. He said, I've watched you all day today. He said, you're the most peaceful man I've seen on a golf course, which will tell you right away, I was having a pretty good round of golf, right? I'm not always peaceful on the golf course, but I was having a good day. And I said, I said, I'd like to be one. Yeah. I said, where does that come from for you? You have a faith of some kind or he said, oh, yeah, I grew up in the faith and grew up as a kid following Jesus. And he said, yeah, but he didn't seem like the term was coming. It's a term Jesus uses, so I was kind of seeing if he was zeroing in on that. He didn't seem to be. And so I said, me too, man, I love Jesus with all my heart. And his response was interesting. He said, well, I don't love him near as well as he loves me. And it was kind of with that, I'm sorry, I'm not a better Christian kind of vibe to it. I don't know if that's for sure where it was coming from, but that's the vibe I felt. So I kind of, you know, I said, boy, that's a competition you don't want to get into. He said, he said, what? I said, yeah, you don't want to compete with Jesus as to how well you love because he's the founder, right? That is loving down, man. And we're all just spending a lifetime trying to sort out just a little bit of what it means to be loved and to love. And that led to a discussion about what I do for a living. And then I got us into the shack and I got us into the movie. And they were both really shack fans. And so we had one hole to really dive into all that stuff to be around 18. When I left, I each gave, I gave him a copy of books. One had asked quite a bit about the language of healing book. The other had asked about a lot of, he loves me kind of theme. So I gave one, he loves me the other one, the language of healing. And I wrote my phone number and I said, Hey, here's my number. You guys want to play golf again? You got to call me because I don't have your number. So we'll see. We'll see if I hear from him again. I said, text me, call me. I said, be fun to get together again. And isn't it tough though, when, when somebody drops a really good question like that, right? When things are coming to a close. Like that's, I find that often with clients that it's like the last 10 minutes of the session, they drop some kind of deep thought or deep question is like, well, yeah, now I want to unpack that with you, but I've only got like 15 minutes left to do that. And so that's awesome though, that led into that kind of conversation. Yeah, but there was some going on for 17 holes that led to that moment. So I'm, even, even in sessions, you know, they, I would love for people to drop in the most important question at the beginning. But I don't, I don't think most people know what that important question is till they've kind of exhausted their other stuff. And then finally there's this insight thing. But to me, it's just, so I get my phone number. That's going, there's more to be had here. Give me a call. Yeah. And we'll see, or text me and we'll see where it goes from here. But interesting to be thought of as a man of peace on a golf course. While the last podcast was dropping and airing, I was out, I'm in a golf tournament this week. And so I was having to see if my game was pretty good and just checking it out for a ride and see how it's going. What does your normal presence feel like when you're on the golf course? Well, yeah, I'd have to let my golf partner speak to that. Okay. Sometimes it can be pretty ragged. Sometimes it's just, I mean, I was playing well at two birdies and shooting some good golf and, but I was just relaxed. I wasn't out there. I wasn't in a tournament. So I was relaxed. I don't know what it was about that that invoked this man of peace thing, but it's been a theme that's been on my heart of late. You know, when Jesus says, when you go into a town, find the man of peace and stay with him and do whatever. And it can be a woman too. I'm not trying to be sexist about that. Where you touch people's lives and peace is part of that vibe. Yeah. That's Jesus. That's a good place to be. When it's resistance and argument and fear and struggle. At my age, I'm learning not to waste so much time with fearful and angry people, unless, unless I have a mission or a call or a nudge to get into that with them and help this army. But people are persistently that way. I really like Jesus saying, hey, find the man of peace. If your peace comes back to you, he says, shake the dust off your feet and move on. And I love that. I love that not being controlled by the relationships we're in, but having a choice about this is where it seems fruitful. This is where it doesn't seem fruitful. And I don't mind stepping out. We have a lot of those connections right now. It's interesting coming out of COVID in this area, connections to people who are quasi, maybe Christian, one atheist who told me, you know, I've been an atheist for a long time, but you and Sarah are the most engaging people I know. And I'm, we're kind of into some dialogue now that we're going to get together this weekend. And that's going to be really fun, because I like where she's at and I like her journey. But I don't know where this stuff leads. It's just fun to be in it. It's fun to see how God does what he does. Well, it's interesting too. I feel like to encounter those people where they, there's something about them. There's a genuine, I like the term person of peace or man of peace, woman of peace. Jess and I actually bumped into a very similar situation. We were in Michigan on vacation, just this last couple of weeks. And we were in Saga talk, Michigan, and we're on this chain fairy and Jess strikes up a conversation with a lady there. And there was just this genuine care and rest about who she was. And she just, her presence was very loving. We got done with the trolley ride and Jess was like, well, man, I should have gotten her contact information. But Jess told her where we were having lunch. Well, she came back over and actually came back and found the restaurant. And her and Jess continued to talk and her son and Elle played together in the park and they just had this great conversation. Well, come to find out, she was the wife of a very famous starting quarterback for an NFL team. Oh, wow. And yet it was just this beautiful, genuine conversation with a person who had such a loving presence about who she was and just the sense of rest and just to watch Jess connect with that and see that from a complete stranger was a lot of fun. Yeah, it's part of what I think we see in this emerging generation, whatever God's doing to stir people. I think when you find people at rest, at love and at play, you're finding once something that may evidence of God's presence in people, it's also what I think people in our culture are really yearning for against all the anger and polarization and fear and vitriol going on in the culture. I think those things stick out and I'm hoping that's how we learn to live. And even when, and I think the best way is not, I'm consciously trying to let people think I'm love and rest and play. What I loved about my experience in the golf course was I wasn't doing anything but playing golf. I wasn't trying to be an evangelist. I wasn't trying to win people to cry. I wasn't trying to model anything. I was just being Wayne and that was enough for them to glimpse at something that provoked a conversation that may or may not bear fruit further up the road. It may just plant a seed somewhere. I think this guy had some real spiritual hungers that have been unsatisfied. So I really expect to hear from him sometime and jump back into that relationship and see what God has in it. I love what you're pointing to, though, that it's not a manufactured thing. It's not an intentionality thing. It's a byproduct of living loved, right? It's not friendship of angelism where every connection you're trying to turn around to the gospel and people are just so alert to that and turned off by it. And I think it has to be. The most lovely things I think God's done in my life have been when I've been most unaware of them. Well, I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just in the moment with me and with God and with them. And then I say or do something because, man, that really impacted my life. Really, I'm hardly aware of what happened. I kind of remember it. Hey, for those that don't know, my friend Lewis, the special 13th episode dropped today. We've got three more, 13, 14, 15. Got to warn you. Listener discretion advised. These are intense. The first two are very intense. And the third one is a visit with Raphael, whatever you want to make of that. So I'm really excited to finally get these out and share them. And so it dropped at my friend Lewis. Actually, we're recording this on Tuesday. So it dropped on Tuesday. You're hearing this on Friday or Saturday or whenever you hear it, you can go over to my friend Lewis.com and pick up the ongoing podcast there again. And those are the rough ones. You got to hear them because it sets up for the Raphael conversation. But they're very raw, very painful. And yet there's a presence of God in them that's drawing Lewis into some wonderful space. And then you and I, just another announcement. Maybe you and I are talking about planning a retreat for 20s and 30s. We've been really excited. And I know people like in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s are going, Hey, what about me? Man, you leave me out. Yeah, we are just for this, but not for most stuff. So if some of you want to plan a 40s, 50s, 60s gathering somewhere, we'll show up, right? We'll be there, absolutely. Yeah, we just felt nudged in this whole thing of God giving rise to a new generation that's untainted by religion. And that doesn't mean they didn't grow up in it and didn't have it unpack them, but how to unwind all that so they can live in the freedom of being outside of it. We're looking at planning a retreat, maybe or two, depending on how many people are interested. We have a Facebook page now, a group where people can kind of go there and begin to make plans there. Who's interested, when they can meet, where they are in the country, where we can find a place to pull us together. Probably sometime early December, January, something like that. We're giving it a look, see what we can find. Just creating a space for people to connect, right? I guess what is your heart behind it? Or when we talk about a retreat, sometimes there's that cringe factor or that yuck meter factor right away, right? We're going to tell you everything you need to do. Now, it's basically two or three-day conversation for people to explore together and get to meet each other. And if there's things that you and I can do to help people unwind some stuff, kind of hanging them up in their life, then I'm sure we'll be in those kinds of conversations. It's like most stuff I do. Wayne's going to do a lecture, Kyle's going to do a lecture. We're going to sell books at a table. It's not that kind of thing. This is really a chance to connect and we're not hoping for hundreds. We're hoping for a small enough group of people that there can be some real in-depth connection and conversation. Like I said, if there's more interested, maybe we've even talked about the possibility of doing one on the west coast, one kind of in the middle of the country and one on the east coast if there's that kind of interest. We're going to see, but anything we can do to encourage people who are waking up to a fresh sense of God's movement in their life around them, even if they wouldn't call themselves Christians yet. They just go, something's stirring in my heart and I've heard from a number of people in the podcast. I don't keep track of who you are. So I'll have a link at the bottom of the podcast notes if you want to go to that page and sign up and let us know who you are. We'll start working with that and kind of come to some dates and locations and see how that works out. This is really in the raw. We're asking you to help plan it with us, rather than here it is all mapped out. It's going to cost you $5,000 for two days of waning Kyle's time. Did you get a little throw up in your throat? Just even talking about it. Yeah, I almost had to step away there for a second. I'm excited just to see what conversations might come from it because more and more, especially as people are transitioning out of COVID, what I've heard in conversations is we don't even know, we don't know where to begin yet. We don't even know where to start that conversation as we are untangling a lot of those things and COVID has really highlighted a lot of different heart conversations and what does community look like? What does it mean to gather together? What does it mean to do life in spiritual community? And a lot of people that I've been talking to, that doesn't look like a Sunday morning gathering anymore. Or that might be a tiny piece of it but that's not the driving force. There's this need or this desire for more rich community, in-person, face-to-face community. But where does that even start? What does that look like? In fact, that's where we left the last podcast, didn't we? It is. If you haven't listened to last week's podcast on the rise and fall of Mars Hill, you might want to go back and take a gander at that. It's a new podcast Christiane Dey's putting out about what happened at Mars Hill, which is a church in Seattle that Mark Driscoe pastored. But it's actually more expansive than that. They're actually reaching into the whole ethos of how church planting, mega churches, how they've come to be, why there's a continued, well, they say body bags or body count. Yeah, body count. A continued body count of young men who've had great passions from ministry and yet got involved in something that ended up eating them and destroying some lives and fall out from that. So they're asking some really provocative questions. We've been listening to it. I want to join us in that if you want to. But the last thing you asked at the end of the podcast, so what does it look like? And I was going to ask, but we ran out of time, what it are we looking at? What does it look like? What's the it? I would say the it, I think it points back to the heart and the desire to be able to create spaces for people to grow. What does it look like to help people on this journey? What does it look like to create that community? What does it look like to help people untangle some of these challenging conversations or hard topics or some of these lies that they may have had as a part of their life in the past, but they're wanting to move into a more generous, gracious, loving space. And so what does that even look like? And yet the temptation is to build a thing. It's to start a ministry, to brand something, to create a new movement. That's the temptation. And I mean, even for me, and as we're looking at this retreat, it's almost knocking on the door. It's like, well, yeah, we're going to brand, the temptation is, well, now you need to monetize it. Now we need to brand it. Now we need to get the agenda set up. Like you said, when like here's all set and it's a $5,000 fee and this is where you show up. And I'm like, Yeah, see, already I'm not coming. Already I'm out. I'm done. Yeah. But to really explore that, how do you do authentic discipleship and community in today's world without building a thing and hanging a price tag on it? Which may not even be the right question to ask. You know, because I, when you were asking it last week, one of the things he says, how would Jesus do it? Remember that? And I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know that Jesus didn't already do it. One of the things that perplexed me when I was still pastoring, when I'd read the Gospels was, I'm not doing anything during my week that looks like the weeks Jesus had on the planet. Right? Jesus didn't organize meetings. I was organizing a lot of meetings, classes, curriculums, worship teams, plotting, planning and branding, putting out information so people would be attracted to the things that we were doing because growing that was important. And you look back at the life of Jesus and you go, well, what did Jesus understand about the church? If his goal was to plant something called the church, he didn't do one thing with his disciples that looked like what we try to do today. And what we unquestioningly, we think about, where do we facilitate or create space for these conversations? We're already thinking facility, whether it's homes or, you know, rented or bought or purchased or whatever, or whether it's something else and who's in charge and how do we do it? And we're going to set a time and a place and a meeting and you go, well, Jesus didn't do any of that. As far as I know, even the sermon on the mount, they're feeding the 5,000. These were not pre-programmed events where they're putting up flyers around town to come down to the hippodrome and do this or get up on the mountain on Tuesday morning because Jesus is going to share some amazing stuff with us. They didn't hype anything. They didn't plot anything. They didn't have a worship band to draw people to it. It was just the magnetism of Jesus' character and the things he was saying drew people into his orbit and he was trying to get them to experience a relationship with his father like he was experiencing. He wasn't trying to break them up into small groups to form church gatherings in various cities. He didn't leave churches in Bethsaida or Capernaum or any place else he traveled. He simply was with people tapped into those that were hungry, kind of moved away from those who weren't. The conversations just happened whether it's at Zacchaeus' house, I mean, going through town and Zacchaeus is there and he ends up, that's the day. I'm going to spend the afternoon with Zacchaeus and that's going to change things in this town rather than I'm going to establish a presence in this community to be a place where people who want to have these conversations can come and then someone's got to facilitate all that. That's what I look at. I look at, you know, he didn't spend any time doing everything I was trained to do, everything I was expected to do as the pastor of an institution. And that's probably the saddest part right there. We see pastors of an institution or elders of an institution. It's not pastors and elders as gifted men and women living in the community caring for the people God gives them and helping them find other connections and facilitating an organic revelation of the Church of Jesus Christ as she expresses herself in the world. But instead, we're trying to create something that looks like that. Even the day of Pentecost was kind of got out of hand really quick, right? Just all these people come into Jesus and not understanding a thing about who Jesus was and always go down to the temple and try to explain some of that to them. And I used to teach that in the old days and many others did. That's the Sunday morning service, gathering in the temple to do the teaching of the apostles and then the house to house is the home groups. None of that was, I mean, you can't imagine Peter and John running home Pentecost night going, we got to get some home groups organized, man. You go down to Kinko's and get a list. We got to find some people and get them in the homes and put it out in a bulletin, a map beyond them, right? It's just, okay, let's explain to as many people as we can how Jesus lived and worked among us and the life that we get to have with him and then they're in town without TVs and Walkman. Walkman, that dates me. iPads or, you know, ear pods. They were people who were hungry to have this kind of conversation with people and they weren't finding it in podcasts like this one. They were finding it with the person next door and the person they met on the street at Pentecost, or the people they met in the temple who were listening to the apostles and going, ooh, ooh, I like that. If the Messiah has come and if the Old Testament has been fulfilled in him, this is what I want to know. And all of that was incredibly organic rather than a group of people trying to figure out how to facilitate that. But I think we asked the wrong question starting out which is simply, what are you doing, Jesus? How do we participate with that? And how do I stimulate the hungers of people who are around me and draw them into the, whether it's in my home, their home, people listening to this going, man, I, you know, maybe on your heart to get some people together, well, then get some people together. You want me to come with Kyle to come? You want other people to, I mean, a lot of stuff happens because some people get together and listen, but when they start forming something and pray about a name and a budget and a leader, now we've already gone down a road that's going to end hopefully in benign encouragement, but most likely into a destructive palace for someone's leadership ego and financial needs to get all messed up with the church Jesus has created. That's what I hear in Mars Hill. That's what I hear in the, a lot of the institutions I've been involved in. I talked to a pastor this week of somebody trying to do something very different in a community in Texas and I, I love the passion to say I got some people were together, but we don't want to go down that road. How do we avoid that road? And I'm, man, I love the heart, but realize that's a big challenge. You already putting people together. You've got a name on it. You've got a regular time to meet. Now you serving the love and hungers of the people and the community more than serving the needs of the entity is going to be a huge challenge. Yeah. And all the more as it grows, if it's just 15 people hanging out loving Jesus together, that's going to be pretty easy. Yeah. When it becomes 2300 now we got to have a Sunday school and we've got to have elders and we've got to have and then people always go to access it. Yeah, but that's what they did, man, ball appointed elders and you don't know how different that was from what we do today. That was very relational organic people who just came to know Christ people helping them understand what that life is. And then they connected with each other because they wanted to talk about these things together which is very different from how we plant quote unquote a church and create a program and create all these kinds of lines of doctrine and leadership and program and oh my gosh, I just creep out thinking about it. I feel like that Jesus lived that very well. He lived very much lived in the present. He lived in communion with the heart of the Father and just looked around and said, Lord, what are you doing Father? What are you doing around me? And sometimes it looked like turning water into wine. Sometimes it looked like sitting down and having lunch with a friend that was up in the tree. Sometimes it looked like you know a whole plethora of different interactions and experiences with people that were in his fear just around him and where the Father was leading, those nudges, those recognizing that there was something going on in that person's heart or in that group of people's hearts that the Father was stirring up. And yet for me anyway it gets very quickly confusing when you've got Paul who's planting a church in Ephesus and he's planting a church in Colossia. He's planting these churches and he's writing to these churches and automatically the assumption is that they were more similar to what we are calling churches today and I'm just like no, I don't think that's right and yet that's what they point to is no, no, no, Paul was like he said Paul was planting churches, he was appointing elders. I didn't say he was planting churches because there's nothing in scripture that says he was. We always talk about church planters and it's calling and go plant a church when Paul and Barnabas and Timothy and Silas and Luke and others, they were extending the kingdom of God in the world. The communities that grew around that were what they recognized as the church. But Paul didn't go into Thessalonica, I'm going to plant a church here I'm going to get these people saved, point these people elders, blah blah blah. He came back later to go okay let's recognize who the elders are here because I assume like most places you get some people new on this journey and there's some people that are actually going to be following Jesus there's other people going to be following the fantasies of their own mind thinking they are Jesus and so when you come in and say like I could do that with people I travel to groups I've been with more than once or twice I can go in and say okay if you guys are confused about who's really living this life, those people there are living this life. That person over there is teaching false doctrine he's got he's trying to build something I'd be wary of that guy and I would tell that guy you know dude you're building something. Take your hands off of it because you're going to mess up what God's doing. It's not hard to go and recognize people who are kingdom people and people who are church people and we like to think they're the same thing but they're not. Because the church to us is a system it's not the living breathing bride of Christ in the world making herself known by the way people connect and task together and do it's the Holy Spirit can do that he can manage that side of it if we're doing our side of it which is go and make disciples. But even that you know even that gets so twisted. Yes oh it does right like that's you know that has been the go and make disciples like that's your that is your declaration as a believer like that's what I'm supposed to be doing with my life is going to making disciples and yet I love what you said like I had to pause and think about is like no he never once has anything about planting a church and most of the time he addresses them as my brothers and sisters in Christ or the believers in this city or he's not talking about a specific church he's talking about his friends and a community a ebb and flow community that's in that city or in that region. Yeah I could write a letter today to the church of Jesus Christ in Richmond, Virginia and it's a mess there's no entity called that but there's this people that kind of gather over here there's this group of people who orbit around this relationships over here there's a bunch of different ones I know because I've been there a lot. Yeah but I can still write a gospel or an epistle to the church at Richmond and it would get passed around and people would read it and if God was in it there'd be great things happen as a result of that engagement but it wouldn't be to a specific entity that someone has contrived whether it's the first Baptist or assembly of God vineyard whatever I think that's where it starts getting twisted and I know people freak out on this it's like oh my God you're saying all these things are wrong you know what there's probably not congregation on the planet at the church of Jesus Christ isn't also there people who know him and are finding relationships they encourage that journey in their lives that's probably true I'm just saying it doesn't overlay the entity the entity may be counterproductive to that the entity may facilitate that but to me there's only two things that are really important one to know him so find out what it is to know him and become at rest in his love figure that out that's what I think apostles equipers do man equip people to know him and then equip people to follow him because that's where the kingdom takes root in the world it's not that we just know him and live love it's that we follow him so when he nudges me to make this connection when he nudges me that when he nudges me with that man standing on the green asking me are you a man of peace nudging him with you don't want to compete with that man we'll spend our whole lives learning to be loved and you could see that hit something in his heart because the whole religious thing now Jesus gave me that I've never said that to another human being it just came up in that moment it was there on the forefront of my mind so I crawled into it with him but you're right our views of discipleship are often what you see in him is you go to church you read your bible you pray every day so we're going to make disciples by making good practitioners of a religion called Christianity and it's not the same thing learning my sheep know my voice so helping people discover this is the voice of the shepherd in your life follow him they're not going to say I'm the voice of the shepherd in your life he's shown me the vision for you and that's what Mark Driscoll did and so many church planters you're paying for my vision I've got a vision and it always involves me being in charge and it's about power not love and then all the things that go into that and what you haven't got at the end of it is people who have learned to follow Jesus and don't need you anymore because the business model of what we call church is built like every other business in America you want to encourage ongoing dependency you don't want to just help people not need you anymore you want to sell them a product remember when washing machines used to last for 30-40 years that's how they were built and they sold because man you could trust that name that thing was going to last you 30-40 years now the shelf life of what we're buying one about every 6-7 years and Sarah says yeah that's about right and here that we're doing extra laundry for it lasts about 8-9 years and we've got it because they're made to be obsolete so you can need a new one the same way with computers they're made to go obsolete apps on phones everything right now is made to go obsolete so the dependence continues and the kingdom is the opposite in the world it is trained freedom you become a disciple of Jesus not of Wayne Jacobson not of he loves me not of the God journey not of hey that stuff you learn in your own life to follow the nudges that are him and recognizes the passions that are yours the nudges that are his the selfishness in your life let Jesus poke holes in your illusion that's all where this journey really takes on power and impetus but most of our institutions at the end of it people haven't learned to follow Christ to follow the dictates of the church whether it's doctrine, ritual program, leader I've learned to follow that and when people say no it's time to follow Jesus I don't know how to do that and everybody that does that says God told me so does something stupid because they've never been trained to really listen to who God is and recognize a lot of what God's saying to you is going to be consistent with its character and it's going to blow your little mind because God thinks about everything differently than you do so it just so happens all the things that God puts on your heart exactly what you thinking was the right thing anyway you got your mind you just got to know you're not following Jesus because Jesus freaks me out almost every day what we're going down that road I don't want to go down that road no no no no and that's four or five days of that and then it's okay but if it's you I'm going to go down that road and then there's four or five days of that and then finally surrender to the years between some of that and I tell you if we did that with people what would it take for people just how do I help you follow and then when you've got people in an area who've learned to follow him they will find each other not an exclusive relationship I just hang out with these people I'm in a world of people in need and so I'm going to be out there with them but occasionally I want to get with you to refresh my heart I'm going to be able to be reminded of things that are important to refresh what God said or when God put something very difficult on my heart to be able to grab some people together and say okay I think God's calling me to this but I don't want to do it or I do want to do it so I really want to make sure it's him that's where community happens it's all part of this process of following it's not the substitute for following and unfortunately this answers to every question don't trust yourself trust the priest or the pastor whoever telling you what to do and I think that's the most important thing we've got to help the church rediscover is that this is about our fealty to him not about our loyalty to an institution to a man to a doctrine to a way of thinking it's about living deeply in Christ and following him and letting him confront the difficult places in your heart and letting him be there with insight in the moment of talking to somebody in a chance encounter or a momentary thing and watch how the kingdom spills into the world that's how Jesus lived it so if you do that you're going okay now this makes the gospels make more sense because it wasn't let's form a meeting, let's get bulletins out let's get a sound system let's get people volunteered to put up chairs all the work we did to try and plant a church that could have gone to helping plant Christians in a community and I mean the real kind of Christian Christ followers, people who look like him, he's taken shape in them because they've learned how to know and follow and they're enjoying it it's not like oh crud I got to learn to follow no it's like this is the best life in the world and it's a lifetime journey you're not going to learn it in 30 minutes or 3 months, Paul spent somebody what 2 years in Ephesus and long time in corn he just settled down among them saying this is a life to be learned it's not a set of theologies or ethics or rituals it's living with God as Father Christ as older brother and the Holy Spirit empowering us from within now that's the question we could be asking and that will lead to all the best conversations in the world try and facilitate a conversation about that and it doesn't it doesn't work very long I love what you said about the don't trust yourself because I feel like that's a that you hit on a big key there that when you're trained to be dependent on something else somebody else's voice, somebody else's vision somebody else's ability to to hear from God then you don't get the opportunity you don't learn what it means to listen to the voice of the Father because it's like well if you you can't trust yourself you can't trust your own ability to begin to recognize those nudges to begin to recognize what he might be saying to you or to recognize his fingerprints in the world around you because well no you need a doctoral degree and whatever whatever else in order to be able to prove yourself that you're able to do that and it's just man I feel like that's a huge piece of it that has really disarmed people of their ability to enjoy playing and a love-saturated relationship with God is because their trust of their ability to do that and even an invitation for them to start doing that and exploring in that and playing in that and discovering in that way that they're offered. Right. Tragic, huh? Oh, it's awful. Yeah. So we end up with a really misplaced set of priorities and we have this thing in our head that the church ought to look like so we're forever trying to find the model that will make something look like something. I like this email I got a few weeks ago it says from Lawrence and I think now I've reached a place in my journey where I have detoxed to a point and I like all that this idea more fully that the church is, it exists, it forms from relationships. That's such a game-changer that was hidden in plain sight for me all this time. I'm now 30 years old, love that and I'm starting over with church. Relationships with people matter and I'm curious what God will do with all that. The thing that fascinates me is how long it took me, he's 30. How long it took me to get to this point and how it's been there in God's heart this entire time. I love that because we've grown up with, even when I hear people talk about church, they're talking about that Sunday morning entity or that denomination or that organization. They're not talking about even if you go to one, I say to people your experience with a church is not because you sit here on Sunday morning and listen to a worship sermon moment. It's the relationships you have with people here and who looks into your life and who do you lean on when you need wisdom or encouragement. It's all about the relationships but what's really even one of the real negatives of these mega church things is that you don't have relationships you sit next to strangers and you may wave and recognize somebody but where's the conversation that goes deep? The ones that Jesus had sitting at Peter's mother-in-law's table or in Bethany with Lazarus and Mary and Martha. That's where the church incubates and the relationships that form that's where it thrives. That got passed all over the world and it changed the world but it wasn't because people were trying to plant the first church of Jesus Christ in Colossae or Corinth or anywhere else and I loved it. Somebody could say I couldn't see it and the longer email was the frustration of I kept saying it and he's like going you're out of your mind man it can't be that way and then he said okay now I get it. It doesn't really can exist that Jesus can hold his church together it doesn't need a man or an institution to do that and it doesn't lead to a bunch of loan rangers I'm just following Jesus by myself believe me if you're following Jesus and you're getting glimpses of stuff and it's far from certain and you're always inviting people into that conversation and journey because you know this is something you can't go alone you don't have enough wisdom by yourself and it's not anti doctrine the things about God I believe from Scripture that are great sideboards when I feel like God's telling me something because then I can go okay that's out of bounds that's not consistent with the nature of the God of the Bible now you've got to know the God of the Bible not the Bible religion teaches but the Bible the God of the Bible unpack so that we get to know this loving kindness is better than life and that love and truth go together and the passion for righteousness and a passion for love they're not two separate things they're all one thing and how that ties together without this legalistic performance condemn myself every day because I'm not trying hard enough that's where it all goes sideways because it's a conformity model not a transformation model transformation only happens I think a transformational environment is only relational as soon as you put a structure around it people conform to the structure somebody said this in the Mars Hill he says we become what we tolerate when we're talking about how you tolerate they're talking about Mark Driscoll's unseemly side of being abrasive and narcissistic and then you learn to be the same way abrasive and narcissistic because we're celebrating so you become what you tolerate which is such a fascinating understanding and if we become, if we're learning to tolerate but learning to embrace the realities of the Kingdom then we get to become like that and conversations that stimulate that in me that's better than anything else I got on my DVR or my iPad or anywhere else man it's I had that kind of conversation just before we said to tape this with a man out of Arizona just called and we had a great conversation just opened up some things and I'm going you know what I can live on that all day that's the church of Jesus Christ in the world but doesn't have a bulletin I can't invite you to come meet at it but you know you want to come see me you want to call me boy how scary is that I mean how do we find our way into this life if we're not finding our way into this life yeah and one of the things that I loved about the conversation with Mark Driscoll and when they were talking like there was a lady who talked about the situation with her husband and there were some critical issues and Mark Driscoll offers he's okay I live right around the corner from the hospital if you need anything here's my number and that was very relational that was transformative in that woman's life because Mark Driscoll and his wife were being very relational being very intentional and it was just an in the moment type thing of hey if you need some help we would live right around the corner we'd love to be able to support you in that and that radically transformed the impact of her life versus the big Sunday morning service standing up and sharing his vision stuff or even a program that's going to help people find who volunteered beds that we can put people with all that stuff happens relationally and anytime we try to systematize it I think we heard it so yeah how can we help people know and follow because maybe that's where the kingdom that's where the kingdom unfold thank you for traveling with us today on The God Journey you can join this conversation by visiting thegodjourney.com