Living as an Elder-at-Large (#525) — http://thegodjourney.com/2016/03/25/living-as-an-elder-at-large-525/

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 Journey. I'm Wayne Jacobson, this is the God Journey and we're going to get right to it. I know I'm just back from the UK and Ireland, great trip, lots of things to talk about. Brad and I will process that next week. Before I left, however, I had a good friend stop by, he wanted my help on a project that he's involved in, but in the course of our conversation, I found his story intriguing and thought I'd love to share it with you. Everywhere I go, I get the question, if we don't have local church institutions, how do we have elders, pastors, teachers, apostles? It's been my contention for a long time that those gifts are somewhat diminished in our institutions because they spend most of their time being an elder of an institution, not a true elder to people, end up teachers in a structure that really takes away from most of what teaching is, which happens in a conversation at a lecture up front. Well, here's an example of that. I first met Bob 20-some-odd years ago. He was pastoring a church at the time but was greatly disillusioned. We had some conversations and through that he really felt the courage then to do what had been on his heart for some time and that is to leave that institution and see how else God would take his gifts and use them to bless the body of Christ in the world. This is his story. This is that journey and I've watched him live it over 20-25 years. I love the man's integrity. I love his honesty. He lives way out there on the edge somewhere, but his life has a beautiful grace to it and I'm going to let him tell you some of that story. Before we do, as he was leaving, Bob told me a story that he said he wished to include it in the podcast. I'm going to try and include it for him recently in a conversation with his wife. He's a teacher. Her work gives them obviously some benefits and income that's helpful. Bob's an entrepreneur. It doesn't always cover the bills and certainly doesn't have the benefits in it and yet he sometimes feels like he should probably get a real job so his wife doesn't have to work and recently they had that conversation and then that turned to him and said, Bob, don't you dare think about getting a real job. Who's going to love these people if you don't? I'm happy to keep doing what I'm doing so that you can keep doing what you're doing. This is their story. Bob Prater, Bakersfield, California, hope you enjoy it. Well, Bob, welcome to the God Journey. Thank you, Wayne. It's a pleasure. It is, huh? Oh, sure. Well, it's good to have you, man. I tell you, I say this about my friend Bob. I know few people who kind of live further off the reservation than I do and I like being around people like that because I don't know if I get to help invite you back from the brink or if God's going to use you to invite me out to the brink to join you. I don't know which that is yet. From Bakersfield? From Bakersfield. Former pastor guy. Yeah, sure. Kind of grew up in that loop. Foursquare was kind of the tradition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Went to Life Bible College. Okay. And Foursquare guy in Southern California area? Yeah, yeah. Oh, whatever. Now you live in Bakersfield? Now I live in Bakersfield. And the time I've known you, we've known each other, gosh, 15 years maybe? Oh, probably a day or two longer than that. Probably closer to 20, yeah. Well, was I still in Bicelia when we first, that's what I, yeah, then that is a close 20 years. Yep. And since then you've been, you've worked for a lumber company, you've, I do what I do. Your entrepreneurial guy. Sure. You've got all kinds of stuff going. Yeah. How do you describe your life vocationally? Okay, so vocationally, when people ask me what I do, it depends on how I feel that day. I will, you know, I do that too. Honestly, because I do 42 different things and I do all 42 things with one goal in mind to not have to work for anyone. So whatever it takes to not have to work for someone, because I, So the lumber company was, had to do that. I had to do it. Yeah. But I'm the worst employee on the face of the earth. I have authority issues. Does that surprise you? Uh, no. Yeah, I know. You don't have them with Jesus though. No. You just have them with humanity of something. Yes, with people. So I've got. Is that from your pastoring days? Oh, yeah. Maybe. Or your pre-pastoring day? Maybe. Why are you not a pastor anymore? You got a reduced I just version of that. Yeah. I, yeah, we, we, we stepped away. We, you and your wife and I, many, many years ago, Danette and I. As a matter of fact, Wayne, you were, you were kind of instrumental in this. There was a dear friend of mine by the name of Chuck Shoemaker, a mutual friend. Oh, great friend of mine. That's who put us together. Yep. And Chuck. Chuck, how are you? Come join us. So yes, he owes me a meeting, by the way. Oh, okay. He owes me a breakfast. Get on that. Yeah. I got with him about 20 years ago. I was disenchanted with some things. I had been on the inside of churches and seen kind of behind the curtain of how things work a little bit. And I was. Behind the curtain. Watching the wizard. Exactly. Too many levers back there. Way too many. Yeah. And yeah. So I, I got with Chuck and I, and I just kind of needed somebody to tell me I was okay because, you know, I wasn't supposed to be having these feelings. And he pointed me after telling me some things that, that shook me up a little bit about how he viewed things. He then said, Hey, I think I need to introduce you to my friend Wayne. And he gave me your phone number. And I had already read your book, The Naked Church. So I was already primed. And we met him by sale. Yeah. It was one of those moments where I thought, I can just tell where, where life is not going to be the same after this. And so even though I've journeyed back in and, and listen, we're, you know, we don't completely stay away from the institution. There's a group of people I hang out with quite a bit right now. But the institution, well, the institution is always going to be the institution. It just is. We had a conversation earlier. You and I, when we were at launch about San Corinthians five and it's, this is one of those, those passages of scripture that when I was in seminary, I, they, they didn't teach it to us. And, and honestly, I've never heard it spoken on at least the way that I see it. Yeah. Other than this is why you must evangelize. That's usually how it's used to event exactly. But, but San Corinthians five, 17 through 19 tells us that Jesus came. Paul says that Jesus came on the father's mission because relationship had been broken and he came to reconcile us and, and there was a list of, you know, 10 things that he did to reconcile us back and we had to do all 10. But that's not true. There's one thing, only one thing, not counting our sins against us. And then he didn't entrust that ministry to the Holy Spirit. He entrusted it to us. And so my job, which he entrusted most everything else to the Holy Spirit. I know, but the big one, he entrusts to us. It's ridiculous. The ministry of reconciliation. So how do I reconcile somebody to the father? It's the same thing. It doesn't count. I don't count their sins against them. And I saw that and it was like a smack in the face as I realized, oh God, I've been doing this wrong. Yeah. You can have a relationship with anybody if you're not counting their sins against them. It's exactly right. Yeah. It happens. You want to go. And I was struck, Wayne, by the image that the very thing that separated us from God, sin, was the very thing that was used to bring us back. I don't count it anymore. To me, it's just an interesting picture. So it's not using sin. It's not not using it. It's not not using it. Yeah, or whatever. It's like a not not joke. So the thing that we thought separated us from God, which I think is better said because I might go up Baptist where God can't bear luck on sin, so God turned his back on us. And so sin was the barrier between God and us, not between me and God. It made me shamed. It made me retreat. It made me run away. Right. But God never stopped loving, caring, wanting. No, no, no. Reaching. Yeah. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I think that a very real enemy is way more invested in our sin than God is. Yeah. Wouldn't that be freeing for people to really grasp that? Yeah. We did a podcast a couple of weeks ago and one of the one of the guys' statement in the book, Just Mercy, no one should be defined by their worst moment. Come on. And yet most of us in religion have been trained that we are our worst moment. The highlight reel God's going to show when you get to eternity is every stupid, hurtful, broken thing you thought you hid in the closet. God's going to put it on the big screen so everybody can watch your pathetic little life. Instead of none of us would do that to our grandkids or our children. The highlight reel is the things you did special, the things that are awesome. Yeah, we've got God on the other side of that. Yep. It's so tragic the way we've disfigured him. Well, we don't, we come by this stuff honestly though, don't we? Because we've got, we've got religion that is invested in reminding us of our sin. And without sin, without sin being the primary issue, there's no money coming into the church. There's no control over people. It takes it all away. So it doesn't surprise me that I wasn't taught that. Well, if Dallas Wood is right and our, most of our Christian institutions are sin management systems. Right. When you take sin out of the way and say, look, it doesn't count, it doesn't count to God, it doesn't count to me. Right. Now, what do you do with people? I think that's the dilemma. We've used this for so long to make people feel bad about their sin and because they feel bad, the way I love defining religion in the words of a 15-year-old coming home from a youth thing back in Chicago said, we're dad. Well, you know dad. Yes. How is youth group? Same old, same old. God's good. You're bad. Try harder. I think that's such a great definition of religion. Ding, ding. And that's how we get everybody. And then when you start saying sin doesn't count, God's not count, there's nothing more clear in scripture than that. That's right. In sacred kids five makes it so clear. It's ridiculous. And yet nobody knows. It's the smoking gun drop the mic moment of scripture. It really is. I don't count my children's sins against them. I'm not keeping track. Yeah. I don't keep score of my children. It's just how it goes. Awesome. How many children you got, by the way? I got three daughters, three grown daughters. I've got eight grandchildren, nine are coming. Yeah, one more on the way, it'll be nine. And they are the delight of my life without any question. And it's good. You know, the older I've gotten, it's interesting. I sit with a friend. I've got a friend who is a very high level Muslim in our area. And as a matter of fact, he's the top ranking Muslim in all of Kern County. And a very dear friend who I meet with all the time. And it's interesting as I've gotten older, I've understood a little bit more of what it means to be a friend of God. And so I do many things out of cooperation. And so we have this conversation often about coercion versus cooperation. And it irritates him a little bit, but he understands, but he doesn't understand the concept of being a friend of God. He sees himself as a slave and God as his master. And it's just a different reality that the longer I walk with God, especially in the cooperation phase, rather than in the coercion phase, I find myself becoming more like him. And I'm being honest with that. And that's not an egotistical statement. No, I get it. I'm more like him. As a matter of fact, when I sit with young people, because I mentor people five days a week, I'm sitting in restaurants and homes and coffee shops and just doing what I do. And you charge a big bucks for this. That's how you support your living habit, right? Well, it's just the opposite. Yeah, I know. Well, part of why I wanted to have you on this podcast, and we're going to come back to the mentoring thing. Part of what I really want to talk to you about is I've watched your life over 20 years and then specifically over the last, I would guess seven to eight, something happened seven to eight years ago. And when I talk about you with other people, because people always feel like, gosh, Wayne, the way you view church, and there really are no elders. There are no pastors. There are no teachers. There are none of that. I'm going, no, there's all of that. It's just spread differently in the body of Christ. They haven't planned to flag over here and charge in admittance fees. They live that way among the people of God. And how long have you lived in Bakersfield? Almost 30 years. Did you pastor there initially? Is that where you pastor? Or no? No, no, no. That was in Los Angeles. Okay. Then you went up to Bakersfield. Yeah, but I've been on staffs of churches. In that area? Sure. Okay. But in the last seven, eight years, I describe what I think a real elder is in a city, and it's like in Bakersfield area, and you don't have a flag planted anywhere, but you have tons of relationships in and out of systems, in and out of Sunday morning things. You attend pastors' things sometimes? Sure. Just to hang out with them? Yeah. You were telling me a story, one of the times I was with you, about some guy came to town, was maybe going to start a ministry thing, and you said, I'm going to take that guy's lunch, find out what he's really about, and... Oh, yeah. You remember that? Yeah, I do. Have you done that with other people? Oh, of course. Listen, does someone... So, you just kind of watch over the flock of God in Bakersfield, which is what an overseer would do. An overseer wouldn't start a club over here and only worry about his club. An overseer, a shepherd, if we're going to... And I don't like that term for humans. I like it for Jesus. So, we don't put it to humans, which the New Testament doesn't do as a noun. It does as a verb in 1 Peter 5, but it doesn't, as a noun, call a human shepherd. Only calls Jesus shepherd. Okay. And I like that. But when you talk about an overseer, I think of my dad on his farm. He'd stand there on the patio and overlook the farmer. He goes, you know what? It's dry over there. And he gets some water over there. It looks like some bugs are going on. I'm going to have to go see what that's all about over there. He just oversaw. And when he saw something that needs to be done, he went and did it. I've heard your stories and watched the way you relate, and I see your Facebook stuff go by. So, I know the way you relate to the town you live in. I think so many brothers and sisters I know would be very encouraged to say, you mean my gifting can flow into a community without me having to put it into a paid staff position somewhere. Correct. I'd make the paid staff position would be nice in terms of the income. It would bring to you. Listen. But at the same time, it would distort what the real gift is. I mean, that's what Brad and I were talking about. If it's free, it's not ministry. Right. But talk to me. What happened seven or eight years ago? How did you finally, you do some media stuff with the local folks? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do some media. I do interviews at our local newspaper. They've got a video cast called Open Up. And I frequently host that with a dear friend of mine, Don Clark, who was a news anchor in Bakersfield for 25 years. So opportunities have just. And that's not just a show about Christian things, right? No. It's kind of a show about everything. No, no, no. It's about celebrities. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And you help with that? Yeah. I do whatever I do. I do. I do. I sell books. I speak. Not your own. No. You can sell books. You can think like I do. Perhaps. Someday. Someday. But you sell, like you. I buy books and resell them. Book collections and resell them. I sold one of your books once. Hey, look at this library right here. Take whatever you want. I've got to empty this sucker. I'm tired of books. So, yeah, I do. I do all that. And you've done records too? Oh, sure. Record collections. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, whatever I can find that I can make money on, again, whatever I have to do, not to work for someone. I've written, I wrote for a site that got swallowed up by ESPN years ago. Yeah. So, I did some time as a sports writer, writing for the NBA. And you've had a number of really good, I know we've talked about a bunch of them, good show ideas, good TV. Oh my gosh. I still have an agent. And you've got an agent. I still have an agent. Haven't got any of these into production yet. No, no, no. You're an idea guy. You're an idea guy. I am. It doesn't work out. You're still in there singing. I'm a journey guy. I'm in love with, I, destinies, destinations are overrated. Yeah. Journeys. Journeys are underrated. Unless you're on an airplane for 13 hours going to Dublin tomorrow, then you might be, you might look at a little bit different. But I get what you're saying. But I'll tell you, seven or eight years ago, I simply, I began to see myself a little bit different. I, I can still remember, I got a phone call from someone who's a dear friend who was pastoring a small church in Florida, her and her husband. And they were dear friends of Donette and mine. And she called it a particularly vulnerable period of time where I was like going down a dark road. And matter of fact, it was when I was leaving the staff of another church. And she said, I need to tell you something. She said that city Bakersfield is as much yours as it is anyone else's. She said, as a matter of fact, I'm not sure. It isn't your city. Even though you don't have the title or the political, you know, cachet that the other people have. And that hit me in such a sweet spot that I, I literally stepped into those words and began to consider it my city. And when you consider something to be yours, that you, and I, that word shepherd comes in again, something that you oversee and something that you care about. A deposit of the father's heart came in me at such a high level. There was even a time and I was, I was meeting with these young people. There was a time when the Lord, I believe came to me and said, hey, Bob, do you, do you want to be a father? And I told him, I said, you know, I do. And he said, then I have a rule for you. Now I'm not a rule guy. And so I kind of bristled a little bit. But you let God be one. I let him be a rule. He said, here's the rule. He said, dad's always pay. Dad's always pay. So he said, when you bring these young people out, he said, if you tell them that it's going to be Dutch, they're going to find reasons to not meet with you. So if you will just do this for me, I will never let you go without. We don't go without. And but I pay and I mean every single time. This goes to the mentoring thing. You meet with people. I mean, I've been in your office in Bakersfield. It's a Mimi's Cafe. Yep. Yep. You've been there. Everybody knows you in there because you're there all the time. Yeah. And you'll meet with anybody who wants to meet with you. And you talked about mentoring earlier. You just, you're giving them, you've got a workbook that you've worked out and you get them to fill in the blanks and tell them how to live their lives. Is that what that looks like? Yeah, it's usually if they just follow the order, then. Wow, can we get that on the website? Because people appreciate having an order of things. But without that, when people, probably the most common answer I give when people ask what I do and it took me a while to even say this because I don't get paid for it and we don't value as a society what we don't get paid for. And so it was difficult for me to say because I can't follow it up with, yeah, I get paid well for it, but I do. What I do is I help people connect dots. It's very simple. It's very simple. There are people that walk this earth that don't have that ability. For whatever reason, it's been stripped from them, stolen from them at some point. And so I restore that to them the way that a father would. Connect the dots of life. God's fingerprints in their life? Absolutely, yeah. Where they haven't seen it. Where they haven't seen it. And it's really probably the greatest honor and privilege that I've ever known is to help people do that. So a big part of that is listening to people's stories. Oh, you have to. Yeah, you told me about this lunch you had with this Muslim. Yeah, I sat down with it. I interviewed this guy. He's the only Amir in the United States. And the office of Amir is different than the office of an Imam. An Imam is over a congregation, a mosque. And Amir is over a region. So he's the only Amir in the United States. Now, he's stepping away from that a little bit right now. But he has been for the last 10 years. 5,000 Muslims in Kern County practicing Muslims call him their legal and spiritual head. And when I sat down with him, I interviewed him for the show I do at the local newspaper. And I got him to laugh a little bit. And then I said, hey, you ought to let me buy you breakfast and Mimis. And he immediately said, why would I want to do that? And I smiled. And I said, because you should. And he said, OK, so we sat down. And I'm telling you, Wayne, three and a half hours we met that first time. And you said five words, you said? Well, it's interesting. And an hour in, he said, Bob, he said, I sat with a PhD of religious studies a few weeks ago. And he said that the conversation was not nearly as fascinating as this one. Well, that was very interesting to me, because I hadn't said five words at that point. I looked at him as we sat down. He wanted to discuss religion. And I said, listen, we know we have differences. So OK, we're different. So let's talk about this. Tell me your story. Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out. And he started to laugh. And he looked at me and I wasn't even smiling. And he said, oh, are you serious? I said, sure, why not? So he did. So for the next three and a half hours, I heard his story, how he came to the United States, how he graduated from USC, how his father's life was once saved by the one and only Muhammad Ali. All of it, all of his story. And from that, has forged a relationship that is he's one of my dearest friends. One of my dearest friends on the earth. We meet every single week. And we're literally getting ready to start a video cast together. And we'll come back to that in a minute. But you said he describes himself as a seventh century Muslim. Oh, yeah. I mean, Sharia law. I mean, I'm talking about one of your more liberal kind of going with the flow of a Western culture kind of Muslims. No, no, no. He believes in freedom, but he believes in Sharia law. He believes Sharia law is God's law, that it is the most merciful law. And he refers to himself as a seventh century Muslim. So he's the real deal scary, big, bearded Muslim man that you can imagine in your head. Yeah. Oh, that's him. And you guys are going to start a video cast, podcast type thing together. We are. We're going to start that in just about probably less than a month. About time this airs then. This will be fairly close to that. So you'll get the link. We'll put it in the podcast notes. If you want to check it out, you can check Bob out right there. Yeah, we're going to have a podcast or a video cast called a Christian and a Muslim walk into a studio. And we're tickled by the title. We're tickled by the concept. No holds barred. It's just two guys talking about not just religion, but how terrible the Dallas Cowboys are. Yeah, Cowboys fan. But it's not a debate. That's what most people are going to expect. Oh, Christian and Muslim. But you guys have a friendship. We're going to celebrate that friendship. Sure. And be able to talk about differences and talk about what's going on in the news or the media. Exactly. Wow, what's that friendship shine through? You trying to convert them? No. No. We've had this discussion. He asked you that, too. He asked me that. And I said, no. I said, that's between you and God. I said, you do what you want to do. I did tell him this. I said, if it somewhere along the journey, I can show you a picture of a God who is kinder and gentler than you may have been taught. I said, then I feel like I've done something. Because when I asked him, and he's not going to mind me telling these stories, I promise you, when I first asked him, who are you to God? Who is God to you? He was immediate. He said, that's easy. He is my master. I am a slave. And about an hour later, he asked me the same question. And I said, well, that's easy for me, too. He's my friend. And that's a different concept. Doesn't have a basket to put that in, does it? No, there isn't. I mean, there's not even a word for father within Islam. Fatherhood is not part of their religion at all. God is not a father. He is only the master. So it's a different concept. And we talk about that stuff. And we talk about it very openly, coercion versus cooperation, friendship versus slavery, 21st century versus 7th century. We do. And it gets heated, but it's very respectful. And I think it's going to be illuminated for a lot of people. That'll be fun. And so you guys get together regularly now, anyway. Yeah, once a week, we just hang out. Let's go back to mentoring again. Some of these guys that you, I mean, I love, I got to meet some of them when I was in Bakersfield a while back. You did. Just did a gathering at your home. A lot of brokenness among the guys you hang out with. How do those relationships generally happen? Are they referred? People that, how do people get in touch with you and say, hey, I want to have lunch with Bob at Mimi's? And you pay? Yeah, I know. You pay today. I tried to pay you and let me pay. You're not very good at paying. I know. I'm not good at not paying. I know. There's the not, not again. I was angry. I'll get over it. These people that come to me, sometimes they have heard something or they've seen me and they know that this is what I do. But oftentimes, I find them. Here's something I know. I love that. Yeah. I think that's the whole thing about our institutional programs. We want to set this program. And if you're interested, you'll show up here. Instead of so much of Jesus was, I'll show up there. Right. And I'll invite you into, I'll invite, is that key us to lunch? I'll invite a. That's it. Yeah. Wayne, that's the key. And even in this thing of reconciliation, I've walked through some extremely incredible reconciliation ever since I discovered Second Corinthians Five. And there's a theme. Fathers, parents, fathers and mothers, pursue children. It's never the other way around. Never the other way around. It's not the children serving the parents. No. Although it is in the warped culture, it often is. Well, no. In the church culture, it's often that. But I'm telling you, my mission is to find my kids and to bring them into my family. As a matter of fact, if I can digress for one really small story, this is me in a nutshell. I woke up. I have a feeling this is not a digression, but go ahead. I woke up. I woke up one morning and I was going to meet a dear friend of mine who's a pastor in the city. His name is Al Jones. And before I went to meet him at 7 o'clock in the morning at Mimi's, I found myself reading the history of Saturday Night Live. And I've always loved SNL. And I was reading it. It was a first-person history, like an oral history of Saturday Night Live. So it was very interesting to me. And as I read through, I lost track of time. And I was about five minutes late to the breakfast. But as I was reading, it hit me that the book had a central theme. From Tina Fey to Will Ferrell to Chevy Chase, all the way through all of their memories revolved around one man, Lauren Michaels. Now, Lauren Michaels is the papa. He's the dad. He's the creator and the producer of Saturday Night Live. And what he does is he travels the highways and the byways himself. And he finds this hidden talent, the people who have been forgotten. He finds them and he brings them into his family. He invites them in. He brings them in. He helps them get a little further down the road. And then he launches them into the world. You could start naming off names from here all the way back. He's done that. And when I saw the picture, I mean, I got emotional over it. I said, Lord, I want to be Lord, you want to know who I want to be? I want to be Lauren Michaels. I want to go find the broken and the forgotten. Those who are in the corners that nobody knows about. I want to bring them into my family. I want to help them grow. And then I want to launch them into the world and say, dun dun dun dun dun dun. World, take a look at this. And I went to meet with my friend. I was five minutes late. And as I'm getting out of my car, I got a text saying, you come in lipowits, lipowits. And I thought, oh, he's being cute. What movie is that from? I have no idea. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So I walk in and I go, I showed him my phone. I went, hey, real funny. And we didn't even discuss it. And for an hour, we talked about other stuff, like I told him about the Saturday Night Live thing and how I was kind of feeling like I want to be Lauren Michaels. And then I showed him. He said, I got to go to the bathroom. So I picked up my phone. I said, OK, I don't want to show how ignorant I am. But what's this from? You come in lipowits. What movie is that from? And he said, I don't think it's from a movie. I thought it was a funny name to call you. I'll be right back. So I picked up my phone and I type in lipowits. Guess what came up? Lauren Michaels. Because Lauren Michaels' real name is Lauren Michael Lipowitz. You've got to be kidding. Oh, I'm not kidding. Oh, my gosh. I just thought it was an autocorrect or something. I just thought. But I just started, you know, on the inside, it's like fireworks started going off inside me like, wait a minute, Lord, you see me that way, too? Because that's who I want to be. Help me with this because you used a couple of terms that I could hear other people say it and it would peg my yuck meter. Sure. My city, my children, from a possessive, I'm building something for me kind of thing. You don't mean it that way at all. No. When I hear you say it, I go, wow. My city, there's not ownership there so much as it is love and affection. Yeah, rather than ownership, let's use this word. I take responsibility for it. It's mine. I don't take it to myself and say, it's all mine. But it's like I have. It's not something you would share around town. No. People would think you'd gone nuts on it. No, but I have a relationship with my city. But you take it seriously. You take it that I'm here and God's giving me a place here, which is not positional and not dictatorial. No. But it gives you a way to love the city, to care for the city, to watch out for the city in a way that I find breathtaking. I think if you want to know what true, I used the thing we were talking about doing this podcast. I'd love to talk about this elder at large, which is a lousy title. I wouldn't want to use it as a title, but it describes what I think God does in his body, which is not people who are called elders in our society are usually elders of an institution and live to protect and defend it, often at the expense of the city. Right. When you talk about, when I talk about being an elder at large, I'm just going to, I'm one of God's people a little further down the road, not that being an arrogant above me kind of thing, but I'm down the road enough that I can turn around and love and serve you. Yeah. Help you find your way in the world. That's all it is. Yeah, which I, I think there's so many people, I hope, I guess it's my hope. I hope people listen to podcasts going, oh, I want to be one of those, or I am one of those, but I don't live like that. I live like, well, I don't have a church, and I don't have this, and I have a title. I can't do anything instead of, man, I've got a whole city to love. Exactly. There's broken people in my, so many people are looking for, I'm trying to find people with a common desire for church the way I want to see church, or, you know, the same mind, instead of looking for people to love. Yeah. Who need to be brought into a family and loved, and the family itself will do a lot of the restoring. It's not like you have to be a healer. Like, I have to know how to connect everybody's dots and make everybody better. And I love the people you meet with. This is what I got when I met with people you meet with. Yep. You're not trying to fix them. No. There's no fixer in this thing. It's I'm going to love them. I'm trying to bless them. I'm trying to help them see a bigger God that can encase them and watch what God does when that connection takes place. That's exactly right. And I'm trying to connect themselves to a bigger them on top of that. You know, 1 Corinthians 13 is one of my absolute favorite chapters of the Bible. But I think it's been sometimes wrongly labeled as the love chapter when at the end, it's truly the identity chapter when it says, for now we see through a glass darkly. And it's talking about the fact that when we become, when we come face to face with Jesus, we will know even as we are known. But that glass is not a window. And once again, this wasn't taught to me in Bible college. We know it's a mirror. And so because what happens when people start seeing themselves in the mirror and understanding who they are, then the church, the institution can become very, very frightened, very, very easily. So it's my job to help them see who they are, to see who God is, to see who they are, to see what the potential is. So when you're having lunch or breakfast with them, whatever, you're really their accountability partner. Is that what you're saying? No? I'm a terrible accountability partner. Why? I am the worst. I've had guys count to me and say, hey, you know, I struggle with pornography or I struggle with whatever. And would you be my accountability partner? You help with a lot, quite honestly, you help with a lot of people too that are also have a gay orientation. I do. I meet with a lot of folks that identify as gay. And so I'll have them come and say, will you be my accountability partner? And I understand that concept and there were probably times in my life when I really, really needed one. And you're bad at it, why? And I tell them, I'm not good at it. And then they say, why? And I say, because I don't care. Yeah. I don't care. Or going back to the second Corinthians five language, I don't count. Yeah, it just doesn't count with me. If God's not counting and we're not counting, what's an accountability partner doing? Isn't that all about counting? Oh, is that the same word? Yeah. Amazing. Isn't it? Yeah, because everybody that's, I mean, I did that in the so you don't want a church anymore book about, you know, relationships are not about accountability, not between brothers and sisters. We have an accountability relationship with God, but he's not counting. So that's even okay. Yeah. Yeah. I want God, I want to be able to stand before God and give an account for my life. Yep. But what we get to understand, and I love what you do this with the people you lunch with and breakfast with and sit with, is that because you're not counting, you can love them where they are. They can be honest about their story. And now we have a chance for God to do some wonderful things in a heart instead of me trying to get them all focused on their sin once a week. Exactly. Which is not going to help. Let's face it. No, no. So meanwhile, I am hearing every story from every side of everything, sometimes more than I want to know. But it's the, Wayne, I can't even begin to tell you how gratifying and how humbling it is to sit with the broken. And help them see how loved they are. Exactly. And that they're not, and they weren't created damaged. I think that language is what so many people, whether they're addicted to pornography or they've got gay same-sex attraction in their hearts or go on and on and on. I mean, those are the sins where mostly people feel dirty. Most egotists don't have a clue they're an egotist or a narcissist. They just think they're the greatest thing. Right, no, that's exactly right. They don't live like damaged goods, but people with those kinds of broken places in their life, they really do feel like they're a mistake. Right. And that God is angry with them every day. Correct. And they only see their lives through that little prism of whatever their brokenness or failure is. They don't see that, there's a real person here that God loves, and yeah, maybe something got twisted up in your life, but you're not the twist. You're the thing behind the twist. You're what you are without the twist and God sees that. And I love that you see that and I love that you invited out when I sat in your living room that night that was people introduce themselves around the room. People were openly talking about those kinds of brokenness without shame, without, you know, some guys say, you know, I've been gay my whole life, someone else, you know, with something else and I'm just going, so I get, I'm in rooms where lots of people are introducing themselves to others, particularly with a stranger in the room. Those are not the things they're talking about. Well, they see these are not the, and these are the people I hang out with. And it's just, you know, these are the people that come to me and that I go to. I earnestly seek out people that are hurting because listen, my job, I'm telling you right now, my job, when Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the father, I am a father-representer. I walk and I've told people before, I don't know who he is, well, close your eyes. And I don't do this in any way of ego. Close your eyes and they'll close their eyes and I say, open them. You've seen the father, look at me. I tell people, I boldly tell people, when they say, I don't know what to do, follow me as I follow Christ. Watch what I do and do that. It's how things work. I model things for the people that are younger. And it's not because I have to, it's because I have fallen so in love with Jesus and I have fallen so in love with his creation that I am compelled. It's beyond natural, Wayne. I'm compelled to lay my life for these people. And I've got people who say, I don't know what to do. Well, there's a Greek word, canosis, that it's my favorite Greek word. And it's my favorite of all. And it literally means a container filled with liquid that is poured out until the last drop is gone. When that last drop is gone, that's canosis and the Bible says that Jesus made himself canosis for us. And so- It's the Philippians 2 passage. It is. And so when people look at me and say, I don't know what to do, what do I do next? I don't know what God's will is for me. I tell them, you don't need to know. You don't need to know the big stuff. Right now, find somebody and start pouring. Start pouring your life out. Find someone who's broken. Find someone who's homeless. Find someone who's confused and start doing what we're doing. And that's God's will for you. I promise you, you don't need anything more than that. And then the other fun stuff happens. I walk kind of mystically. Miracles happen to me all the time, but it's a byproduct of how I love and how I view. It's not a byproduct of I went to some supernatural school of ministry. So you don't see the world as sinful or parts of it as religious or parts of it as way. What you see is a world that's fatherless. That's it. And that's when you talk about being a father, it's just reflecting his fatherhood to people who don't see it. That's it. And it's been there their whole life. Exactly. He's been fathering them, even if it's been missed, not seen. That there are a lot of people walking around. And it's kind of a buzz phrase, catch phrase to say father wounds. But there are literally our people walking around who have been wounded by their natural fathers or the lack thereof by their parents. And they just don't understand the concept. And listen, I walked through stuff as a kid too. And it took me a long time to know who my father was. But once I began to see him in a certain way and he revealed himself that way, once you go down that roadway and you can't go back, there's no going back. Once you're part of seeing someone for the first time get a glimpse of father's love for them through your engagement with them, there's nothing more you'd rather do. That's it. Not in life in any way. End of story. I wish there were more people like you in the world. If this podcast encourages others to say, I wanna do that. I find myself when I'm staying in homes with people and I recognize a couple that really has this, they really are living as elders at large in the universe. I usually say to them, man, you really passed her well in the city. And they're like, what are you talking about? Cause they don't, cause we've used that term over there that we don't know what it means over here. I found myself thinking this, I was driving to have lunch with you. I told you this little thing. I don't know how this phrase is gonna work out yet. I may even cut it out as podcasts. But I said, going to church on Sunday morning is to the kingdom of God like playing Monopoly is to running a business. And that's what we don't see because we think that's the real thing because we call it church. So that must be church. Then we miss out what it really is to impact a city with the affection and love of the father and not having to get any, not having to get attendance out of them or offerings out of them, just loving people into a family and then introducing them to the world and watching how they live differently. Come on. It's breathtaking, Bob. Well, I appreciate that. What a great story. And what you don't wanna do is copy what Bob does. I love how God uniquely positions each of us in the world to make the impact he's asked us to make. Bob's longevity and that community and the way he's involved himself has allowed doors to open for him that are extraordinary. God has doors for you too. How he's asked you to impact the world you're in and the people that are around you and who it is that you love and how it is that you care. And if we all do our bit, this church takes shape in the world. Thank you for traveling with us today on The God Journey. You can join this conversation by visiting thegodjourney.com or add your voice by calling our comment line at 805-539-6980.