Transitions — http://thegodjourney.com/wordpress/2005/07/15/transition-the-god-journey-10-posted-today/

You're listening to The God Journey, an ever-expanding conversation with those thinking outside the box of organized religion with your hosts and fellow travelers, Wayne Jacobson and Brad Cummings. Well, Wayne, it's been a while since we've done one of these, hasn't it? I feel horrible. My goodness, we talked about doing one a week and it's been a month, I think. Well, there's been several things that have conflicted our schedules. You started to move house and now we're in a new location. I sense any blame there, are you just having fun with that? Well, it's a convenient excuse to sort of say, well, yeah, Wayne's been moving house and traveling, but... Well, if there's any blame to go around, I want to pass it off to my wife because she made me do it. We talked about moving for some time, but really, I planned to more do that in my head more toward the fall. Sarah thought, boy, summer's good because she's off work for the summer and she can nest this place, but it kind of took me a bit by surprise in the midst of all travel. We ended up selling a home, buying a home, and fortunately, we had about a dozen wonderful friends that helped us move. Brad, and you were one of those. Yeah. I came and sweat for you. It was good. They dumped all their junk here, and then I left town again, so I got back yesterday from Pennsylvania and a wild time with a variety of folks from a variety of different strains of things from folks that are very much involved in more traditional congregational environments. We spent the last three days teaching in one of those, and also spending time with people who've spilled out of various ones of those things and looking for something else. It's just been a wild ride. It was eight days in the western part of Pennsylvania, got home yesterday, and so now we're back at it. In the midst of all of your travels and the busyness of life, what do you do to keep kind of centered and keep your own friendship with Jesus fresh? I find it, gosh, relatively easy to do these days, to be honest. There's certain amounts of time every day, and I don't mean extensive, but often frequent through the course of the day when I'm just drawing back to my heart, saying, God, what are you doing in this? What's on your heart for me? I really feel like there's this ongoing conversation with him. It's not as, go, what do you think about this? I think this way more about you. It's not contrived like that, but it is an ongoing sense of who he is and what he's asked me to do. It's all been distractive, the number of things that I've been up to the last couple of months, but not distracted to the relationship. It's distracted to some writing projects I'd like to get done, distracted to getting the show done and you and I intersecting, but it's not been in terms of my own relationship because to me, that just continues to be the main thing in a day. When I'm traveling, it's even more so because I'm waking up alone in a room and going to bed at night in a room alone. You've got moments to really get away and process what God's doing in that day, where if you're home usually talking to your wife first thing in the morning or late in the evening and so you miss some of that opportunity, but no, the relationship is just one of them. We're staying at a castle out in the woods of Pennsylvania and boy, I could go for a walk in the morning just down these wooded lanes and trails and it was just incredible. I mean, the time to just be with God and then when I'm talking all day with folks about this journey and about what it is to discover who God is and helping them see it in their own life, that energizes me. I just feel like Jesus after the woman at the well where they've gone to get him lunch and he's supposed to be all hungry and tired and they come back and he says, man, this is my joy. That's my meat to do the things that God's put in front of me, so. That's fantastic. Oh, I've had a great time traveling. I'm going to be home for about three weeks now before I head off to South Africa. So I've definitely got to get some things settled and some things written and get on from there. We'll probably log a bunch of broadcasts. Yeah, hopefully. And I hope to get some good stuff when I'm in South Africa and talking to some folks there and they're recording some things that might be helpful as well. We get back and then we got to get our wives on here one of these times because we kind of talked about doing that too and getting the feminine point of view on some of these things. I shared the idea with my wife. She looked at me and she says, well, I'll think about that. We'll have to hijack. We'll surprise her. We'll bring her into a room and just have a conversation and tape it and be knowing her. I understand you've been out kind of late searching for things. Oh, had a wonderful little. We have a cat named Chipper and my cat, I know I'm a dog person. Oh, I hope so. I'm a dog person. Okay. He's got a lot like a dog. He actually has the capacity to drink out of the toilet. And I was really proud of that. It is hilarious. It ought to be on David Letterman. It's stupid. Patrick's, he is gifted at doing that. So I'm proud of that. Our dogs don't do that. They don't like him at the dogs. Our dogs don't do that. That's the dogs fountain in our house and he also begs at the table and he's a great little cat for someone who's not a cat person, but he decided to go out late the other night and he didn't just and he didn't come back and our kids are so attached to Chipper. Jonathan was kind of on the couch and tears and said, Dad, I'm just really concerned about he's going to eat, get eaten by a coyote. And I said, Jonathan, I won't pray about it. Jonathan's eight. About eight. Okay. And I just said, well, let's just pray and you know, let's trust that Jesus can watch it over Chipper. And you know, I said, Daddy will go look for him. So I was up to like 130 searching around and this cat would never come. And you know, the next day, I mean, he finally came back and Jonathan, a dinner, we're talking and I just sort of said, Jonathan, the only thing I don't like about Chipper is when I call him, he doesn't come. And Jonathan's response was just fantastic. I said, well, Dad, you haven't really established a relationship with Chipper. Wow. And I just kind of went, well, what do you mean? He said, well, dad, yeah, I mean, I said, well, Jonathan, we live in the same house. He should know me. And he said, well, yeah, he knows you dad, but you don't have a relationship with him. And as he was talking, I just let him go. I just, well, how do I have a relationship with Chipper? I could just feel the presence of God kind of say, listen in. Because out of the heart of a little kid, he was just talking about entering into this little cat's world and spending time of just intimacy with the cat, as opposed to just being in the house and there's a cat. And I don't have it. And I'm here and I'm paying for that cat food. So you ought to like me. And I recognize there's a lot of folks that frankly, they live in the same house as God. And they go to all his meetings and they go to all. But at the end of the day, they don't have that sense of intimacy. And correspondingly, the analogy kind of breaks down here. But they don't have the confidence that when they call, he's necessarily going to come. Now, I think the truth is that's true about the cat, me and Chipper, I don't think it's true about Jesus. I think whenever we cry out, God's presence is there. He may be answering. But our lack of relationship, our lack of aware intimacy and our awareness of it may mean that it's really hard for us to know how to navigate in those moments. Oh, it's not that he's not there, but it may be that we may not know how to see him there or have got that awareness that recognizes when he is and what he's doing in our lives. And so I think that's a very fit analogy. I know it's the same thing on the trip I'm out. And particularly at the camp for five days with folks, there's people who really make an effort to enter into a relationship with me. It's not just I'm a speaker and we're in the same castle and we're doing the same things. But there are people that will sit down with you at lunch and they'll, in a conversation, start to open up some of their lives to you. And over five days, there are people you go away from a camp and you have the beginnings of a real relationship. And others, you might have been there and you might have even had fleeting conversations. But the same thing doesn't happen. That relationship, I think last week, or last week, last month, when we were talking about Jesus being our shepherd, what that really focuses down on is how do we walk with him? And that's kind of the beginning of whatever we want to talk about, about body life or other kinds of things. If it doesn't start with you and I knowing him, then we're going to miss the whole deal, I think. Yeah, I think the whole issue about going to church, not going to church, all of it, if your focus is in a relationship with Jesus and following the voice of your shepherd, those questions are easily answered. They're not theoretical. They're not questions you ask for everyone. This is what the Lord is calling me to do. And if I'm walking with him in an abiding way, I mean, when I ask you the question, what do you do to keep your relationship fresh? You know, it sounds a lot that you live your entire day and the awareness of his presence and open dialogue. And it may not be this, you know, wound. But there's a sense of God's leading. There's a sense of learning to just, you know, you feel the tug in your heart. You feel the serendipitous moments that happen where you're just going like, I think God has a hand in this and this conversation with this person. And when you're aware of that and you're looking for that, it's amazing to me he is there. And that's, Brad, I think that's what's real important about living outside the box. The box is not whether or not you go to a building on Sunday morning. The box is whether I'm living my life with this religious obligation to principle or to ethic or to doctrine. Or in fact, I'm sorting out here what it means to live in relationship to the king of glory. I'm sorting out what it means to know him. And sometimes I'm of the mind, at least the way I've seen it done in my past, a lot of what we call the church or body life or congregational life wasn't really celebrating that relationship. I think in many ways it was substituting for the lack of it. Because I didn't know who Jesus was in my life. I've got to go to these meetings and someone else is going to tell me what he's like. And that just doesn't satisfy. No, and I think that the subtle deception is that the more you pursue that without cultivating that sense of an awareness of God's presence and learning to discern his voice and hear him for yourself. If that doesn't happen, pretty soon you get just set on a little treadmill of well, this is what we're supposed to be doing. And it's interesting, we were talking earlier the whole issue of validation is that if my friendship was easy. We were talking earlier on this broadcast, we were talking earlier, sitting around a room. But the whole issue, so oftentimes what people are looking for is they're looking for that sense of validation. And sadly, they can try to get it from a system or try to get it from a group and perform for that and then we will affirm you. And then all of a sudden, if they're not attached to that, then their sense of gee, how am I doing? They don't know. And that's a big thing I'm into with a lot of people as I travel around. People who've been disillusioned by or seen through the inadequacies of religious obligation and they're hungering for this kind of relationship. But because they've lived in the substitutes long, they don't have any idea how to do it and they feel incredibly disoriented. I don't even know how to begin that. So how did that happen for you? How did a relationship with God for you, Brad, start out? And how have you cultivated that over your life? I mean, I think the honest answer would be over the last probably two decades of a true conscious search of my heart. I began with a sense of just going like, I want something more. And just sitting in the church service and the Sunday thing that we were at way back then, it wasn't answering that. And so it was, I think God had produced a hunger inside me and I just started going. I started looking here, there, reading a ton. And I started to just ask a lot of personal questions of, Lord, I want you to be real to me. And so, you know. I feel like for me, there were more moments where even at a very young age where God made himself known to me that was bigger than the stuff I was going to or it was kind of that contrast between, here's this, I'll say mysterious presence as existential as that turns out. I mean this mysterious, I wasn't alone in the world. At times I was on my bed at night, you know, praying or just even thinking and all of a sudden not sensing I wasn't alone in the world or in my dad's vineyard. And I had the sense that this relationship and I think for many people, there are moments when they've sensed God's presence near them. They've sensed something. Yeah. And they just haven't known how to go on from there. Yeah. I think it really is the interplay of God's hunger for us and a relationship with us and our responding in kind with, there's no substitute other than time spent. I mean, I remember when I used to work for AT&T, you know, years ago, spending several hours in traffic in my daily commute. And I would just, that would be my own little personal quiet worship time where I would just pour my heart out to God. And because I had a couple hours of just, you know, quiet time of my, you know, quiet on the freeway is not really quiet. Not in LA, that's for sure. But just, I had my own time and there was no one else in the car. I remember at one point there was a car in front of me and some little kid in the back started mocking me in terms of he just started singing. And I felt a little self-conscious at that point. But I realized I had turned my commute into probably the most enjoyable hours of my day spent just in drawing near to God and knowing that he was driving with me. And I think drawing near to him, post the whole navigator thing, which kind of systematized quiet time. You read a Bible, you've got a prayer list, you've got a memory verse. None of those bad things, really. But I think what came out and probably very useful in the beginning stages of that are people that were hungry for a relationship and here were some tools that might get you there. But it's really become, for many folks that I've talked to, and I think my own life personally got into this too, where it's a bit of I'm just getting my things done and that's supposed to be a relationship. Instead of, there's a lot of it, I think, where you're just hanging out, telling God what's on your heart and asking him to make himself known to you. But it really isn't that we're performing our way into this. If I can read the right books or get enough chapters in or prayer my prayer list enough, it really isn't it. I know for me, I mean, in terms of trying to give something tangible, I know there's an actual verbal barrier to be broken that I can sit there and quiet and I can kind of meditate in my mind and celebrate and think about God. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. And that God's presence can just quietly, I'm aware of him in those moments. But I knew, I know at the beginning point, it was like I needed to find my voice. I needed to find a sense of comfortability in talking to someone that I didn't think I was just talking to thin air. I didn't feel self-conscious about talking out loud. And I needed to learn to relate to a person that I knew heard me. Long before I really had a confidence in being able to hear him, I knew that I wanted to put my heart out towards him. And I think interspersed in that, I heard you shares. Yeah, I had encounters with God where there was nothing that I did that initiated that encounter. All of a sudden he was just there. And those, I think those were sort of like the catalyst that just wanted, I wanted more of that. Whatever that was, however, undefinable, I could, it's like, I didn't even know what to do with it. There was just a sense of, oh, you're wonderful God. Yeah, and if I had to quantify it, I'd probably say 90% plus of this relationship is what God does, not what Wayne does. I agree. I've got a seven-month-old granddaughter now and I was some young kids up at this retreat I was at. And the one thing you know about young kids, if I'm as a 52-year-old geeky guy who's gonna have a relationship with kids, they're not coming to me saying, hey, Wayne, how are you doing? What's life about? I've gotta get down at their level. Whatever they're doing, whatever they enjoy, for Amy and I, it's just gibberish talk because that's all she's got, my granddaughter. But it really takes for us to get to their level, play blocks, play trucks, whatever puts you there. If that's true for you and I with kids, how much more for the God of the ages and humanity? And this relationship is gonna work. I find myself last time just saying, God, I need you. And I need you to show me what it is that you're doing in my life today and what it is that you're wanting to make clear to me and how do you do that? And really not putting the onus on me. I've gotta do the right things to make this happen. But really just the openness and surrender that says, God, make yourself known to me. I wanna see you. I wanna be part of your agenda today. For me, that's what cultivates that relationship. Yes, it's a whole lot of reading scripture because I see God so much in the scripture that that's a big part of it for me. And praying and thinking through things in my life alongside, that's a big part of it too. But ultimately, I'd say 90% plus of whatever effort goes into this really comes from him. And I think what's so important about that is when you realize it's God who is excited and desirous of entering into my world. When all of a sudden that becomes a point of revelation in your soul where you're just going like, I don't just hear that as words, but it's like that's really true. Then the work aspect, the religious effort seems to go by the wayside. And there is more a sense of just simply making yourself available to the Lord. And it doesn't, it's not like, gee, I gotta go out for a two mile run. It's more like, hey, Lord, good morning. And what are we gonna do today? And in treasuring that relationship, which isn't just, boy, this is above and beyond a call of duty kind of Christianity. And the fact that it gets thought of that way is troublesome to me. Money night with the group I was with in Grove City, Pennsylvania. We read, again, this expression from Hebrews 8 about the New Covenant. It's a prophecy from Jeremiah that the writer of Hebrews is quoting, but he's quoting it as a done deal. Now it was a promise in Jeremiah's day, but this is what the New Covenant is all about. And I think as we wind up this segment, it'd be good to focus on that. I wanna talk about this relationship with God being above and beyond the call of duty thing. This is just basic New Covenant life. Here's the prophecy, he said, I'll make a New Covenant with the house of Israel after that time declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man, his brother, saying, know the Lord because they will all know me from the least to the greatest of them for I will forgive their wickedness and I'll remember their sin no more. And then the writer of Hebrews comments this, by calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete and what is obsolete is aging and will soon disappear. Now where do you have that taught in Christianity today as we mostly experience it? The idea that don't worry about the rules and doctrine because God will write his law on your heart. You don't need to be taught by somebody saying, know the Lord because God wants to make himself known to you. These are things I think our religious institutions wittingly or unwittingly have provided a substitute for this relationship instead of doing what I think is the real call of the body of Christ and leadership gifts among the body of Christ. Don't replace our walk with Jesus, equip us to it, help us experience so that I after being a Christian for a time am growing in this awareness of God's presence in me much more aware of what pleases him in my life where he's giving me something, putting something because I'm learning how to relate to this presence, this living God, not because I'm working Christianity as a system well. That's what we've robbed from people and so many people have been believers for years, decades even. They have all the rules down that Christian knowledge, Bible knowledge out their head but boy they don't, when you're talking about what's God doing in you? What's God been breathing into your heart these days? Have no idea. I think what Hebrews is arguing for is there is this ongoing relationship and conversation which is not as plastic I don't think as most Pentecostal evangelists kind of make. I'll get up and ask God this and He said that and I said this and He said that. I think what we're talking about is there's these growing convictions over time as I'm looking, it's not as cheap as just some fragmented conversation. It really is. I'm making honest expressions to Him and through the course of my day in various ways through various events, God's making His stuff known to me. Sometimes it is a thought that comes in just exactly like His voice and other times it's just convictions that grow over time. This is not something God wants me involved in and this might be and that's, I think that's the heart of what this new covenant is and if we don't get that then we're missing the best part that this journey has to offer. Yeah and I think one of the great promises is when Jesus says in John, I am the good shepherd. He is answering out of Ezekiel 34. That's where he's basically coming out and saying, I'm here. I am here to shepherd my flock. My sheep know my voice. I take that as a promise. Not as a skill I've got to develop. Not some lessons I've got to learn. I mean, I'm grown but if I don't know yet. I'm growing but I take that as a promise that just says, you know what? God said that I know His voice and if I can begin from that place of confidence of saying, you know what? He said the voice of a stranger I'm not gonna follow. I'm gonna follow Him and He knows me and I know Him. I take those as promises as a starting point of saying, okay, I'm going to believe that that is true and look at life from that lens as opposed to try some religious striving to feel like I am not. And I just feel like every time you try to jump over the religious hurdles, seems like you trip and fall. Yeah, we do. That's something we'll come back and visit again and again because to me the God journey is really about the life that we experience in Him and body life is how are we sharing that reality together and spurring each other on to live in Him, not finding in each other what we're not finding in Him but finding Him in each other in a way that makes our own walk in relationship become that much more live. Well, we could continue talking about this relationship with Jesus all night I think because that's really at the heart of it and I'm sure we'll come back and visit it again and again over the course of these days together. At least until He returns. It's been wonderful though after our last show. We had a number of you, some calls, some blog entries, some emails and we'd like to tackle some of that because our desire is to get this conversation going and we heard from Rex out of Florida this week. Hi guys, my name is Rex from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. I'm in the real estate business. I heard about you folks from one of my real estate clients and there's so much I wanted to share with you folks. I've been out of the church business for many years and there's a lot I wanna say. I've never had so much freedom in my whole life as I do walking with Him. I don't have to do in order that I might be. I don't have to measure up. I don't have to worry about what they think of me or my walk with Jesus more importantly. It's just me and Him and those that He gives to me as friends and I run into believers and they run into me and it's a wonderful and precious thing but He's taken the believers out of the religious business which Satan and men put together with Him that they might know Him and love Him and it's so sweet and so precious so just walk on and trust the Lord Jesus. Listen, keep on pressing on. Don't be afraid to trust Jesus. Then He loves it when we trust Him. He loves it when we step out in Him. You're not gonna drown. All you gotta do is get out of the boat. And there is a little more to His phone call than just what we played for you there but I thought it was great to just kinda hear His heart and His excitement. I think just, you know, I don't have to do in order to be in just a sense of freedom that He really is experiencing. It's just going like, you know, He's aware that He's bumping into people and that God has a hand in those interactions in the fellowship and the whole call to just trust Jesus. That's what this thing's about. It really is and even from our first segment talking about how a lot of times what we do in our institutional engagements is a substitute for that, I think growing in trust is just one of the big joys about what we talked about, learning to be sensitive to His presence in our lives and His voice and I think quite naturally what grows out of that is this growing trust that He's gonna take care of me and all the fears we have, well, if I follow Him or if I try this, what if it doesn't work out? I love the encouragement. You just gotta get out of the boat, man. And you find out that even when we mess up, He's big enough just to scoop us up and carry us on. That's the trust sometimes that we've lost the sense of. We can trust Him when we get it all right, but man, if we can't trust Him when we mess up too, then we haven't got much hope, I don't think. Isn't the element of trust, the whole coming to a realization that this is more about what God is doing in me than what I have to do so as to be in Him? So much of our fears, so much of the areas where we're not trusting is because we're trying to achieve, we're trying to accomplish and somehow we're failing in our own estimation of ourselves and God seems to be standing wholly aside from that conversation in our head, just going like, look, I love you. If you would simply allow me to love you, the atmosphere around us would be all different. Well, the whole performance thing is self-trust. I'm trusting me to get it right. That's just nuts. We're not that bright. No. I think trust- If I died right now, I had to find my way to heaven. I'd be lost. If we just look through the New Testament and the freshness of how much time is the word believe, trust, faith, which is all about vesting our confidence in what He does, not what we do. How is it that we participate in His work rather than try to get our own? And for some, like Rex, I mean, tell he's down the road a bit, he's enjoying it. I think some of the other, Jeff, we heard from, he's enjoying it some, but it sounds a little more difficult for him. Let's listen in. Hi, my name is Jeff. We're going to church. You can't want to know that. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for your encouragement. We appreciate the fact this has been a blessing to you, reading between the lines to hear that tough talk. And it is, isn't it? If you've been taught to trust in other things and you've got these validations and things we've been talking about around your life, somehow moving from that to a more relational way of engaging God and this life and the body of Christ without all these comfortable structures we found our way into, I think a lot of us would describe, particularly our initial journey in this, as really tough. Yeah, it's really disorienting, especially if you were invested in a community of people and somehow that community of people aren't following that same voice that we are, and you are. I mean, as an individual, it's not like they're following a wrong voice. If God's asking me to do something and all the people that I've always been doing something with don't come with, that can be real isolating. And that's, I think that's probably the toughest element is you feel at times kind of alone. And not only don't come with, but then sometimes even you sense their disapproval or an alienation or a definite stepping away. Totally, I mean, completely back, that's when you're not doing the right things. And it's like, well, it's not about that. And if this can help encourage folks like that, because I think there's this barrier you kind of get on this journey and things seem disorienting. And it's very easy to retreat back into a safe place. Let's go back into the boat in Rex's analogy. Or, you know, I'm gonna stay out here. Even if the waves get big and I start to fall down, I'm gonna keep going on what Jesus is asking me to do and what he's put in my heart, even if other people don't approve it, even if other people don't come alongside. And even if I'm kind of taxed beyond my comfort zone, that's where I wanna encourage people. That's where life is. Life is not in your comfort zone, what you can't control. It's when you're willing to walk with Jesus beyond it. And yes, I understand. I've got a lot of compassion for people who like Jeff, you're gonna say, I love this, but it's tough. And at times it is. I think pretty much earlier on than later on. I think later on, the freedom that Rex kind of is experiencing and the joy is a lot easier to walk in. And the toughness doesn't come because I'm not getting approval here. I'm not having fellowship there. The tough comes now just in the things that Jesus asked us to do that cuts across the grain of culture. And that can be fun too. But I think those initial days of disorientation proved to be tough. Yeah, I mean, I think what is so challenging is most of the time we're used to being the decision makers and being in control and so much of our cultures trying to somehow control or manipulate things so as to get the outcomes we desire. And I think this life that Christ is inviting us to partake of is something that he really is in charge of. He is the one who is in control. Every day I go to work and I drive through a road called Malbu Canyon. And it is one of the windiest, most treacherous little roads in California, but it's incredibly beautiful. It is. And if you think about it, when we're driving, it's like I can just, it's a whole different field to go through that same canyon in the passenger seat, especially when someone else is driving. Especially if you're driving. Yeah, I suppose. But when you're whipping through there, when you have a sense of control, somehow there's that illusion like, well, I'm okay. But why not go through it with someone who's far more capable of navigating everything and far more aware of everything that's going on? And if my trust is in that person, then I can relax and enjoy the view that much more. And Lamott, one of my favorite authors, even though she's got some funny political views, they wouldn't sit well with most of us. She says God's always the one in control anyway. Whenever we think we're in control, we're like the little kid who's sitting in the back with that little play steering wheel and gear shift and looking outside. He thinks she's controlling the whole car. He never was. He never is. It's just funny. I think this relationship thing you mentioned a bit and why that's difficult, it reflects something. We also got another phone call from Gil. But unfortunately there's a lot of static on the line. It really isn't good enough for us to play. But I do want to respond to it a bit because Gil was asking, what about when you've been to move outside these comfortable structures and then people you were relating to before, he particularly talked about being involved with some pastors and now that he's doing home church, the pastors are at least standoffish, maybe suspicious, I'm not sure exactly. He wasn't very specific on it. But it reflects Pamela from Tulsa wrote and she expressed some similar things. She talked about one thing I find interesting, I could develop relationships with people while a part of an institutional church, but rarely would they continue after I left. I would sincerely try, but they would not respond much after a time. This is when I began to realize there was something dreadfully wrong in my experience. I've heard this a lot. People who you feel like you've been through cancer with, you've been through marital struggles with, you've been through all kinds of things and suddenly you're not part of the same group anymore. And as far as the group's concerned, it's like you don't exist. Yeah, the disenfranchisement of not doing the church thing with that group of people, it doesn't matter whether you're not, you could just go to a different church and you're still gonna get that same disdain. If you're not with us, then you're out there and in the church little culture, it seems as if you only have value in as much as you're a part of our program. I've heard it phrased one time as task-based relationships. In other words, the relationships aren't really the relationships of friendship and family that go on no matter what. It's really task-based. As long as we're on the task together, we have a relationship. But if you're not on my task anymore, then I'm too busy to take time with you or too busy to include you. Man, I've gotta say, when I was one of those things we called pastors, I treated people that way. People that came all the time and were an important part of our program, I would make time for them. And people that weren't, even if they came and visited a few times, I really liked them as people. And if they went somewhere else or didn't keep coming back, I felt this responsibility to spend my time with those who were committed to this. That's one of the false things about that. I'm sure I was guilty of doing that as well. But what was interesting in my little journey is having been that pastor and having not so much worn the hat of pastor. I mean, I didn't think of myself as I am the pastor. I'm more related to these people as here's my dearest friends. Here's the people that I really enjoy. I spent time with them because I wanted to be with them, not because I needed to have so many pastoral visits. And then when all of a sudden I'm disenfranchised from the institution, only a handful of those relationships remain because largely a lot of those people related to me as a spiritual function. And if I wasn't going to do the function, they weren't so focused on the fact that this was a friendship. I think one of the things that, you know, when Jess said, this is tough, I don't want to think that's tough is the pain of some of the fact that, you know, gosh, was all I, all I was was a purpose. All I was was a task. You know, there's not an inherent value to our friendship or relationship. We have to have a meeting that facilitates that. I think that is a painful realization. And that's part of the thing that stuck is you end up going like, I don't like how that feels. And I think that's one of the things that underlies what the priorities of institutions are. They're pretty much task-based and function-based. And families aren't that way. If you never, a healthy family now, I don't realize just things that aren't healthy out there. But a healthy family doesn't matter if you're in the same profession. Doesn't matter even if you go to the same religious group. If you're family, you're family. And it goes past what you do with your time, what, you know, where you're invested in your activities. The family relationship transcends that. And I hope those on the God journey, those looking to be part of this more relationally realize that I can have relationships with people that are in all kinds of things. I don't have to have this theological agreement, the same task to be on. This week is a good example of that. I had a lot of relationships with people out of a variety of traditions. Some I agree with on a lot of things. Others, I don't think we agree on so much yet. We had one meeting where that was obvious. There was some other agendas there trying to push for what they had in mind. But it's not essential in family that the task is anything at all. You don't have to be on a task. The task of a family is relationship. And I like to think of that as the body of Christ that to cultivate really, even if other people seem to be more distant from us, sometimes we help that happen because we start feeling like martyrs instead of engaging them. Give them a phone call. Do you wanna go out to lunch with somebody you knew for a while and lost touch with? Call them up and do it. I think that's a great way for God to keep knitting this wider body of believers together. Well, it's easy. When Jesus called the disciples, he wasn't looking for just a bunch of workers. Who could he train up and then send out to work? It was like he was inviting people into relationship. He spent three years of invested time with just focusing on them and who they are. And the Gospels have some of the story of, but I just think of the numerous times where they're just having a meal or they're sitting around a campfire. Part of me is curious what went on then? And not just with them. He would do things like the Woman at the Well and Zacchaeus. There were other times when it was, he could have done some amazing things in Jericho when you've got streets lined with people who wanna talk to you. But when you go home to lunch with the worst crook in town, I think you're saying something about relationship and the transformation that that brought to Zacchaeus' life or the Woman at the Well. A relationship is the way that God works. And I think sooner we join him there and frolic in the joy of relationships that the sooner we see this body of Christ really come together and our place in it. Yeah, I think when we're so busy worrying about what we're gonna do, and we have lost sight of the fact that, you know what, there is a primacy, it seems, at Jesus' places on just the enjoying of people. Well, it's been great having so many of you give us some feedback this time. We didn't get everybody's in, but we got some of it. I wanna remind you of the phone number. If you'd like to participate with us, the number for our comment line is 805-626-4212. Grab a pen, we'll give it to you again. It's 805-626-4212, it's just a comment or question line. Feel free to join the dialogue. I think I've really enjoyed a lot involving some of these other voices on the God Journey and you can also connect with us through the blog at thegodjourney.com or to our emails and our addresses are there on the website as well. We read a bit from Pamela. There's something else she poses and a couple of things that came up this last time since we were last together that we're not gonna have time to cover it all tonight, but I think we will at least make some beginning comments and definitely revisit some of these things again. Pamela talks a bit about, it's grievous to me, she writes. This is Pamela from Tulsa. How many sincere Christians are miserable in the institutional church? Many that I know there are, there, I hope, excuse me, many that I know that were satisfied are not any longer, but my question awaits parents. Many of my friends have stated that if they did not have children, that they would probably not be part of an institutional church or congregation. They are concerned that their children will not develop correctly in their walks with the Lord. I guess they do not have a revelation on how God would raise their kids. I know ultimately each parent will need to hear from the Lord on this matter, just bothersome to me that they are doing something that is miserable out of a genuine concern for their children's spiritual development. What do you think about that, Brad? Oh, it sounds like if you don't send your kids to Sunday school somehow, how in the world are they gonna learn? And yet, as someone who has been a part of children's ministry and overseen it for a decade or so, it's what goes on in the home that is the biggest reality there. It doesn't matter what a little Sunday school teacher is gonna sincerely say or do. If it's not reflected in the home, that child is not gonna pick that up as important. I mean, our kids, Kelly and I have wrestled with this. I mean, you know, we have three kids, two boys and a younger girl, ages 10, eight and almost four. And what's so exciting to me is to watch the relationship with Jesus mature and grow in each one of them. I mean, Jared is 10, we spent some time late at night talking about God and what he thinks God is saying to him and how he responds to some of his friends. And he's old enough to remember and really enjoyed a lot of his previous church experience. And yet, his whole heart is, Dad, it's about a relationship. It's not about just, I mean, he'll sometimes go to Sunday school with a friend or two and I'll usually ask him, so how was it, Jared? And he'll say, well, I think the guy really gets it or he's like, huh, I'm not really sure. It just seems like a lot of rules, Dad. And it's fun to watch a 10-year-old kind of key into whether this is a real thing that someone knows or whether it's just a religious deal. You know, what's amazing to me too is if something is so miserable to us, why do we think it's gonna be valuable dragging our children to it? I mean, we're hoping that whatever is going on in Sunday school or children's church is better than what's going on where we are. But if it's miserable to us, I think one man in Australia, and this is what we'll talk out more down the road. We just don't have time to really crawl in this, but I know a lot of other people have this thought about kids and what do we do about kids? So if you wanna call us to the comment line to give some of your thoughts on this or write us, we'd appreciate it, because we'll come back and tackle this down the road. That's not a rule, that would be a whole subject. This man from Australia said, oftentimes Sunday schools just give our children enough of God's things to inoculate them against the reality of God's presence. Tragic. And I think he's right. I do, I think Sunday school is a lot about ethics. You do good, God will do good for you. It's stars on charts. It's things that is all that performance, religion stuff that kinda gets us off on a road that's complicated. And I'm not saying that all programs are like that, but many of them are. And there's a high entertainment value to keep kids' interests. I find, particularly in relational groupings, families getting together, kids where adults and kids are relating together beyond those generational spectrums and kids are watching the parents struggle with things, and often listening from the other room, but definitely listening. I've been in homes where the kids have snuck in and joined us for about 20 minutes because of the reality of parents crying and laughing and going through some reality. The kids just leave their videos and come in and watch that because that bit of reality is good. So we'll definitely talk more about that. We also heard from Dwight from Boise Idaho. Yeah, I got an email from Dwight in Boise Idaho and he gives us some nice positive comments, but at the end of a couple of questions, he says, I continue to remain confused about the role of leadership in this view of relational church and acts that speaks about apostles and prophets visiting the church and having a role in the encouragement and direction, speaks about the appointment of elders. And he says, my question concerns the expression of the gifts and graces of believers. And then he references Ephesians for the gift of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, pastor. And he's kind of just sort of wrestling and like how does that work in this whole relational dynamic? What about church discipline? You know, wouldn't there need to be a recognition of a local group of believers to exercise this? And he just kind of finishes this. I can't go back to the way I used to do church and I say thank you God for that, but I'm still sitting through some of my former doctrines and seeing how they fit in a new paradigm. What do you think? Oh man, I know Dwight well. I've been at his home a couple of times. In fact, we're just there a couple of months ago. I think it's some great questions. I think people really are trying to sort this out. What happens to the Ephesians for gifts as they're often called or what happens to these elder functions? Do they exist in the kinds of relational dynamics? And it's interesting to me though, quite apologetically, we will not have time in the last few moments of this particular show to get to that. But the reason we wanted to read the letter is because we're gonna tackle it up the road. We wanna invite some further input on this. But I think it's interesting that we've so long only seen these gifts in institutional settings that people just can't even imagine what it would look like outside of it. That somehow that's the only way to define them. Because I get this question when I travel around, I get this question as much as I get any. Yeah, I was blasted for one of the accusations of always preaching a leaderless Christianity. And it's like, I don't know, I would subscribe to that accusation. But Jesus himself said, don't call yourselves leaders. I believe there's the function of leadership, but I don't think the whole focus on title and rule and position and some hierarchy is all that much of a concern for Jesus. Or that the task of that leadership is playing policemen and enforcing the discipline kinds of things. I think Jesus is talking about something a bit different there, but we'll have to tackle it down the road. I think what maybe we could underscore as we kind of wind up this one tonight is what we started talking about earlier. If the real purpose of the covenant is to bring us into relationship with the living God, then the purpose of leadership or, for lack of a better word, what these gifts and functions are to the body would certainly not be to replace that and tell the body of Christ what they should be doing. But to facilitate. It would be to equip people to that reality. And I think that's where we get into that. What is a real elder? What is a real apostle? What is a real evangelist? Maybe in the next show or two, Dwight, we're gonna tackle that. So this would be a great time if some of you wanna join us and share some of your questions about this or ways you've seen it function in relational settings that's been inspirational to you. We'd love to get your feedback. Again, either at the blog, some email, or you can call our comment question line at 805-626-4212. Or feel free, I think it's great that people pose questions, but if some of you out there have listened to the broadcast and you're going like, oh, give us your answer. What do you think? I'm curious how people are actually working these things out because I know we're not alone. I know there's a bunch of people out there that are following Jesus, many of whom who've probably done this a lot longer than perhaps you and I. Certainly that. And I think the relational life too is there's a relational reality in which this lived out. And as I've traveled around the world, that looks very different in different places. Institutionally, it kind of looks like one thing and all needs to look the same, but the reality I think both in the New Testament and what I've seen the body of Christ in the world is that these things take on very different expressions in very different places. So I hope we hear from folks, not only here in the U.S., but around the world because we know how many of are listening from a variety of countries. We've got people listening from Romania and Czechoslovakia and so it's amazing, the number of people that have found their way to the God journey. And we would be interested in your thoughts and your insights and what God's teaching you as well, not only in this, but in the other areas. So I think Brad up the road, we're gonna talk about children a little bit and ways we can deal with that. And we're gonna talk about leadership gifts and the way we deal with that. Great. Until then, we'll try and get another one up next week and get back on a little bit of track here while I'm home and then I'll be going off to South Africa to help some folks there toward the latter part of July and the early part of August. Thanks for joining us tonight. And we pray that Jesus will make some real sense in your own journey as you seek to follow him and some of these things that we've talked about particularly in the early part of the show will be a growing edge for you in the week ahead as God leads you by his graceful hand. Thank you for joining us today on the God Journey. If you'd like more information about this webcast or would like to join in the conversation, you can find out more at thegodjourney.com. It's our hope that this webcast will help us all recognize God as he really is in the reality of our own lives.