Reimagining Church Culture Through Christlikeness

Josiah: 0:02

Welcome to Praxis, a podcast where we explore how to practice and embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen. We are in a series right now focused on cultivating a healthy church culture. Every church has a culture, whether they realize it or not, and while some churches' cultures are reasonably healthy, others are not. Some churches' cultures are reasonably healthy, others are not.

Of course, no church is perfect, but part of the work every church needs to engage in is to intentionally work to close whatever gap exists between being healthy and where they currently are. So in this series, that's what we're doing. We're seeking to close the gap, and this involves not only talking about the marks of an unhealthy church culture, but casting vision for how we, as the church, can embody a way of life together that, while it may not be perfect, is oriented towards goodness and kindness and love. And today we're doing a deep dive into something that we would say is one of the primary markers of a church centered on goodness, and that is Christlikeness. There's a lot of different ideas out there for what a church should be, but we want to submit today that being formed into the image of Christ and helping others being formed into the image of Christ is ultimately what the church should.

Katie: 1:29

Welcome everyone. My name is Katie.

Mac: 1:31

And I'm Mac

Josiah: 1:32

and I'm Josiah.

Katie: 1:34

All right. So you know, now that I'm about to say this, I feel like I might have started another podcast this way, so stop me if I did, but I didn't sleep well last night. Sounds like, Josiah, you didn't sleep well last night. Sounds like Josiah, you didn't sleep well last night either, from the conversation we were just having. But I had one of those nights too where I woke up at 3.30 and just kind of laid there for a while and couldn't go back to sleep. So I went downstairs.

Katie: 2:00

I usually put on the news like something kind of boring, like BBC. I mean I actually think BBC is interesting, so. But you know, I usually put on the news like something kind of boring, like BBC. I mean I actually think BBC is interesting, so. But you know, and so I watched coverage about the hurricane, Hurricane Helene that's heading towards Florida. I watched a story about a big pothole in Chicago that the city is planning on fixing but the residents are advocating to not have fixed. So I was like, well, that's interesting, I wonder why they wouldn't want this pothole fixed. The reason is because so many people speed through the neighborhood and there's this giant pothole right in the middle of this intersection and it's causing people to slow down. So there are literally protesters with signs saying save the pothole and marching around the city. So I was like, well, that's interesting.

Mac: 2:45

Does the pothole have a name?

Katie: 2:48

Yeah, not that I caught onto but you could yeah it was big. It was like almost the size of the whole intersection. It had cones all around it and the people loved it, Actually one woman was like I hope we get more potholes.

Katie: 3:01

So that was kind of funny, but anyways. So what do you guys do? Josiah, you had a night last night where you didn't sleep well either. Like, what do you guys do? The TV thing Do you do? Sometimes I read, but then it's like you have to turn the light on and that wakes me up more. So I struggle.

Josiah: 3:19

Yeah, usually, and it usually is just scrolling through my phone which I know isn't helpful.

Katie: 3:25

Yeah, the blue light is supposed to wake you up, right.

Josiah: 3:28

Yeah, that's not very helpful. It's not very often that I wake up in the middle of the night.

Mac: 3:34

I rarely get up and do something.

Katie: 3:37

You just lay there.

Mac: 3:39

Yeah, typically. I remember this was years ago my therapist said something like when you can't sleep, you can still rest, and I thought huh, and so now, when I can't sleep, I don't like stress about it Not that you were stressing about it but I just kind of relax and go okay, well, this is a time just to kind of be.

Josiah: 3:58

Yeah, that is one of the problems of sleeplessness and I have dealt with that before, I guess like difficulty falling asleep. If you have something important the next day, you have to wake up early. You're anxious about not only waking up, but then you get anxious about the fact that you're not getting as much sleep and then that makes you less apt to fall asleep and you're like mad that, like oh, and then you start counting down how many hours of sleep you're actually going to get as you're laying there.

Katie: 4:26

Yeah, I did that a little last night. My kids have had cold. Alex had a cold. I woke up at 3.30. I'm like I think my throat hurts. Okay, I need to sleep so I don't get sick. And now I can't sleep so that means I'm going to get sick.

Mac: 4:35

Before you know it, your amygdala is firing.

Katie: 4:42

I try that, but I have like a limit on how long I can do that. If it's been like, I suppose, for like 45 minutes that I laid in bed and after 45 minutes I'm like, right, this is not.

Mac: 4:47

Yeah, and there are some studies that suggest getting up and doing something, for just like the right type of thing not scrolling, josiah.

Josiah: 4:54

Sorry.

Mac: 4:55

But getting up and kind of like change of environment and then coming back increases the chance of you falling asleep.

Katie: 5:02

Although there have been times when I've done that and turned on the local news and there are some terrible stories that did not help me fall back asleep. I highly recommend BBC over local news.

Josiah: 5:16

I really want to know more about the pothole.

Katie: 5:19

You can Google it.

Josiah: 5:21

Speaking of potholes. Speaking of potholes, let's talk about the series we're in. So, to get started, today, quick recap, we're working off the book called A Church Called Tov, and we're talking all about church culture. So, in order to have a healthy church, we need to attend to the culture of the church. So, in order to have a healthy church, we need to attend to the culture of the church, and we do that by resisting toxins that can kill the soil and replace them with nutrients that make it healthy and allow everyone to flourish. We've been discussing what we can do, both individually and corporately, to promote a goodness or a Tov culture, and what we're talking about is that we essentially all have a responsibility for creating the culture that exists. It's not just within leadership. Culture is the water everyone swims in, so we all have a part to play. Today we want to discuss the importance of Christlikeness, and I believe this is our last one.

Mac: 6:23

I'm so sad about it. I need to just hang out. This is our last one.

Adam: 6:30

I need to just you know, hang out in lamentations for a bit.

Josiah: 6:32

Yeah, so we want to discuss the last nutrient that you put into the soil, and that's Christlikeness. John 13, 15 says I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. So in order to be a healthy church or a person for that matter we must be focused on being formed in the way of Jesus.

Mac: 6:59

Tove churches are churches that are focused on being formed in the way of Jesus. I've got a software on my computer called Covenant Eyes.

Katie: 7:07

We all do. It's part of the policy.

Mac: 7:15

Yeah, so it's. It basically blocks any unwanted images from popping up on your computer and it also sends a report each week to a few other people of everything kind of random screenshots of things you may have been viewing. Yeah, as a staff, we have it on there, not because anybody has a particular struggle, but rather it's just great healthy accountability and a good safeguard against it becoming a problem for anyone.

Katie: 7:39

So I promise this is going somewhere, adam, more than the pothole story.

Mac: 7:42

Yeah Well, so here's the every. Every once in a while, Covenant Eyes gets over eager and they'll report something really silly. So the first time this happened to me, I had done a search for a baby pheasant and there's this tiny bird that looked like a baby pheasant, running through our front yard and it was spectacular and beautiful and I was like I wonder what that is, I wonder like a baby pheasant running through our front yard. And it was spectacular and beautiful and I was like I wonder what that is, I wonder what a baby pheasant looks like. And so I searched it and, sure enough, like that, all my people were alerted and it became like this massive joke Like there's Mac, I was searching for baby pheasants again. Well, anyway, so I also got flagged.

Adam: 8:26

Well, well anyway. So, uh, I also got flagged you. Well, why did it flag that, I don't know, was there. I'm just trying to imagine like what image it saw that thought, hey, this might be I don't know, I, I don't know.

Mac: 8:34

That that's why I said they covenant eyes can be over eager. Um I once I I got flagged again one time, some mating pheasants or something yeah.

Mac: 8:44

PG-13. Another time I got flagged because I searched quote-unquote Asian Jesus. Now there is a reason for this one too. I was preaching on our human tendency to create Jesus in our own image and you can see it Like, for black people, they'll have a black Jesus, for Asian folks, an Asian Jesus, hispanic, hispanic Jesus, and so on. So everyone thought that was hilarious too, because they're like why are you searching for Asian Jesus? It flagged it Asian Jesus. Then, right after that, it was around Christmas time and I literally got a postcard in the mail from another church in our community inviting them to their Christmas series or whatever. On the front of the postcard is the nativity scene and Mary and Joseph clearly look Middle Eastern and baby Jesus is like blonde hair, white baby. It was so ridiculous.

Josiah: 9:51

Okay, interesting. I really want to know where this is going. Well, what I'm getting?

Mac: 9:57

at is.

Katie: 9:57

He's going to email the customer service of Covenant Eyes.

Mac: 10:00

Yeah, and this other church in our community. We're focusing today on what it means to be Christ-like. Toe churches are Christ-like churches. Scott and Laura call this Christ-o-formity, Christo-formity, to be formed into the image of Christ. But here's the thing is, it seems to me that even before we can set out on the journey to become Christ-like, we have to get clear on what Jesus Christ was actually like. And this is where, it seems to me, we encounter a huge temptation to make Jesus into our own image.

Mac: 10:37

I can't remember which scholar said it. It might have been Albert Schweitzer or George Tyrell. It might have been Albert Schweitzer or George Tyrell, but something along the lines of when we look down the well of history, we see our own image. And they were kind of in this thing called the quest for the historical Jesus, where they were trying to figure out who is Jesus. How can we really know what Jesus was like? And I do not share their skepticism, those particular scholars around how little we can know. But the point still stands that rather than being formed into the image of Jesus, we tend to form Jesus into our own image, right, we get it backwards. And so for conservatives oh, interestingly enough, Jesus tends to be conservative right and reinforce all your values. For moderates, Jesus is moderate and always sees both sides. For progressives, Jesus is progressive and agrees with them on all the issues. For peace loving hippies Jesus is a peace loving hippie right. So so I think we've got to just raise our awareness around this dynamic that if we're not careful, we end up with a Jesus that looks like us, talks like us, sounds like us, agrees with us on everything.

Mac: 11:49

You guys kind of fall on this and yet maybe I'll say two things. One I think we can know enough to establish some clarity around who Jesus is and what he's about, what it means to be like Jesus and the word that best captures that for me is the word cruciformity, C-R-U-X, cross and formity shape. So I would say, at the center of what it means to be like Jesus is to live a cruciform or cross-shaped life. I would also say that growing in our understanding be like Jesus is to live a cruciform or cross-shaped life. I would also say that growing in our understanding of who Jesus is and what he is about is sort of a lifelong journey.

Mac: 12:31

You don't graduate. I mean, I've been studying the life and teachings of Jesus for over 20 years now, with a certain degree of rigor and I still like learn things all the time that I didn't notice before. So my understanding of who Jesus is and what he's about continues to be filled out. It's not complete, right, but I guess I'm just raising our awareness to go hey, there is this temptation to sort of create a Jesus in our own image. I don't think it has to be that way. If we can acknowledge who we are and what we're about and sort of name some of those things and at the center I'm sort of naming it's a lifelong journey towards cruciformity what do you guys think about that?

Katie: 13:16

I hear you and I think it's really. Yeah, I think it's a good insight that it is a lifelong journey, because I think as soon as we feel like we've got it figured out, we're setting ourselves up to get it wrong.

Mac: 13:28

Do you guys also see the kind of temptation to create a Jesus in our own image Like? Have you noticed that at all?

Josiah: 13:35

Yeah, yeah, I'd like that we're starting this whole discussion by naming how difficult it is, because it's really easy to say a blanket statement of be Christ-like.

Josiah: 13:50

That sounds really good, but when you get into the nitty gritty and the details of it, what is it? What does it actually mean to be Christ-like? That people vary on their opinions and doctrine about that, and I think that identifying that sets us up for yeah, identifying that conundrum sets us up to have a much better like, a more humble approach to it, rather than seeing ourselves as like, hey, this is what it means to be Christ-like, I have figured it out and now I'm going to do this with this ourselves as like, hey, this is what it means to be Christ-like, I have figured it out, and now I'm going to do this with this sort of like oh, I'm more Christ-like than you. It becomes this thing you can hold over others and then look at other people like, well, that isn't Christ-like. I don't know. I just think it helps to have a more humble approach, to say this is difficult to figure out and to interpret for us in our day, and even identifying the difficulty of identifying those specific characteristics without yeah.

Katie: 14:57

I also hear you saying some people acknowledge the temptation to do that but then become so skeptical and kind of throw their hands up and say, well, I guess we can't know who Jesus really was, because we all have this temptation to see him in our own image. And I also hear you saying, no, we do have enough to know with some level of confidence who Jesus was. It's just gonna take some work.

Mac: 15:19

Yeah, this would probably be a different episode entirely to talk about what's known as the quest for the historical Jesus. There were several phases, but it was kind of like how can we know what we know about Jesus with any degree of confidence? And it was rooted in historical skepticism that, ultimately, many concluded we can know very little. I don't share that skepticism, so, on one hand is like nope, we can't know anything about Jesus. All we do is project our own stuff onto Jesus, and I'm going nope, I don't agree with that conclusion. Maybe on the other end of the spectrum, though, is us projecting onto Jesus and having no clue that we're actually doing it, and I do see, unfortunately, many people in the church today who do just that. They've got a Jesus that does not at all match the Jesus of the gospels. They have convictions that Jesus's teachings flat out contradict, and they see no tension between the two of those, and I kind of want to go time out. We kind of need to attend to that, and this is a lifelong journey, but we need to attend to it, so maybe to kind of push us forward. Whatever we mean by becoming like Jesus, it's going to involve I want to submit becoming the kind of person who lives a cross shaped life, a life characterized by other centered, self-sacrificial love. To me, that's at the center of who Jesus is and what he's about. And scripture repeatedly calls us into this kind of imitation about. And scripture repeatedly calls us into this kind of imitation right. In Ephesians 5, 1 and 2, for instance, it says follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children, and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Follow God's example. The Greek is literally mimeti, which means mimic, mimic God. And how do you do that? Well, you walk in the way of love, just as Jesus Christ walked in the way of love. You do it by following in the way of Jesus. Maybe, let's okay, let's break this down. I use that phrase quite a bit other-centered, self-sacrificial love. Let's like kind of like, I don't know, pull that apart a little bit and talk about each one of those components, so like I'll kick us off.

Mac: 17:31

Other-centered when I say other-centered, I mean not self-centered Right. And yet that in and of itself is so countercultural, my goodness. We live in a country founded upon classic liberalism of the Enlightenment where there's this deep conviction that everyone has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, my goodness, that was a great improvement at that historical moment, coming out of abusive monarchy where people were being denied rights and liberties. So, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Mac: 18:06

However, the shadow side of this, you know, this 248-year experiment, is that it gives people lots of permission to live super selfish lives. Right, it's all about me and my happiness, and it's about me insisting upon my rights. You can't tell me what to do, and so on. In a lot of ways, this is the exact opposite of Jesus, right, paul says do nothing out of selfish ambition in Philippians 2, rather, in humility, value others above yourself. And then he goes on to connect that to Jesus have the same attitude of mine as Christ Jesus, who took on flesh, went to the cross, and so on. So that's what I mean. Other-centered is radically countercultural and it's rooted in not only the character of Jesus but the way that Jesus embodied and did life.

Josiah: 18:56

Yeah, I would say that I think it's interesting that when you form Jesus in your own image, it ultimately equals pride. And when you're able to live other-centered, like living in the way of Jesus is like a cure for that. It's like it forces you away from holding any sort of leverage over what Jesus did and does and how he agrees with you on everything. And when you live other centered, you take the focus off of how Jesus could be like me and more like what does it look like to be Jesus to other people? And I think that's really important. Yeah.

Mac: 19:38

While you were talking, I had this kind of going into systems theory a little bit with triangles and I thought, okay, at the heart of systems theory is like I can't change someone else, but I can focus on myself, and I think you're naming something significant. A lot of people triangle Jesus. They sort of use Jesus to do bidding on their behalf.

Mac: 19:58

In other words, they're not submitted to Jesus, they're sort of leveraging Jesus or weaponizing Jesus to accomplish something in the world around them, and I think maybe the starting point is to go no, it's about me submitting and being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Katie: 20:17

Yeah, like if you're finding that the ways you're using Jesus is to help you get what you want, there may be some work to do, which we all do, right. I think one of the challenges or convictions for me in this, one of the challenges for me in this, is that you say, okay, jesus was other-centered. It's like, well, yeah, of course I've heard that since Sunday school when I was in diapers, right, like, we all know that. But when you really sit back and go, yes, and how am I living this? How am I practicing it? I think there's always something that each of us can humbly submit and repent of.

Mac: 20:54

All right, so that's like other centered right.

Josiah: 20:57

Yeah, another marker I would name is self-sacrificial. So Jesus showed us what the way of love is, which is ultimately to lay down your life. He did so in teaching. We have lots of spots in teaching. A couple of verses that come to mind are in Matthew 20, 28,. Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life away as a ransom for many John 15, 13,. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. So, like in his teaching, continually teaching his disciples to do so, laying down their lives for others, even in what it looks like to, when he talks about loving your enemies. All that is very much sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. And ultimately he, he led by example which culminated, culminated with the cross, jesus laid down his life for others consistently in the way he lived his life, and then it led him to ultimately die.

Mac: 22:04

Yeah, which is also tricky. So if you know, katie, you said man being of course. I've heard about being other-centered. I mean, that's been something that's been taught since I was really, really young. But man, how hard is that? Then you take it a step further and go yeah, and it's about self-sacrifice, like it costs me something. Loving in the way of Jesus is going to cost me something. It's going to require sacrifice on my part, which is really hard.

Josiah: 22:35

Yeah, and I think, when we set it up this way, to say that Jesus showed us the way of love, love equals this and in our culture we have a very can often have a very shallow meaning of love. Often there's, like this, romantic tension or, you know, or reciprocal relationships. Obviously, love is present, but Jesus is showing us what love ultimately is and that's willing to sacrifice of yourself for the sake of someone else.

Josiah: 23:11

And if the way you're loving and living your life isn't costing you something, then you could pose that maybe it's not full of love if it's only benefiting you, if it doesn't cost something, right?

Mac: 23:28

Yeah, maybe one example of this is I don't know. We live in a fairly affluent area and I notice a lot of people who might be willing to write a check, which? Is great. You know what I mean.

Mac: 23:39

They're going to give financially. But it's one thing to give financially, you know, out of your surplus. It's another thing to like show up for a service project and sacrifice your time and energy, which seems to be a lot harder in our culture because everybody feels compressed with regard to their time. They're living busy lives and so sometimes it's like well which one? Both are important, but like which one costs more. It's easy to write a check, you know. Yeah, it's a lot harder to give maybe an entire day, to contribute in some way or participate in something you sense God's doing. Yeah, you know what I mean.

Josiah: 24:18

Yeah, or there's like an emotional cost to caring about an issue that is close to God's heart. Right Like I can sit comfortably in At a distance, at a distance, and care only about the things that are going on in my life. But when I choose to step out and let's just say we're. You know, one of the things our church is trying to partner with is the human trafficking organization. Yeah, luteo, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's even just like an emotional cost, a burden you feel the burden.

Mac: 24:51

There's a burden.

Josiah: 24:52

You're just like now. I care about something that's happening around me that I didn't before.

Mac: 24:57

Yeah, that's good, that's good insight.

Katie: 25:00

So I had a memory Mac as you guys were talking. At one point, probably a couple of years ago, I remember putting like a Facebook post with the verse John 13, 34, a new command I give you love one another. And then you commented underneath it.

Mac: 25:19

I did.

Katie: 25:20

You did and you completed the verse, which I appreciated. It said, and the rest of the verse says as I have loved you, so you must love one another. And I remember reading that and going oh yeah, like love one another. Great, but to your point, josiah, we can talk about love all day. It's loving in the way of Jesus, as I have loved you. That's how you are to love each other, in this carrying each other's burden, in this self-sacrificial love, in all the things that we're talking about.

Mac: 25:51

My favorite verse in the Bible is 1 John 3.16. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another, and so it captures, because it captures what we're talking about. We don't get to fill in what we think love is with just like our own ideas. The New Testament authors are giving us a definition of love. It looks like this it's Jesus Christ laying down his life, and built into that verse is a call to do the same. Yeah.

Josiah: 26:22

And ultimately I think it. I just want to mention that it doesn't. It can sound depressing to think about, like I guess I should say some may say that it would sound sort of depressing to think about, like if I'm always sacrificing of myself, then I'm ultimately empty. And. Jesus is setting this up. To say no like, that's like self-emptying type of love is actually a very fulfilling thing.

Mac: 26:49

Yeah, that's where you find life.

Josiah: 26:50

It's where you find life. Like this is like living out love this way is where you find life, and I'm thinking of a scripture, but I can't remember the reference. Maybe, mac, you could tell me. But there's a spot in Paul's letters where he encourages the people in the church to outdo one another in acts of service and love towards each other. Do you know which one I'm talking about?

Mac: 27:15

No, not off the top of my head. Dang it, I should have looked it up.

Katie: 27:17

Mac is like our chat GPT.

Josiah: 27:19

Yeah, maybe it's not, I'll find it. All right, I'll find it. I think of that within a community of like, I empty myself. I think of that within a community of like, I empty myself, but then if other people are all doing the same within a community, then everybody's needs are met and we live ultimately much more fulfilling lives.

Mac: 27:34

One verse that comes to mind is Romans 13, 8, where Paul instructs us not to be in debt, do not be indebted to one another except for in the area of love. And I often use that in sort of premarital counseling context to say, hey, what would happen if you actually woke up every day, you know, assuming you owe the other person a debt of love, and you sought to pay it off.

Katie: 27:58

All right. A third marker I would say is that Jesus embodied grace and truth. So I did a leadership intensive a couple of years ago with your wife, mac, with Josie, and one of the most transformational concepts that I took from that year was on grace and truth how Jesus looking, love looks like grace and it looks like truth. I think as Christians we can sometimes have this idea that love equals grace, and that's certainly true, but that's only part of it. Like Jesus's grace was rooted in truth, and what I mean by that is he didn't like say things just to make people happy. He didn't kind of do the people pleasing thing where you, you know, give a lot of niceties just to kind of placate or kind of make people like you or argue with you. His grace was always rooted in truth and at the same time he extended truth that was rooted in grace. He didn't bash people over the head with truth. He didn't tell them what idiots they were. Like. His word of truth for people was always rooted in their good. Like he had in mind the best version of who God created them to be and then was inviting them to live in alignment with God's kingdom. And there are tons of examples of how he does this. If you read through the gospels, you'll with that lens. I remember doing this.

Katie: 29:21

One of our assignments for the group was to just read through a section of the gospels and find the places where Jesus speaks to people with grace and truth. And the one that sticks out to me is the woman caught in adultery in John 8. When at the end he looks at her and says has no one condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin. And in there it's pregnant with this grace and truth.

Katie: 29:45

He's extending grace to her and giving her a vision with some challenge in it for her good. He doesn't say no, no, no, you didn't do anything wrong. Like you're good, right, like there's a word of challenge and truth in that. So I just think that offers us a, really helps us fill out the vision of who Jesus was and how we can be like Jesus. I can't tell you how many times since I learned and studied this that it's come into play for me, when I've been in relational conflict or tension or had anxiety about something, to say how did Jesus relate with grace and truth? And then what would it look like for me to do that in this situation.

Mac: 30:21

Yeah, and both of those require other-centered self-sacrifice. Right, extending grace to someone, I think, is easier for us to connect the dots, to go. Oh yeah, that's other-centered and it's self-sacrificial. But I would also tell you, in my life, initiating or being part of difficult conversations where you have to speak the truth to someone in a way that maybe puts tension on the relationship or is hard, a hard conversation, let me tell you if I was just thinking about myself.

Josiah: 30:54

There's no way I would have those conversations, because I don't want to. I don't. You know what I mean.

Mac: 30:56

So like even truth telling. Um, obviously there's a purity of motivation there. We don't want to just like drop truth bombs in a way that make make us feel self-righteous. That's not what I'm saying. But when you're genuinely having a difficult conversation with someone else for their good, out of love, there's a self-sacrifice involved there because you're sort of entering space you otherwise probably wouldn't want to an uncomfortable space for their good.

Katie: 31:21

Yeah, right, yeah, I had to do that just a couple weeks ago and you helped me. I had to have a very difficult conversation and I named that for the person. The reason I'm having this conversation with you is because I care for you. It would be much easier for me to not be having this conversation. Matter of fact, I don't want to be having this conversation. The reason I'm having this conversation is because I ultimately care about your good.

Mac: 31:43

Yeah, so maybe one. I love that the people that genuinely love you are going to risk telling you things you don't want to hear as an embodiment of their love for you.

Josiah: 31:55

Yeah, and as a caveat, or, I should say, a disclaimer, that can be taken too far, yes, some people tend towards high truth, in the sense that they're going to be much more apt to tell you exactly what they're thinking and feeling, in the name of love, all the time and for them the self-sacrifice could be extending grace and not just calling things out for the sake of saying it.

Mac: 32:23

Absolutely All right. So let's transition. We've talked about, hey, we can create Jesus in our own image. We don't want to do that. We want to be mindful of that tendency and we're naming maybe at the heart of it is this other-centered, self-sacrificial love. Right, right, all right. So you know, let's transition a little bit. We've talked about this tendency to create Jesus in our own image and to push back against that. We're saying the center is other-centered, self-sacrificial love, like this is at the heart of what it means to be and follow Jesus. And yet it sort of seems to me that this is at odds. The way we've been talking about Jesus is sort of at odds with the way many churches operate right, particularly with, like, this corporate model of church. It's a tractional church growth model of doing church and I'm wondering if we could fill that out Like, let's get a little bit more explicit about how the way we're talking about Christlikeness maybe even conflicts or challenges some of the ways that we're tempted to do church.

Katie: 33:31

One thing I thought was interesting in the Church Called Tov book that we're reading is they do an exercise where they look at different job descriptions for pastors and they look at, they kind of compare job descriptions for pastors to job descriptions for, like, ceos or leaders in the business world and the corporate world, and there's a surprising amount of overlap. And one thing they did is talk about how many times in different ways the pastor job description talks about leadership. One position description said he or she will be a proven leader of leaders who can motivate and inspire high capacity men and women to use their gifts to further the vision. So none of us would hear that and go, well, that's a bad thing, right, like it's not a bad thing, but it's also not exactly what we see represented by those in the Bible whom God calls to be in these types of positions, be in these types of positions. And what the book observes is that this, like obsession with leadership in our modern churches I would say particularly in evangelical churches seems to actually come from the surrounding culture. It's something that we are borrowing from the culture and we are being shaped. We are allowing ourselves as a church to be shaped by the culture rather than being shaped by the countercultural way of Jesus. So you just look at that and then you look at the examples in the Bible. You contrast it with someone like Eugene Peterson, who you often reference.

Katie: 34:56

Mac was a pastor and he defined the three most important pastoral practices as praying, reading scripture and giving spiritual direction. That's different from casting a vision, creating a strategic plan, courting donors. Those are two very different job descriptions. So I just think we have to think about do we want our pastor to function as CEO or do I want our pastor to function as shepherds in the way of Jesus? Because there's a difference.

Mac: 35:25

Yeah, yeah, and you're right, I love Eugene Peterson. I've started to read a Eugene Peterson book every January to like kick off the year, just because he's good for my soul.

Mac: 35:38

And he resisted a lot of these, I think, malformative cultural currents around him and named those in very helpful ways to help other pastors resist them as well, I feel this one, you guys I'll just name it I mean you just kind of provided a great example, katie, of how, like hey, the job description of a lead pastor in many places mirrors that of a CEO. And I feel that not so much from the staff or leadership team, because we have clarity about what I'm supposed to be doing, but definitely, definitely from from congregants. One quick story was this was maybe five, six years ago there was a guy who said I'm leaving our church and I want to have an exit interview, and it was actually me and your dad that sort of had the exit interview. And it was actually me and your dad, um, that sort of had the exit interview and we decided to kind of make it, um, a less formal environment.

Mac: 36:34

So we went over to your parents' house and went out on the pontoon boat and it was during the summertime, so it's nice. It was just kind of like, hey, um, this guy shows up in like a uh with big biceps, you know everywhere, and not that there's anything wrong with that, but the tank top says on the front macho man. Okay, so for what it's worth, well, the picture is helpful. Yeah, it's just nothing against big biceps or anything like that.

Josiah: 37:04

Or macho man. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mac: 37:06

All that but the guy shows up wearing a tank top that says macho man, and it's clearly like how he's presenting himself. Now you go. Why was he leaving the church? Well, the explanation he gave was that I'm not a manly enough leader, I'm not functioning like the CEO, with sort of the command and control always at the center, so on and so forth. And it's time you start doing that, because that's what's gonna draw people to our church, and kind of like what you were saying well, I'd already deconstructed all that or thought through all that, as had your dad, so we're just sitting there kind of like internally giggling Like this is you're right. You're noticing a difference between how you view leadership and how we understand faithful biblical leadership. There's a gap between us.

Katie: 37:54

Yeah, I had a similar conversation about a year ago with someone who was leaving and one of the primary reasons was that we didn't have like a strategic plan for growth church growth Like we're not clear enough about what this church's strategic plan is, and the Enneagram three in me wanted to be like don't try me, I can make a strategic plan.

Josiah: 38:18

You want a strategic plan.

Katie: 38:20

But it was just like yeah, you're right, like we have lots of strategy, we're very discerning, we spend a lot of time talking about where we're headed, but growth is not our primary metric of success.

Mac: 38:34

What would you say to those who go? But what, okay, so no plan. You know what I mean. Like well, no. What would you say to that?

Katie: 38:44

What did?

Katie: 38:45

you say to that yeah, we don't have necessarily a plan for growth. We have lots of thought and discernment and intentionality around how to grow disciples, how to help our people grow in generosity, how to do life and community in the way of Jesus, like you want to talk about that. We have lots of intentionality and thought around how we're moving in that direction and if people see that and it catches and they invite their friends and our community grows, that's wonderful. We don't want to discourage growth, but it's not what's driving everything else.

Mac: 39:17

Yeah, our focus is growing disciples and we have a lot of metrics and strategy around how we're doing that, and I would love for numerical growth to be the natural byproduct of that, but we're not going to prioritize numerical growth at the expense of growing disciples.

Katie: 39:33

Yeah.

Josiah: 39:34

What would you say to someone who says you can have both. We should be working towards both.

Mac: 39:40

Yeah, I'm not opposed to that. I'm not opposed to the church growing in healthy ways, but this whole idea that you can have a five-year plan, particularly in this day and age where we're increasingly finding ourselves in a place of rapid and discontinuous change, is absolutely absurd in my opinion. I mean, you put together a great plan for five years from now and five minutes from now it's likely going to have to change, because that's how fast our world is changing. And so the new stability for the church and this is probably a different episode is not marked by solidified plans that you're executing with authority and command. The new stability is agility. You need agile leaders who know how to read the room, read the space and know how to lead people into a new future.

Mac: 40:25

It's a different way. We need a different skill set as leaders today than what oftentimes the CEO model even assumes. So, again, totally different podcast. But I have a lot to say about what leadership needs to look like in this day and age and how it actually puts us in a position to cooperate with the spirit of God rather than assume we know more than God, because oftentimes what happens with these five-year plans or these big, hairy, audacious goals, these BHAGs is that we're actually getting out in front of God or we're imposing something on God rather than discerning what it is God is doing and then faithfully joining it? Totally different way of operating.

Josiah: 41:01

Yeah, yeah and it ends up and kind of brings me to this next point. But it sort of sets up this leadership from this super zoomed out view and then people turn into numbers rather than individuals, who are who God is at work in their lives and everything else I really love. I think there is so much richness to the analogy of Jesus being a shepherd and teaching us to do the same, like when he appears to Peter after he had denied him right, he invites him to feed my sheep. I think that the analogy of shepherding being the primary way that we lead people is there's a lot of richness to that. That could be a whole other episode too. But customer satisfaction becomes the bottom line in a corporate model because it then turns out, because then it turns into equaling success and growth if everybody's happy. That is at odds with living into Christlikeness in the way of grace and truth.

Josiah: 42:18

When we prioritize customer satisfaction over shepherding people, we miss out on a lot of what Jesus may be leading us to do, because shepherding is going to involve saying things that people do not want to hear.

Josiah: 42:33

I mean you don't have to. You could flip a page and point to a spot where Jesus is saying something that disrupted someone's peace or equilibrium or made them angry. So when you're shepherding, you're making decisions in the best interest of others' well-being, not in, specifically, their comfort. As a parent, I feel like if my kids aren't a little bit frustrated with me, I'm probably doing something wrong. Right, I'm probably avoiding something because, uh, you know, kids are going to be testing boundaries and I think you know this analogy of sheep, like always, like scattering and like needing care and concern and probably some challenge.

Josiah: 43:19

Um, I think it. It lines up a lot in the sense that, um, Like, I can make things a lot easier on myself by, like, giving into demands and making decisions that make people happy. We kind of alluded to that earlier. But what's best often isn't what's the most popular, and laying down your life as a leader is going to involve loving your congregation and it's going to require getting clear about the things that matter and resisting the need for their praise in the pursuit of becoming like Jesus.

Mac: 43:55

Yeah, I think what I hear you saying, Josiah, is that when we consider the way of Jesus other-centered, self-sacrificial love, and then maybe the predominant paradigms of how we do church a lot of churches tend to orient around customer satisfaction as the goal and then maybe the predominant paradigms of how we do church A lot of churches tend to orient around customer satisfaction as the goal. I want to keep, I want to satisfy the religious clients, so to speak, and make sure they stay happy, because that's what will ensure that our church continues to grow. And I hear you creating some tension around that. To go man, you don't see Jesus like doing a day of ministry and then handing out a survey, going, hey, so how did I do?

Josiah: 44:33

Are we still good.

Mac: 44:35

How did you feel about the miracle at 3.30 today? You know what?

Katie: 44:39

I mean that's funny. That would have been funny if you did that.

Mac: 44:45

Well, yeah, and I just think the bottom line this is hard because it applies to me, it applies to you, but, like the bottom line is not making me happy, you happy or your congregants happy, that's not the bottom line. It's helping you become more like Christ.

Katie: 45:02

If you have a Jesus that only makes you happy, you might have a Jesus in your own image.

Mac: 45:06

Yeah, yeah, and I'm not saying Jesus is opposed to anyone's happiness. Like Jesus came to give us a life abundant but, as we named before, like that abundant life is actually found by emptying yourself. You know what I mean.

Josiah: 45:20

Yeah, and it is at odds with the part of us that is, you know, like our flesh that's wanting to be selfish. So it is at odds with that, you know. It's also worth naming that. It's really difficult because if you make a decision that a lot of people are unhappy with, it's really easy to question yourself as to like was it the right thing? To do For sure, Right For sure. It's like it's very difficult.

Adam: 45:49

Max looking in the mirror, looking at his biceps and wondering if he made a mistake by not being more manly.

Mac: 45:59

I just need to do more curls, more curls.

Josiah: 46:05

If you're shepherding people and you decide something or you say something that doesn't equal customer satisfaction and is at odds with the corporate model of church growth and all of these things, you have to. There has to be a sense of confidence in the thing that you, in the decision you made, but that confidence isn't so easily attained.

Mac: 46:30

Yeah, that's why Jesus had an incredible amount of inner strength in just being willing to say and do things that he knew would cause disruption. You know what I mean? Yeah, I wish I had more of that, okay, so we're holding up here's who Jesus is. We're looking at the ways we organize and do church. We've talked about how this challenges some of the predominant paradigms around leadership. We've talked about how the focus shouldn't be just consumer happiness or satisfaction.

Mac: 47:05

Maybe can I add a third thing which is oftentimes in this sort of corporate model way of doing church. There's a little bit of mission creep, and I would characterize it as the focus then becomes producing a product versus producing disciples, which we got at a little bit when we were talking about hey, how do you respond to someone who goes what's your strategy, what's your five-year plan? Well, actually it's clear, we're producing disciples who can multiply and join God's work in the world, and we have all sorts of strategy around that. But in this model, where the primary goal becomes growing your church numerically and making sure that, which involves having a happy consumer base, well then the focus for people in the church becomes producing products that consumers love to enjoy. Right, and I know we've named this in previous episodes, but Jesus didn't do this.

Mac: 48:00

There's this old axiom that says what you win people with, you win them too. So if you win them with sort of attractional programs and meeting their consumer preferences, they're going to continue. Your average ordinary person in your church is going to continue to expect that, and this is what we're seeing. This is why there's so much constant turnover within our churches, where people go to this church for a while because they've got all the best programs for that season. Uh, so they go as long as their needs are being met, but then eventually discontentment sets in because the product no longer is as flashy as it felt before, or maybe the church goes through a difficult season, a period of transition, whatever, and so then they move on to the next church that seems to be having the best programs and stuff for that season.

Mac: 48:52

And so the cycle repeats itself. And this is the nonstop influence of and insanity, quite frankly, of consumer Christianity, and churches actually unfortunately play into this. They feed this cycle to the degree that they try to compete against each other to provide the best religious goods and services in order to draw the crowds in. You're actually competing for religious consumers, and if you're currently at a church where you feel like you have momentum and people are coming, you might feel great. You may also be on the losing side of this.

Mac: 49:29

You know you may also be on the losing side of this, where once that was you and now it's not right, um, jesus, I think, offers us a completely different paradigm, um, which is to is to not focus on the ebb and flow of satisfying consumers, um, but rather to commit yourself to the long obedience in the same direction, to borrow from eugene peterson, of being a disciple and making a disciple, and in my experience, don't take this the wrong way, but I'll just say consumers make really crummy disciples.

Katie: 49:57

Yeah, one thing that sticks out to me when you're talking Mac is going back to kind of the pastor as CEO versus pastor as shepherd is the idea of controlling outcomes. Ceos control outcomes, or at least they try. That's kind of what they're paid to do. What are our sales goals going to be? What's our profit margin? How many widgets are we going to make? What's our marketing? But whatever, they're constantly focused on controlling an outcome, whereas a shepherd loves people in the way of Jesus, points them to Jesus and then, like, releases the outcome to God and to that person, to the extent that they're going to be open and receptive to God's work.

Mac: 50:36

Yeah, it's somewhat humbling to admit, and we all know this, but we just probably don't hold this reality up enough. I can't transform myself. I'm completely dependent upon the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in my life to bring about transformation. I can't even transform myself, let alone transform someone else. Right, we're completely dependent upon the grace of God to do that Now. He doesn't do it without our participation and cooperation. We have a role to play, but it is just to do that Now. He doesn't do it without our participation and cooperation. We have a role to play. But it is just to say that, even when we say, hey, our task is to produce disciples, it's not even something that I get to fully control, you know, because it requires the intervening grace of God.

Josiah: 51:23

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like the shepherding pastor and the corporate pastor most likely we'll just assume decent motives want the same thing right To bring influence and to, let's say, they want to create disciples. They would both say that's what we're here to do. The corporate pastor sees it being done through a broad scale of influence and through crowds and a shepherding pastor sees that influence happening on a more individual discipleship basis. One is focused on the outcome, on being able to read the outcome and the amount of influence. The other one is saying no, I'm letting go of the outcome, I'm going to be faithful in the way that I'm present and loving towards these sheep. And it's like, if we just don't assume any of the negative motives and assume that both the corporate pastor and the shepherding pastor want the same thing, which is disciples, just one believes, because of the way we have seen the church be constructed in that corporate model for so long, believes that that is going to happen by drawing all the crowds.

Josiah: 52:37

And the other one says I care less about the crowds and more about the individual sheep. Yeah.

Mac: 52:42

Well, let's maybe take that thought. And again, if our goal is to look and live like Jesus, let's see how Jesus did it right. Again, I like the idea of clarifying motives. Hey, maybe we both want the same thing, but it's worth not just constructing a Jesus in our own image, a Jesus as CEO, for instance, which Katie said is really borrowed from our culture. It's an enculturated model of leadership, of church leadership. So let's talk about how did Jesus embody this? And one thing I would say is his primary concern was faithfulness, not outcomes. Not to say he didn't care about the outcome, but clearly of Jesus's strategy was just to get as big a crowd as possible, thinking that's how I produce disciples. There's not a whole lot of scriptural support for that in the gospels. I mean almost every time a big crowd gathers around him, he says something really offensive in their presence and it weeds people out, like in Luke 14, when, huge crowd, he says hey, unless you pick up your cross, you can't be my disciple. Boom, thins out the crowd. We've talked about John 6 with teaching around eating his body and drinking his blood. Boom thins out the crowd.

Mac: 53:57

Right, you know this is again going back to Eugene Peterson and you know I'm sure he had his own faults, but he talks about this If you know his story at all he planted a church out on the East Coast. It was this beautiful thing. I mean it started small in a basement. Everybody was super engaged and gradually it began to grow and you know just this beautiful expression of a church family joining God's work. And eventually they had to build a building to support the number of people who were coming, support the number of people who are coming. And he talks about how, once the building was built, it changed the culture of the church into sort of that more consumeristic. People brought their consumeristic expectations and because before they didn't have a building and it required everybody to show up and set up chairs and like right, a high degree of participation was needed just to worship. Together with a building, less of in, week out sort of service was required. And with that came a change of culture, things felt.

Mac: 54:58

He talks about how the momentum in the community felt like it stalled out and he shares this story where he was in his backyard doing some gardening and his neighbor next to him was like an expert. He was in his backyard doing some gardening and his neighbor next to him was like an expert and he came over and was like talking to him and giving him tips, teaching him how to garden, and he had some really harsh words about putting fertilizer like false fertilizers on in your garden. And all of a sudden he made the spiritual connection that here he is in a church that feels like it's sort of lost momentum, and everybody around him from other pastors in the area who he's talked to about this, to his supervisors and his denomination have basically been encouraging him to pour some fertilizer on his church to regain momentum, start another building project, put a big goal in front of the congregation. You've got to figure out a way to like restore that momentum and in that moment he sort of makes the decision to go.

Mac: 55:59

I'm not going to create false momentum, I'm going to wait and be faithful and allow the spirit of God to work and move among us and I just I learned from that, because I think so often and we talked a lot about this in our previous episode we want to be part of something big and we want to be part of something significant. Who doesn't want that? And oftentimes it does function as an extension of our ego and when things aren't going well. Oh, the temptation is so strong to try to fabricate momentum or fabricate success so that we sort of can push away from that feeling that we're insignificant or that we don't matter. You know, do you guys notice that? I mean honestly, do you notice this temptation, this pull internally or organizationally, to like create momentum to offset that feeling, that insecurity that we're not making a big enough impact?

Josiah: 56:54

Yeah, I would add that there's two sides to that. One is the leadership side. You feel the need to push things. When not as many people in the seats, you're tempted to get sort of discouraged. Um, you know, depending on how worship goes, if you get this impression that maybe people are super into it, um, or if they're not, um, you can you have all these temptations try to pull you there and then you feel like you need to create it. Um. The other side of it is, as a member of that community, when you sense there's not enough of this quote-unquote momentum, the temptation is to say, well, it's a little more exciting over at this other church, and I think we see that a lot.

Mac: 57:36

Yep, yeah, like I'm going to go where it feels more exciting.

Josiah: 57:39

Yeah, and assume that, but I'm using these markers of like oh, there's more people going there. There's more this and they're using all these markers that aren't necessarily discipleship markers or shepherding markers. They're using consumeristic, corporate model.

Katie: 57:56

Yeah, and I think the reason you know, if you listen to every episode, you probably hear these themes coming up every episode, and I think the reason is that because it's a big part of our story, right, like, we have gone through these different seasons of being the church with a lot of momentum. That's been really big and there's a lot that's exciting about that and there's a lot of benefits from that. And we've also been in seasons where that hasn't been our church and I think, while it might be easy to go, okay, well then, what do we need to do? To get back to what we were doing? I think we've been intentional about saying what does faithfulness look like in this season?

Mac: 58:31

Yeah, and part of the conundrum reflecting on our own history is when we were at our biggest, we were actually the most unhealthy, and that's the conundrum is, just because something's big and there's a feeling of momentum does not at all mean it's got kingdom characteristics or qualities to it?

Mac: 58:49

Sure, and that's just a sobering reality. You might be part of a massive church and, um, next week you might find out that things aren't as they seem, as we're seeing on the news every week, like the pastor's having an affair and created a toxic work involved. You know what I mean.

Katie: 59:05

Yeah, and I would also say just because it's big doesn't mean it's inherently unhealthy either. I remember when I went to Blackhawk in Madison and someone who didn't go there made a comment about Blackhawk being an attractional church. I remember thinking you know it's big, but they actually do a pretty good job of pointing people towards discipleship and community, and so I want to say that too.

Mac: 59:22

Yeah, that's a great word.

Katie: 59:23

Another thing that comes to mind is that Jesus kept in mind the long game um, or he he always had in mind like an eternal perspective. There are many examples where Jesus could have done something to get the quick win or the quick the quick W, I guess as the kids are saying just idea, Kids say that yeah, really yeah. It's like the the W start using that at home.

Katie: 59:46

Yep, yep, jesus didn't always do the thing that gave him the immediate, the immediate win. We look, for example, of the story of Jesus being tempted in the desert. You know, he's been hungry, hasn't eaten for 40 days, hungry, tired, and Satan comes in and tempts him, saying like hey, turn these stones to bread. Or if you bow down and worship me, I'll give you power over all these earthly kingdoms. And that certainly feels like it'd be a win. Right, like Jesus, why would it be a bad thing for Jesus to have more power?

Mac: 1:00:21

It's getting a good thing in the wrong way.

Katie: 1:00:23

Right, right, like I would look at that and go, well, either, okay, so Satan has power over something, and he's saying, jesus, you can have power. Well, clearly, I'd rather have Jesus have power over something, like, in a way, that's what we should all want. But he had the eternal perspective in mind to know that, no, this isn't what I'm called to do, even though right in front of me something might look tempting. He had a vision of faithfulness and he knew that that didn't always translate into like an immediate, an immediate outcome or an immediate win. Second Corinthians 4.18 says so we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what is seen as temporary but what is unseen as eternal.

Mac: 1:01:03

I was talking to my friend, jim Harrington recently and he said something that I think captures this long game, eternal perspective. We were talking about just all the upheaval and changes that are happening in the church right now and he said, mac, I'm working to plant a tree and I will likely never sit under its shade or taste its fruit. And I just thought, wow, like, yeah, that you're probably right. I mean, he's nearing retirement age and the things that he's giving his life to, the changes, the shifts, the way he's trying to encourage the church to embody increased faithfulness it's not gonna happen in his lifetime. He's planting seeds, he's putting a tree in the soil and he likely won't sit under its shade or taste its fruit.

Mac: 1:01:55

And this was something that your early church got. I mean, you look at the first 300 years. There's a book called the Patient Ferment of the Early Church and you think about the fermentation process and it takes time, you can't speed it up, and they got this. The time when the church grew the fastest was when they intentionally slowed down and were careful to reproduce disciples. And so the early church. It's a great book. The early church had a very strategic process that was slow and arduous, that trained people to become disciples of Jesus, and they didn't speed it up, they didn't try to short circuit it and eventually it turned the Roman world upside down. I think we need to regain some of that. I think we need to go hey, the work we're doing, I'm probably not gonna see the full fruit of it, and I don't need to. Oftentimes, we want those quick fixes, those what did you call it? A W?

Katie: 1:02:49

The immediate W the immediate W.

Mac: 1:02:50

We want the immediate W, and if we don't see it, we're not willing to do the work. Well, you're gonna have to if you're gonna live into the way of Jesus. You're gonna have to engage in sacrificial, costly work. That's hard and difficult.

Katie: 1:03:10

And you may not see the fruit. Yeah, we've been talking about Eugene Peterson a lot, so I'm going to continue that. I have the book on my desk in front of me Along Obedience in the Same Direction, and it's really what the whole book is about. In one part he says there is a great market for religious experience in our world. There is little enthusiasm, though, for the patient acquisition of virtue.

Mac: 1:03:35

There is little enthusiasm, though, for the patient acquisition of virtue little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Yeah, that's a great quote and I think it's capturing. It captures exactly what you were saying.

Josiah: 1:03:44

Yeah, I would also add that something we've already been discussing is that Jesus consistently laid down his life for others and that ultimately culminated in the cross. He made decisions on the interest of faithfulness and love towards others which led him to sacrifice himself and that led to him ultimately dying on the cross for it. So yeah, again, we've been talking about this quite a bit already.

Mac: 1:04:16

But that's the bullseye, I mean, that's the center of the center is Jesus dying on the cross for us, out of love, and that's exactly what we're called to embody in our everyday lives, individually and collectively, as a community. We're to live cruciform lives and we're to be a cruciform community.

Katie: 1:04:33

And all of this becomes evident when we look at the cross.

Mac: 1:04:35

Yeah, all right, it's practice time. It's time to name some. Let's say, someone's listening to this and they're not tired of listening yet and they're going okay, but what do I do about this? If you were to tell me what are the implications, what are some practices I could do, walking away from this conversation and we've been talking a while, so let's kind of do more, maybe a rapid fire. Here's some concrete things you can do to live this out.

Katie: 1:05:05

To praxis this.

Mac: 1:05:06

To praxis this, yeah Praxis.

Katie: 1:05:08

This To praxis this yeah Praxis podcast To praxis, one I could say might be clarify who Jesus was and what he was about. So we started the podcast here and we're basically saying if we claim to be about Christlikeness, then we need to be clear about who Christ was. Are we spending time in the Gospels reading about him, or are we kind of just trusting the perspective of others, maybe listening to just preachers, podcasts, reading books, etc. There's lots of competing narratives out there. One thing I've noticed if I can share just a brief observation, it's as you listen to different voices.

Katie: 1:05:43

Like man, there's such easy access to pastors and theologians. Right now, lots of people talk about God. Easy access to pastors and theologians. Right now, lots of people talk about God but, as I've heard, like sermons or messages that strike me as like not as healthy or like not the vision of what we're talking about, they tend to not talk a lot about Jesus. Like I hear a lot about God and maybe not as much about Jesus. Or insofar that they do talk about Jesus, it's usually just about his death. Like they'll talk about Jesus's death on the cross but not as much about his life.

Mac: 1:06:15

And his teachings.

Katie: 1:06:16

And his teachings, and I think there have been seasons even where I kind of grew up solely focused on Jesus's death, and obviously that's really important. It's like the pinnacle of Christianity. But if you're not looking at his life and you're not actually looking at how to embody his teachings, I think we're missing something. So I would just say we have to get clear about who Jesus was and what he was about. And the way we do that is by looking at him, going to the source, reading the gospels and seeing how he lived and what he taught.

Mac: 1:06:45

So would you say, maybe practice one is just normalize. You're going to be a lifelong student of Jesus. You need to study Jesus's life and teachings while owning how, while becoming aware of your assumptions, your projections and so on, and submitting your life to him.

Katie: 1:07:00

That capture, yeah that's a good way of capturing it.

Josiah: 1:07:02

Yeah, and to follow up to that, then, is clarify who we are as a church and what we're about. So I know that sounds like the same thing, but this gets into more of the details. Like, what does it look like then to prioritize Christlikeness and to move away from that corporate model into shepherding, defining the end goal as a church, being able to name the goal as the goal of Christ-likeness, openly, consistently and fervently? I think about the person who's looking for your five-year strategic plan for growth. It becomes an opportunity to again say like, hey, we're not moving towards trying to get this place huge, we're moving towards becoming more like Christ and creating disciples.

Josiah: 1:07:59

I do think when I was growing up, my family hunted a lot and we would do camping, and my dad really enjoyed the wilderness, um, and I remember at a young age him teaching me how to read a compass and how to use it to navigate out of the woods, cause he would often drop us off in the middle of the woods when we were hunting and then we would and then be there until dark and then we'd have to find our way back to the road and, uh, this wasn't our own property, this was on public land, so you know the spots we were in would often change, so your dad would often drop you off in the wilderness With a compass With a compass and be like well, find your way back to the road.

Mac: 1:08:42

And how old were you.

Josiah: 1:08:43

I'm old enough to hunt.

Katie: 1:08:45

Okay, okay, I guess, and it's not okay.

Josiah: 1:08:48

The wilderness.

Mac: 1:08:49

So your dad would.

Josiah: 1:08:51

The wilderness is a stretch. Okay, now, there were times that it was genuine wilderness, when we would go way, way up north, but often these were. You know, there's a road. Yeah. You know, within like half a mile. The point is, he would drop us off and then he would go to a different spot and then he'd be at the car and you would meet to the car, he'd give you directions and he'd give you a compass and a flashlight. And a watch hopefully, and a flashlight, not a watch necessarily.

Katie: 1:09:18

How do you know what time it was?

Josiah: 1:09:19

Well, you can watch when the sun sets at a certain point.

Mac: 1:09:24

He gave them a sundial, katie. He gave them a compass, a sundial and some beef jerky.

Josiah: 1:09:31

But yeah, so the point of this is in teaching us to read a compass. He was saying that if you pick, you need to pick waypoints as you're navigating. So if you're like I need to go west to get to the road and you just look down at the compass, all right, west is that way, I'm going to walk west. And you put the compass back in your pocket and you just start going.

Josiah: 1:09:58

Pretty soon you will find out that it's very easy to wander. Off course, very easy to wander. And so what he would say is you need to pick specific landmarks that are within eyesight, and then you pick those and you take a compass reading and you go to that point and then, when you get to that point, you're going to take your compass back out and then you're going to pick, you're going to make sure that you're still in the right direction and you're going to pick another point and you're going to walk to that. And eventually you keep walking until oh look, I see the road, it worked. And then you had to remember okay, well, which direction on the road do I walk, because I don't see the car, and sometimes you had to walk for a while. But the point is. I think this works for this. This analogy works for this point is that, as a church, you're going to need to continually clarify that.

Mac: 1:10:49

That waypoint yes.

Josiah: 1:10:50

You need to pick the waypoint and then move toward it, and it's not going to be as far out as you want it to be and you're going to have to check the compass more often than you think. And the murkier the waters, or in the analogy, like the thicker the forest, the more you're in darkness and you don't know you're going to have to check more often. Yeah, like if you don't have a clear landmark across a field but you're in a thick forest, you may have to pick a tree you know 20 yards in front of you and then recheck.

Mac: 1:11:21

Yeah, so it's not like once a year you do a waypoint. Check it's, this is something you got to do every day. Check it's, this is something you got to do every day.

Mac: 1:11:30

You're checking your way point. Am I centered on Jesus? Where have I maybe deviated or taken a few steps in the wrong direction? What would it look like to get back on track Right? This is the narrow path, yeah, but one final thing.

Mac: 1:11:42

So we've we've talked, you know, and talking about practice, practices, praxis. Um, hey, it's about being a student of Jesus. It's about having wayward points, constantly checking those, those way points, and then finally, uh, I would say we just got to get comfortable with naming the gaps. Um, and that's an individual thing and a corporate thing. I mean, it's probably people are sick of hearing it, but every intro to this series we said hey, the healthy not every church is healthy, but we're attending to the gap between where we should be and where we currently are. Right, this is we just got to normalize this that none of us have arrived. There's no perfect church, no perfect Christian at this point. We all have gaps between where we are and where we need to be. We've tried to do that in this series on a corporate level. I mean, we've named some major gaps in the American church celebrityism, church growthism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, all that stuff and we also have to get accustomed to doing that in our lives. Here's where I'm falling short, because it's as we get honest about those things and learn to come into the perfect love of God revealed in Jesus, with that being true, that we experience his uncompromising, faithful love toward us and we start to experience transformation.

Mac: 1:13:03

I often get pushback Mac, why are you naming these hard things? It sounds negative. This and that and I often quote Ephesians 5.11, have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Until we can name them, until we can expose both in my own life, here's where I'm falling short. Here's where we're falling short collectively. It's going to remain untransformed. So I guess what I'm saying is yes, let's be a lifelong student of Jesus. Let's continually check hey, are we still on point? Are we still tracking in terms of our compass? And let's just get comfortable naming hey, here's where our gap exists, and not with guilt and condemnation, but rather to open up to God's transforming love and grace.

Katie: 1:13:45

With grace and truth. Yes, yeah, love that All right, transforming love and grace With grace and truth.

Mac: 1:13:50

Yes, ye ah, love that All right. Well, this was the last episode in our series on creating a healthy church culture. There were a lot of them, oh my goodness, and I've said it before, but I'm gonna need to create some space to grieve and to lament, because I've liked this series so much. I might even borrow a box of tissues.

Katie: 1:14:08

I was gonna say you could do an encore episode of it by yourself. You can listen to it whenever you want, yeah you could go.

Mac: 1:14:13

I'm sure that we'll continue to some like return to some of these themes in the future. But yeah, this was sort of the capstone episode where we're summarizing everything we've been talking about, which is to say, the goal is to become like Christ, and that's a lifelong journey and will never fully arrive, but nevertheless we're going to pursue it.

Josiah: 1:14:36

Sweet. Well, thanks for joining us today. As Mac just mentioned, this marks the end of our series on creating a healthy church culture, at least for now. Next up is going to be a series on what is being referred to as the great de-churching. Why are so many people leaving the church, what are they missing out on, and how can we engage those who are no longer connected to a church community? We hope you will continue to tune in. We'll see you next time you get your podcasts.