Jesus and the Mission of the Church

Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God, so that thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer. I'm here with a special guest, Greg Fincke. And Greg, you are in charge of a ministry called Dwelling 114. You've also authored a number of different books. And I'm just kind of interested, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, kind of where you're located, where you're from, what your family is like, those kind of things. And then we'll dig into your ministry, your books, and just have a good conversation about theology and ministry. Well, thank you, James. Yeah, no, I'd be happy to share. You know, I'm Greg Fincke. I had been a pastor for about 22 years before the Lord really made it clear I was supposed to step out of kind of pursuing a vocation of applying my vocation in an individual congregation and start helping a variety of congregations. I'm from the Houston, Texas area and had been living there the last about 12 years. And then about four years ago, God took us on up to St. Paul, Minnesota. So this Texas boy is getting a real introduction to snow and not only sub-freezing, sub-zero, but we're doing well and enjoying it. My wife and I, we've got three grown children. All three are young women. Two are married. I have one grandson. And that really is kind of all that matters right there. I have one grandson, you know, almost three years old. So that, that's why you have children. I'm coming to find out. So anyway. Do you find it more fun? Do you find it more fun to be a grandfather than a father? Well, I, I enjoyed growing up. I wouldn't want to have to go back and do it again. Right. So I really did. But yeah, having a grandson that we are able to, you know, have fun with, teach, you know, but then when it's, you know, when, when, when they need a parent, I can hand them off. That's kind of nice too. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I, you know, I, I saw when I was kind of reading about your bio and, and just kind of investigating things, I saw that you actually went to seminary in St. Louis here. And so Concordia seminary, which is the Lutheran seminary. And so I'm just wondering what led you there? How, you know, where, how did you end up at a Lutheran seminary? I, I was sharing before in the pre-interview. I actually grew up a Lutheran. We were at a Lutheran church, Missouri Synod here in central Illinois for most of my life. I was confirmed all that kind of good stuff. Actually looked at Concordia for undergrad and, and ended up at a state school. But yeah, just, you know, I kind of know a little bit about that and, and was able to actually consult with a Concordia seminary in Fort Wayne. And so I know the admissions process pretty well and you know, how people are led there. So I'm kind of interested in your story. If you wouldn't mind just sharing how you ended up at Concordia seminary, seminary St. Louis. Yeah. Well, it, it's a, it's a fairly simple story. Number one, you got to know I never wanted to be a pastor. I thought that was a very bad idea. And, but God, you know, obviously, you know, takes very little account of my opinion and made it clear that's what I was supposed to do. So I went to undergrad work thinking I'd be a, I wanted to be a high school teacher, like a history teacher maybe and a coach. I love coaching, love sports. But about halfway into my freshman year, God just made it very dramatically clear whether I wanted to or not, I was supposed to become a pastor, which meant I got to go to seminary and God made it real easy for me to decide which seminary in our tribe. It's St. Louis or Fort Wayne. Like you said, made it real easy because I had fallen in love with a woman who got a teaching position down in St. Louis. So it's like, okay, even if that's not the Holy spirit, I'm going to St. Louis. But it was, you know, it was the Holy spirit and, and a great experience there. Learned a lot academically, very vigorous, you know, but, but a lot like in a lot of, of occupations, you know, you, you learn the book knowledge, but then you, you actually get spit out into the real world. And I had a whole, a whole new level of education waiting for me when I actually was placed in my first church. But St. Louis, as far as the Concordia seminary, St. Louis, excellent job preparing me, you know, with, with what I call the facts and figures of the faith. Absolutely. Yeah. And you did ministry. You were in the pastoral ministry for 22 years. Did I hear that? Did I remember that correctly? Yeah. So I was up in Michigan, a place, Midland, Michigan, to be specific, for 18 years. God sent there as a 26-year-old baby pastor. And my first Sunday there, there were 52 people in church. And after 10 years, there was a thousand people in church. By the time we left, about 1200. And so I really thought, you know, even though I was from Texas, I'd never even been to Michigan before getting sent there. But I really thought that'd be where I would, you know, live out my days. And after 18 years, and then just about that time, God started messing with me again and made it very clear. I did not want to go back to, well, I didn't want to leave Michigan. It wasn't that I didn't want to go back to Texas. It's just didn't want to leave Michigan, but God made it clear that we were supposed to and went down to a congregation in the Houston area. And after about four years, it really became clear that God was kind of closing off that chapter of my life and redirecting me to helping, you know, multiple congregations. So and the focus of this, of this ministry, of this organization is helping churches, no fooling, actually starting to live out the mission of God for the good of others in the community in which they live. This is not just a Lutheran thing. I found it because we work with a variety of church bodies and denominations, very much an American Christian thing. But we tend to think that if I worship Jesus and study Jesus and understand Jesus and believe Jesus, that's about it. Right. And, and what we've been missing is not just the worshiping and the studying and the believing, but the going out and doing for the good of our neighbors, neighborhood workplace. And, and so as we began to kind of come out of what we in the, in the church world would call the attractional church model, you know, it was for, I mean, the reason we went from 50 to a thousand in 10 years was, you know, come to our church. We have, you know good this, good that, you know, and people came. But then when we had been doing ministry for about 10 years, it started getting harder and harder to attract people to come. Right. And so what we were realizing was that that was a season, but that season was quickly coming to a close. And now, you know, the, the, the season of attracting disaffected, disconnected Christians had kind of run its course. And now we were in the new season of we're actually needing to do the work of missionaries in our own neighborhood. You know, we knew how to raise up missionaries, send missionaries, support missionaries. We just didn't know how to be a missionary. Yeah. And so that's, that's what Dwelling 114 resulted in is helping individuals and congregations start to be much more intentional and consistent about, as we say, join Jesus on the mission. He's already on in our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools. And it's fun because people actually do it. And all of a sudden they're in the middle of these stories that all their life they've only heard other people tell it. And now just live in the daily life they've already been living. Now they're realizing, oops, Jesus is up to more than going to church on Sunday. It's really interesting. You talk about the, you know, the 10 years, that 10 year period where you experienced this growth of just disaffected Christians and that sort of, you know, would you tie that into when I hear you talk about it, I, I have in my head, like the seeker sensitive movement and you know, sort of that, that whole era. Is that in my, okay. And so it was, you know, where were you at in Michigan exactly? Like where were you near Detroit? Were you more rural? Yeah, we were. If you would have parachuted in, you'd have thought you were in the middle of nowhere because it was like bean fields, corn fields, depending on the year. But we were about 10 minutes South of Midland, Michigan, which is the world headquarters for Dow and Dow Corning at the time. Yeah. About 40,000

It's just sort of fascinating to, you know, hear the juxtaposition of that 10-year period where you have all these sort of almost like low-hanging fruit people coming back and then having to shift and pivot into this more incarnational ministry, which I think is how you would describe it. Is that fair? Yeah, no, it's all about that. Yeah, of doing basically neighborhood missions work. Yeah, which looks a lot like loving your neighbor, right? Yeah, probably. I mean, oddly, I'm betting it does. So as you work beyond these different congregations, you know, I've never been a pastor specifically, but I've worked in churches in different capacities. And so as you go into a church, I can imagine that they are feeling some sort of a need to usually, if it's anything like my higher ed consulting, they usually just want to grow, right? And so do you deal with sort of this misperception of, yes, this is a growth strategy, but not the sort of growth strategy maybe you're looking for kind of vibe? Like, how do you, is there a normal approach, I suppose, that churches bring to you as they engage you with your ministry? Yeah, no, that's a, that's a great question. I think, you know, for the most part, uh, leaders want to grow. The rest of the congregation just wants to be left alone, right? It's like, Hey, we were in that room voting on stuff. We just, we come to church, we want to go to church, you know, and, and, you know, we'll give a little time, give a little money. Uh, and so what we're, uh, we have a couple of different things that, uh, are realities every congregation we go into. Um, you got the leaders that maybe even for all the right reasons, you know, want to see their congregation be more mission focused. Um, yeah, they would love to see it grow, but a lot of congregations, even at this point are like, it's not even about our growth. We just want to be more intentional about being, uh, you know, living out the mission of Jesus for the good of others. Uh, what I tell them though, is that if, if you go do what Jesus gave you to do, you will see local growth, right? Yeah. Um, the trouble is too many churches want to grow without messing with people, right? They, they want to have a program or a staff person. We don't actually want to, you know, involve ourselves with people, but we want the programs and professionals to do that. Well, of course that doesn't work. It might've worked a generation ago. Maybe it actually didn't, but it was easy to fool ourselves into thinking it did, but these days it doesn't, you know, the younger you go, the more they're looking for a relationship, not a program. Uh, they got plenty of things to take up their time. They got plenty of ways of accessing, you know, even good theological information, right? Um, what they're looking for is Christian community, um, which a lot of churches don't even know what that is, right? They, they, uh, have classes, they have services, they have ways to get you involved, but it's all task oriented. It's not sitting in a circle talking about how life with Jesus is going for the good of other people. You know, how's it going? Putting the ways of Jesus into play in your workplace, in your family, in your neighborhood. And, and people need that. Uh, especially as we are finding out that, uh, being, uh, a shrinking population in an increasingly secular, uh, culture, um, you know, I, I try to help people realize that's self-inflicted, that we're as much a reason for that happening as any other force out there, that the church has settled for going to church rather than being the church. And so we have a variety of ways of helping people realize number one, that going out and living a life of love as you're joining Jesus on his mission is really what, uh, is what we're made for and saved for. And that that is the route to a, a fruitful and fulfilling life. So we'll, we'll kind of poke, you know, I'm, I'm the guy that comes in for one Sunday, right? I come in, well, for one weekend, but I'm there to the people that avoided meeting with me on Friday in a leadership capacity. They avoided meeting me, you know, at the seminar. Now they're just showing up for church. They weren't paying attention. And now who's this guy up there? And I'll just say stuff. That's the reason you're bored, right? You got saved. And now what are you going to do? Sit on the bench and run out the clock till you die and go to heaven. You know, or there might be this, this adventure called every day that we have just been completely oblivious to that. If we start to think about what is Jesus up to, what's he preparing in advance for us and, and how we can start to participate with that, not in a way that's above our pay grade. Like I can't fix people, solve their problems. I certainly can't save them, but I can love them. And in that context of, of loving them, serving them, laughing with them, um, being a source of encouragement to them, practicing hospitality with them, God then has a context to do all the God stuff that only he can do. And it's amazing how people want, once some of those light bulbs start going on, they really are leaning in. And once the other thing that's huge, uh, James is that even people that want to are afraid to. And that's because they are thinking they got to do it for Jesus rather than we're going with Jesus as he does his own work. And then we just are his hands and feet, uh, helping people experience a little bit of what we have in abundance. Once they start to catch onto that and our, our training doesn't just drop a bunch of information on you and then say, you know, adios. But rather we then help them implement over time. And it is so much fun seeing whether it's a, a 15 year old at, at high school or an 85 year old at their, uh, assisted living place, having stories about joining Jesus about what a difference a little attention, a little love, a little encouragement has made in the lives of people around them. And it's like, there you go. Uh, if all the people in church on Sunday. Went out and joined Jesus and loved their neighbor on Monday. Every community would be immediately much better. Well, it's good. I I'm glad you bring up joining Jesus. I want to take a quick break here and, uh, just for our sponsors. And then we're going to come back and I'd like to explore that idea of joining Jesus after the break. So hold on, everybody. We'll be back and we'll talk a little joining Jesus afterwards. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94 878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94 878 or call 888-958-6579. All right, Ray, welcome back. We're here. We're going to start talking about joining Jesus. I actually had a couple of questions maybe before we jump into joining Jesus. And so one of them is, you know, again, my kind of experience with this is that, you know, a lot of times I'll be asked to talk about discipleship or help out with discipleship programs, those kind of things. And what I find is that people do tend to equate discipleship with Bible study. And so normally I'm asked because, you know, I have the PhD behind my name and it's like he probably knows what he's talking about when it comes to scripture. And so when I go in, it's like people don't really expect what I'm expecting. At least that happened the first few times. I've kind of gotten used to expecting what they're expecting too. But I think people don't quite grasp the holistic nature of what you have to do. Like it does involve an understanding of scripture. And I appreciate what you said in, you know, when you went to seminary, it kind of gave you the facts and figures of the ministry. And so I think those are really necessary, but they're not always sufficient. Like we have to do something with them in order to really know and experience God in ways that are beyond the text, let's say, or that bring the text into our own lives. And so can you just talk a little bit about maybe how when you go in and speak to a congregation over a weekend, what are you encouraging them to do specifically that would transcend sort of knowing about Jesus? Right. Or learning about Jesus and actually learning to obey. Yeah, no, and that's you summed it up very well. People think that studying what Jesus says is the same as doing what Jesus says. And obviously it's not. I like to use the example. I have three daughters and let's say one of them, when

I want her to come in with the result that then I would have clean dishes, right? Yeah. But I said, Hey, honey, can you come out, please, and do the dishes? And she sticks her head out of her door and she says, Dad, can you say that again? I said, Yeah, honey, would you come out, please, and do the dishes? She said, Dad, that is fascinating. You really gave me something to think about. Like, young lady, I did not give you something to think about. I gave you something to do. I want you to come out and do the dishes. No, Dad, I'm coming, but I'm doing an Internet search. I'd like to find materials that would help me better understand what does it mean to come out and do the dishes, right? In other words, you have this whole spiel of substituting, thinking, discussing, memorizing, understanding, and all I wanted her to do. And so that's the same thing we try to do with our people in understanding what discipleship is. It's not simply sitting down and taking good notes, right? Yeah. Jesus taught people how will they know unless they hear, but the way a rabbi taught was not just to tell them what he was teaching them, but to show them what he was teaching them. And that's Jesus right away. He proclaims the kingdom of God, but then he says to anybody that's willing, I know you don't know what that actually means or what that actually looks like. So come follow me. I will show you how to live in this new reality of the kingdom coming and I will make you to become fishers of men. And so if we can realize that discipleship is a training process, does that require information? Absolutely. But information that is learned how to put it into practice so that you gain experience, skill, and confidence in this new way of living, which is what Jesus, it's a both hand. So now Lutherans, particularly, we get nervous about the doing stuff part, right? Because our Genesis story is all about screwing that up. You know, we think we got to do something to be saved. No, no, no. We're saved by grace through faith alone. Amen. The trouble is, that's now what we think that the only thing is. It's the how we're saved. We forget why we're saved. Yes, I'm saved by grace through faith, not by my works, lest any man boast. But now why did he do all that work of gracing me, faithing me, saving me? It's so now that I'm recreated in Christ Jesus, I can do the good the father's preparing in advance for me to do. And then we can reread the words of Jesus and start literally not just studying them, but what is he actually giving me to believe and do? In other words, action verbs mean take action. I want you to do the dishes with the result that the dishes will be clean. And the same is true for us. He says you can sum it all up this way. Love your neighbor as yourself. I want you to love your neighbor action verb in such a way that your neighbor knows they're being loved. And when we're doing that, we are actually not earning something or proving something, which is exhausting and unnecessary, but rather we're participating in something that we've actually been enabled and empowered to now do that results in some pretty cool stuff. And when we don't actually participate, we don't have the cool stuff happening and we end up getting bored and we settle for going to church, right? Yeah, which, you know, you brought up the younger generation and I'll say this and then we can get into joining Jesus. But I mean, I think that your comment about the younger generation really rings true. They don't need more activities. Even my kids, I mean, they've grown up in a Christian home now for a lot of years and they know their Bibles pretty well. They've got hopefully solid theology. We'll see. You know, they've all they've all professed faith in Christ. And, you know, so it's amazing. But, you know, it's tough to get them plugged in at church. My daughters are more apt to serve in children's ministry and those kind of things than go to youth group. They just don't need another activity. And I think that that's a real in a lot of ways. I feel like it's a real shortcoming. Yeah, and I think it's a shortcoming because, you know, as much as I think that they're getting at home, the home is not the vehicle. Right. The church is supposed to be the vehicle. And so we're kind of disconnecting a little bit. And it is a challenge to get my kids to kind of go plug in and understand what a biblical community is apart from an activity that they might go and participate in. That makes sense. No, it's and it goes back to the mistake that we've been making for a very long time now. The church is not a program. The church is not a service. The church is a community of people. And so, you know, my wife and I, our third and hopefully last book that we wrote is Joining Jesus as a Family. And it's taking mission and discipleship things that we talked about in the first two books and applying them in the family. And the reality is that discipleship, and we didn't say this yet, but it's very much a part of what we're saying. At a certain point, I need a model and a mentor. And that's what Jesus was doing for his trainees. He modeled what it looked like to live out his teachings. And he mentored them as they were learning how to do it themselves. And in a child's life, in the early years, that model and mentor is absolutely the parents. I tell parents all the time, you know, you're already discipling your child, for better or worse, right? They're learning from you right now what it looks like to follow Jesus, for better or worse. So be aware of that. Be intentional about how you're living your life because they're watching and imitating. But you're right. At a certain point, and certainly it sounds like your kids are at that age, they start looking around, looking for verification, right? Looking for other people to add to that. Now they need a model and mentor. It might be a coach. It might be a youth worker. It might be a teacher. But it needs to be a collection of people. And for a long time now, like we said, churches throw a program together and say, hey, that should be sufficient. It's not. I need someone besides my wife and I that can be modeling and mentoring my kids in what it looks like to live out the faith for the good of others. And when that happens, we see amazing results. When that doesn't happen, we see about 70% of kids walk away from at least church, if not their faith, when they head out of the home and into college or the workplace. And so that's where discipleship is very much about, yes, we need to know, it is about scholarship, but discipleship's not just for the smart kids. Discipleship is for those that want to be living a life of love for the good of others as they follow Jesus. And having someone show them. Now, will all the facts and figures of the faith be honored and a part of that lifestyle? Will we be able to pick it out? Yeah. But what we tend to forget is that when I put all the facts and figures, all the data, the doctrines, the characters, all that together, what does that look like being lived out? And the thing is, Jesus already told us. He said, hey, it's actually a joyful, peaceful life of love, right? This is the best way to live. And we've turned it into some kind of academic pursuit where everybody's frowning. And so our kids see that and they're like, you know, maybe not. Or they have someone living a joyful, peaceful life of love for the good of others. And they're like, I want to be like that person. But it's all about people, not about programs. That's really good. I want to, we will now get to joining Jesus. I'm going to take one more break. And when we come back, I'm just going to ask you flat out, how would you summarize joining Jesus? So let's take just a minute for our sponsor and then we'll come back and talk joining Jesus. All right, everybody, welcome back. We are here. I'm going to ask, how would you summarize it? I mean, I think you've described it. But what, you know, do you have, how do you, what's the take home on joining Jesus? What exactly are you encouraging people to do when you're saying, hey, get into joining Jesus? Well, it begins, you know, being, joining Jesus starts with Jesus, right? He's the initiator. And so this is not about me coming out with a program that, you know, accomplishes something. This is about taking Jesus at his word, taking him seriously and going, hey, what if we actually did this, right? And so Jesus, from his inaugural, from, you know, baptism and into the beginning of his public ministry, was announcing a new reality, not that would be coming someday, but that had come and is coming right now. Namely, the kingdom of God, the person and activity of God at work in the world. And so that's why then Jesus uses a lot of action verbs about watching, right? Looking, seeking, recognizing, perceiving. And what he's saying.

is that it's all around us, and the big thing that we gotta worry about is, like he says in Matthew 13, ever seeing but never perceiving. You're looking right at it, you don't recognize what you're seeing. So joining Jesus is very simple. Even a little child can do it. It is looking for what he's preparing in advance for us, right? It might be a person, it might be, like he says in Ephesians 2.10, it might be a work of good, but it's something that in the course of my day is God's just plopping it right there. And if I look at it, don't recognize it, I'll miss it. But if I'm looking at it and I recognize that little opportunity, then I can respond to it. So seek, recognize, respond. That's a new mindset and lifestyle. I'm raising my kids, I'm driving to work, I'm doing my job, I'm mowing the lawn, I'm doing all these things, but now I'm doing so with an anticipation and awareness that I am not my own, that the Lord is organizing things around me. And if I look, I'll see, seek and you will find. And then the second thing, so if seek the kingdom is the first thing, the second thing is that the way I respond looks like love and action. It might just be a small thing like a smile, or it might be something big and sacrificial, but the point is is that we realize that what we have is very valuable to other people. What do we have? God's love. And I like to say it this way, God's love is your superpower, and God's love changes people, and it only works though if we use it. And so if we can then start to say, who's my neighbor? What's their name? What's their story? Start to have some unhurried time called hospitality. Share some food, share some laughs, share some stories. You're gonna be just like Jesus was in Luke 15, hanging out, having a great time, and all of a sudden, you're having these conversations about the value and worth that people have, that they're so valuable that God would come chasing after them. These kinds of things, if we are seeking the kingdom, loving our neighbor, then God has what he wants us to be doing to work through to do what only God can do, which is to start to change people's hearts and minds and leading them to salvation in himself. So joining Jesus is really simple. Look for what he's already doing. We maybe need to build a little skill in recognizing what I'm looking at, right? Which happens very quickly. It's really fun to hear people having their eyeballs kind of opened up, light bulbs go on. Then the investment in people, and the one thing that we really try to help people understand is the priority of once you get to know your neighbors, whether that's where you live, work, go to school, once you're getting to know them, who are those people that are living without what you have in abundance, right? I'm living in the abundance of God's love and peace and joy. I don't just know about it. I'm experiencing it because I'm not just academically aware, but participating. And being able to then look for people that are struggling to live life without that and starting to invest in a relationship with at least one person. And if we have, let's say we have a thousand people that are connected with a church and every week they go out and invest in one person over the course of the year, the influence of that congregation will be very great in the community. So I really love that. I mean, I think the more I've studied, so I've been studying the gospels over the last six months, really a lot more seriously. And just finished up a piece that hasn't been published yet on the incarnation. And part of what I'm sort of picking up on is what you're talking about, this idea of perception, the sense-making in the sense like our five senses, let's say, right? You know, you've got things outside the gospels, obviously, like taste and see that the Lord is good, you know, and it's a reference now to taste and, you know, Thomas touching Jesus' side, right? While not the most glowing moment in the gospels, right? You do have this idea that the disciples are supposed to learn to make sense of the world in a different way than the world makes sense of itself. And we have to incarnate differently. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, I'm just gonna build on top of what you were saying. You know, our name, Dwell 114, comes from John 1.14, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And so it goes back to why, why did God need to come in the person of his son, Jesus? And it's because he already had made his word clear. His covenants were clear, but time had come that God wanted us not just to know about this or experience it in the context of a location of one temple, but to now have this really be spread to the ends of the earth. And the way that that happens is the word becoming flesh. Now, obviously, second person of the Trinity became flesh and blood. Absolutely. But what the reason is that God wanted people to experience his love through the person of Jesus. And what's crazy about this is that we now who have Christ in us, we are in Christ, means Christ is in us. We already call ourselves the body of Christ, right? Well, that's not a theological idea. That's a material reality. We're the word made flesh. No, I'm not Jesus and neither are you. But we got Jesus in us. And that's the whole multiplication explosion of goodness and redemption and joy and peace and encouragement that God intended to spread throughout the world, the experiencing of that, not just the hearing about that. And that's where North American Christians have kind of separated the concepts of the word versus the word made flesh. And certainly there's a conceptual understanding so I can put it into practice, but the whole reason God gave us his word was so that we would understand it and live it out for the good of others, empowered by that very word to be able to do it. I wanted to draw your attention because of what you said, but this is the first letter of John, the first John, the epistle, and chapter 1, verses 1, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life. See, it's all that simple stuff, right? Right. It's all those senses coming together. Yeah. And that's where a lot of people in our community, if they don't have a follower of Jesus that they know well enough to see it, hear it, touch it, and therefore they're left without any evidence of it. But we get to be the ones that start to reverse that. Very, very, very cool indeed. 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So in your ministry, because I can envision, you know, you walk into a church and you're, you know, I love the message of, you know, identify someone who doesn't have what you have. They don't have that level of Christ in them abundantly. But I, you know, I can envision a lot of Christians saying, yeah, I don't feel that either, right? This idea of as we've separated the concept from the actual experience, you know, parable of the sower is one that I kind of go back to an awful lot. And you almost have these tiers of how the faith hits people, right? And that third one, which is, you know, their faith gets choked out by the worries and the wealth of the world, right? That's my little paraphrase of it. And it's like, they're not experiencing this either. And so do you, as, you know, as part of your ministry, are you kind of trying to help people develop those senses, like to see Jesus in their lives, to experience that joy, to actually almost kind of bet and lean into Jesus and to obey him so that they can feel these things? Is that a part of what you're doing?

Yeah, for sure. So that's why Christian community is so important because we need to hear and experience from each other the reality of how much we are loved, valued of God, and how important it is for us to take that valuable, those valuable things and go out and live it out for the good of other people. Otherwise, we never get to experience it. Going back to that first John, first John chapter four, it's like this is love, right? He's like, this is love, not that we love God, but that God loved us and gave his son as an atoning sacrifice. And then he completes it. Now that we have been so loved, let us now love one another that this love may be made complete, right? And that's the part that a lot of times we're missing. We forget to receive that love and therefore we don't have any love to give. Or we receive that love and we forget how important it is to give that love out so that we never get to this place of experiencing the completeness of being loved and freely loving. Or like Jesus says in Matthew 10, freely you have received, freely give. Now that I have loved you, now let us love one another. It's this receiving and giving part, and that is happening first and foremost in a family and as a collection of families within the congregation or the family of faith. So we really make a really big deal, especially in how we disciple one another is focusing, starting with what Jesus focused on, or maybe what I should say is how the father focused Jesus, which is on our true identity. It's interesting that in all four Gospels, Jesus is baptized, right? And the cool thing about it is, Jesus is baptized and in the context of that baptism, the father says, this is my son whom I love, with him I am well pleased. It's like he's stamping them, right? That's your identity. And what's cool, and I know this is Jesus the son of God, but what's cool is that the father does that before Jesus has done anything. He's starting his ministry out of abundance. You're loved, I already approve of you. Go have a blast of an adventure, right? And that's the same for us every morning. We can wake up and remember 1 John chapter 3 says that how great is the love the father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. It's like, hey, let's, before we do anything else today, let's make sure we have a big gulp of that good news. And then with a smile on our face, we can go out and I don't know what's going to happen today. I don't know who's going to bring a cross my path, but I'm gonna look for opportunities to give out cool cups of water of that which I have in abundance. Do you find, do you find that when you go into churches, let me phrase it like this. So I think there's a way, there are certain churches I've been in that create a very particular ethos. Probably all of them do. They have a very particular culture. They emphasize certain things. They have resource for certain things, not for others, all that kind of good stuff. And it starts to, I think, shape the way that the congregants actually think within the church. And so they start to focus on only what the pastor's preaching on that Sunday. They start to think about, you know, just the books that the church is assigning them to read in small groups or what have you. Right. And so there's a way in which these churches function to help almost reinforce a particular sensemaking within their congregation. And so how do you help churches overall think through like a holistic ministry? And we think about it, you know, when we think about an individual, it's almost easier to think about a holistic individual, but a holistic ministry is a very different thing, isn't it? How do you, how do you handle that? Or am I just like misperceiving that? Oh no, it's, see, first of all, every single church, right? You asked, you know, are there such churches in every single church. And so the key then becomes, and the reason there's such a vague, complicated understanding of what this ethos might be is that nobody, nobody said is what's the main outcome all this stuff is supposed to produce, right? In other words, what's the point? What's the purpose or what's the mission, right? And if we don't have clarity on what the mission is, then anything we throw in there, we can say is discipleship, right? Anything we throw at that. Yeah. It's like, well, I don't know what it is, but it has to do with Jesus and stuff. And then you have this hodgepodge at best, or you end up narrowing it down to something that probably is the personal, you know, uh, little hobby horse of the pastor. Uh, either way, those churches don't just look at who's there, look at all the people that aren't there. Right. That's why our impact in the community is so unremarkable. Um, I, I, uh, I was, I, I often am at churches that are very old, right? So I've been to one, a couple of them that are 150 years old. One, one I was at just is getting ready to celebrate 165 years, um, et cetera. And I'm like, my, my typical line is, okay, you guys have been the people of God living in this community full of the love of God for 165 years. What, what, what would you think would be the impact on this community after people filled with love living in the community for 165 years? And the answer is how come it's so little, right? And it's because we never get around to living a life of love for the good of others. And so if we can say, what is the mission of God? Well, the mission of God is to redeem and restore all things to his kingdom, right? We got all kinds of different verses we could go to with that. The means of that is the death resurrection of Jesus. And what's our part in this? It's to do what Jesus gave us to do to take that love and to go out and make sure people are experiencing that love in the community in action, word, and just standing alongside them. Now, the trouble is we don't have a vision of what that looks like. So one of the things I like to, to, to do to just kind of clear up what the mission is, right? I like to have a, a map of the community and then on there will be a cross, which is the building, the church building. And then we say, you know, we're gonna keep calling this, whatever, you know, uh, Highland church, whatever you want to call it. Uh, but we know the building is not the church. The building is the church where the church is the building where the church gathers. Right. So then I like to do a, uh, a, uh, a bunch of dots indicating, this is where all the people of Highland church live. That's the church. Now you can see the footprint of the church, uh, in Highland. And I say, now we gather as the church, but let's face it, it's only a, a fairly meager, uh, minority of even those that are signed up to be a part of the church, right? So if that's the impact of the church, that's not that great of an impact, but if that's a means to the greater end, which is all these people and all these places. So we have all these dots on the map and then we, and then we superimpose dots of a different color that indicate the loved neighbors, right? So you got all the people that are participating in the church. And now what if we did the one thing Jesus gave us to do, love our neighbor. And now you have all the, the superimposed dots that are a different color. And that is a powerful image for people, right? Now they can go, oh wow, it's not like 40%, 30%, 25% of our people gathering for an hour or two, but look at the impact on this community of people being loved by people who have an abundance of love. And then what I always do is I stop and say, now guys, this is the mission, not what we're doing here. This is important. This is a means, but that is the mission. And our discipleship process, if it's going to be A, following what the gospels show us, and B, see this result, it's a training process for helping us go out and to love people that need God's love. And that clears up that issue of mission very quickly for people. They're like, duh, that makes complete sense. And what happened in the gospels and in the acts and the epistles is wherever Jesus followers went, little redemptive movements started, right? That's because they were loving their neighbors and they could tell them where this love came from, right? So the good news of God is articulated very much so, but it's the experiencing that good news of God that will transform a neighborhood, a workplace, a community. That's the mission. And that's what we're here to help you to go learn how to do and get better at it and help you up when you stumble, you know, etc. But that, all of a sudden, people are like, you know what? Let's go do that. I think that is excellent for keeping a church on track and I think it's a great place for us to close.

in our conversation here. Greg, this is amazing work you're doing. Give people where they can find you. You know, I've got the website here, dwelling114.org, and it's the numbers 1-1-4, correct? Correct. Like 1-14 of John, right. Of John. And so we'll put that in the show notes, but man, it's been fantastic talking to you. I love this ministry. I love the concepts. And I'm sure that you have a great impact on the congregations you visit. So, hey, folks out there, if you're looking for something in your church and you want to reach out, I assume you can just go to dwelling114.org and there's a learn more button there. I can see it on the website right now. Reach out and I just encourage you to engage, Greg. This has been a fantastic conversation and just really helpful. So thanks a lot, Greg. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Thank you, my friend. Good times. All right. Take care, everybody. We'll see you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. I want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you will find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Life Audio. It's a crazy world out there, moms and dads. I'm Katherine Segers, host of Christian Parent, Crazy World, the podcast that tackles tough topics to help you be a godly parent in an ungodly world. Subscribe at lifeaudio.com.