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How Mark & Michelle Have Built A Family On Mission To Build God's Kingdom · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  It can be tempting to have a vision of how we want to do mission, and then it might not actually be needed. But what we found is, if you start with where the need is, that actually opens up those doors. Because when they're aware of a need, they actually are more oftentimes aware or open to a conversation about other needs. And one of the things in those years that we found that actually has been transformative from our community connection is...
• 0:28
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. I am joined today by Mark and Michelle Tiderman. Thank you guys for jumping on here today.
• 0:53
  What's up? Thanks for having us. Yeah. Good to be here. Fellow Cincinnati family, and we're good friends with Mark and Michelle. And one of the things that we are going to be talking about, April and I talked about it last week in the podcast, the importance of being a family on mission. We know that oftentimes the way we think about this as families is that our mission as believers in Jesus and all that we're called to do for his kingdom can sometimes be pit against our
• 1:21
  life as a family and our desire to build really strong families, to be present with our families. And so we are always looking for the win-win. Sometimes that trade-off just does happen and, you know, you have to take steps back in certain seasons from mission. But we definitely want to be looking for creative ways to go on mission as a family. We talked last week about it's not family and mission.
• 1:42
  you know, family as mission, but family on mission. So I am so excited for you guys to get to hear from Mark and Michelle. And they are also the community coaches for the family teams accelerator for the month of October. So one of the great things we get to do in the family teams accelerator, every single month, we try to introduce you guys to new community coaches.
• 2:03
  These are families that are family teams that are working on and have really focused on the area we're going to be covering that month. So what we get at week one in the accelerator, you get a playbook for how to be a family on mission. Week two, Mark and Michelle are going to jump on a Zoom call and talk to you guys. And so as you're listening to us, have this conversation over the podcast. This is a great time for those of you guys who are going to jump into the accelerator or for anybody who's in.
• 2:25
  The accelerator to just jot down any questions you guys have, things that you want to cover with Mark and Michelle. During week three, April and I gave you guys a little tutorial for how to be a family on mission from our perspective. And then week four, our family jumps on Zoom and just does a whole town hall to talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. That's the accelerator. So if you guys want to jump in for the month of October or for the year, you can do it month to month. You can do it for the whole year, whatever you want to do. But yeah.
• 2:48
  It's mission month. And so we want to be really thoughtful about how to be a family on mission. So yeah, Mark and Michelle, why don't you guys introduce your family team? First of all, who are you guys? Where do you live? Like, tell us a little bit about your, your family and then we'll dive into the mission conversation.
• 3:02
  Okay. So we're the Tidermans. We like to say that we have an alliance with the Priors, you know, uniting the North and the South, the armies of the North and the South. And tried to, we've been called to Fairfield, tried to get out of Fairfield a lot of times, and God continues to missionally send us to Fairfield. So that's pretty awesome and clear in hindsight.
• 3:24
  Yeah, we have four kids ranging from age nine to 18. And we have lived in Fairfield for a lot of years.
• 3:33
  Yeah. Awesome. Michelle originally got, like I grew up in Pittsburgh. She went to Sycamore and because it's kind of cool, you know how she got here, she was getting placed at Young Life and there's a whole story. We have so many incredible stories of how like the tiniest little tweak would have changed, you know, so much of our trajectory, but she was getting placed as a leader of Young Life and the night before she was supposed to be placed at Middletown High School, the leader switched. They made a couple of switches and she got placed at Fairfield. Hmm.
• 4:02
  And that started our life in Fairfield. 25, 26 years ago, and it's like Fairfield along the way. So it's been pretty awesome. Yeah, I'm so excited for you guys to hear that there's different ways that God can direct a family, and regions can really matter. And so what you're describing there is sometimes God really knows, hey, I want your family to really be rooted here. And so what Mark's referring to is, yeah, Cincinnati, there's, you know, we're kind of a flat area. So there's a north, south, east, west kind of Cincinnati. We live in the south. We live in...
• 4:29
  the Northern Kentucky contingent of Cincinnati. They live in the North up there in Fairfield. So yeah, really excited to hear you guys. Now you guys, you might've like met on the mission field, right? Tell us a little bit about like how team Tiderman started and then where that where mission fit into, to that picture.
• 4:46
  Yeah, we met on a mission trip when we were both college age in Mexico City. So we came with, I came to Mexico with a church from Cincinnati. Mark came from Pittsburgh and we spent our first week together serving in the garbage dumps of Mexico City.
• 5:01
  I think it was almost an arranged marriage. My mom was on the trip with me, and she basically found this beautiful girl and tried to set us up. And successfully, even though I was a little bit thick, scald, I didn't realize it at first. But over time, God revealed how we were going to get married. So it's pretty awesome. But yeah, mission field. And then right after we got married, felt led to actually join that mission organization with Operation Serve. So Mexico City, we really spent the first three years of our marriage together.
• 5:30
  in Mexico City, you know, raising support and...
• 5:34
  leading short-term mission trips there. So really the foundation of our marriage and our family team is mission. And this is actually a really big part of our story with mission because we were so global mission-minded and had such a passion. We both did. Our marriage was founded on global missions. We both had this dream that we would raise our kids globally and kind of just like waiting for that to unfold. And after we came back from Mexico and had our first
• 6:01
  child and really thought it was just a matter of time till we went to another country and went back to the global mission field. And that was, I mean, that's just foundational for our marriage. Yeah.
• 6:13
  I think that's the very tricky question for us. You know, you guys know our kids, we love when our kids get a heart for global missions, when they get into that kind of early season as singles, as young adults, like this is the time, please go out there. But there is a confusion and our kids ran into it because, you know, as they were in various countries, Norway, Japan, Korea, our kids have been around a lot of missional groups and opportunities. Yeah.
• 6:41
  There was a lot of tension between a passion for mission as a single young adult believer and a passion for family. And, you know, there wasn't in a lot of these mission organizations anyone really thoughtfully, at least in our experience, trying to help.
• 7:01
  young people resolve this. You know, our kids were in one of our, one of the couples from our family was in South Africa right after they got married. And so they were on the mission field as a married couple. And yeah, there was like, they were very much treated like singles in some ways. And that was a lot of tension for you guys, as you went through that transition, kind of talk through, you know, how did that work for you guys? How did you go in and out and wrestle through the tension between feeling called to missions and then starting a family?
• 7:31
  So it felt like we felt peace when we were expecting our first child and felt like in God, we felt peace to come back off of the international mission field. And essentially, but very soon after we started to really feel clearly called to still spend ourselves and to, we started a ministry very similar to what we were doing in Mexico of a mercy mission here, but here in Fairfield, we called it the simple church of Fairfield. We learned that we were kind of like partaking in the community and a part of the community at Northstar church.
• 8:01
  And so we modeled a lot of what we were doing, just what we were doing there, but in our hometown.
• 8:07
  That also came from leading these short-term mission trips in Mexico City. And people would leave feeling so filled up and fired up about God and mission. And we would tell them at the end of the week, it's not Mexico. It's that you gave your life away. And you can go do the same thing when you go to your hometown. So when we left Mexico and came back to Fairfield, we were like, well, I guess we better do what we told everyone else to do. Yes. So that kind of fueled this local mission.
• 8:35
  which then later, you know, it was a few years of that. And it was a bit trying, you know, and I was an entrepreneur at the time and felt called to start a business. And so I had this software business and we were trying to build this out. And it was pretty stressful. You know, stewarding a family and a business is hard, but then you're stewarding a family and a ministry is hard. And so you're
• 8:57
  All these, you know, mission, family, business, all these things, as you know, it's hard at times to steward all of them and to know where should I put my focus. And praise God that he ended up kind of
• 9:08
  evolving that Simple Church of Fairfield into, you know, in a lot of ways, what is now Red Door Church. So we had a number of other families come around us and we had this awesome kind of just partnership and so many incredible stories. I would say the biggest benefit that we found for getting to the mission field or at least spending our lives early in our family team journey, we're kind of...
• 9:29
  inversely, like almost in a lot of ways, we've had to learn the family team priorities. The benefit of that is it gave us such a heart of generosity and such a heart of God showing up in the midst. And I feel like there was just such a dependency and that you see that on the mission field or when you have big, great need.
• 9:47
  you get an opportunity for God to show up. And it built, even our kids, Isaac's named after, his name means, you know, on the mountain of the Lord, the Lord will provide. And the significance of the seasons we went through and God's provision in that gap, this continual dependence on him really formed us, I would say, that has still really stuck with us and been formational of that missional piece. Yeah.
• 10:11
  On a practical note, we brought Marcos as a toddler, our oldest, into this time we would serve this low-income apartment complex. And we would knock on people's doors and on a Saturday morning, bring, hey, we brought you these Pop-Tarts to let you know God loves you. And us knocking on their door, people would be a little more guarded in their response. But as soon as you have a cute three-year-old with you, it actually really benefited our ability to relate to people and...
• 10:40
  It was a great way to like bring our kids in. Kids, you know, kids just broke down those walls. Yeah. It's so important to find a mission that fits the shape of the family, you know, in that season. So you're called to something, but when God gives you a two-year-old or a three-year-old or multiple kids, then he's going to call you to something that utilizes their, they're not an obstacle to mission. They are, you know, yeah, that's,
• 11:07
  They're an asset. They're an asset. So you guys were maybe talk a little bit about that season and just part of what we want to do is give people, you know, like little handholds into possible, like a possible vision for what a mission could look like. So tell us a little bit about what that mission was like to that low income apartment, what that was about, how God used that for you guys.
• 11:28
  Well, it started with, you know, the simple, it's like a vineyard style outreach, knocking on doors, giving a box of cereal, letting them know God loves you, ask me if we can pray. And over time, we've just built relationships with people. We ended up involved in a lot of people's lives, helping with a lot of the needs that come from a low income industry.
• 11:45
  area. Running Bible studies. It turned into, yeah, we had a summer camp for kids. We ended up with a Bible study that we ran in someone's apartment. We just brought a babysitter and had our kids hang out with the kids of the families we were meeting with. That was a huge step outside our comfort zone in some ways, just involving our kids in that way, but also just felt so natural to say, this is what we're doing as a family.
• 12:10
  I think a principle there is always, is, you know, we, we tried to ask ourselves over and over again, like, where is God already working? And we could see that at times. And we feel, you'll feel, you know, a calling or you'll feel kind of a guided, oh, maybe something you observe, or there's an opportunity, or it feels like God might be moving. And we would just try to be present there. We also would just see, where's there already a need? I think there's a lot of times it can be tempting to kind of have a vision of how we want to do mission. And then.
• 12:40
  It might not actually be needed. But what we found is like, if you start with where the need is, that actually really opens up those doors because when you can meet a need, there's.
• 12:51
  You know, people are much more... When they're aware of a need, they actually are more oftentimes aware or open to a conversation about other needs. And one of the things in those years that we found that actually has been transformative from our community connection is the need to actually coach kids' sports teams. We would just be signed up for a basketball league and maybe our kids just want to play basketball. We'd go there and whoever would coach, especially if your kid's...
• 13:20
  On the younger side, you go to a Y basketball practice. And as parents, you have to sit there the whole time anyway. And half the time, it's kind of like, I could totally do a better job than this. Like knocking the people there. But half the time, it's like you're already putting the time in. You might as well just be the coach. So we started to find that by simply saying, sure, I'll coach.
• 13:42
  It is incredible, our society, how we position ourselves under a coach's leadership and influence and authority by default. So you think of like, and I would just by simply checking a box as I'm signing my kid up for whatever sport, I just check this one box. It's the only thing, you know, they immediately, when they show up, they all look to me to lead. They all look to us to lead, whatever it is. And from, and we found that cultural things,
• 14:09
  you get that hour with those kids. It's incredible opportunity. If my kids are going to participate, I'm just going to coach. And we found that. And then we found alliances where we would find anytime we could find another family with a similar aged kid that we could partner with. That was gold on so many levels. That's one of our big principles is when you can find alliances with other family teams to go into mission together.
• 14:32
  There were seasons. One of my favorites, there's one other guy, another Mark, that we partnered with so many times. And many of the times, he'd be the head coach in the baseball world, or I'd be the head coach maybe in football, or we'd switch off at different times. But there's just a chance to really just partner together. And over and over again, we've found that now all the way up through middle school sports.
• 14:54
  And then coaching even now CrossFit gym now in Fairfield. But the coaching component is fascinating because by default, people come under your leadership as a coach. And I literally have kids that they'll come up to me 10 years later at a football game that I coached in flag football when they were in fifth grade and it's a senior now. And they still remember me. But give me a fist bump. And it's an open door to talk. And sometimes I don't even remember them.
• 15:19
  But it's just, you know, and it just is such an opportunity because I just get to partake in that journey with them. That's so good. Yeah, I think that's simple. A lot of what you guys are going to hear is what are ways, again, we could do this together. How can we make sure that this is not a either or or trade off? Like I'm going to spend less time with my kids, our family, more time on mission.
• 15:41
  When you've got young kids, when you're going through each of these stages, there's just ways to do this. So serving the apartment complex is really great with little kids. Then the sports start. Then you've got opportunities there. And I love what you're describing, Mark, that when you just check that box, you instantly get all kinds of equity from people. They're looking to you as a leader. And so you just have influence. And part of what we're trying to describe is that God created family.
• 16:06
  to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule. And that is part of the process is you have to look for opportunities of influence so that you can do that. Michelle, you were doing cross-country. Tell me about that. Well, I run this kids cross-country group that is our kids and a friend and then has expanded beyond that.
• 16:23
  You just made it up. Basically, you made it. You made this thing up. You like created your own cross country. Yeah, it's not an official thing. We just meet at parks around Fairfield and we do a running workout. And then I teach on how running can teach us about life and God. So I give them a little lesson. And it's a great way we've seen for people to plug in and. Yeah.
• 16:45
  One of the runs that we do is always we start at our house and run to the park nearby. So, 30 kids running down the street and, you know, the neighbors are out like, what's going on? And we've had neighbors jump in with that. Tell the story of specifically Rachel's story. So, then our neighbor brought her kids just a couple times and then ended up asking us, I loved what you shared in those teaching times. Would you be willing to teach us more about the Bible? I was like, wow.
• 17:09
  Yeah, definitely. So it's been a really fun and such an easy thing. Again, like we love running. We want to run with our kids. So then we invite other kids and then they tell their friends and it's turned into this thing. Well, in that case specifically, even when she asked you to teach her about the Bible, you said yes. And you did. She did a story form life with the Jesus storybook Bible, which was so cool. And she framed it, but it was.
• 17:32
  the woman that was asking you had maybe a 12 year old. And at the same time you have, we had our 12 year old. So she just brought our daughters right into it. So it's literally, it doesn't have to be the either or a missionally going after my neighbors in this Bible study, or let's just bring our kids right into it. Yeah, right there.
• 17:49
  That's amazing. It's always a win when you can find something that you're doing with your kids that can be like a family activity that overlaps with your mission. Those have been the best missional places for us. It's really that concept of where you already are. What are you already interested in? Where do you already want to spend your time? And then viewing that missionally. So, you know, for us, that's...
• 18:11
  In some season, it's been join the neighborhood pool and remember that we're not just going to the pool. We're going to build relationships. We're going to be a light. We're trying to invite people into our lives. But it's where we already are. It's where our kids are and where we are together. Well, those alliances are so important, too. It's really exhausting and tiring and lonely if you're going on mission and you don't have those alliances. Yeah.
• 18:36
  You feel called into an area. And we've had seasons of that. But other times, even at the pool is an example, or now at the CrossFit gym, we've got these like, maybe have like, we maybe have four or five other families that are locked in and they're all pursuing that same community, same group of people. And so you'll literally be hanging out with them and talking, hey, it's literally...
• 18:54
  swapping notes like, oh, did you hear this? I was praying with this other person or, hey, I was having the conversation and they're really open. They want to read the word. Again, from the beginning of Red Door, we've seen this so many times when you can just throw these parties. It's like creating collisions. It's like reminds me of Matthew where like when Matthew and Jesus comes to his house and he's like, he invites all his friends and just creating collisions for when you've got friends who are followers of Jesus that have the light and are intentional and they show up ready to ask questions. Yeah.
• 19:22
  And to be intentional and to like have it on their radar and you're praying into it. It's real exciting and very fruitful. I love it. Yeah. I'm just kind of counting how many birds were killing with one stone to use that horrible analogy. It's like, what are we doing, Jeremy? I'm not killing anything. I promise. I love birds. But there's a, you guys are getting exercise. You guys are building community with friends with these alliances. You guys are sharing the gospel with people. You guys are discipling your own kids.
• 19:51
  And we marriage and get marriage. Yeah. Yeah. That's the neighborhood one is another one that we at one point shifted to really focus on our neighborhood. And we felt a conviction. Yeah, we can even start there. Well, yeah, after we kind of had that global vision for so long, we spent a lot of years in Fairfield.
• 20:12
  kind of halfway here of like, but really we want to be in Kenya or, you know, across the world somewhere marked in some global travel. Always longing for somewhere else. Yeah. We just thought, Oh, one of these opportunities is going to work out for us to go. And there came this point where we had to lay it down and say, we are here. We're going to be fiercely local here. And that's when we kind of shifted to our neighborhood. And that ended up into a story form life kind of study on our back patio with neighbors. And again, we invited our kids to,
• 20:41
  into that time. And they were part of a discussion. And these other families were like, oh, our kids could be in on this. So they invited their kids into it. And it just was just very organic and natural. We started doing the open dinners that we learned at 1KH and just, you know, the framing of that and neighbors. Again, it's a perfect example. Our neighbors were always like, thank you so much for gathering people. We love our neighborhood. We just don't see anybody. And
• 21:05
  Oh, so good. Yeah, it's like, you know, Jesus talked about the disciples going from, you know, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, and you guys have gone from the ends of the earth back to Jerusalem, all the way down. Literally, that's exactly what, well, I, because I heard, I forget the name, who made the quote, but there was a haunting moment. I was literally flying home from, on a flight from Romania, and God totally rocked my heart, and he said,
• 21:28
  Mark, you know, the light that shines the furthest abroad shines the brightest at home. And I didn't even know the people's names or their hearts on my street. And all we were doing, we were so, and so my infatuation with having an impact way out there, God was like, yes, that's still a very good, righteous desire and dream, but you've got to really, and that actually is that when it was really when we started to embrace the family team concept was it shifted in me of like, my primary identity was always driven as like an entrepreneur or a missionary. And it's shifted to be,
• 21:58
  I need to be a son and then I need to be a husband and a father and then pursue my neighborhood. So it was right when COVID hit. So it was nice that we were like, we got to benefit from this lockdown. And that's when we started our Shabbat rhythm, our family dinner rhythm, our, you know, all the family team rhythms that started essentially after that identity shift. And we started to really go inside out from that in literally Acts 1-8, which you just quoted literally became our verse. Yeah.
• 22:23
  So good, guys. One of the principles I've noticed, too, that you guys are really living out is when you are the initiator, that's when you get a lot of the benefits of doing multiple things at once. So when you join somebody else's program.
• 22:39
  all the time. Sometimes it's like not in a neighborhood, not maybe the sport you would choose, you know, not the schedule you choose, not the people you would choose. But when you, when you initiate, like what you were doing, Michelle, with the cross country, it was like, Hey, this is what I want to do. I'm going to do it with my kids and we're going to do it with their friends. And we're going to do it in our neighborhood or we're going to do it at our parks. And then, you know, a lot of people don't realize you can design a program like you, you know,
• 23:01
  Like you can start something like, and you might look at something and say, well, there's only one or two, you know, things that are happening at once. But if you design it, you can make five or six or seven different things that you're trying to get done all happen at once because you took the initiative. And so I just want to encourage families to be like, and that can happen when you join a program as well. But you oftentimes it requires a little bit of initiative on your part. It takes, sorry. I think one also thing is a willingness to have it only be us.
• 23:28
  If the stakes are only successful if 10 families show up or whatever. So we've had to really shrink that. And when we do that, it's so freeing to be like, hey, we're doing this thing. And if it looks like the same thing with kind of open dinners, like, sure, we'll invite it, we'll cast a wide net. But if it's just the six of us, or if we have one other family that's in, we find a date that works for that. And we go full speed and it allows God to bring them everywhere.
• 23:53
  Make your family the hub. And this is like, you know, it's good enough. Like you start something. Yes. You're a sort of a gravitational force. You're a vortex as a family, especially when you have four kids like you guys do. You're like, we're a force to be reckoned with. We can sustain something ourselves. And then other people can start to orbit that thing.
• 24:13
  and get the goodness. And that's when your family can be a blessing. But yeah, there are seasons where it's just like, we're doing this for us and we're going to keep this up. And people are going to eventually come around this thing. But, you know, for now, we're happy to just continue to enjoy this ourselves. And you get to the point where you're actually relieved when it's just the 60s. You schedule something, it's like, sweet, nobody else is here. Yeah.
• 24:36
  Love it. Well, you guys now are diving into this whole CrossFit thing. I want to, I want to like understand this strategy. I've loved hearing this story. So how did you guys get involved with this, this one? And how is that, how has that worked out in terms of like, and you think about, because a big question and one of the things that's just realities of our current day and age is that.
• 24:57
  People tend to build relationships now around affinity. It used to be mostly proximity. It was like, this is our village. This is how we build relationships. And there's still some of that, like you guys have been able to do in your neighborhood. But man, there's something about affinities, affinity groups and finding places where people are already gathering and have a common interest.
• 25:16
  And I think, you know, CrossFit is a bit of a culty group that loves just like getting together around, you know, this, this one way of being, being fit. So talk to us a little bit about how that happened and what's going on there. So it's kind of neat when we look back, cause I kind of forgot this part, but one of the things we did probably maybe eight years ago is we just started gathering guys for a 5.30 AM workout in my, on Fridays.
• 25:39
  in the summer. So every Friday over the course of about 10 weeks, we would just gather and we would run to a park and I would just make up this workout, you know, and it was like, it would be just dumb half time or goofy stuff and bear crawls. And, but it was, it was awesome. It was gritty and it was like a good group of guys. And then we would finish like usually like stretching out and then we'd either share a passage or kind of ask a question and a decent amount of Christian guys, but also guys that just would come fathers of,
• 26:04
  Marcos' football teammates would just show up and they would have these experiences. And so it's kind of been a rhythm of just shared working out, shared suffering component. And then it was neat how God leaves things together. We've been in this town and really feel called to Fairfield again for this past season. We've been talking about, we started to follow CrossFit about three years ago. We started doing it in our garage and we started having this desire to start a gym.
• 26:31
  Well, it was two years ago, and one of our friends were like, hey, there's another guy here also trying to start a gym. And he actually worked for CrossFit Corporate. And this is Keith Knapp. And I had never even heard of the guy. You know, both of us, he had been in Fairfield. They also felt called to Fairfield. And they'd been here for, you know, almost 15 years as well. We live in half a month.
• 26:50
  down the road. It was wild how God had kind of like brought these two groups very clearly focused on fitness, at least. He's more on the fitness side. And I think that we were very much aligned from the day we met. We only met once. And then I got an email from him saying, hey, he's officially starting. And I was like, cool. And I was kind of relieved to not be the one who actually had to start the thing. So I was super pumped to kind of come alongside him. And it's
• 27:14
  So we don't own the gym, right? You know, they're the owners. We're definitely locked in to when we started it. I now coach. Again, going back to coaching CrossFit. Now it's not for everybody, but it's again, just like that sports opportunity. Adults are identical in the same way that they want to be cared for. If you know their name, if you look them in the eye and you give feedback that is caring, but also challenging, you call them up to that next level, it will unlock them. And there's like, again, there's trust that comes.
• 27:43
  So we have this space that's basically set up for mission. People who come to a gym already want to do hard things. They're all about growth physically. Nobody steps in the door. CrossFit's really interesting too, because it's costly. It literally costs a lot of money if you're a member. It's expensive and it's very costly. You go through suffering every single day. That's why it gets that cultish feel. But the only people that stick around are people that are like, I want something more. Wow.
• 28:10
  And so they come, I've heard it said that like the well, another guy, there's another guy in another city. It's actually, I'm starting to get connected to other kind of missional CrossFit owners that are very clearly doing the same thing. And he said, it's like the well, the woman at the well came looking for water, but what she got, what she truly needed when Jesus is like, I have living water for you. And that's what we get to offer to people. And, but that shared, so I know I'm like getting all fired up and I'm just like, I gotta keep talking about this.
• 28:41
  Can I share a little bit more about CrossFit before you guys ask it? So like CrossFit is really fascinating too, because it's literally, we all do the same workout. Okay. We've been, I've been really wrestling with the question. It's like, we've, we've built a church and we've been a part of this church plan and it's incredible. The community that we have is incredible. However,
• 29:00
  A lot of times I don't feel that connected to all the people in the community, even though I'm brothers and sisters with them. Like literally it's like, it's our body, church body. I actually feel more connected to the people in my CrossFit gym. And here's a couple of things. When it comes to CrossFit, you literally see that group every single one hour, every single day. Hmm.
• 29:20
  So the typical person will come to an hour and you end up seeing them. The frequency is, is really interesting. Yeah. And then every single person in a CrossFit gym, it's not just like a gym where you can come and do whatever you want. There's one workout each day. So, you know,
• 29:35
  Literally, when you wake up, you'll look at that workout. And so every single member that comes, all 100 of them, are going to do the exact same workout, which means you all suffer the exact same way. Everyone, there's a shared, like, it feels very similar like a mission trip. Like, you've shared a suffering with everybody that's gone through it. And...
• 29:52
  What's so cool is there's a scale. So there is, it's meant to be where it might be a workout where you might have more elite athletes that are going to do a harder version of it. And you might have beginner athletes or people, you know, people that have certain ailments that they physically can't do things. And that's very common where you scale it down. But everybody does the same. It's meant to hit the same stimulus.
• 30:11
  And so that shared calendar, that shared suffering, it creates a bond that really opens up the door. And what we started doing is, you know, at Midrash or like a story form life question or like a Bible study component, I lead the Saturday class. So it's actually open to anybody. If you're in Cincinnati, come check us out 9 a.m. Almost any Saturday. It's free. Come check it out. After the workout, we'll ask the question. We'll sit down and say, what stood out to you? How did this workout mirror your life?
• 30:39
  I'll usually give a life or leadership teaching principle about how we believe that CrossFit exposes things in our lives. And we believe that we're supposed to be whole. We talk about Shalom. We don't use the word Shalom, but we talk all the time. We were created to be whole and we believe we're supposed to be whole physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. And so that's what we're on the journey to. But these workouts are meant to, it's training, resistance training. We go through hard things to get stronger and, you know, give a teaching like that. And then I just open up the floor.
• 31:09
  And people would just start sharing. Sometimes it's turned into 30 minutes of people just sharing their hearts. And you get these bonds and...
• 31:20
  Well, and then we had a girl who was like, I've never heard anyone talk like this. I want to know more. So then that's where those next level relationships and conversations come from. People are open. They want growth in one area and they're realizing, oh, there's growth possible in all these other areas of my life. And so there's just been this natural openness to conversations. Yeah.
• 31:40
  she's one, that's one that got, she got baptized like three or four months later. She started, we started doing a Bible study. We had like 28 people from our gym that were just started coming, sharing a meal. Half the people had never studied the Bible before like that. And so it's just, yeah,
• 31:54
  Just trying to, again, where are you working, God? Trying to be sensitive and trying to... And we also had partnerships in this too. We have a couple of our core friends who also have a very missional mindset who have the same mission and we're in it together. And that makes all the difference knowing this isn't on us and we're linking arms with people.
• 32:12
  Yeah. Oh, love it, guys. Man, so good. And yeah, so I hope you guys, as you listen to Mark and Michelle describe this, there are these opportunities to have influence, to lead, where people are already gathering, God's already moving, people are already trying to seek for something greater. And this is such an important thing for us as believers to lean into, to be a part of, to try to take some level of responsibility in.
• 32:35
  And you could be one step away from an amazing mission. Imagine being a part of a family, being a child in a family, watching as people are giving their life to Christ, as people are being baptized, as you're seeing the kingdom of God expand. A lot of times where kids grow up in Christian families that are like, hey, we're just, we don't have the bandwidth. We're just going to stay like a family and not do anything else.
• 32:56
  then their kids get older and they're like, what's the point of this? Like you can really disillusion your kids. They're like, well, we didn't like, there's not, there's not a sense of mission. And you think, well, I just, I protected my kids from all that so that we could just be together all the time. But you don't realize that one of the nutrients your kids need is purpose, you know? And so they got to see that and feel, feel that and be a part of that. And so,
• 33:16
  You guys have done that in every stage of your kids' lives. And this is why I find this really helpful. And I'm super pumped that you guys are going to be the community coaches. Any other last things you want to say before? Yeah, I had a couple of things. Well, first of all, just to clarify with CrossFit, our kids do it with us. So that was another thing. I think people at the gym were like, oh, you could bring your kids to a workout. You know, the Saturday class is open to anyone. So we would show up as a family of six and people started bringing their kids. So
• 33:41
  All of our kids are members and our son Marcos is now a coach. Yeah. So he coaches. And so we do, you know. So this is very much still a family mission. And it just is a gift that it overlaps our family passion with our mission. And the other thing is just we've used this phrase faithfulness over impact for so many years because, you know,
• 34:00
  You know, we tell these stories, but we have had fruitful seasons and we've had what seems to us like fruitless seasons when it seems like we're giving the same effort in both. We're showing up, we're being missional, we're trying to initiate, we're trying to have conversations. And some seasons it's like...
• 34:16
  We don't see anything happen. And we happen to be in a season right now where we're seeing a lot of fruit, but we have to remind ourselves, our job is faithfulness. Our job is showing up to where God's called us. And it's His job to make the impact, to change hearts. And we have to keep coming back to that.
• 34:32
  When we've been focused on impact, it's really been disheartening because it's like, it's not ours. You know, it's that Kronos versus Kairos, like God's timing. We have to allow him to worry about the impacts, but we are called to that faithfulness. And it is fascinating now, again, walking around a football game,
• 34:49
  And feeling a high school football game who our son Marcos plays for the, you know, he leads the Fairfield defense, you know, he's out there. And so we've now kind of have this community equity. But again, it's been growing for 15 years. And it's like there's been such a season where it felt like we were planting seeds and saw nothing. And so now we're seeing it's that bamboo tree analogy where we're seeing all this incredible growth. And it's like it's like an overnight success. And it's like.
• 35:15
  No, we've got to remember that. Like it is, these are seeds that we either planted years, decades ago, or God's like, I'm going to give you a harvest that wasn't even your seeds. These are partners with other people, you know, that have been sowing the ground. And so. Yeah. There's just such a beauty in having deep roots in a place. And it took me a long time to come around to that because I so wanted to be elsewhere. Yeah.
• 35:37
  And as soon as I gave that up and just surrendered to say, God, it will be fiercely local where you have us. I just started, my eyes were open to just how much comes from being in one place and having those deep roots over the course of so many years.
• 35:52
  Man, love it. It's a perfect place for us to pause. And just, again, you guys who are listening, we'd love to see your family be on mission. Like this is our heart and how to make this actually a blessing to your family, a blessing to the family culture, a blessing to your kids, a blessing to the presence you spend with each other. There's ways to do this. So if you want to jump in the accelerator, hang out with Mark and Michelle in the month of October, ask them any questions you guys have. I just want to thank you guys again. I was telling Mark, we were hanging out on Saturday and I just like,
• 36:21
  I am so inspired by you guys. I so appreciate what you've done. You have done that faithful work and we needed and need your example in a kingdom and in our city. So thank you guys so much for what you're doing. Thank you. It's bearing fruit. We love what you guys are doing. I know you guys are taking hits in the front line as well. And thank you for doing that. We love you guys so much.
• 36:37
  So for another podcast, right? That's right. I love it. Okay. Thank you, Jeremy. I just want to tell you, I mean, it's such an honor to partner with you in any way. You know, we've learned so much from you. Family Teams has been formative for us and your family. It's been huge. So thank you. Absolutely.
• 36:52
  Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks guys. So yeah, if you want to jump into the Accelerator, we also have a, like a little free PDF for any of you guys who want to just get a small version of the playbook that we're publishing this month that you can go to familyteams.com slash mission, and we'll just send that to you guys for free. But yeah, I can't wait to see what God does this month. I can't wait to hear the stories for the next months or years, families that are finding their mission. We're so passionate about watching families find a mission that God's called and constructed their family uniquely for. So-
• 37:19
  There's a season where the Holy Spirit's going to give power right here. So just bless you guys. Yeah, we feel it. This is such a perfect time for us to have this conversation. So you guys might be feeling the shift happening just in the spiritual realm. If you want to enter into this in a season of harvest, a season where there could be a lot of open doors, this is the time. This is not the time to be on the sidelines, you guys. So if you're feeling that call, let's do it. Thank you guys so much for jumping on here today. See you soon. Bye, everyone.
• 37:45
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.