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Rev. Lathem Postell (Georgia, North Georgia) Interview · What You Have Seen and Heard

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello again and welcome back to another episode of What You Have Seen and Heard.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: The title comes from when John the Baptist sent a delegation to Jesus to ask him
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: if he's the Messiah.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say yes or no, he just says go and tell what you've seen and heard.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this started out as a series of interviews with folks in my home conversation.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome, Latham, to this conversation.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Travis.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to see you again after being together in Johannesburg.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to talking with you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the first question I ask everybody is, how is it that you became a Christian?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you've been a Christian your whole life,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: which I think might be the case,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: how did you come to the point in your life where you took your faith seriously?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I have been a Christian my whole life.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to hate this question,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: ironically, because I really felt like I had a bad answer, right?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up in the Bible Belt and as I pursued a call to ministry,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you're often asked, how did you come to Jesus?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I was not everyone who had this down and out situation.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the ditch, right, my life took a 180 degree turn.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I hated this question because I just felt like I didn't have an answer or
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: at least not a good one.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as I've grown and God has helped me to see that I do have an answer.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's different than others.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually love now to get to share my story because I get to brag on God in
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: the sense that I have been abundantly blessed,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: that there has really never been a time in my life where I didn't know the love
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: of God and really feel love for God.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a cradle Methodist, so I've got two wonderful parents, a mom who grew up.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: In the Methodist Church,
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: her parents grew up in the Methodist Church down in Perry,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Georgia, if you know, south of Atlanta.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And a dad who grew up going to church in
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Bounced around, right?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: They were Congregational Methodist for time, Church of God, right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is a long way to say a joke,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: which is when they got married, they decided they want to go to church.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And like all good couples,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: they compromised and went to where my mom wanted to go to church, right?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So very, very blessed and fortunate for that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been a cradle Methodist, was a part of some just wonderful churches.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Again, where I felt the love of God and where I was taught how to love God from
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: a very early age.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I learned to take my faith seriously,
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: probably most clearly at a little country church, a place called Rutledge, Georgia.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Real small place.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can remember when we moved there, they built the first red light, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So one of those sort of towns.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Great, great town.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Love the place.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't got a
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: red light in our town.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're almost there.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be there soon, hopefully.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a stop sign in a barrel?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: We have a couple.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we have a couple of stop signs anyway.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually getting just out of the town.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting a roundabout put in, which is a topic of no small controversy.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, big time.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, no, so yeah, sorry.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Please go on.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the scene, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you can kind of imagine where I was at.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: My story always kind of intersects with my folks.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: My dad had a call to ministry.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this is why we were there.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was going to seminary, serving
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: as a student pastor.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we were in this small church.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I was the youngest person in the church.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: my sister,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: who was eight years younger than me, was the youngest person in the church.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, probably my dad was the next youngest person in the church.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But man, this church of 30 people.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Loved on me in such a way that I am who I am because of this group of people.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't see this kid that we have to placate and put up with.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: There was one Sunday school class.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It met before the service started.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Woman by the name of Vi Robertson, just a great saint of the church.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she taught Bible study.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: At least for 12-year-old me,
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, knew the Bible better than anyone I've met before and since, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And just instilled within me a deep love for Scripture.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where I began to take my faith very seriously.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: went through confirmation there and really began
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: to not just have my faith be something My parents gave me that the church entrusted
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: to me, but it was mine.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It really grew from there.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I could say a lot more.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was eventually reappointed here to Cartersville, so I'm back in my hometown.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I call this home because this is where my wife and I met.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was a church plant.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: As a family, that was us.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was great.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk for a long time,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: but that's When I tell my story about coming to faith and being a person of faith,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I always want to highlight what God did for me,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: which was he blessed me with just abundance to always be able to look back
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: and see his love for me in my life.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the other story, but I've got that story.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've learned is I love to hear the stories of people who were down and out,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: like Saul on the road to Damascus.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not me.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I've learned that some folks,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: that's their story,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: love to hear the stories of just God's steadfast, abundant faithfulness.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's my story.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think about that.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: My story, I did not grow up in the church at all, but I came to faith.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: But my wife was in church her whole life from an early age.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing to think about the God who kind of pulled me You know,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: into his love and embrace.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: my wife has been blessed to never know what it's like to really live outside of
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: that, you know, and both of them are glorious in different ways.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you are, you are a pastor.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me a bit about how God called you into ministry?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's kind of a continuation of that story.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was what was next.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, There's so much to it, and you know this going through the Methodist system.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: As you are constantly sort of asked your call story,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've reflected back,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: and I go, look,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you the narrative, and I'll share that with you in just a second, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But really,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: to tell the whole story,
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: like I can go back years before when I really felt God calling me to ministry,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: and as I've reflected, I'm going, well, God was pushing me to understand it then.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Really, it's hard for me to separate these stories,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: but I'll give you the narrative that I have to turn into the board of ministry
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: when I went before them.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we were living here in Cartersville, and we're in a church plant.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, every day is ministry.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that at the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm just a middle schooler,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: high schooler,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm serving every day in ministry alongside my folks
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: and alongside this great church.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had a youth group, a small church plant.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: We were doing a confirmation retreat,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: but our youth group wasn't large enough where it was just sixth graders.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: So a couple of them were going through confirmation,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: but everybody went on the confirmation retreat to Lake Junaluska,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: which I don't know if that means anything for you.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've never been there, but I've
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: heard about
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: it.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So, so we were, we were there.
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  SPEAKER_00: That was where confirmation retreat was.
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  SPEAKER_00: Great, great weekend.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: Didn't think much of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just another great weekend.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But on the way back, um,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of stopped,
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: pulled off into a little town about 30 minutes outside of Cartersville.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sort of the last thing the leaders had for us were letters from home.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: folks important to us in our life who I found out later that they actually meant
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: to give them to us in Lake Junaluska, but forgot.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: one of those sort of divine intervention things that actually worked out,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: at least in my story.
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  SPEAKER_00: And
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're out here.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a playground of a little elementary school, 30 minutes outside of town.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I can see the bench in my mind's eye.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I sit down and start reading this letter.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually from my father and just kind of reading through it.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish I knew exactly what the words were.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't old enough yet to, I guess, know I should have kept a letter.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't have it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: But It was in reading that letter,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: sitting on that bench,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: that the way I describe it is I've never heard God speak audibly to me.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But in that moment,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: it was as if it was the clearest and most obvious thing in the world that God,
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: as I sat on that bench, was asking me to serve in ministry for the rest of my life.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what that meant at the time.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I think, 15, 15, 16.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we were very active in mission trips to Andros Island in the Bahamas.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought, okay, maybe this is mission work there.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that place.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I loved the people there.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: We went to the same city every time.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought maybe God's asking me to move to Staniard Creek, Andros Island in the Bahamas.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I just continued.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I knew, I was like, all right, I'm supposed to be in ministry.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as I kind of grew up in the church, Just sought every opportunity to serve, right?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Serving in the church, had opportunities within the local church to preach, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: In my local church,
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: and then kind of as lay pulpit supply in a couple churches outside of my church,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: but in our county.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it was,
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: that moment of being called to ministry for me was a profound moment of clarity.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: The discernment of the call to pastoral ministry was Was more gradual, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Was just God working in me through experiences over time to show me that my gifts
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: and graces aligned with the church and that that's where I actually felt
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: the most alive, particularly through preaching.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went to Young Harris College,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: a small Methodist affiliated college here in North Georgia,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: right outside of North Carolina border.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually started serving as a pastor my senior year of college.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I don't know why they let me do that and probably shouldn't have.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the reason why I'm laughing is
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: almost every one
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: of these interviews I've been having with folks,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hearing,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: especially with folks from my Met and General Conference,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: there are bits and pieces of my own story I hear being echoed back to me.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of them.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was in my senior year of college and they started serving too.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe you can go through the same things for me.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they just needed somebody that was willing to.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, hey, this is a great opportunity while I'm in college.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The plan was to go to seminary right after college, so I thought I'll serve this church up here.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like three hours from Atlanta where I went to seminary.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I'll serve there for a couple months,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: and then I'll get an appointment down near Emory.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: But no, these are great people.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: They loved me, and I loved them, so I served there for four years.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't even go to, I maybe shouldn't say this out loud, but it was in a former tribe.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even go to license to preach school until like a year in.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned everything I was doing wrong for the past year, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, right.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: But God just kept opening these doors that showed me that my calling was to be in
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: the local church, to love God's people, and to preach the Word.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's my calling.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really interesting.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I did go straight to seminary,
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: but I had a similar thing where I told my district superintendent,
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to serve at church for a year and then I'm going to leave and I'm going to
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: to Asbury because everybody was going to Asbury.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, look,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you what God's telling you,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: but what I can tell you is if you want to come in with zero experience and preach
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: for one year at a part-time thing and then leave,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to point you anywhere.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a whole long story about that, but I'm not the person being interviewed right now.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's interesting how God works those unexpected ways out for folks.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that's interesting is how you and I met
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: at General Conference was interesting because I believe,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think you were sitting in, you were an alternate, is that correct?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I was our clergy alternate,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: but you were in,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: you were in,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: you were sitting in at the time and we had this,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I referenced it,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think in a, in a,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: in our other interview, um,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: we had a moment where, uh,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: the question was being raised at one of the,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: one of our annual conferences,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: but a lot of legislation forward that was trying to say, if,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: if it's not enforceable and it's not measurable, we shouldn't have it in the book.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the subcommittees was dealing with,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: there was a,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: there's an encouragement People are encouraged to be part of small groups,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: and because you can't enforce it,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: there's no consequence if you're not,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: this annual conference said we should get rid of it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the subcommittee said that, no, no, no, no, small groups are really important.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: We really want to keep this in there.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: We want to keep the encouragement in there.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I stood up and I said, you know, here's the thing.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: The problem isn't with the small groups.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is it's not enforceable.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: You could fix the concern they have by making it enforceable.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: So everyone has to be part of a small group.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do we want to have that conversation?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And our chairperson said, Do we want to have that conversation?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you were the only person who raised the hand in the whole room, including me.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't raise my hand at that point either.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's why we got to meet.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to share that a little bit with folks about how that kind of strange moment happened.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you talked about you grew up in a town,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: so you got your first experience in a town that was not a very big town,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: and you are in a bigger town.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how big Cartersville is by Georgia standards.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: By Iowa standards, you would be in the top 20 cities in the state.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's the case there or not.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't...
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, have a running list of Georgia City sizes,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: but I would say- There are fewer of them in Iowa,
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: so I mean, it's easier to keep- We're not as big as Atlanta, that I know for sure.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, I mean, 20 is probably a pretty good line.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's growing, I mean, every hour, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ask me again in an hour, and maybe we've grown.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: This area is rapidly growing, and this was- Sort of projected growth.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're 20 years behind in some ways.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the 0708 market crash.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: This was all coming this way and then it stopped and it's kind of kickstarted again.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're on the Northwest corridor.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean anything if you're not from Georgia.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I-75 runs up the Northwest part.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we're sort of getting suburb growth from Atlanta.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So growing pretty rapidly.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you could see outside the walls of our church, we've got a parking deck being built that way.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: New city halls being built literally right across the street.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're in downtown Cartersville.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's growing.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a pretty
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: big city,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: but it has,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: at least Cartersville, really maintained a small town feel that's unique.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've lived in a lot of places.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've lived in places bigger than this and smaller than this.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it has a small town feel.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we could talk a long time.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a podcast about Cartersville.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some of that's because of the way that the school system is set up.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a unique place and a wonderful place to be in ministry.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned you went to school at Emory, the seminary in Atlanta.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, was that simply based on geography or was there another reason why you chose that?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you and I are both people who are going to be increasingly rare in
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: the Golden Methodist Church because we didn't go to Asbury and we didn't go to WBS.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So just curious about how you ended up where you ended up.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So in North Georgia, you went to Candler and I won't say that exclusively, uh, just proximity.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: It made so much sense.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was at the time,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: my now wife who would become my fiance girlfriend at the time,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: uh, was, was here, right.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: She, she was still, um,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: She was a couple years behind me in school,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: so when I graduated college, she was still finishing up.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: She was living at home in Cartersville.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about Asbury,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: and I actually had an opportunity at church that was willing to maybe bring me
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: on staff.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be full-time, but maybe go to Asbury online.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had kind of thought about that for a little bit,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: but I only ended up applying to Emory,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: to Candler, and it was really just because of life circumstances.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was the To be close to my wife.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they were generous to me scholarship-wise.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it just made a ton of sense.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say it was actually God, like always, used that to form me.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think I probably needed to go there because I would have been
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: a pretty party-line guy.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was a cradle Methodist.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: The UMC had always been really, really good to me.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it always was.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the things that grieves me so much about where we can.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to talk too much about the past.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But personally, I had no issues with how I had been treated.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went to Candler probably, if you had asked me, identifying as a centrist.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of, hey, we got to figure out how to make this work.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: We got to stick it out together.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went to Candler,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: and what I saw was kind of where some of the theology that I don't agree with kind
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: of lands in its logical conclusion.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of the crossroads moment,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: right, where you go, I can go that way, and I see the fruit of that.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or I can kind of buckle down and go, what do I actually believe?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I...
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the only case in history,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: but I think I came out of Candler more orthodox than when I went in
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: because I really had to start looking at, you know, what is Wesleyan theology?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is, I mean, even more basic, what does the Bible say?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what do I believe about the authority
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: of Scripture?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it was, I now find myself firmly in the kind of orthodox conservative position.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was blessed.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had Dr.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Kevin Watson, who you're probably familiar with,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: who was still there at Candler, who was really formative for me.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a lot of great conversations about that.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was good.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Again, God knew that and knew where I needed to be.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is interesting because the very,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: very first person who I interviewed for this within my annual conference is
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: a retired pastor named Mike Morgan.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he was really the leader of the WCA in Iowa.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he went to ILIF.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's one of the people who only kind of know him,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know, don't know how those two facts go together.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I did ask him about it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he said it was because of a girl, you know, the woman who's now his wife.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: He just started dating her at the time and wanted to start seminary as late as possible.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what determined it.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it's funny.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny to see how God takes those things that we think are,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know, just what happens to be in front of us and uses it in surprising ways.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: I know I went to a Presbyterian seminary.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things we, there were a lot of Methodists there though.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things we know,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: we always did was we said,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: we cannot take for granted that the school is going to give us everything
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: that we need.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to be really deliberate.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of banded together.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it had started decades before I got there,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: but there had been this culture of Methodists saying, we're going to get together.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about our distinctive Methodist perspective.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of folks came out of that institution with
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: a really robust understanding of what does it mean to be Wesleyan because we,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: because we didn't go to a Wesleyan school.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's why for me,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: this idea of small groups and bands, right,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: that we did talk about it or didn't talk about at General Conference,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I guess is the more accurate way,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: was born out of that experience because I had to surround myself with a group
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: of guys who were generally rowing in the same direction, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would go to class and then Debrief that lunch, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like talk about this work together.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously the influence of Kevin Watson looms pretty large there as well.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: But like I, in some ways got to, I don't think I knew it, but that's what was happening.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I, I'm a big component of that.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not sure what, what,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: what does ministry like in, I mean,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: so I guess Cartersville,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean, how is it, how has God shaped ministry in your life?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've never asked, how long have you been a pastor?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: So 10 years now, which feels like a lot longer in a good way.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I say that with love.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I've known.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I've done.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I get blessed beyond blessings to be able to say that.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love to hear stories of second career pastors, but for me, this is from an early age.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I wanted to do, and I've been blessed to be able to do it.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, right, this is all I've known.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've lived in Cartersville longer than anywhere else I've ever lived.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it seems natural.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: When my wife and I moved here, it sounds silly.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Every time we had moved somewhere, you have to use your GPS for 30 days.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: They even just get to the grocery store, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we knew where to go.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it would be hard to say what does ministry in Cartersville look like compared
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: to ministry in Iowa, obviously, because I've not even been to Iowa.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I can at least compare it somewhat to other places around the state of Georgia.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: we're still,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a unique time to be in ministry because I think we're seeing
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: a Transition in the church.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's going on while we're living it out.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a blessing and it makes it difficult all at the same time.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this may even kind of get into one of the questions I think you were planning
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: to ask a little bit later.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: But
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: we're living in this,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think, time of great opportunity.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Even as it's a time of refining,
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: and what I mean by that is we are probably further behind some places in our country
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: as it relates to sort of general religiosity where,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: maybe I'm speaking out of turn for Iowa,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: but I look at other places around the country and sort of this idea of Christendom,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: this idea of Being a part of a church in such a way
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: because it's culturally advantageous seems to have dissipated in most places.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're still in that transition, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are still people who move to Cartersville and go, I'm a Methodist.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let me Google what Methodist church is downtown,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to go there, and I'm going to be a member.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to do anything.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: They just come.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that still happens, but it happens less and less.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are,
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: like our church,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: our folks are learning,
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: what does it,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: how do you be a Christian in a society where it doesn't always help you?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is, again, used to, you wanted to open a business downtown.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, first question was going to be, what church did you go to?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that was going to generally be the basis of your customers.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's stopping, right?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it's exciting to me because there's a sense in which you get to the core
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: of what matters,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: but it's also a challenge because you're sort of casting competing visions
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: for what did church used to be versus what does it have to be today.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's exciting, but hard.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's a town in Iowa called Ankeny that's just very close to Des Moines.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's having a similar experience
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: to what you say Cartersville is either having right now or is moving toward having.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: The joke was you could plant a splinter in the ground and the next day it'll turn
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: into a house because they're growing them so fast.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting about that is we actually had a group in
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: the Iowa Annual Conference that In a previous situation that was analyzing not just
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: which churches were growing or not,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: but they were comparing them to what counties were growing or not.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in Iowa, we've got a lot of counties that are not growing.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they were looking to say,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: it may be the case that if you're serving a church that's in
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: a county that's just exploding with population,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that you happen to be growing may not be all that impressive.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: It may be the fact that you've got all these other factors going on.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't say that to be down on anybody only in as much as to say
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: that it's probably you have an additional challenge,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: which is how to make sure that when people are flooding in the door,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: if they're flooding in the door because just everyone's coming to Cartersville,
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: how does that shape?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: What you do as a church and what does that do?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: How does that affect how you think of yourself as a pastor?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it would be easy to be like, oh, everyone's coming to my church.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: I must be amazing.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe you are, you know?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: But think about it.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a really interesting,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: in Iowa, the narrative is so often, you know, everyone's moving away.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: No one's staying.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: People grow up.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: They graduate from high school.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: They go away.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: They never come back.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I live in a small town.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: That thanks be to God.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the narrative.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of folks are moving back here.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not going to be We're not going to hit 2,000 anytime soon, you know?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a different set of issues.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: But we even have a situation where we are a fairly well-churched community,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: and we certainly think of ourselves that way,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: but the data is that 40% of the people in our area have no church home of any kind.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not even just for Christmas and Easter.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a reminder.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: After a new conference,
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: I reminded them all to say,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: if we were packed to the gills and every other church in our community was packed to
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: the gills on every Sunday morning, it still wouldn't cover it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the people who need Jesus down.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I say that frequently here.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: They did a couple of years ago,
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: actually the local Baptist Association who has kind of someone who is here and
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: a great guy that partners with not just Baptist churches.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so they sent out a text to all the pastors in the community after Easter.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was two or three years ago and just said,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: how many people did you have in service on Easter?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the number was roughly 30,000 people in Bartow County were in church
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: on Easter, which is, praise God, is a number to celebrate.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the high watermark, right?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: 30,000 people.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the point of it was to show there's 120,000 people in Bartow County.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the high watermark is 25% of the county.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I say it, and I think there was a sermon a few months ago where I did actually share this.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want every church in our community to succeed
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: because we could fill up every church and still not have enough room.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's the sort of mindset we need to have.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a unique thing about Cartersville because it has a rich,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: deep spiritual heritage.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have a great number of churches,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: maybe it's true in Iowa too,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: that I think all kind of feel that way,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: that we want The churches in our community do well, not just our, our church.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I just, I think that's just a fascinating thing.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're in a new era.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you went, you went to, what made you want to go to general conference?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, man, that's a, that's a really long question.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I almost didn't.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Really, truly.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: It, it,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, all right, I'll go back.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've done this for kind of a long time for someone my age in the sense
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: that this was my fourth general conference,
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: if you include 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2024.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I've,
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: both on the lay side and the clergy side,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: had the chance to go to many of these,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: had the chance to serve on both the Connectional Table and the Standing Committee
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: on Central Conference matters and the former tribe.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: None of that really matters other than to say, going into 2024, I just didn't know.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, I've done this enough.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is it time to step away and let someone else do this?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so the only thing I can say is the night that we kind of had – so here
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: in North Georgia, we self-nominate as, you know, not everyone is eligible.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody could nominate,
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: but if you don't nominate, there's no nominations from the floor.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, right.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: The night before, it was due.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I went and read kind of my – Candidate bio, for lack of a better word, from 2022.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: It just felt like God said, I want you there.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so I put my name back in.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the specific reason why I was there this year.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: In general, I just love the church.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy the work of conferencing.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most folks don't.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I do.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're probably one that does as well.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I could give a lot fuller answer to that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I just I like the way we do things.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think maintaining that is important and just being a part of it's a great blessing.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: 2032 is a long way away, but I felt like God wanted me to be there in 2026 for sure.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know that for myself,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I really wanted to be in the room in the legislative committee that I was in.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was really hoping for, and so it worked out really well.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of my background really pushed me to want to be in there for that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when I knew I was going, that was where I wanted to be as well.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our delegation, the way we do it, we kind of break up, even for those who aren't.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: In legislative committees,
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: either alternates or reserves,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: we kind of break up and help those who are seated read through everything.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it was always my plan to be in there.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of got to bounce around, so I sat in for Theology and Doctrine.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: I got to sit in on the superintendency.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: I might have even gotten to sit – well, I helped with something in the ministry committee.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of got to bounce around, but Theology and Doctrine was where my
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: heart is.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the questions that I always ask everybody,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: and if you want to just kind of refer back to what you said,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: that's fine, but I imagine there's probably more to it.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: I always ask everybody to identify what they see as a sickness in the church,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: and I always want to make sure I'm really clear about that a sickness,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: we're not here primarily to be standing in judgment,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: we're here primarily to diagnose so that healing can come.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the intention of it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: It is, to a sense,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: to an opportunity for a prophetic word,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: but also one that is rooted and grounded in the desire for wholeness and healing.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So have you seen...
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen a sickness in, it doesn't have to be the congregations you've served.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: It can just be things you've observed in the church anywhere.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I can give a, you know, everybody has a unique perspective, I guess.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I think where I come at it from is from a,
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Western church, American Bible Belt background.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as I've thought about this,
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: not to break the illusion here, you told me you were going to ask me that question.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I've had some time to think about it.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry if that ruins it for somebody.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's been one on every single one of these so far.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the illusions may be broken.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as I have reflected on that,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I really think, and I'll unpack it.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the sickness is sin.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that seems so easy.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe if folks don't live where I live or in the places I've been,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: that feels like a sarcastic answer.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I genuinely think it's sin.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to unpack that,
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: what I mean is we live in a time and a culture and a society where We're blessed
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: by it, where things are pretty good.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have running water every day.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I got a bed to go home to.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: I got air conditioning.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's generally true for about everyone in Bartow County.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And any county, at least around me.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: With some exceptions, I'm sure.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not everything's great.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: But in the grand scheme of history, things are pretty good.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: When I say sin,
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: what I mean is I don't know that we live in a culture
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: where people even know they need to be saved.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sin abounds, and yet they don't realize it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: They don't recognize it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Life is almost so comfortable that when a
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Bump in the road comes.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bump in the road and they move on.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they have no idea that they're dead.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's actually,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: a great opportunity because I think the work of the church in my context over
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: the next decade to 20,
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: 30 years is going to be once again proclaiming to the world the good news.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And some folks who have heard it for a long time maybe get to hear it for
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: the first time and really hear it.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: How do you preach to someone that they're dead in their sin
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: when they've sat
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: in church for 50 years?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And anytime I'm pointing at somebody, I'm pointing back at myself in all of these.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to get sucked in by comfort.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's it,
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: is that sin has almost tainted us so much that we don't even recognize it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say it another way.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think Satan is very happy with a lot of our churches.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is folks think they know Jesus.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't know the power of the gospel, right?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a real sickness, and I think the church has to take it seriously.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was leading a Bible study last night,
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: and we're kind of walking through the Word of Salutis,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: and next week we're talking about just creation and sin.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: This idea that Jesus is Savior really...
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can't begin to talk about that if there's nothing for which we need to be saved.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the sickness,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: which is for so many, there's not even a recognition that their salvation is needed.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you get a lot of opportunity.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: You look back in history,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: and it's almost,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: at least for me,
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: you get kind of jealous of people like the Wesleys and the early Methodists, right?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Open territory of people who maybe for the first time are hearing the gospel
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: and coming to Jesus.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, man, it seems like low-hanging fruit.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know it was a lot harder than that.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there was just conversions,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: people coming to Christ left and right and the church growing in such good ways.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I really think if the church does its job,
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: we might be entering into a phase where that's true again,
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: where people hear for the first time.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they've kind of culturally grown up religious,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: they hear for the first time the power of the gospel,
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: learn of sin and are convicted of the sin in their life and come to trust in God.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's exciting, but it's, again, hard, like everything.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember now.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said this in my conversation I had the other day,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't know if it got published into the podcast.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he saw...
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: He said, well, you know, the thing is, he says, everybody in Denmark is a Christian, right?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, we were all baptized when we were kids.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: We all did all these different things.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, even if we were to overtly stand up and say, no, no, no, no, I reject Jesus.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a Christian.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: They'd say, yeah, but you kind of are because we all are, you know.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that part of why I go back to that and reread it every year is
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: because I think there is a fair amount of that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Some of his statements make more sense with a state church, and that's why.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't always hit home.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot about his criticism that I think is, well, we're already Christians.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I go to church, right?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what else is there to do?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've been to church for 50, 60, 70 years.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there's a calling to go and do more than that.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder...
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know that John Wesley,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: when he was doing his ministry,
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: he was relatively unsuccessful in the affluent, um, genteel parts of England.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when he went to the poverty stricken areas,
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: it just, there was a massive, you know, response.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if there's also going to be a call to go back,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: to be deliberate movement of the poor again, which is a tough call as well.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: it doesn't, um,
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: The problem,
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: if we're trying to diagnose problems,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: is the church isn't structured for that anymore.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you start considering budgets and maintenance, and I'm not saying that's a good thing.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're just identifying the reality of what would it look like
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: for churches like Sam Jones or others,
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: maybe even yours, to say, hey,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to That's going to be our mission,
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: and we're going to intentionally minister to people
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: who really can't financially support the church in any way.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: We would have
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: to fundamentally – maybe that's good – fundamentally change how we do things
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: because we're just not structured for that.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we could go through a lot of the history behind that of some of the things
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: that I think we got wronged.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: It always goes back to classes and bands, right,
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of taking our eyes off of that and actually seeking
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: a more affluent congregation.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it would be interesting to see what it would look like.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's churches that are doing that,
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: but most churches,
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: at least the ones I'm familiar with,
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: that's not a great way to ensure that your capital campaign gets funded.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things,
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: so not everybody knows,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: but we have a bit of a time constraint because of some other things going on.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're probably about ready to start kind of winding this down.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: But would you be willing,
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: is there anything else that you particularly want to make sure that you share?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I didn't ask a question that made sense to that?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not anything in particular.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got to think on the sin question and the sickness question for a long time.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of my heart on that one.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so I'll do this since I didn't get to say it at a conference.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: I do think we should have had that conversation,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: and I want us to have that conversation of what would it look like for the GMC
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: in particular to,
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll use the word mandate,
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: maybe it's too strong,
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: maybe it's not, but participation in small group discipleship.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: The big question, right,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pete Bellini,
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: his great article before General Conference talking about what kind
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: of Methodism are we going to be, right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: All of these questions that I think are very,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: very important to ask, particularly in our infancy.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we be a church that returns to the practices that were fruitful?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: At least talk about it.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: If not, is there...
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference between local GMC congregation
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: and insert non-denominational evangelical church down the street.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing against that church,
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: but is there something distinctive that our denomination offers to
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: the wider ecumenical body and to the society at large?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we just another outpost And so I think of things like our wonderful doctrine of
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sanctification, entire sanctification, the pursuit of holiness.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: We can say it.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't see that we actually believe it because we're not structuring ourselves
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: in such a way that we're pursuing it.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's great that we've reclaimed the historic mission of the church.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great step.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think we can just throw that on the front door and then think
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: that that's going to kind of fix it.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I'm not saying, right, because obviously 300 years ago was a long time than now.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Things are different
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: in a wide variety of ways.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of deep,
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of fruit in that deep well,
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: and we're just, why not talk about it?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: What would it look like if,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: We laid out a plan that said in six years,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: every person that's a member of a GMC church is a part of a discipleship group.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if not, they're not on membership roles anymore.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they can't come to worship, but I would love to have that conversation.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's interesting also that one of the things on the one hand,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was so thrilled to be part of the group that got to work on the articles of faith.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things we also talked about was the general rules.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a question.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think we did a good kind of compromise where on the one hand,
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: the general rules in their historic form are protected by the restrictive rules.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand,
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: we want to be able to use them and actually help them be responsive to
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: the greatest sins and opportunities in our world today.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Which is what Wesley did them for.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so we ended up kind of,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: the compromise was we left the historic document where it is,
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: and then we have kind of another version of it that we can do some modifications to.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember when I was,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: that was,
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: the document about whether to move it or not was in the subcommittee that I had
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: the opportunity to chair.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself before conference saying,
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: obviously it should move,
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: it's not doctrine, it shouldn't be in the restrictive rules.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, you know, here's the thing.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: You could be a Methodist and not affirm some of the distinctive Methodist doctrines
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: as long as you agreed that you were going to follow the general rules
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: and you weren't going to make a fuss about it.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if you weren't going to follow the general rules, you weren't a Methodist, period.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you weren't going to be part of a small group, you were not a Methodist, period.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: And on the one hand,
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thrilled that we have done a good job of reclaiming kind of
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: an overt Wesleyanism.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I have a similar concern, which is
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: Have we become obsessed with the doctrine because the doctrine doesn't challenge us
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: to our core in the way that the general rules and
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: the small group structure really do challenge us to our core?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: it's probably easier to point to the practical outworking of those rules
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: in small groups as far as what caused the transformation that sent huge revival.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably more related to what they did than it was
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: with simply what they intellectually believed.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's going to be a big challenge for us,
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know, for the next six years and then beyond.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm just so convinced that,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: and this is no righteousness sort of theology in any way, right?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: But just you do what you believe, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of show me your wallet, I'll show you what you spend your time with, right?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true for our faith as well that The
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: manner in which you approach it,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: no, I don't think anyone's justified because they go to a band group.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if we are people of holiness,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: pursuing the spread of scriptural holiness across the globe,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't yet know that we've kind of bridged the gap between how do we do that,
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be some mechanism by which that happens, and I think it's right there for us.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: If we'll claim it and reclaim it.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's who we are.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're not introducing something new.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is in our DNA.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually perfectly maps onto what we believe.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been transformed through that.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's obviously the most...
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want for folks is because I know that there is transformation and
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: that I know there's power and I know the Holy Spirit will work in their lives
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: when they're part of it.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I want that for them.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about it at General Conference just in one of our side coffee conversations.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think the way you do that is actually through the clergy.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: And because I get that's a large wholesale change globally.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the way you start it is with pastors and say,
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: by the next six years,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to say all of our pastors,
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: a part of the covenant faithfulness to the order,
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to be in a discipleship group.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because what will happen,
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced of it,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: is as pastors are transformed by it,
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: they will go to their churches and say, wait a second, you should be doing this.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: And even if we can't get it mandated,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: for lack of a better word,
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: if the clergy are transformed by it, they will begin to do it.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's where he starts, pastors.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I always ask my guests if they're willing to close us out in prayer.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Would you be willing to do that for us?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would be happy to.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's go to God in prayer.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: Gracious and loving Lord,
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just thank you for this afternoon,
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: this time that I'm able to gather with Travis and just talk.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for the blessing of technology,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: which allows us to span time zones and many miles.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for God,
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just pray that you use this,
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: that it not just be empty words,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: that it not just be hot air that we spread out into the universe,
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: but God, that it be something we mean.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, as we talk about the sickness in our world and in the church,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: and Lord,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: as we talk about what our church might could be,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: that you inspire each of us to be about the work of doing something about it.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: As Travis shared,
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: sickness,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: once identified, can be healed, and we know that you are the great physician.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: So God, help us to lead with you,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: to go out into our churches and into our communities,
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: to share the true gospel,
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: to share the power of transformation that comes through Amen.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for that.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: And thanks everybody for joining us.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: This has been what you have seen and heard kind of across the connection
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: with my guest Latham Postel from Sam Jones Church in North Georgia.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you once again for watching and let's see you next time.