Latest / Future Christian / Dave Runyon asks: What If Christians Were Known for What They're For?

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Dave Runyon asks: What If Christians Were Known for What They're For? · Future Christian

• 0:05
  This is the Future Christian Podcast, a conversation about church leadership, fresh ideas, and the future of the church.
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  Today I'm welcoming Dave Runyon to the show. Dave helps faith, business, and government leaders unite around common causes in the Denver
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  metro area of Colorado. He serves as the executive director of City Unite and as a consultant for businesses who have a desire to make a
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  positive impact in their communities. Dave helped to start a neighboring movement that has now spread to over 2,500 churches across the
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  country. This experience prompted him to co-author The Art of Neighboring, which was published by Baker Books and has sold over 150,000
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  copies. He speaks locally and nationally, encouraging leaders to collaborate for the good of their cities. before founding City Unite, Dave
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  served as a pastor for ten years at Foothills Community Church and the next level church. He graduated from Colorado State University where
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  he studied history, economics, and education. Dave and his wife Loren have four kids and do not plan to have any more. Please take a moment
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  to subscribe to the podcast or share Future Christian with a friend. You can be sure to follow Loren, Martha, and Future Christian on
• 1:23
  Instagram. We appreciate your thoughts and perspectives as together we're We discern the future of the church. So thanks for helping make
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  this independent podcast possible.
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  Hey, welcome to the show. This is Loren Richmond Jr. and I'm pleased to be joined today by Dave Runyon. Hey, good afternoon and welcome to
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  the show.
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  Great to be with you, Loren.
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  Yeah, for those who don't know anything about you, tell us just real quick, like, who you are, what you enjoy, that sort of thing.
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  Yeah. So I live here in the Denver Metro area up in Westminster, right between Denver and Boulder. Four kids, almost an empty nest or one
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  year away from being an empty nester. And I run a nonprofit called City Unite. We help faith government business leaders work together to
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  focus on the needs of the city and to mobilize people to serve those who are under-resourced.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Talk about your journey of faith. What's that looked like in the past and what that looks like today.
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  Yeah, you know, I grew up in an incredible Christian home and was kind of like a lukewarm believer for most of my formative years. Kind of
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  had my like fun friends and then had my little church friends and
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  you
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  never the two shall meet. And so I kind had a segmented understanding of God and what it meant to follow Jesus. And a lot of that is because
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  I This isn't what my parents kind of gave me, but like how I viewed the Christian faith was the end game was to say a prayer, put your faith
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  in Jesus
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  Mm-hmm.
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  so that you could go to heaven when you die. And then just try not to sin as much as possible for the rest of your time here on earth. So I
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  had a very
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  Yeah.
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  limited, very limited understanding of the gospel for a lot of my life, my formative years, which led me to kind of like this segmented, of,
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  I wouldn't say apathetic, but just kind of a very unhelpful version of following Jesus. Halfway through college, I was just around some
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  people that started to open up my eyes, and the big thing that dropped for me was just the kingdom theology, this idea that I think faith in
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  Jesus is important. all that stuff, but I was missing this huge part that was once you decide that you're going to follow Jesus, that God
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  has invited us to partner with him in redeeming and healing the brokenness that we see in the world around us. And so
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  Mm-hmm.
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  that gave me a vision and a mission and a purpose that helped me just jump all in and kind of like go from a lukewarm believer into somebody
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  who was like actually driven. and motivated by my relationship with God. So yeah, that was the big, it was like a second conversion for me.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Sure. If you would anything you're willing to share about spiritual practices, something you find meaningful.
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  Well, the ones that come most natural to me is I've just always had an incredible community. I've had deep, deep friendships and people that
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  would walk with me that I'm walking with that are holding up a mirror to me, celebrating the good stuff and also like calling out some of
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  the stuff that like isn't okay. And so for me, just like intentional community, deep friendships with a few people has been a huge, huge
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  part of my story. Something I've been trying to work on recently is just the practice of experiencing boredom, shutting things, shutting
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  things down,
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  Yes.
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  trying to create some space where I'm able to just notice things and experience
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  Yeah.
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  a little bit more awe and wonder. I have like a severely underdeveloped right brain. And so that's not like natural for me, but it's
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  something that I've just been trying to work on and to lean into more and more.
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  Yeah, gosh, I hear you there. I've been trying to just like, that temptation is so quick when I'm outside, for instance, just to like grab
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  my phone and stare at it. like, maybe I could just like notice the sky around me and the trees.
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  Yeah, exactly. So that's a new discipline that I'm trying to experience a little bit of.
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  Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about your work more broadly and this kingdom theology, as you say, with City United. And you're also the
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  author of a book I'm learning of the art of neighboring. So why you talk about your current role and how you, well, yes, you sort of already
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  talked about how you found your way into the work, but maybe more specifically, how, because from my understanding, like you, you worked
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  beginning in a local church, right?
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  Yeah, actually, when I first worked, I was a high school teacher and baseball
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  okay.
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  coach. So I went to Colorado State University. I got out and I was a teacher and coach and I was really content doing that. And then I just,
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  I fell backwards in the ministry. I
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  Hmm.
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  was going to like a large kind of a tractional church with a lot of young people. I was friends with the lead pastor. He got sick. He
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  probably asked like seven or eight other people to teach for him. And then he asked for me and I was like, just, just arrogant enough to say
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  yes. and I remember, I remember sitting there like in the front row, getting ready to go up and teach. And the largest group that I taught
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  to was like 30 high school kids.
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  Yeah.
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  And there was over 2000 people in the room. And I remember
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  Wow.
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  going, God, I don't have this. Like I wish I had more moments like this in my life, Loren, but I remember just going like, I need you to
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  show up. God, I do not, what am I doing? I do not have this here. The rest is kind of a blur, but two months later they came and asked me to
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  be the teaching pastor. And so I had no formal training. It was kind of like in that era where you could get away with that.
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  Yeah.
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  so I went from being a high school teacher to a teaching pastor at a large church overnight.
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  Wow.
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  And there's a lot of great things that happen there. There's also a lot of really hard things. And so I cut my teeth the hard way. And even
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  from the start, I was kind of an angsty pastor. I was always wrestling with the amount of time and energy that we were, and money, that we
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  were putting into that like hour and 10 minutes every Sunday. And
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  we had it at an extreme. Versus, what does it look like to walk with people, to disciple people, to help people engage into the needs of the
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  city? And so, even though the... Two churches, I did this for 10 years, so the two churches that I was a part of were great and there was a
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  lot of amazing things that happened. They grew numerically. But I was like, I remember just getting in my car a lot of times after a Sunday
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  just going like, God, this is success in ministry, I'm in trouble
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  Wow.
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  because this is leaving me wanting. And
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I have so much respect for the pastors and leaders that teach every week. Like the burden of doing that is real. The weight of doing that is
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  real and I
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  Yeah.
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  didn't like it. I didn't like it. I had all this like unhealthy stuff inside of me of like performance and you're only as good as your last
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  sermon and a lot of different stuff that wasn't very helpful for me personally and for my own health and so I'm so grateful. You know I'm
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  part of a great church now. I look at the the people that are up there every week and and creating a space for us to connect with God and
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  I'm really, really grateful. But it just wasn't the fit for me. so after 10 years of that, and during that time when I was leading as a
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  pastor, I started to meet with other faith leaders. I was in Arvada, up in or right outside of Denver. And I started meeting with other
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  faith leaders around Denver and just have coffees and lunches and start to just kind of dream about like, know, what if... what if there's a
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  crew of us that were friends and what if we were thinking about the city together? I got obsessed with John 17 with Jesus' last recorded
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  prayer where he prays for himself, then he prays for the disciples, and then he prays for all of us, prays for all the believers alive at
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  that time, all the believers to come, and the thing that he prays for is unity.
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  Yeah.
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  And I just got obsessed with that text and just sort of think, you know, what would it look like to see unity happen in my part of the city?
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  And as I started to hang out with other faith leaders and talk about that, I realized that that was bubbling up in a lot of them as well.
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  And so it was a really sweet time. The more that I leaned into that work of like helping churches think about local mission together,
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  including my own church, the more I just started to get energized and it was really life-giving. And so that led me to leaving my role as
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  kind of a full-time vocational pastor and to starting CityUnite. And City Unites take it on some different iterations over the past 16
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  years. Early on, it was heavily focused on let's help faith leaders get to know each other and then mobilize the people that are sitting in
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  their pews towards common issues in their part of the city. And so we
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  Mm-hmm.
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  started to do that in Arvada and then we started to help people out in Golden and in different parts of the metro area do that work. We
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  would, it was really simple. The formula for us was invite faith leaders into a room and then invite a civic leader. So we would invite the
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  city manager or the police chief or the mayor. And we would just sit in a room and just say, hey, tell us your story. Tell us how you ended
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  up doing, what you're doing. There was always this common thread. Most people in civic life, especially at the local level have had some
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  sense of calling. And so there was a lot of commonality between the faith leaders and the civic leaders. And then we would always ask the
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  civic leaders, okay, if you could wave a magic wand and change something in our city, if you could mobilize all the people that show up to
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  all of our congregations every week around one thing, what is it that you would want us to go do? Or what do you think the smartest thing is
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  for us to do? And then we would... pray about what they shared with us and then we would go and sometimes we'd have those meetings and be
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  like, oh, that's cool. And like nothing huge would happen or like a couple of congregations would get around something. But every once in a
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  while, something would happen in one of those rooms and we would say, okay, let's go after this together. The first thing we did was a big
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  church and school partnership program where we had congregations go, start reaching out to local schools that were under resourced and just.
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  start supporting the teachers, look for ways to like, if there were budget cuts to help with facilities, and it really like push churches
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  into the needs of the city. Cause if you get involved in like a local school, you get everything. You get single moms living below the
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  poverty line, you get at-risk kids, you get
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  Yeah. Yep.
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  addiction, you you get it all. And so that's still, think one of the best things that congregations can do if they just want to look for a
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  place to get engaged locally. is to go and to reach out to a local school, just start getting to know them and to start dreaming about ways
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  to partner with them. And then a few years after that, we started a neighboring movement in our community. We had a mayor that sat in one of
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  those rooms and just said, you know, if you guys wanna like really move the needle in our city, and he didn't see the irony in telling a
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  bunch of pastors. that they should like think about starting a neighboring movement. He wasn't like, he didn't realize he was basically
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  telling us all that we should do the most basic thing that the Bible says.
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  Haha, yeah.
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  But that, but it was convicting and beautiful. And so we did a thing where we took all like 26 churches, kind of put their own agenda aside.
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  And we started to talk from the front about this idea of like, what if when Jesus said, love your neighbor, he meant your actual neighbors
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  too. And so.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  We have like a little tool where people can make a commitment to learn their neighbors names and to use their names when they see them,
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  Mm-hmm.
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  to be a part of throwing good parties, to invite neighbors into their home for a meal. And so that's that kind of like the way that that's
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  scaled and that was something I didn't see coming and kind of hijacks a good five or six years of my vocational life going around and
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  helping churches think about literal neighboring together.
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  Every time I have a conversation about neighboring on this podcast, it comes in a convicting way. Cause I remember again, like I only know,
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  I think the names of like two of my neighbors and
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  Yeah.
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  it's, it's not good. It's not good.
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  Well you know Loren, they say if you want to, if you want to love somebody it's helpful to know their first name.
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  Yeah. I'm remembering, Alan Roxburgh. Go back and listen to that episode. Same con- same, same p- same point. Talk about the
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  prayer luncheon and how that can be, or, or your work with the prayer luncheon.
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  Yeah, the Colorful Prayer Luncheon is an institution that's about 40 years old. A man named Don Reverts, who was a young life leader for a
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  while and then started an organization very similar to City Unite that was focused on like bringing different people from different sectors
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  together to think about how can they bridge together to serve the city. So Don started doing this about 40 years ago, way before my time. He
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  became a mentor to me. He's the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing now and how I'm doing what I'm doing now. so he, 1987, he and a small
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  group of friends started this prayer luncheon. And one of their central tenants was, no matter who is in office, the governor, the mayor of
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  the city, we are going to invite them to help us see the city through their eyes. And so. goal has always been to create a bipartisan room
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  of mostly Jesus followers who are listening to and considering what the local government leaders see. we just think whoever God has kind of
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  put in positions of authority that we're supposed to honor them and pray for them and to be able to do that we try to give them space each
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  year to come in to share a little bit about their heart. And then we'll do other things in the part launch. There'll be a time we'll bring
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  in a keynote speaker. We've had like just crazy, Chuck Colson back in the day, Condoleezza Rice, Tony
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  Yeah, I thought...
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  Campolo, all these, like I could just list off all these incredible people that have come in to share with that audience around.
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  Yeah, I thought Joel Clout was great this year.
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  Joel Clout was incredible this year. you know, sometimes it'll be somebody like that. That's got a little bit of profile. Sometimes it'll be
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  Yeah.
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  like Lisa Stevens from Hope House was incredible last year sharing her story.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  so it's just become like an annual gathering of the Christian community in our state. And about 15 years ago, Don Reverts invited me to
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  start doing that with him. he actually passed away this last year. And so. He's kind of, passed off the mantle to me and has allowed me to
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  steward just an incredibly unique event in our city. And our hope is that it's not just one of those like glad-hanging events where people
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  come in and like say hey and feel like they're supposed to show up. But each year we're trying to pick out something where we can highlight
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  a major need and invite
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  Mm-hmm.
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  the people that are part of that community to stay engaged in it throughout the year. And so when the migrant crisis was huge in the Denver
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  metro area. We were able to mobilize that room in really practical ways to think about how to serve these people that were sleeping on the
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  streets of our city. This year, we've made a big push around mentoring to encourage people to think about, you know, could they walk with
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  others who are in need of a mentor? Last year, we talked about like the affordable housing crisis and some very practical ways that people
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  could engage or that congregations could engage to help. address the homeless and affordability issues that exist in our community.
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  Yeah. Yeah. I think what was, what has stood out to me the most in recent years, when we think about our political climate, our sociological
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  climate in America, how, especially the last two years, I remember you made a point from this stage to be like, listen, like we can have
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  conversations with our political leaders, but let's do so respectfully. I've also noticed how like those political leaders are in the room.
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  You had Mayor Mike Johnston. If I'm remembering correctly, Governor Polis also spoke this year, right? And, again, I
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  Yes, yeah. Yeah, Senator Hickenlooper, the attorney general, like all those people come into
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  Yeah.
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  that room, which is a gift, and we get a chance to reframe how the Christian community is interacting with them.
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  Yeah.
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  A lot of the stuff that they see on social media from Christians and non-Christians is pretty toxic. And
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  I want to be careful to say this too, Like, it doesn't mean we're supposed to you know, not have our convictions. and strong
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  Mm-hmm.
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  beliefs. I just think we need to think as believers about our posture. What does it look like to hold on to our convictions and our beliefs
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  and to be able to like share a heart, you know, our feelings, opinions of people, but to do it in a way where we're actually being kind and
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  loving and also like really clear. And that's
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  Yeah.
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  hard to do, especially when things are emotional. It's hard to do for me at times. I get all that, but I think it's the best way to actually
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  enact change. It's the best way to actually help people hear stories, hear opinions, and be able to absorb them instead of just putting up
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  their defenses and going, all right, here's another group of people that don't like me and that are ticked off about something that I've put
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  into play.
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  Yeah. Let me ask you about this. Cause I, I mean, I just saw this in an article. I don't know if as someone myself who tends to associate
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  more with the political left, like this is something I see all the time. I'm wondering if you see it in other contexts. Like there's this
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  tendency right now, especially amongst the political left at like having a quote unquote purple church or being a part of a purple community
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  is some somehow like a sign of unfaithfulness, especially in like church spaces. It's like, how
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  Yeah.
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  could you have. Like how could you be a purple church? Like you're not, you're not truly staying up for what's right or what you believe in.
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  you're, you're even making space for folks on the other side of the political aisle. Like I imagine this is something you navigate in your
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  work at the prayer luncheon and more broadly, like talk more about how you've, you've dealt with, where you approach that conversation.
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  Yeah, I think that's coming like very loudly from both sides.
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  Yeah.
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  I think the number of congregations that exist today where there's people from both sides of the aisle that are like worshiping together and
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  I think those congregations are growing fewer and fewer.
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  Yeah.
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  If you want to build a church and like build numbers, it's way
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  Yeah
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  easier.
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  way easier
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  to create rooms where you feel like everybody in here is voting the same way that I am. And so I think that's for sure. I also think it's
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  really dangerous. think
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  go.
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  it's recreating a lot of the echo chambers that exist. And I think it makes it really easy to start drifting towards congregations that are
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  just deeply politically focused. as opposed to being like laser focused on Jesus and on God. And so it's so, but it is so hard to hold the
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  middle. And I don't even like that term, hold the middle, because
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  Mm-hmm.
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  it suggests that you have to like water everything down and don't have convictions.
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  Right, right.
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  But it's really hard to create environments where there are people who have different political opinions, who are worshiping together and
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  following Jesus together. And so it's, It takes, it's like you're walking a tight rope and it's really hard and you feel like you're on this
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  like spectrum and wherever you put yourself, everyone to one side is it disagrees you and everyone to the other side. And, and there's,
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  there's a few congregations that I watched do this and that are just doing it in beautiful ways. think about Colorado Community Church and
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  Robert Gelinas. I think he does this masterfully well. And there's others here in the, in our community. But it's hard, hard work in our
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  current day. And it's hard work to do the Unity thing. mean, 10 years ago, doing the Unity thing, and like I used to bring congregations
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  together and say, let's go after this in the city. And the number of congregations that were willing to do that was way higher than it is
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  right now. I think that all the different things that exist right now in our current culture have made the Unity thing harder. And it's made
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  it harder to create churches and congregations where people from both sides of the aisle are in relationship together and in community
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  together.
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  Yeah. Well, I want to keep asking about hard topics here. So for some of my listeners from the Denver Metro who are pastors, you probably
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  recognize Dave's voice from, what were they called Dave? Like these were like COVID updates for faith leaders back in the day. So
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  Yeah.
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  if I remember correctly, it was you and Amanda Henderson, who some of my mainline friends around the Denver Metro.
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  Yes.
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  So shout to Amanda.
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  Amanda's amazing. She's
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  We'll remember.
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  now, she's now a city council person, Amanda's incredible. She's done so many interesting things in our city. One of the things she's doing
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  now, she's a city council person in Littleton which, mad respect to Amanda, incredible.
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  Yeah. So obviously like, you know, a thing or two, I guess is what I'm saying about like urgent messaging. Like that was the whole point of
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  that. Those faith leader calls
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  Yeah.
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  was you'd come out and say like, Hey, here's the latest what's happening with COVID and the numbers and what the recommendations are from
• 24:39
  the governor, from the health officials.
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  Yeah.
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  So I'm saying that to ask, like we're living in a time and place like since COVID there's really been this like this pressure on pastors to
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  respond to every major event or controversy, like immediately. I see this all the time, more often on one side than the other. But again,
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  that may be just my algorithm. Maybe both sides are doing it. Like, you know, if your pastor doesn't say this, leave that church.
• 25:13
  Right. Well, can I go back and give you a little bit of the context of COVID? I think it might be helpful.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  So in the early days, know, very, very early on, I think it was March, Governor Polis reached out and I run a clergy council that helps
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  different faith leaders come together and connect with, you know, the governor or the mayor of Denver and those different things. And Polis
• 25:37
  reached out and The early COVID in Southeast Asia, some of like the flare ups happened around faith communities that were coming
• 25:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:48
  together. And so his thought was, listen, faith communities are gonna be crucial in this process. I wonder how I can talk to as many of them
• 25:55
  as possible and to do it on a regular basis. to Governor Polis' credit, he reached out and to me and he said, Dave, I will give you time
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  every other week. Can you get me on a Zoom? on a call with as many faith leaders as possible throughout the state. And there was such an
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  urgency among faith leaders. Everybody was trying to figure out which way is up. How do we do this? What is it going
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  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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  to be? so, and now this, this took on a whole, like this was a journey, but early on everybody, like, I mean, the first call we had, had
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  1100 faith leaders on the call with,
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  I believe it.
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  on the call with Polis. And, and like, he would bring on people from the health department and, by the way, I think, I think people look
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  back on COVID. people in our health department, people on all, you know, on all sides of the aisle, every turn of perspective. And I think a
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  lot, everyone is like, they have a long list of things that they wish they could do differently. And
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I genuinely believe I had an inside look at this, that the people that were leading were doing the best they could at the time.
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  Yeah.
• 26:57
  And so we would bring on people from the health department and they would share. And then the governor and his team would come on and say,
• 27:02
  okay, here's the parameters that we've put up and we want, you know, lesson. gatherings of less than a hundred and socially distance and I
• 27:07
  don't care if your sanctuary seats 3000 it can still only be a hundred and but to his credit he kept meeting every two weeks we would do
• 27:13
  these calls and I remember telling him hey let's not do Q &A anymore like this is bad I don't want any of these like faith leaders who are
• 27:18
  like
• 27:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:27
  and he was like no I want to do it I'll take if they're angry if they're upset like I want to actually and he would just put himself out
• 27:30
  there and
• 27:34
  Yeah.
• 27:35
  it was you know, I again, a ton of credit to him, but the all of the COVID stuff that happened was this beautiful picture of a very high
• 27:42
  profile government leader saying, I want to create a line of communication with the faith leaders in our state. And even if it's going to be
• 27:50
  hard, even if there's going to be like a lot of like negative, you know, emotion around it, and there was especially as things went on and
• 27:58
  on, you know, down the road, and these congregations were deeply impacted. But it It was special. There's nothing in none of the other
• 28:06
  States had anything like what we had here. I thought it took a lot of courage from him and,
• 28:14
  Yeah.
• 28:14
  and he did, you he did a great job. We did those for a year through that time. And at the end, when, when things were like starting to not
• 28:20
  make sense and know, pastors are walking around Home Depot and there's like 200 people on Home Depot or they're being told like in a way of
• 28:26
  a hundred and this like our governor went wrestled with this with his team and he came back and he eventually said hey listen I don't want
• 28:32
  to get into any of these legal battles we're not going to show up and put locks under your door and this was happening in other states he
• 28:38
  just
• 28:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:45
  said I I care about people's health and
• 28:48
  Yeah.
• 28:48
  if you care about them too here's the recommendations I'm gonna get but I'm not gonna get into these weird legal battles I'm not going
• 28:55
  Yeah.
• 28:56
  to like you know and there were people that were like starting those and he just pulled back and said this is my desire This is my, like,
• 29:02
  this is my wise counsel to you. but I'm making these suggestions instead of mandates. and I think he earns a lot of like, you know,
• 29:08
  eventually down the road. mean, I think people were like bumping up against him on some of that stuff. but I think the way that he handled
• 29:15
  that, that situation specifically, earned him a lot of goodwill with faith leaders who don't agree with like a lot of the majority of the
• 29:21
  policies that he makes.
• 29:28
  Right.
• 29:29
  So. But it was a cool, it was a really cool example of what can happen if there's relationship and communication between civic and faith
• 29:34
  leaders.
• 29:39
  Do think that's it? to, bring this forward relationship and what was your other thing? Communication.
• 29:44
  Communication. Yeah. Honest communication too. It wasn't like everybody's just playing nice and doing photo ops, you know, with the, with
• 29:48
  the governor.
• 29:52
  Right.
• 29:53
  there, there was a level of like honesty and he created space for people to be like frustrated.
• 30:00
  Yeah.
• 30:00
  and he was able to hold that tension. It wasn't like he's like, I'm out. These people are being jerks. I'm going to like stop having these
• 30:05
  calls. he kept leaning into it. The faith leaders kept leaning into it. and it was, it was, it was a really special. special time and it was
• 30:10
  hard. was really hard. get, people get mad at me. People get mad
• 30:16
  Yeah, yeah, it was not easy. Yep.
• 30:20
  at me. They'd be like, you're working for the governor. I run a nonprofit. I don't get paid by the governor or any of his team. And so,
• 30:28
  which I'm really grateful for. I was able to be kind of like a third party that was just helping bring that, make those calls happen.
• 30:37
  Well, speaking of that, like, how do you avoid this sort of fusing that we've seen in America of faith and politics in a way that confuses
• 30:45
  allegiance to Christ with allegiance to a political party or a movement?
• 30:53
  Well, I don't. mean, there's, there's people on both sides on the extremes that have zero interest in like coming to the prior luncheon or
• 30:57
  being part of anything that I'm doing. because
• 31:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 31:04
  they feel like, they feel like that I've sold out on both sides on one way
• 31:08
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 31:10
  or the other. And I just learned like, I used to let that stuff bother me and like, you know, keep me up at night. And I just learned to go,
• 31:15
  you know what? Like, let's play ball with the willing. There's,
• 31:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:20
  there's way more people that are. not on those two extremes that do see the polarization that exists right now and they're grieved by it and
• 31:30
  Yeah.
• 31:31
  they know that the way for the only way forward is to be able to hear from different people about who have different opinions and to strike
• 31:39
  and try to hang in and stay in relationship with them and so i think that's the key is like can you hold that tension you know you know
• 31:47
  somebody told me this i can't remember where it was from but you know Bridges hold tension. That's the whole
• 31:55
  Yeah.
• 31:55
  key. And if we're gonna create bridges and if we're gonna like try to bump up against the polarization that's going on, we need to be able
• 32:02
  to hold tension if we're gonna be bridge builders. And that's the whole key. And it's really hard not to get super anxious, not to get
• 32:09
  emotional and to be able to hold that tension and stay in there. But what comes out on the other side of that is like I've seen it over and
• 32:16
  over and over again. is really, really powerful.
• 32:24
  I'm thinking of like data from like Ryan Burge and others who have suggested like that it's really a small but very vocal, but also again,
• 32:32
  very small minority who are often the ones making the most noise. Has part of this process been for you like recognizing that, like you said
• 32:41
  before, like it really is, there's a much bigger majority who don't want to play those games.
• 32:50
  Yeah, and I think the tension with that is they're not as vocal.
• 32:56
  Yeah.
• 32:57
  And so what you get, you're just looking on social media or different things like that, you get the people that are the most upset. And so
• 33:00
  it's
• 33:04
  Yeah.
• 33:05
  really easy to get into this mindset of going, man, we're not making a difference at all because you're just seeing the negative stuff come
• 33:10
  at you. And
• 33:16
  Right.
• 33:16
  I think the truth is that 80 % in the middle is there and I think that they're thirsting for something. They're not as like fired up and
• 33:26
  angry and so you're not hearing from them as much. I was listening to, there's a great podcast, Lee C Camp has this podcast and he was
• 33:36
  interviewing Malcolm Gladwell and Malcolm said man like I, what I get on social media is so negative and angry. What keeps me going
• 33:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:47
  are the emails. He's like the people that actually write an email to me to talk
• 33:51
  Hmm.
• 33:51
  about this really impacted me. He's like, nobody ever sees that. He goes, but
• 33:53
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:55
  the people that are like in the business of like making themselves known or their opinions on social media are usually fired up. They're
• 33:59
  like mad,
• 34:03
  Right.
• 34:05
  you know? I think I love John McKnight also passed away within the last couple of years. He did a lot of work around asset-based community
• 34:09
  development. And he was a
• 34:14
  Yeah.
• 34:14
  community organizer. And early on he was in Chicago and he... He said, like all the training was figure out what people are angry about and
• 34:21
  then mobilize them around that. And he got really burned out on it. And
• 34:28
  Yeah.
• 34:28
  so he started to flip it and he started to say, I wonder if we can start identifying what are the assets in these communities and can we
• 34:35
  rally people around the assets instead of the deficits? And he said, it's way harder. It's so much easier to just figure out what people are
• 34:43
  pissed off about. He said, but it's so much more life-giving and rewarding and long-term beneficial. to actually do asset-based community
• 34:51
  development instead of just, you know, the opposite of that. And that's really been helpful, a helpful thought for me.
• 34:59
  Something comes to mind is like I just saw this today or yesterday on Facebook like and you know how the influencers now they do like the
• 35:04
  hate response videos where like they'll
• 35:09
  you
• 35:11
  You know, they'll play
• 35:11
  Yeah.
• 35:11
  a clip of their nemesis on social media to respond like I saw a video that was like a response to a response to a response like they're
• 35:19
  going back and forth and like, you know trolling each other's videos it was Feels like there's a better way to go forward in life than that
• 35:27
  Yeah, yeah I agree.
• 35:30
  But I mean, there is some factuality that, like you just said, that that's a popular way of moving forward. So you work with churches, you
• 35:36
  talked about asset-based community development, rallying around that. Like, what are some, like, one, two, three things you say to churches?
• 35:43
  Like, hey, like, look at this number one. Like, I don't know, is it as simple as just like, who are your names of your neighbors across the
• 35:50
  street?
• 35:57
  100%. Like, I mean, if I, and I'm talking about the neighboring thing, it's like, how can we make, what we're up to as concrete and as clear
• 36:00
  as possible?
• 36:04
  Yeah.
• 36:05
  you know, the neighboring thing, we have this little refrigerator magnet that looks like a tic-tac-toe board. And we just ask people to like
• 36:10
  use it and to think about their houses in the middle and think about their eight, the eight closest neighbors to them when they walk outside
• 36:16
  of their apartment, their condo, their, their house. And we just say, you know, Can you just like write down the names of those eight
• 36:21
  neighbors, the adults or the kids in those houses? And if you can't, could you just like have a series of mildly awkward conversations with
• 36:27
  people
• 36:33
  Hahaha
• 36:34
  to say, like I've lived next to you for four years and I've met you three times, but I forgot your name. And then
• 36:40
  Yeah.
• 36:41
  just go write them down and to put it in a place that's visible and to start using their names when you see them. It's like, it's like the
• 36:46
  lowest common denominator of missional is
• 36:51
  Yeah.
• 36:51
  to think about, you know, Who are my neighbors and are they important enough for me to know their names? And it's a Trojan horse to get
• 36:55
  people to do all kinds of other stuff. Because once you just kind of
• 37:00
  Right.
• 37:01
  start the ball rolling with like organic connection, some of those neighbors, they're just busy and they don't want to talk to you. And you
• 37:05
  can tell that some of
• 37:09
  Right.
• 37:09
  those neighbors, if you lean towards them a little bit, you'll be shocked at how they'll lean back towards you. And so I just think as like
• 37:15
  Christians, we should be catalyst for connection and for community in the places that we live. And I've seen it over and over and over
• 37:21
  again. I've heard thousands of stories of people who have done this. They've started to realize that they don't live where they live by
• 37:27
  accident, that there's something sacred about their place that they live, that there's something
• 37:33
  Mm-hmm. Hmm.
• 37:36
  beautiful about proximity-based relationships.
• 37:39
  Yeah.
• 37:40
  Most of my relationships my whole life are affinity-based relationships.
• 37:43
  Yeah.
• 37:45
  And we've lost kind of a theology of place.
• 37:48
  Yeah.
• 37:48
  But when we can rediscover the theology of place, when we can start to lean into proximity-based relationships, I think that's where the
• 37:53
  gospel breaks out.
• 37:59
  Well, I want to lean into that here. I'm writing that down proximity, proximity based relationships, thinking about churches. And this is a
• 38:05
  podcast that's really focused and centered on churches and, many churches are struggling right now. There's a lot of churches in America
• 38:12
  that are in struggling neighborhoods or are struggling to meet the needs of their neighbors and to connect with their neighbors. I mean, is
• 38:19
  it just as simple as like, let's make a map of all our neighbors and and figure out their names and believe that like God has us here for a
• 38:26
  reason.
• 38:33
  That's it. That's actually I, I, you just saved all of your listeners, the time of reading the art of neighboring.
• 38:37
  You
• 38:40
  you don't need to read it. It's actually that simple. And it's not, it's not that
• 38:42
  You've sold enough copies already, right?
• 38:46
  churches are, it's not like the church should go do it. It's the people in each church. When
• 38:51
  Yeah.
• 38:51
  this thing actually works, it's when the people in congregations realize, Hey, I'm, I'm going to just like spend more time in my front yard.
• 38:55
  I'm
• 39:00
  Yeah.
• 39:01
  going to. I'm going to take walks and just be available and to like to see what happens. I'm going to live at a pace where I'm available to
• 39:09
  the people around me instead of always just like going in, get your garage door goes up and then you get your car in and it goes down. It's
• 39:17
  like that shockingly simple. And what we've seen come out of that over and over and over again has been really profound. And it's, know,
• 39:25
  it's the adage. It changes the people, it changes those of us who are doing it as much as it changes our neighborhoods. You know, like God's
• 39:33
  used, it's been like my marriage. God's used this discipline of engaging in my neighborhood to polish off a lot of my rough edges
• 39:41
  Yeah.
• 39:42
  and to confront some things in my life that need to, that he wants to see changed just as much as the impact that I've had on the people
• 39:46
  that live around me.
• 39:51
  Well, good stuff here. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back with some closing questions. All right, we're back with Dave Runyan.
• 39:58
  Dave, you can, we always tell folks you can take these closing questions as seriously or not as you'd like to. But if you're Pope
• 40:06
  Okay.
• 40:06
  for a day, what do you want to do with that day?
• 40:15
  mean, again, I'm gonna give you another cliche. Like I just, I have this deep, deep belief that a lot of like, a lot of the stuff would be
• 40:22
  healed in our churches, in our communities, if like Christians were known for what they're for more than what they're against.
• 40:29
  Hmm
• 40:30
  And so I think I would bring congregations together, help people see like the, there's a church of Denver, there's a church of our vat or
• 40:37
  Highlands Ranch, you know, St. Louis, wherever it is.
• 40:44
  Yeah.
• 40:45
  And that I would help people begin to focus on the 98 % of things that they have in common instead of the 2 % of things that they differ on.
• 40:53
  And then I would mobilize them to go and to work together in the city, especially to heal some of the brokenness. Because I think the people
• 41:01
  that aren't involved in church right now are not sitting around waiting for a better sermon or a better worship leader, right?
• 41:09
  Are you sure about that?
• 41:10
  I'm positive. They're sitting around going, you know what, all Christians are hypocrites. All church wants is money. Or
• 41:15
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:17
  they're thinking, there's no way there could be a God because of this like incredibly painful thing that I've seen happen and I can't
• 41:23
  reconcile that. Or maybe they have like some intellectual block.
• 41:29
  Mm-hmm. Yep.
• 41:30
  And so I think that one of the best things we can do as the church is to act in ways that help people to question some of those assumptions,
• 41:35
  to
• 41:40
  Yeah.
• 41:41
  show up in ways where they go, wow, maybe some of my assumptions about Christians aren't right. And I'm experiencing something from somebody
• 41:48
  who says that they're a Jesus follower that feels a lot different than this stereotype that I've made up in my mind or that I've made up
• 41:55
  because of an experience. And so if I spoke for a day, that would be something that like. I would try to mobilize and engage people around
• 42:02
  the most systemic needs in their community.
• 42:10
  Okay. I need to ask you a hard question here because it's coming to mind and I feel like I got to ask it. You mentioned like the 98 % we
• 42:17
  agree on. There's going to be some things in some churches that they're going to think like you, you, you mentioned yourself, like we have
• 42:24
  our firm convictions. What do you advise? What do you use for yourself when you say like, Hey, this is a deal breaker. Like feel
• 42:31
  Yeah.
• 42:32
  free to give examples or not, but you know, cause obviously there's going to be some churches are going to be like, this is a deal breaker
• 42:39
  for us. How do you advise churches like What is a deal breaker? What do you need just like, Hey, let's set this aside for now.
• 42:46
  Yeah, I mean, I think I always go back to like in the essentials, you know, unity and non-essentials
• 42:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:53
  liberty. And I think trying to figure out what are the essentials. For me, I think we got, you know, the, we've got some creeds that are
• 42:58
  like really helpful. Like the apostles
• 43:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:04
  creed is, you know, when we first started doing this in our battle, we had some Catholic churches, mainline churches, evangelical churches.
• 43:09
  And then there was a lot that like, we're like, I'm not into this. And so. I would just invite the people at the table and it really comes
• 43:14
  down to motives.
• 43:19
  Yeah.
• 43:20
  the motives piece is like one of the biggest things that I think we have to wrestle through. And
• 43:24
  Hmm.
• 43:25
  so if your motive is I'm going to go do this so that I can do this and it's going to lead to this. Most of those congregations don't come
• 43:31
  into the room. If they're a congregation that feels like we are a hundred percent right on everything and everyone else is wrong, they're
• 43:37
  going to opt out.
• 43:43
  That's true. Yeah.
• 43:44
  It's so for me,
• 43:44
  Yeah. Yep.
• 43:47
  for me, what mission does, and there's all kinds of church unity stuff. People will do worship services together. They'll do prayer
• 43:52
  movements together. They'll do all those different things. For me, what was really on my heart was to create and to like get clear on the
• 43:57
  needs of the city. And so instead for me, instead of figuring out like what are the essentials, I would like bring the room together and
• 44:02
  then say, hey, this is something that I think we're gonna go after together. it allow, it's that whole centered set versus bounded set type
• 44:07
  mentality. And
• 44:13
  Yeah, yeah.
• 44:14
  then, and then people who believed in that and wanted to work together, those can do that. We would go and work together. It saved me the
• 44:18
  time of chasing people around
• 44:23
  Yeah.
• 44:23
  and trying to like convince people to do this.
• 44:26
  Right.
• 44:27
  Which I did plenty of that by the way, and just learning the hard way. And so for me, I got the Apostles,
• 44:29
  Yeah. You know, I'm sure it saves.
• 44:33
  for me, like the Apostles Creed. has been like a foundational say, like this binds us. We used to say the central, if you believe in the
• 44:39
  centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ, then let's come and play ball together and serve our city together. And so for me, it wasn't like
• 44:46
  I'm gonna nitpick like this issue or that issue. It was much more about inviting, creating the room and inviting the people into the room
• 44:53
  that wanted to be there without trying to like convince them. Does that make sense?
• 45:00
  Yeah, yeah, it kind of goes to what you're saying, what you're for rather what you're against. You're defining self rather than allowing
• 45:03
  others
• 45:06
  Yeah.
• 45:07
  to find you to use like a family systems term. So that's helpful. That's helpful. Who's a theologian or historical Christian figure you'd
• 45:13
  want to meet or bring back to life?
• 45:20
  yeah. Like everything that happened around William Wilberforce and the Clapham sect,
• 45:28
  Mmm.
• 45:28
  there's a great book called Bury the Chains. And it tells the story of what happened with the anti-slavery movement in the UK and how this
• 45:38
  group of 12 to 15 people from different sectors came together and they lived in deep community together. They were committed to walking with
• 45:48
  each other, living out their faith together. And then they just like, they stacked hands around the anti-slavery movement and they
• 45:58
  Hmm.
• 45:58
  did it at the right time and they the right like formula. And it, it made massive, massive changes for,
• 46:06
  Yeah.
• 46:08
  you know, and so they moved the needle. And so I, I would like, I'd want, well, I'd want all 12 of them. I want that whole group of the
• 46:15
  Clapham sect. to be able to spend time with and to go, okay, how much of this has been romanticized?
• 46:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 46:24
  Talk to me about the disagreements. are the times where you thought this whole thing was gonna fall apart because people weren't getting
• 46:27
  along or they were?
• 46:30
  Yeah.
• 46:32
  But I take Wilberforce and his friends and I'd love to spend time with him.
• 46:37
  Yeah, that's a good one. What do you think history will remember from our current time and place?
• 46:46
  We're in a liminal time. We are in, we're in a liminal moment. And I think that there's these times, know, what happened after the printing
• 46:54
  press and the reformation. I imagine like being a part of that, I would have been so angsty and I'd been like, nothing's working. And how
• 47:03
  come, you know, I've been asking all these questions. And I think we're in that now with the advent of the internet and AI and all the
• 47:12
  changes. It's caused massive disruption and I think that we're probably in a 50 or 100 year time period where there's just a lot of like
• 47:21
  disorientation and a lot of like unsettling things that are going on
• 47:30
  Well, Dave, thanks for your time. We always leave folks with a word of peace. So may God's peace be with you.