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Dave Miles Pt 2: Repentance & Renewal in Practice · The Church Renewal Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: It looked like one of the pastors was the issue.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, he simply reflected the dysfunction in the system that had been there for decades.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: What looks like the issue is rarely the issue.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: And it helped me understand that what they were doing was symptomatic of something much deeper.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: In our conversation with Dr.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dave Miles last week, we traced how his own ministry experience led him into family systems theory.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not as an abstract framework, but as a way of making sense of what he was watching unfold in real churches.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: That conversation stays close to the ground where conflict erupts, where leadership gets tested, and where good intentions collide with long-standing patterns.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: What emerged was not a formula for fixing churches, but a way of seeing them more clearly.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: By being non-anxious, we allow people to make choices that are going to be different than what we make, and we've got to be okay with that.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: In part two, we pick up that thread and move further into the places where those dynamics become unavoidable.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: How churches organize power, how leaders hold their ground, and how this work ultimately shapes discipleship.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: We want to see a whole organization or the organism of the church change to move towards God's purposes, God's plans for God's glory and the good of the community involved.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We ended our conversation in the last episode discussing how churches come to understand their own history and why they are the way they are, and we're going to pick back up right there now.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Helping churches come to realize those kinds of things about their own history and why they are the way that they are.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: We have a transitional pastor in a very old church that is just they this week, I think he said three more charges were filed against leaders this week.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: I pastored a church in West Seattle for 10 years.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was the third pastor of my denomination to pastor the church.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: It had been in the old main line that had gone liberal, then they'd been independent for some years, and then they came into my uh the denomination where I'm more day, the Presbyterian Church in America.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the first two PCA pastors both left this church clinically depressed.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: The guy I replaced was literally on the couch.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I talked to the first PCA pastor who was still in the area, and I was telling him about what the Lord was doing, and the Lord did a very kind work in this church.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, It took a while, and it took us owning that even if our forebearers had been right about standing for truth, standing on the Bible, doing the right thing, their pride in being right actually made them a very critical bunch that did not turn outward at all towards the community.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: And my two predecessors were heavily critiqued.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that systemic makeup of the church, it was a black cloud over the church until the Lord excised it and it became a different group that looked outward again and that held into the same truths, but did so for the sake of others, not just for preservation.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to think about um why is this church like that?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And what would help them come to self-discovery and and repent of that and begin to love each other in a way that was profound so that they might love those outside of the walls in a profound way.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, who wants to be around a bunch of angry, vindictive people who are right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody met my family.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, there you go, yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and and this is what the historic fundamentalism is like this.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're right.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: And even when we're wrong, we're right.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's this angry, self-righteous, vindictive, critical, disdainful, caustic spirit that is often a part of the history of, say, Orthodox or conservative churches, and they're not even they don't even recognize it, but that it just emanates from them.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: So what non-Christian would ever want to be part of something like this?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: They're all a bunch of older brothers.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: And and Keller talks about this in his book, The Prodigal God, you know, how like one of the big things that puts off non-Christians is the self-righteousness of all, you know, these I mean uh the one of the I know this is not probably the best way to express this theologically, but Jesus never called us to be right, he called us to be reconciled.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Now I know that we need to be right about the virgin birth and the deity of Christ and all I get it, okay?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: But think about it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus never really called us to be right.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: You better be right.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: No, he called us to be reconciled.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: And again, if I'm taking responsibility for my sin, and I've got low anxiety, non-anxious presence, I don't try to overfunction and change things I can't change, then it becomes inviting and grace-giving.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: The most self-differentiated person in the history of the world is Jesus Christ.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Fully God, fully man, calling people to a place of repentance.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Look what happened, it changed the world.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: But look at look how many people I mean, it got them nailed to a cross, too.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's there's that, you know.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: So there's just something about American church history, particularly in fundamentalism, where this this need to be right, wow, it's a real turn off.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you're doctrinally accurate, this need to be right is it's really a problem.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: It just pushes people away.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if we actually get grace and we understand it, we realize that we couldn't have earned it, we didn't earn it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was a gift to us, and if we have any insight, it's by the Holy Spirit.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so that should make us incredibly humble people.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because even if we think somebody else doesn't get it yet, it doesn't mean they need to be badgered by us.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: It means they need a work of the spirit just like we had a work of the spirit.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Jeremy doesn't know how live of an issue this is when he wrote this question.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: One of the systemic places in churches that that vital church works, and we're actually you and I are dialoguing in the background of right now, is in the governance structures of churches.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's sometimes one of the places where the system is actually broken, and and kind of I would say it's always broken to get to a certain end.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, it's built by design, but the design isn't the glory of God, the reaching of unbelievers, the discipling of people.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's designed typically around some kind of stasis, some kind of idol holding something up.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So talk to us a little bit about that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: How does this insight about systems help us think about governance in a way that that is that's more robust than, well, do you have deacons or do you have elders, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's it's more how the thing is, not what the labels are, right?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I you know, the one of the things that Jeremy did uh bring up was like, have you seen a certain model of governance that tends to have more prone to anxiety than say another one?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I I can't speak for anybody else, but in my experience, I'd say there's not one model of governance that creates more than another.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying that's my experience.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: What you have is when a model of governance where the roles are unclear, roles of the board, roles of the pastor, roles of the staff, uh, when expectations are unclear, when the the role of the board specific to its job as a board relative to the church is unclear, that's when you got anxiety.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: That lack of lack of clarity about what are we here doing, why are we here, leads to micromanaging, reactivity, uh blaming, you know, and then on the board you're gonna have very strong personalities.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: All of a sudden, you know, people that have different opinions.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh goodness, I was talking to a guy just last week.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: We saw this just recently at a church that we're working at.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, people with different opinions don't say anything when the guy or the person you know with a really strong personality speaks.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: They speak ex cathedral.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: No one says a word, even though half of the people disagree.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that hurting thing.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, interesting.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: See, so even though they know if we do this, it's wrong, like half of them believe that, they do it anyways.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: Again, that's a dis that's a systems issue, and that the governance manifests itself.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: Another way that this happens is boards handle their anxiety over a situation by putting people you know into the chairman role who don't belong there.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: So the person's it's just the wrong person, but because they've done it in the past or because of the strongest personality, no one wants to upset the apocalypse, no one wants to challenge it, their anxiety just gets too high.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: They just capitulate, okay, whatever, we'll let so-and-so do it, even though they know so-and-so can't do it, shouldn't do it, and won't do a good job.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I've had a situation where I had to figure out a way to get that person out of the chairmanship of the board, which which we figured it out.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: We figured out a way to do it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's interesting because one of my, you know, one of my observations is that the the way that churches pick pastors is very intriguing.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it matches what you're saying about the the board chairman, right?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is that there are times when I'm sure you've seen this too, where you kind of walk into a situation, you see a pastor in the seat, and you're like, I know why they picked him.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because he wouldn't upset the apple cart, he would keep the system as it is.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we have a I've won in one of my pastor wonder contemporaneously right now, where a church picked and it was and it was subconscious.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: They picked somebody who was safe that would not actually upset things, but keep keep the steady eddy going forward, even if the steady eddy was imperfect.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we have a church right now where we we've got one of our pastors deployed, and they are gonna pick an easy candidate that they can mold into their own image because he's he's young and unformed, and he won't upset where they are, even if they have a lot of dysfunction, which they do.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna pick somebody that won't mess things up.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Dave, when you or I send a guy into a church, we're not there because things are perfect.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're there because things are broken.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's both of us work, and if you take uh transitional situations on a scale of one to five, one can do fine with just a stated supply, a regular preacher, two might need a little bit of advice.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: By the time you get to click three, the church has problems.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: They need somebody full-time, they need somebody to help them work through their stuff, and that only increases when you have fours and fives like scandals or splits, or or um pastor went off the rails doctrinally, or embezzled money, or or whatever you want to do, that's the most severe situation, right?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we go in there and we are there to disrupt the homeostasis.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: We represent uh change which is loss that puts people into grief.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we're the ones that get those arrows pointed at us.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how do you help your guys sort of like keep their head?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like this isn't personal, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is more you're there as God's agent, and and that's gonna have effects.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how do you help in your coaching or in your training?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: How do you help guys kind of like keep their head as they go about this?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you, uh, I even had this experience maybe just I mean last week.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we tell them you're here to facilitate God's change.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we give them permission to, for example, use your example, to say to the board, you're picking the wrong person.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell I tell our guys, if you know this person is a problem, you had better say something.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Then you're there to speak the truth to power.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Whether they listen or not, that's their responsibility.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: When somebody on their board gets mad at you and resigns, we tell our staff accept it immediately.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Every time be manipulated.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody, yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I'm gonna resign.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, so and so, for doing your work.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, let's get around brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care who it is.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: If they resign, that's it, they're done.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: And we and we tell our staff, I I tend to be again, I think I said that I'll tend to be more prophetic.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so I tell our, I tell, I told one of our staff that kind of messed up on this.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: You got to channel your inner Dave Miles, you know, like just you know, be mean, let the New York guy come out a little bit, you know, and and because for for you not to do that is is a problem.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so we tell them over and over, this is your job.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Your job is not to be their friend, your job is not to be popular, your job is to speak truth to power, even if it's uncomfortable.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: I had a situation at a church I pastored where the guy they were bringing in was problematic, and I told him so.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: I told him so.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: This guy, you gotta watch this, and this is here's how you need to watch it, okay?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that guy five years later split the church over the craziest stuff.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Later, I went back and I sat with a group of people, I tell you it was heartbreaking, and I said to them, What could we have done differently to resolve this?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: They said, Dave, you needed to talk louder.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: You needed to be like more forceful.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: I I said, Yeah, this might be a problem.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I put it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because I like it's not my job to pick their pastor, right, Matt?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: You're right, absolutely.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's not my job, okay?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because what happens if I pick the pastor's the wrong guy?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: So, but they said you needed to be more forceful in it.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: So we want to give our people the right to say what needs to be said, even if it means truncating our time there.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because what good are we doing if we simply capitulate to what we know is not gonna work, not gonna be honoring to Jesus Christ, the Great Commission, the Great Commandment?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's not gonna be good for the community or for the church.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what what what we're not being pastors at that point.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Dave, we've talked a lot about the diagnosis and the process that you're working through with the church itself.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask this question with your intentional interim guys and with the people on the board.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's the wisdom in helping them do their own family of origin work to understand how their history is affecting the church's story currently?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Friedman and Chitama both talk about the church as being a set of family systems within a family system.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do you employ that kind of hey, you know, brother Bob, sister Sally, whatever, here's some resources I think it would be worthwhile for you to dig a little deeper to see why it is that you're being reactive in this moment.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think there have been times where I've done that better than other times.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I I'll admit that sometimes these ex these situations for me when I was pastoring is just so they're so complicated, especially in larger churches.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: You're dealing with staff.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: I did you just I just couldn't do everything.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: So there's times where I have actually trained people in the genegram.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: Or we do one of the things that we've done frequently, and so I kind of passed the buck, is we'll we'll use uh Pete's Gazero's emotionally healthy discipleship stuff.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Emotionally healthy relationships, emotionally healthy spirituality, two eight-week courses at 16 weeks, they are forced to do a genegram in those courses.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: And and so then chasing it down on an individual basis as needed.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way I've dealt with it.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not been perhaps as intentional in some cases as it's intentional in that I use these uh these other tools, but like going like if if you have a board of six people trying to get every one of the six to have done the geneogram and sitting down and coaching them through it and all that kind of stuff.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't always done that as well as I uh I would like to.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Some and and that's just me.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's again, I'm not a perfect pastor, but it's uh sometimes I get so overwhelmed with what's going on, I just can't get to everything because you got 18 to 30 months.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we used to say 18 to 24 months, we're saying 18 to 30 months now because we're finding it more difficult to place the long-term pastors.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: So you do you get the best you can anywhere from a year and a half to two and a half years.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and then uh the way that I've resolved some of that, Jeremy, outside of using Pete's stuff in emotional healthy discipleship, is I will make sure to the best of my ability that the people who get on the board during my tenure are self-differentiated, well-balanced, grace-based, team player kind of people who don't have an agenda.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: I will work very hard to get the right people on the board so that when I leave, you're you got a good board.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: You got a board that you can work with.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's another angle that I've used to actually make sure that the people on the board are those kinds of people.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm sure I could have done a better job.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: To the point where listeners, when you think about a ministry like Vital or you think about Flourish, when we do these uh Vital as a diagnostic up front, uh we do a church health assessment up front, the church doesn't want to face the issues um that they themselves uncovered.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I probably learned this language from you, my husband didn't realize it, but we're a mirror to them.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: We just tell them what they said, we summarize it for them.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if they don't want to hear that, man, my sense is maybe the spirit's not at work here.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: We got limited, limited assets in terms of people, you know.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't want to face your stuff, then um maybe we'll find a different place to work and you're better, you're better on your own than with us here beating our heads against the wall.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that's exactly right.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that we've learned the hard way is when the board is the problem.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: When the board is the problem, we in the past we have we have made that known kindly, but it's not been well received.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: So what we do now is we figure out a way to tell people that's the problem, but then we say more directly what needs to happen in uh when it comes to the board.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like if they need to resign, we need we'll tell them in private, you need to resign.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Or everybody needs to be re-vetted, and some of you need to step down.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: And but but we'll just you know, we'll work with you to make that happen.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, they got to choose uh to do that or not do that.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: In some cases, we were at one church once years ago, where it was so obvious the board was the problem that one of our guys, he was the interim pastor, he said, I'm I'm not I'm not doing this.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: He said, I'm not coming here until all of you guys are off the board.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was that clear, he was that black and white about it, and you know what, six months later, they all resigned, brought us in, did the assessment, uh, and the church turned around.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I got a text message just uh not long ago about how well that church is doing.
• 19:28
  unknown: Wow.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we're talking like a week or two ago, how well this church is doing, and it's because uh they did the right thing.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it and sometimes it's hard.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: They're board members that shouldn't be on the board.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: But they got there for whatever reason.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: For whatever reason.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they they would they would say the exact opposite.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's the crazy thing.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: They would actually believe in some cases that they're doing the right thing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Even though what they're doing, see they're not doing what was it, Psalm 77, 78, David.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: They'd shepherded the w with skillful hands or whatever.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember the exact verse.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're not doing that.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And even when people try to tell them they're not doing that, they they again, it's a family systems thing.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: They won't face reality.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: They blame, they hurt, they get reactive, and y you can't control that.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: So many times in those cases, I think what's going on is that the person's identity is wrapped up and on the board.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Agreed.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's that's one of the places that I very much appreciate your approach.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I probably imbibe more of it than I even knew.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's my own formulation, but I probably got it from you.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um implicitly, when I teach on family systems stuff to Christian leaders, I talk about how our identity in Christ enables it, affords us to be able to differentiate.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because differentiating is costly, it's gonna cost you to differentiate.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Not everybody's gonna love you.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: If people are not gonna like that, you don't agree with them, but you give them the freedom to disagree with you, and so there's a cost involved with differentiating that if you don't have that security, that identity, that firm sense of I'm loved by the Father, I could never be out of this family.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bizarre thing that God wanted me in his family, but he did right, and he's done everything possible for me to be in, and the spirit's shed abroad the love of God in my heart, and so I have this solidity in Christ that enables me to be this non-anxious presence, even if I'm even if I'm getting assaulted.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: If I have that identity in Christ, and it's kind of like, oh, okay, you think um it's not good for me to serve on the board?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Great, that's not a part of my identity, anyways.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to be a servant, but right it, but that's not what we run into, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: We run into, no, I couldn't possibly um in a situation a couple weeks ago where a guy said, a guy knows he needs to get off the board, but he's trying to get to 20 years service as an elder.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, Wow, at least he's honest dysfunction, right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's he's getting he's getting his he's gotta get his 20, he's gotta get his 20th gold star, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Gold watch, gold watch, yeah.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: He's got the gold watch after 20 years, right?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: So as we've described family systems over the course of the season, we told them, you know, this was originally developed by uh Murray Bowen, who was no Christian, right?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Friedman was a Jew, but he was trying to more overtly put it in church and synagogue, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's in the subtext of generation to generation.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the reasons that we've made good friends over the years is that you've been able to pull together this wonderfully deep-rich gospel theology, this talk of idolatry, getting to the unholy trinity in churches like we talked about in the last season, but you've also pulled it together in such helpful ways with Bowen's Insights with Family Systems.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: So talk about how you bring those together so that it's not just something that's therapeutic, it's not just something that's psychobabble, but but where they how uh how do you pull it together for people that they see this a genuinely Christian thing that we're doing?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I you know what?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm not really sure.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know how to how to answer that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: I I think probably part of it was I mean, reading again generation to generation and and uh creating a healthier church by a guy named Ron Richardson, realizing look at what these people like Murray Bowen are saying that it's actually very biblical.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then trying to accidentally so.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: Accidentally so, but yeah.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, accidentally so.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so I don't always like the word self-definition, for example.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Self-definition sounds like uh expressive individualism, you know, in American culture right now.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm gonna be true to myself, I'm gonna follow my heart.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: I don't particularly like the nomenclature, but I know what they mean.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: Am I going to be so aware of who I am?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: This is my Christian theology in Christ, to your point, man.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: So aware of who I am in Christ, that my identity is rooted not in something somebody thinks about me, but in what God thinks about me, and God is crazy about me because of Jesus Christ.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so what I did was just I I read, I got the topics, the context, and I just started realizing just how biblical this really is.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was no intentionality behind it.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: It was more like over the years, just recognizing the uh inherent biblical nature of systems thinking.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, even the idea like we talked about Nehemiah and Daniel confessing the sins of the fathers and everything like that's Genogram, that's all systems thinking.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there it's rooted in uh in a biblical theology.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: And this, frankly, the whole federal headship thing goes all the way back to Genesis chapter, you know, two and three.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: So when you start putting those theological pieces together, you know, it just it works because it is very biblical.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that we can um, even by common grace, um, even sinners can observe things pretty accurately.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Bowen wasn't we Bowen was an acute observer, and you see it in Friedman too and generation to generation.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they observed well and then tried to figure out what to do in light of their observation.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Dave, you're probably familiar with Covers' little sermon and and his book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sermon in pamphlet form.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that one one of the things that I find so valuable about that is him sort of laying open that when the apostle Paul looked at the systemic problems in Corinth, in the Corinthian church, when he looked at the systemic problem of them being divided, and he said, How do I, how would I approach solving that problem?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: What Paul identifies and what Keller brings up so well in that sermon, and we can link to that in the show notes, is hey, the problem is you're you're hitching your wagon to these different teachers thinking that's what will give you a sense of self.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's what will give you an identity.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: And Paul says that's it, that's a lost cause in being right, in being on the right side of history.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: No matter what you try and hook yourself to, to give yourself an identity that ends up dividing you from other people, it's all hogwash.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna fall apart at some point, which is why people hold on to it so tightly because their very identity is at stake, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: And Paul says, I've given up on that.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is the only thing we have to hold on to.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you're saying, Paul, give up on that.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: That I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Paul.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, he says, give up on all that.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: I've given up on all of it.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not the way I think about myself.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think about myself as in the family of God because of Christ, and that's how you ought to think of yourself too.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: Servants of God.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: I look at that as an example of how the apostle Paul came into a broken situation, diagnosed it in a gospel way as a systemic issue, and provided a gospel solution.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now they still had to own it, right?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: They still had to say, Yeah, we'll follow you, Paul, kind of off the map of where we've been before, but we'll follow you into this.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: That I think is the freedom that we're calling people into.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: They've allied themselves to a building, or to sometimes you and I have both seen it, to a particular theological strand.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Or you pick the idol that people have allied themselves with as a place to stand or the place to find identity.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: And we're coming to them and we're saying, Well, that's an unstable thing.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, that's why you're so reactive about it.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because if your identity is wrapped up in that, you can't let that go.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, maybe we should sell the building, it'd be better.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: And people are like, Yeah, right.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, Jesus, Jesus doesn't need a building, he needs a loving people.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: He needs a people that outsiders look in and they go, Look how they love one another.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's the only thing Jesus said as the identifying.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think what we get to do is is a privilege.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: I really do.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard, it's difficult.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: We walk in difficult with people in difficult circumstances every day, both of us.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: We sense that thing Paul said about the anxiety for all of the churches.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: But it's it's for good, right?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's for good.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: But this this this pulling together of good theology and good system thinking, I think is it's for good.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: As you've been talking throughout this this entire conversation several times, the movie Saving Private Ryan has come to mind.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you why.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I watched it recently, uh, a week or so ago, you know, for the first time in several years.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And watching the movie and watching the way that the captain leads his men through a very difficult mission, he shows so much uh non-anxious presence and differentiation that that is so clear to see.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you have the label, it's like, oh, that's what he's doing there.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a scene where one of his soldiers is ready to essentially to mutiny, to to walk away completely.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: The sergeant's got his nine millimeter out and he's ready to shoot the guy for desertion.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the captain's standing over there, and you know, privates are yelling, do you see what's going on?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna stop this, blah, blah, blah.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where he stops.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is where he says, uh, what's the pool on me?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: What's it up to?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a teacher.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was a teacher back there.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a point in the movie where the guys are griping, and uh they say, Hey Dan, don't don't you don't you have gripes about this?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, If I do, I don't tell them to you.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your captain.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: The gripes go uphill.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what if it was the major?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: What if I was a major?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then I'd say, Well, sir, it sounds like a great plan.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to do it, and I'm happy to sacrifice my life and life, my men to see it happen.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: The way he's put together in this in the movie is I think textbook.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is what it means to understand what your role is, to not have an agenda, but be fully committed to a mission and to lead people through as a leader, not as a butcher, in lieu of you know, going and doing deep family of origin work.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: You could uh have the board members watch uh Saving Private Ryan.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: They'd probably enjoy that more, they might.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Many times the diagnostic or our in our case, church health assessment, you know, uncovers the church doesn't have a discipleship pathway.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the nice things about using Pete stuff is that it's very side door, it's not as straight on with people, but it's kind of like, hey, so what have you been learning as you've been going through the course?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's a it's a it's um it's not sneaky, it's just not straight on.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Dave and I are both um prophetic gifts, and so we can be really straight on with people, but sometimes that's not the what people need, right?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: They need time and space and the right kind of thing to reflect on.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if they do, and as we pray for them and the spirit works, that they might come to us one day and they go, Wow, you know what my dad was always like that when I saw him in meetings, and so that's why that way, but I don't have to be.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now you've got something to work with, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: You you've got something you can really you can really help with.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: And and think about it, that is discipleship, that is spiritual formation, that is a person becoming Christ-like.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, this is really again in family systems when it's with a biblical twist or a biblical understanding is nothing less than discipleship, growing in Christ, growing in Christ.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I am in Christ, I'm in union with Christ.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: What does that mean?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: How does that affect how I treat people?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: When I screw up, which I do frequently, how how am I going to respond?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Am I going to demand that I'm right?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: Am I going to apologize on my stuff?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: Am I going to blame?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: See, and so this is all, you know, the again, the process and content stuff that you talk about in family systems.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's all process, you know, which is really the issue, which is you know, having a non-anxious presence, uh self-defining, and taking responsibility for my own my own growth.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if if that's not biblical, I don't know what is.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: They just call it process.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: But that's the real issue.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: See, so most of these things that we're talking about in church level are discipleship issues.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so when we think that way, we're simply using these tools to bring people into conformity with the image of Jesus Christ, to live out the fruit of the Spirit, to love well, to be self-aware, and to make that so much a part of your life that slowly but surely you become more and more like Jesus, and you get a whole church full of people doing that, now they're going to be outwardly focused.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now they're going to be compelling to other people.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: Now you can have spiritual conversations with non-Christians about all kinds of things without them coming unglued.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I mean, right now, one of the big things that Christianity is not liked for is the whole right-wing political stuff.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: We're highly highly criticized for that.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: And you can see why, because it's so tribal and reactive and angry and vindictive, and you know, I mean, that's not Jesus.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus is the, I mean, I don't care how you vote, right?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be like Jesus.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so if I as a pastor can move a church towards that, now I'm walking like Jesus.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: Now he's apprenticing me to become like him.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, now I'm thinking outwardly, wow.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Dave, I was gonna try to land the plane, man.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna ask you what pitch would you give?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like you just did.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_04: You did.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: You just landed the plane.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_04: That was great.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: That was great.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Dave Miles, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: This was a wonderful conversation.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate your brother so much.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate what the Lord's doing through Vital and the impact you've had in my own life.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks for being here.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, vice versa, man.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: We're we are thrilled to be part of both of your ministry.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: And Matt, you know, we're gonna be working together for many years, and I'm pretty stoked for it.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a pleasure having you, Dave.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching.
• 34:49
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• 34:53
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• 34:57
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• 35:01
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• 35:34
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• 35:38
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• 35:46
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