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The Southeast Story | Eddie Johnson · Real Life Theology Podcast

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Welcome back to the Real Life Theology podcast. Today we continue our
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Amazing Baptism series with Eddie Johnson of Southeast Christian Church.
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Eddie explains how Southeast's one-at-a-time approach to evangelism
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has helped the church grow. He also shares about the impact of student
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camps, baptism weekends, and Southeast Recovery.
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Well, what an honor it is to be here, and I just
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want to communicate from the leadership of Southeast just how really excited
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and honored that you would invite me in, that you would invite Southeast in.
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Unity is a big deal for us at Southeast, and so we
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really truly are honored and excited about this gathering and the conversations we're having.
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For many years now, our former senior pastor Dave Stone sent
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his daughters to Lipscomb. Kyle sent his 2 daughters, our current senior
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minister, to Lipscomb. And so And Bobby has been
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a great friend of Southeast for a long time. And when I was a church
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planter, he was a great friend and mentor. So truly honored to
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be here. And Bobby, if I say anything, you can clean me up and I'm
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gonna blame it on you discipling me if I say anything wrong here. But let
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me tell you a little bit about myself. Eddie Johnson, I am a Hoosier.
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So I love that we've had another Hoosier up here. That's exactly right.
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I know Alabama fans, I'm sorry. I don't mean to bring that up a little
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too soon. Um, see,
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I know I'm off to a great start. That's why I'm here to be a
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missionary, right? I'm not home yet, fellas. I'm not home.
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I've been married to my wife Karen, who's over here, for, for 25 years and,
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uh, love her to death. We, we actually met here, dated here, got married
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here, and she is the reason that I'm in the restoration
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movement. She is, um, as independent Christian church restoration
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movement as you can be, and We met her. She kind of introduced
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me to Southeast and brought me into this, and it has always just
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felt like home. So she has been a great ministry partner for me.
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She actually has her own ministry. She works with the Ambassador Speakers Bureau here in
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Franklin. It's been doing that a long time, and that's kind of
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her ministry. We have 2 children. One, as Scott was
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saying, her name is Kaylee. She is a junior at Lipscomb,
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animation degree, working on the Dead Sea Squirrels. And if you don't know about that,
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You need to check it out. Scott will tell you about it later, but we
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love Lipscomb. It's been a second family for us. And then
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my son Keegan is over here, and if you guys can wave at Keeg over
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there. Keeg is kind of our miracle. His name
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actually means a little fiery one. Keegan has high-functioning
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autism, didn't speak until he was 4 and a half. He's God's miracle.
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We prayed every day that he would speak, and now he won't shut up.
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So be careful what you pray for.
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But you will want him as a part of your church. There is nobody who's
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more excited about what God's doing everywhere,
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but especially at Southeast, than Keeg. I've been
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at Southeast for almost 19 years now. That's hard to believe.
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I've had many different roles. My current role is I'm the regional campus pastor where
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I work with some of our campuses, and primarily
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I'm kind of working with campus expansion and Coming down here is
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kind of us coming into the Middle Tennessee area, and with
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our merger with Franklin Christian, our campus pastor Bryson is over there.
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That's Bryson Cook. That's our campus pastor at Franklin. Bryson is also one
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of our teaching ministers at Southeast and a great friend, grew up
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at our campus back in India. I'll tell you about that a little bit,
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but came to Southeast as a young adults pastor and then had
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this crazy boss named Kyle Adaman who put this idea of church planting in
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my heart. So I was sent out as a Southeast church planter,
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came back to Southeast in 2010 when we started
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our first campus outside of our original campus, and that was
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in Indiana. And so, man, had the honor to serve as the Indiana campus pastor
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for 12 years. And then these past 4 years have kind
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of moved into this role of kind of really discipleship
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and working with our, our campus pastors, working at starting New
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campuses, new churches, and that's just kind of, as Scott was saying,
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my heartbeat. And we are so excited. We moved back to
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the Nashville area. We're living in Nolensville, part of the Franklin
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campus, and we could not be more excited to be back home.
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And you guys have just been a great welcome to us. Even I'm getting that
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today. For those of you who don't know about Southeast, let me take a few
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minutes, maybe give a little background, because if you know the story of Southeast,
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then our baptism numbers, it kind of will give some perspective,
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and you'll appreciate this. We're a 63-year-old church,
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and it was founded in 1962 as a church plant.
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And if you were to talk to any of us who have been around Southeast
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a long time, the story we love to tell is not about our story.
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It's about this small to medium-sized church in
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downtown Louisville named South Louisville Christian Church. And South
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Louisville Christian Church had a vision as Louisville was growing that,
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you know what, we can continue to grow bigger. We are going to plant other
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churches. And so one of the things, the reason we have this weird name of
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Southeast is because the intention was, is that
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the southeast side of Louisville in the Hikes Point area needed
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a new congregation. And so 53 people— we have this picture,
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we can put this up here— 53 people stepped
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out in 1962 and said, You know what, we don't have any money,
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we don't have anything, but we just have a heart to start a new church.
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And there is— I mean, really, uh, most of the large churches in
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Louisville were started because of this church. Isn't that amazing?
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And that has really been the heartbeat of who we are, these 53 people.
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Well, they needed a senior minister, and the one they really wanted, they were waiting
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on, this 22-year-old Bible college grad named Bob Russell.
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But he had a year of school left, and he was serving at this church
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So they had a minister that stepped in for years. His name is Joe Kearns.
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But then Bob came. And if we have this picture,
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I can show you. This is our 3 senior ministers that have
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served since the very, very beginning. This pic,
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is it behind me? Oh, there it is. It's behind me. There it is.
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This is Bob Russell in the middle, Dave Stone, who came after
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him. And after Dave is our current senior
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minister, Kyle Ideman. And what's really cool is the intentional relationships that
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exist right here. Um, when Bob was kind of approaching,
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you know, even 10 years before he retired, he did
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a study of the large churches across the United States, across all evangelical
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churches, and could not find one that had transitioned successfully
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from one generation to the next. And so there was this really intentional
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pathway of bringing up Dave to preach on a regular
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basis so that he would take over and that there would be
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the successful handoff. So Bob, at the young age of 62,
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stepped down and handed it off to But before he did, it was kind of
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this new model we have of having 2 preaching ministers. And so
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the last thing Bob did was to bring in Kyle to be Dave's right-hand
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guy. And so then they served together for 17 years.
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And then since 2019, Kyle is our
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senior minister, and Kyle is now raising up some—
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actually a handful of teaching ministers, with Bryson being one of those.
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And so The heartbeat of our church has really been to go
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after young people, to raise up new people, to start new
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churches. One of the things we're very proud about is we
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have started over 100 churches along with partnership. Bobby knows this in
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the last 63 years, along with 15 campuses.
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And it goes back to the heart of who we are.
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So before I share these baptisms number with you,
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I kind of want to share my story. As some of the guys have done
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to kind of put myself in this is I
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grew up in the church, but it really didn't make sense for me.
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It was my parents' faith. It wasn't mine. I tell people I had this drug
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problem when I was growing up. Maybe you can relate to this. My parents drug
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me to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night,
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and it just never made sense to me. And it wasn't
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until— it wasn't my faith until my best friend was radically
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radically converted in college. And I watched what
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happened with him. And in my parents' driveway, when I was a junior in
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college, I gave my life to Christ. And it was a decision to follow
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him. And that really marked me. And I
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went off to be a financial planner, but just was growing in my faith.
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And at 28 years old, God called me into ministry. And a
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good friend of mine, the one who led me to Christ, said, you need to
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be discipled if you're going to do this. Just don't go to seminary. The importance
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of disciple-making. So this minister who had a program brought
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me in for a year, and man, that year changed my life. It taught me
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the importance of just not making converts, but making disciples
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who can make disciples. So as I started off in ministry,
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as I was getting going, I started dating my wife and came here to chase
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her to Nashville. We're trying to figure it out, and I'm a part of this
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young new church and I have no idea what I'm doing.
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And this tension, maybe you guys can feel this here. Here was my experience growing
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up is either had really, really good Bible-believing and
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teaching churches or you had kind of this growing thing.
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It was called a seeker church. Like, well, they're really good at reaching the lost
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and they're really good teaching the Bible. And it was kind of this dichotomy,
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right? Like, but these things didn't merge. And as I was trying to
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figure this out, my wife said, you know, there's this amazing church up in Louisville,
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Kentucky, and I went to college with a lot. You need to get up there.
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And so on a regular basis, Karen and I started driving
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up to Southeast and connecting with the staff, fell in love with it. And that's
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what brought me to Southeast. And I think the thing that I've
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seen in other churches, but for me it was the first time ever seen just
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this uncompromising stance to preach the
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word of God. But also this passion for reaching the
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lost. And I think the thing that Bob and
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Dave and Kyle and our elders have really impressed upon me is
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just this zeal to focus on the lost,
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to, to focus on those who are not in the room, but to not compromise
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as you do it. There's a verse— you should look this up
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later, I love it, it's become my life verse— when I first started Southeast
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It's Psalm 51:13. It's David's famous prayer of repentance.
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And in the middle of that prayer, it's not just about being forgiven.
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He says this. He asks God for something very specific. And in The Message,
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it's translated this way. It says, God, give me grace and give me
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a job teaching rebels your way so the lost can find
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their way home. And that has been my prayer is, God,
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give me a job to reach the lost, to help these rebels
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find their way home because but for the grace of God,
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that's me. So let me share with you a little bit what God
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has done this past year at Southeast. And as I do that,
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I just got to share. I know we keep doing this, but it's so good.
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Like, we are not this good. I think if anybody of our elders
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could be here, they would say, if you get to know me, I am
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really shallow. I mean, I'm strategically shallow, but God uses me
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But the thing I would want you to know is we're not this good for
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whatever reason. I don't know. But God has chosen to
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use Southeast Christian Church in the Louisville, Kentucky area for 63
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years now. We can't explain this other than we feel a stewardship
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to not be just a church with a great past, but God, we've been
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handed something that has just been incredible. There's so many faithful
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years that people have, you know, they have planted,
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they've turned the soil, and we are reaping the benefits of 63 years of
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people that went before us. And so I share that to go,
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this is really not us, this is 63 years worth of people at work.
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So this past year we celebrated, which is staggering to me,
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4,857 baptisms this
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year, which is just amazing. And that's building upon
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the year before was 5,150.
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But with that, we had— we did a baptism weekend,
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as Jeff was talking about, many of the independent Christian churches,
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we do this on an Easter weekend where we gave this opportunity for
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people to respond and it really significantly jumped our numbers. But this year
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we didn't have that on Easter. A typical weekend at Southeast, if you count all
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of our 15 campuses, is around 28,000 across all of our
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campuses. And so that puts our baptism ratio at about 17.3%
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of our average weekend attendance. So about 17 baptisms
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per 100 people that'll attend. But the most exciting part
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is it's kind of what you've already heard so far is kind
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of the who. So if I break this down by the ages of
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that 4,857 baptisms,
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322 were elementary age kids,
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471 were middle schoolers,
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737 were high school students.
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So 36.7% of our total baptisms our
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kids and students. And then if you include our college-age ministry
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and our young adults, so basically anyone up to age 28, the best
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we can tell, about 47% of our baptisms
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are coming from the next generation. And I think the common thing
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that I just want to encourage you, and I think you know this, but I
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want to encourage you just to lean into it as this next generation, something is
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happening. It's happening across our college campuses. It's happening in our cities.
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That God is at work in this next generation and everything and anything
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we can do to throw fuel on that, I think,
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is wise. A couple of things that are driving
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and leading us at Southeast that I wanted to share about baptism and discipleship.
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We got this. This is when Kyle took over in 2019.
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When you think about if you're Kyle Adaman, you're taking over for Bob
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Russell, Dave Stone, And I think at the time we're
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a church of, I don't know, somewhere in the 18,000 to 20,000 range.
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And it's kind of like, I think Kyle has been around long enough to go,
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numbers become numbers, right? Is really your legacy just
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going to be, hey, we took it from this number and drove it to here,
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or is there something more that you want? And as Kyle really spent
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some time studying the scriptures and really the
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life of Christ, and you're looking at how he taught and what he did,
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yes, he had some big events, But the most meaningful stories that
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we see, the abundance of his time and the ones we quote, are these one-at-a-time
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stories. That this one person at a time is
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really just this phrase that just kind of locked Kyle in and has really become—
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it's the mission statement of who we are. In fact, we say it this way,
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that the mission of Southeast is to unleash the full force of the
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church to love people one at a time.
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And that shows up from our elders when they pray. It shows up
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at a staff leadership meeting where we, we are expected and we
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consistently go around, hey, who's your one? Tell me your one-at-a-time person name. Who are
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you praying for? Who are you inviting? Who's your one at a time?
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And that really comes from Kyle. And it's just become a
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way that we talk to one another. It's a way that we hold each other
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accountable and pray and work together. Another exciting thing that's, that's really
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been culture shift for us this past year. This is
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Move, and you guys are used to capital campaigns,
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and we haven't done one in a long, long time. We have been
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so blessed by the generosity of those who come before us that at
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Southeast, all of our buildings are paid for. We have no debt. So there was
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kind of this, do we really need to do a capital campaign?
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But one of the things that I think we were really burdened by was we
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have a lot of people attend, but this idea of making disciples who are making
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disciples, and how do we engage our people in this process.
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So MOVE— the MOVE initiative is a 2-year kind of campaign,
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but it's a discipleship journey of not just sacrificial generosity with
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money, but also with our time, talents, and treasures,
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where we're trying to do some amazing things.
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So it's not just that we're raising money, but we are actually
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trying to plant 40 new churches in
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the next 2 years. We're trying to start 5 new campuses.
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We want to send out 4,500 short-term mission trips,
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people on mission trips. We want to translate the Bible in 17 languages that
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don't have it yet. We're asking 250 of
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our members to literally move to the Arabian Peninsula as
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healthcare workers and engineers to be missionaries.
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To live there and to be a part of that. We're wanting to rescue 200
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victims of sex trafficking. And the list goes on and on and
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on. But with that, the ultimate goal over the next 2 years is
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that, God, if you'll move, we're going to move with you.
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We want to see 10,000 souls be baptized in
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the next 24 months. And we're on our way to seeing
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that happen. And I just can't tell you the excitement that our
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people have, the stories that are being told and what you're already
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hearing here. I think the thing that as staff we would tell you is I
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think I've only baptized just a few people this year. It has been
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our people who are in relationship, who have their own one-at-a-time story that
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we're in the water with them, but they are baptizing their friend,
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their son, their daughter, their neighbor, their friend
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from school. And it is so cool to see. So what
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is working and what has worked so well? I'll put
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some things up here that are maybe just unique to Southeast.
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One of the things that we wanted to go all in with
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is one of our 3 goals as a staff, our vital goals, was student
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camps, that we wanted to be all in about student camps.
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And not only just us serving, but our kids inviting. So we had a goal
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this past year of seeing 7,500 students in
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camp— elementary, middle school, high school— and
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we just fell short. It was 96%.
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But most of our baptisms that came from camp week or
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just after that, as the numbers I shared with you,
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36%, were based upon camp. There's something that happens at camp
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week, and it was just intentional. There was this pathway,
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there was this relationship aspect, and man, the fruit
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that comes from summer camps has just been so vital.
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Baptism weekends at Southeast. We try to do these every
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12 to 18 months where we'll have a targeted weekend that
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we will present the gospel and there'll be a response at
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every one of our campuses. So for instance, we're getting
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ready to have one again this year at Easter. We're going to be going
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through the book of Genesis this year, and it just so happens,
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as Kyle planned it out, that we're going to be teaching Genesis 6
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on the flood story. And at the end, there's going to be this intentional,
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hey, we're all ready for you. We got everything. We got shirts, we got shorts,
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we got towels, everything you need. We are going to have an
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in-the-moment response at Easter where we go all
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in and we're just excited to see what's going to happen. We had
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one this past year that was at the end of July.
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And it was called At the Movies. Now, At the Movies is kind of an
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outreach that we do where we intentionally challenge
19:46
our people to invite their unchurched friends. And I want to say this, if Kyle
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was here, he would be going, I hate At the Movies. He feels
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like he needs to turn back in his Ozark degree for preaching.
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Like, he would rather not do it. But I think we've seen that
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just for using those a few weeks, it engages our people in the process of
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having a spiritual conversation with their friend,
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with their neighbor, to invite them to church. And what we
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did this year was, if you guys saw the movie Jesus Revolution, it's a
20:15
true story of Calvary Chapel and Chuck Smith. And if you
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remember, there's this famous baptism scene in the COVID And so we use
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that to kind of share the story but point to,
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hey, this is what God wants of all of us, that we would follow
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Jesus, that we'd be obedient, that we would deny ourselves, that we would die
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to ourselves right here, right now. And on that weekend of
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that, at the movies showing Jesus Revolution and giving a response at
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all of our campuses, we saw over 800 baptisms on one day
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alone, which has just been amazing. We follow that up with baptism
20:50
classes and assign people to walk with those people. And I'm
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not going to tell you we did it perfectly or we've got it figured out,
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but it is a beautiful mess of trying to walk with people
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I just would want you to know that we take it very seriously to walk
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with people on the backside of those decisions.
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I will share this. It seems like a common theme. I didn't know that we
21:13
were going to be talking about this, but one of the coolest things going on
21:15
at Southeast right now is Southeast Recovery. And this
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past year we saw 1,028 people give
21:25
their life to Christ in Southeast Recovery. It's a unique partnership that
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we have with 8 different recovery centers.
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Indiana, mostly Kentucky, and now here in Tennessee.
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And it came about— the origin story has to do
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with one of my best friends who was a campus pastor at Southeast.
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His name is Matt Robinson. And I didn't know Matt had
21:47
a problem, didn't even know Matt drank.
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And but blacked out drunk, his wife called,
21:55
we found him. And I would have told you Man,
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Matt's going to lose his job and I don't know what's going to happen.
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But Kyle was the one who just kind of said, hey, if he wants help,
22:07
we're going to help him. So we sent Matt to treatment and
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found out there's just all kinds of things. And if he was here,
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he would tell you, it's not my story to tell, but he'd be okay with
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me saying that just some horrific stuff from his childhood that some of it he
22:19
knew, some of it he didn't know. And it led to this path of
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he would do good for a while and then he would go back into it.
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And it's the only way he knew how to deal with this pain. And Matt
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is fully recovered. He's 5 years sober and man, it has
22:34
changed our church. About that time, I had just stepped out
22:37
as the Indiana campus pastor and this group had reached
22:40
out to us in Springfield, Kentucky, which is in the middle of the state.
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There's nothing around. There was a college, Catholic college called
22:48
St. Catherine's College that closed and it became a recovery
22:51
center. And at the time, and I think it still is, it's the largest men's
22:55
recovery center in the United States, almost 600 men. Out in the middle of
22:58
nowhere. And they had tried, they are a faith-based group and
23:02
they were trying to bring different churches in. But you'd get the
23:05
Catholic priest one weekend, you get the charismatic the next weekend, the Baptist.
23:09
And so they had no intentionality. So they reached out to us and said,
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hey, would you guys be willing to come and do services for
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us? And our elders said, hey, we will do it on one condition.
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We're not coming just to give services. If you're interested in making
23:24
disciples, on top of that, then we're all in.
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And so as me, the church planter entrepreneur, I was like, man, I'm all in.
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But I don't have a recovery story. But I brought my buddy Matt
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and man, we started doing services and nobody had to come. And next
23:39
thing you know, there's like 250 men showing up and baptism
23:42
after baptism after baptism. And that
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led to, hey, well, we got these 17 other centers. What are you going
23:50
to do? And so at this point, that has led to— there's 8 different groups.
23:54
We don't run a recovery center. We're just the spiritual arm of it.
23:58
We do weekend services and we have an intentional pathway where
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any of those people, we have a video curriculum and we train group leaders in
24:06
that meet with them. And a couple of things that we want is,
24:09
hey, we just want you to know that Jesus wants to be your higher power
24:13
and that Jesus is more interested in you than just your problem
24:17
with addiction. He wants to be your Lord and Savior. And so we walk with
24:21
people. And so what's really cool these past 5 years, this March will
24:25
be 5 years. We're celebrating over 5,000 baptisms in
24:29
Southeast Recovery. The newest one, this is really
24:32
cool. When we came to Tennessee, we said, hey, we really need to be intentional
24:37
about recovery in Nashville. So our friends in
24:40
downtown Nashville, Next Door Recovery, faith-based group, had the same problem.
24:45
Churches consistently not coming in. And we said, hey, won't cost you anything.
24:49
Here's who we are, here's what we believe. If you're okay with it,
24:53
we'll come. And so we're doing weekend services at this women's recovery center
24:57
next door, right off Charlotte Avenue. And from June of this
25:00
year when we started, we've had 89 baptisms, and 56
25:05
of those were first-time decisions for Christ, which is just really amazing
25:09
what God's doing. So I could share so
25:13
much, but I'm going to let Scott— I'm going to invite him up here and
25:15
let him talk about maybe what's helpful and interesting.
25:20
I think the thing that I just would encourage you and
25:24
the thing that I'm learning is, man, when your elders and leaders live
25:28
this out, when they have their one-at-a-time story,
25:32
when I know that my elders are investing and inviting and they're
25:36
sharing their faith and leading people to Christ, it's infectious. It really is.
25:41
And I think that the reason that a lot of us— my staff is over
25:44
here— we would tell you is because we're following the way.
25:47
Of our church leadership. Let's give him a hand.
25:51
Yeah.
25:56
Eddie, I really appreciate your time and love your church and
26:00
so happy to have you in the community here in Greater Tennessee.
26:05
So tell me, the thing that I would love to know first off
26:09
is how do you as a church and
26:13
as leaders of a church inspire a greater passion
26:18
for the lost? What does the Apostle Paul say?
26:22
Remember your chains. Right. And I think if—
26:26
I think equipping and challenging our people to know their own testimony and be
26:30
willing to talk about that on a regular basis,
26:33
man, there's just the power of story, right? The power of story.
26:37
And so I think almost every weekend we'll have a video testimony or
26:42
as we share during the week, We're always sharing stories of
26:46
life change and you see it modeled. And then I
26:49
think we celebrate it. And so it's just something that's become a regular pathway
26:55
and a part of our communication. So if you were at a church that didn't
27:00
necessarily do that, what would be the, the little steps on how
27:04
do you shift a culture where there is a greater passion
27:09
for the lost and for those that aren't here
27:12
yet? Yeah, well, the rebellious person in me would say go start
27:15
a church. That's what Bobby would say, right? Like we would. But I think working
27:20
with churches and just kind of consulting with that is,
27:23
man, I hate to say it, but it really, it's prayer, right? Like the harvest
27:27
is plentiful, the workers are few, but you pray for the Lord of the harvest.
27:31
But man, praying for the lost and God to give those opportunities.
27:35
You know, if you really think about it, if there's people out there right now
27:38
who are desperate and man, they're looking for
27:41
some kind of intervention from God, is if God really
27:46
wants to save people, he's looking around going, who's available? Who's available?
27:49
Okay, Nashville, Tennessee, this person's praying. Who can I put in their path?
27:53
And I think that being led by the Spirit and just asking
27:58
for favor and being mindful of those conversations I
28:01
think our elders and our church staff leadership gathering and
28:05
praying for the lost is one of the most powerful things that
28:08
you can do. And that's where I would start. On that, with the
28:12
staff, the elders in prayer and all that, tell me how you went about building
28:16
out your goals that you were talking about there. And a goal of
28:20
10,000 baptisms, a goal of this and that. So what
28:25
was that process like for Southeast? Yeah, always starts with our elders,
28:28
right? That they're praying about what that looks like and then our campus
28:33
pastors. Like, I think we would say our campus pastors are the one
28:36
that leads those congregations. Us coming together,
28:40
praying before, and then on a weekend of laying that— hey, what— there's a lot
28:44
of things we can do this year. What's the most important things that
28:47
we can do? And evangelism is always one of those 3
28:51
things that we're going to focus on. Okay. So if I asked
28:54
you, who's your one? Yeah. Right now? What would,
28:59
what would the answer to that be? It's my nephew, my nephew Jordan.
29:02
And, uh, you know, grew up in church, walked away
29:05
from it. Special Forces and the Army,
29:10
baptized in the Mormon Church, walked away from it.
29:14
And, uh, man, I— but I know God's working on him, and we're having spiritual
29:18
conversations. And, um, that's who I'm praying for. I'm trying
29:22
to share. Is that a conversation that you regularly
29:26
have with other ministers, other elders? I mean, in other words,
29:30
is there permission given to ask who's your one?
29:34
Yeah, I would say most of our staff meetings we're
29:38
going to pray and then real quickly, it may be as quick of, hey,
29:41
remind me, who's your one? And we'll go around going, I would say Jordan,
29:44
Mary, Tim. We— a lot of times we'll say,
29:48
hey, real quick, who are we praying for? Quick context. Hey, it's my nephew,
29:52
it's my neighbor. And man, we just stop in those moments to pray for those
29:55
people and pray for opportunities that we can have favor in
29:59
those conversations. That's a regular part of who we are. That,
30:03
that's a sea shift for a lot of us, isn't it? Is to,
30:07
you know, we spend a ton of time praying about the people who are at
30:11
our church already, which is great, right? But also
30:15
to be thinking about who's the one that's not here that we—
30:19
that God's put on our heart is a whole different way of thinking
30:23
as church leadership. And so this has been really helpful
30:27
for us just to think in, in real simple, small ways
30:32
about goals and who's your one. I also wanted to ask you
30:37
just a minute about what y'all
30:41
are doing as far as the recovery ministry Um,
30:45
what, what's the difference between Southeast Recovery and Celebrate Recovery
30:49
or some of those? Did y'all kind of create your own? No, and it's a
30:54
little different because Celebrate Recovery, I mean, that is, um, part of Saddleback and
30:57
what they— and they do great work and they kind of have their program.
31:01
I think what we've decided is to go, man, there's experts in the medical field
31:05
and counseling and there's already doing this, is how do we
31:09
come alongside them? What we want to be Man, we just want to introduce people
31:12
to Jesus. We want to baptize people. And so we've tried to
31:17
find partners that are in the part of recovery, but maybe are
31:20
looking for a church or they're looking for discipleship. They're looking for someone
31:24
to kind of be that spiritual arm. So are you saying that you've already
31:28
done that in Franklin? Did I hear you say something? Yeah. The Next Door Recovery
31:31
in downtown Nashville. Yeah. So talk to me about what that looks like.
31:35
Yeah. So God, if we're here and
31:39
if the brokenhearted are near to your heart, who is that? And just a conversation
31:43
opened that Next Door Recovery, that they really struggled
31:47
with churches coming in. So we started a relationship and
31:51
it was, hey, here's what we do. Wouldn't cost you anything.
31:55
Here's what we believe. Can we come in? And we will do weekend services,
32:00
but we will, as part of that, we want to do groups on a weekly
32:03
basis, on a daily basis. And if you're all in, here's what it would
32:06
look like. We will give every one of the ladies there a Bible, a journal.
32:11
We're going to take care of them. We're going to— our church, on the way
32:14
out, we're trying to invite them to come to our campus afterwards and develop
32:18
those relationships. So it really is more than transactional.
32:23
They become a part of our church. I love that.
32:26
Last thing I'm going to ask you, and then we'll move to the tables,
32:30
but the You're looking towards Easter and
32:35
it's intentional about the gospel. So how are
32:38
you equipping the members in
32:43
the weeks heading up to that to be conversational
32:50
with others about getting them there? What does it look like
32:54
to prepare the soil for God to really do a
32:57
work on that day? Yeah, we usually, you know, you kind of
33:01
think 40 days out is kind of a, you know, a lot of people call
33:04
it Lent. I think it's just, but there's something to that number of 40 in
33:06
the Bible and just going, hey, we're gonna start praying, we're gonna start preparing
33:11
every weekend, our campus pastors, whoever's on stage,
33:15
we're gonna be, you know, reminding our people, hey,
33:18
you need to be having spiritual conversations. You can't wait till the day before and
33:22
invite them last minute. Like there needs to be some investment in these relationships.
33:26
So when the invite comes, they're ready to go. And then there's also,
33:30
uh, we have follow-up classes. We're getting people ready for— we do
33:34
our baptism classes on the end of going, all right, here's what it looks like
33:38
to walk with Christ. Here's what it looks like to get involved with our church
33:40
in a group, serving, all those sorts of things.
33:44
And so it'll all build towards that day. And then,
33:47
uh, what will it look like on that day?
33:51
Chaos, but beautiful. It is crazy. Yeah. And I
33:56
won't tell you what the water looks like at the end of the last service,
33:58
but, you know, it's— sin
34:02
has been washed away. So let's just put it that way.
34:05
Gotcha. But it is, it is just awesome.
34:09
And, you know, we're in the back and there's a lot of times we're pulling
34:12
people aside and there's a lot of times you're just trying to reassure
34:16
people in the baptism they had. So we're trying to have those pastoral
34:20
conversations to guard against emotionalism.
34:23
Trying to also help people understand what they're doing, and then trying to
34:27
help people with next steps. So, but it's wonderful, but you have no idea.
34:32
You do all this planning, but we literally have no idea what's going to happen.
34:35
That's great. Let's thank Eddie for his time.
34:40
Thanks for listening to the Real Life Theology podcast. For more content
34:44
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