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Rev. Jonathan Hart (Alabama, Alabama - Emerald Coast) Interview · What You Have Seen and Heard

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, hello again, and welcome back to another episode of What You Have Seen and Heard.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: It takes its name from the passage of the Bible where John the Baptist sends
0:07
SPEAKER_00: a delegation to ask Jesus if he's the Messiah or not.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say yes or no.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: He just says, go back and share what you've seen and heard.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: And so this is a conversation that started only in the Upper Midwest.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: I was visiting with folks from across the Upper Midwest,
0:18
SPEAKER_00: but after going to General Conference,
0:19
SPEAKER_00: I've been trying to maintain the conversation that started with
0:22
SPEAKER_00: a few folks out there.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And so today is another one of those episodes from across the connection.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: And today,
0:27
SPEAKER_00: my special guest is Reverend Jonathan Hart,
0:30
SPEAKER_00: who is the pastor of Mulder Church in Wetumpka, Alabama.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: He's part of the Alabama Emerald Coast Annual Conference.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: So Jonathan, welcome to the conversation.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Travis.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: It's good to be here.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to start this conversation the way I do with everybody,
0:45
SPEAKER_00: and that is to ask you, how is it that you became a Christian?
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Or if you've been a Christian your whole life, how did you come to take your faith seriously?
0:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: So the short version is I had a moment when I was six years old that was so normal
0:58
SPEAKER_01: for me that I don't remember it.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: I remember it now after my mom kind of redescribed it to me.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: But at six years old, I went to a local passion play.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: My mom and dad were both working.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: I was in first grade.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: Mom picked me up after work.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I rode with her.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: We met dad at this Easter season, you know, Lent season passion play.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: And it was really dramatic.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: And at the end,
1:22
SPEAKER_01: they actually had a life-size cross that they thumped down into this hole in
1:26
SPEAKER_01: the stage.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: And so when we got back in the car,
1:28
SPEAKER_01: I just looked over and said, you know, mommy, why was that man up on that cross?
1:32
SPEAKER_01: And she shared the gospel with me in language that a six-year-old could understand.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: And I just believed.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Like I was...
1:38
SPEAKER_01: I had two older half brothers,
1:39
SPEAKER_01: but I was raised as the only child in the home and my parents were my source
1:44
SPEAKER_01: of truth.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: And so I just believed everything they said.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: It was just a normal day for me where I asked a question, I got an answer.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I remember praying at bedtime at an early age, just on my own.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: And we went to church.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: But it was in high school when we had moved and we're looking for another church.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: And for two years, we were visiting churches.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: We were very selective, but the church we kept coming back to was a Methodist church.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: And so like you and others that I've heard you interview on this podcast,
2:15
SPEAKER_01: I became a Methodist before I really knew what a Methodist was.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: I just knew I felt very at home.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: And for me, it was even more delayed.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: I was in the seminary,
2:22
SPEAKER_01: like learning about John Wesley, reading the writings of Wesley, the theology.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: And that's really when I realized, oh, this is why I feel at home here.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Like this is my theological home base.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: This is what I believed even since before I could articulate it.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: But in high school, that was the first church where I became part of a youth group.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: I went on my first retreat,
2:44
SPEAKER_01: like youth retreat, I think my sophomore year, Martin Luther King weekend.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: And at that retreat,
2:51
SPEAKER_01: there was just this night where I felt that they were calling kids to the altar.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: And I just felt this dilemma of like, Lord, I want to respond to you.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And I sense that you're doing something, but I don't know whether I should go up or not.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And I just sensed the Lord very peacefully say to me, you've already done that.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: I had accepted Christ when I was six.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: I got baptized at 12.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I've got you right where I want you.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: And I haven't had a lot of these in my life,
3:22
SPEAKER_01: but I just had this physical manifestation of what felt like just hands kind
3:26
SPEAKER_01: of pushing down on my shoulder, like this reassuring kind of, I've got you.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: And I just kind of melted into the chair.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those moments where time just kind of stops.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: And it could have been minutes.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: It could have been hours.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: But it was just this sweet communion with the Holy Spirit.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: And I went back to the room kind of feeling This presence,
3:46
SPEAKER_01: like even having this physical sensation.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, well, this is the emotional high that a lot of people talk about.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: So we get up the next morning, we get on the bus, we start going home and it was still there.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: And I went to school that Tuesday after the three-day weekend and it was still there
4:01
SPEAKER_01: and it just kind of never went away.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: And so to me,
4:05
SPEAKER_01: and this is one of the helpful things about Methodism,
4:07
SPEAKER_01: while we have language and categories for what we understand grace to be doing
4:11
SPEAKER_01: at certain points in our life and walk, It doesn't really box us in.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And the way everyone kind of describes that is different.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: There are some people that have the Damascus Road experience.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: There are some people for whom it's more of a process with multiple plot points along the line.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: But for me,
4:26
SPEAKER_01: what I think to the best of my understanding is that Jesus became my savior at
4:31
SPEAKER_01: a very early age, but that moment was really when he became my Lord.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: And I started reading the Bible more regularly for myself.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: I was interested in him becoming the leader of my life and not just doing it
4:43
SPEAKER_01: because my parents said it or my church was pressuring me to do anything,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: but literally kind of entering this one-to-one relationship of following him
4:50
SPEAKER_01: and having the Holy Spirit actually inside me and influencing my behaviors,
4:54
SPEAKER_01: my choices, my speech.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: And shortly after that, I felt called to ministry or maybe even just before that.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: But I got caught up in the whole like applying to colleges and picking out majors
5:07
SPEAKER_01: and just literally forgot about sense of calling.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until the summer after my freshman year of college that I went back
5:16
SPEAKER_01: and interned for my youth group and went on my first mission trip to Juarez, Mexico.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: And it was there that I sensed very clearly a call to pastoral ministry.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: It's been really interesting meeting with these folks because you and I had
5:29
SPEAKER_00: a few conversations in South Africa,
5:32
SPEAKER_00: but we didn't get into our biographies and all the rest.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm finding just utterly fascinating is talking to a variety
5:37
SPEAKER_00: of people I met at a general conference and hearing my own story told to me
5:41
SPEAKER_00: through their lives.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I share that just as a way to say, on the one hand, everybody's story is different.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, it's been fascinating to me.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Then in the midst of all those differences, to see some similarities.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Because I also would argue that my genuine kind of evangelical awakening,
5:54
SPEAKER_00: if not conversion, experience was at a three-day weekend on a long weekend.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And I remember distinctly now,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: now it makes a lot of sense, but at the time I was a little confused.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: We had this very powerful evening,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: and then we go back to our little rooms in this church,
6:08
SPEAKER_00: and I remember hearing some of the other boys who were there deciding they wanted
6:13
SPEAKER_00: to spend the time late at night telling dirty jokes and And I was just scandalized
6:19
SPEAKER_00: in a way that I had not been in the past.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: In a way that it was this notion of like, you guys are here having this experience.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, did you guys experience what I experienced?
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Because if you did, why are you doing this?
6:30
SPEAKER_00: And kind of that moment of,
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I think about like the thief on the cross,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: who kind of comes to Jesus and immediately has an awakening
6:42
SPEAKER_00: where he's bearing witness to Jesus.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: I find it fascinating to hear And also about how my call came in the summer
6:50
SPEAKER_00: after my freshman year of college as well.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yours came before that, but your rediscovery of it.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: So it's just,
6:53
SPEAKER_00: it's been fascinating on the one hand,
6:54
SPEAKER_00: hearing how everybody's situation is different because there are many differences
6:57
SPEAKER_00: in your story from mine.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: But I also find it just fascinating that almost everybody I talked to
7:01
SPEAKER_00: from General Conference,
7:02
SPEAKER_00: hearing more of their story,
7:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, in a lot of ways, their story is my story.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And just fascinating to hear how God works in people's lives.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: So you talked about, you talked about Yeah.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So I'll start back kind of at the moment I was called and how that happened
7:16
SPEAKER_00: because similar, I mean,
7:17
SPEAKER_00: now that I'm saying this out loud,
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I realized that I had a similar reaction to both experiences.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: I was almost
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Afraid or at least had a resistance to sensationalism.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And so at the retreat,
7:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:41
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be careful that it wasn't just this emotional high or this kind
7:44
SPEAKER_01: of manufactured response.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: And when I was in Juarez,
7:49
SPEAKER_01: I remember sitting on this concrete slab and I have a touch of OCD and I don't use
7:55
SPEAKER_01: that language lightly.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know people that are full blown, you know, it's a disorder and they take medication.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: I have...
8:03
SPEAKER_01: A bit of that.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: And so I was out of my context and away from any semblance of control
8:12
SPEAKER_01: or I was completely surrendered to the structure of what this organization we were
8:17
SPEAKER_01: with was providing.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: I was away from home and routine and all the things that normally provide that sense
8:23
SPEAKER_01: of security and familiarity.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: And yet I just felt this calm, I thought, this is not what I find my peace in.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: And yet, I can't describe this feeling that I have.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: Why am I not only okay right now, but feel like I'm flourishing in this context?
8:42
SPEAKER_01: And I was sitting on this concrete slab, just in this moment of contentment.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: And from a kid that I would say contentment was one of the searches of my life.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: This longing for that feeling.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget,
8:56
SPEAKER_01: there was this Minnesota farm girl And she was one of the interns working for
9:01
SPEAKER_01: the organization that summer.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: And she had like five kids from the community attached to some part of her.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: And she was just spinning around and she had kids,
9:12
SPEAKER_01: you know, flying and holding on to her arms and her shirt and her legs.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: And this vicarious joy,
9:19
SPEAKER_01: like secondhand joy,
9:20
SPEAKER_01: like they're enjoying the moment,
9:21
SPEAKER_01: but I'm enjoying just watching them, enjoying the moment.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of just felt this whisper.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: The voice of God in my life has often felt like my own voice in my head,
9:31
SPEAKER_01: the way that you have thoughts that you can hear.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: But he says things that I would not have said or answer questions that I have
9:37
SPEAKER_01: that I know I didn't possess that answer.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: And so this voice just said quietly and internally, you'll never be happy doing anything else.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: And I knew what it meant.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: And I immediately had a picture of my senior pastor of my home church in
9:55
SPEAKER_01: that shepherding role of standing up on Sunday morning,
9:58
SPEAKER_01: leading the people through worship,
9:59
SPEAKER_01: through preaching and the sacraments and caring for them during the week.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh man.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: So I went home and I didn't tell anybody for a couple of weeks.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Again, I just thought this is my first mission trip, sensational response.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: And when I did finally start leaking it,
10:14
SPEAKER_01: I just started with a few trusted people,
10:16
SPEAKER_01: some family, some friends, some church people that knew me well.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: And I would just kind of test the waters.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Hey, what would you think if?
10:24
SPEAKER_01: I've been a mechanical engineering major,
10:25
SPEAKER_01: but if I was to consider maybe being a pastor, what would you think?
10:30
SPEAKER_01: And far and away, the response that I consistently got was, Yeah, we've known that for a while.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: We were wondering when you were going to come around to that.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: Which blew me away because no one had ever said, hey, you should be a pastor.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: But so many people apparently had thought it.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: And it was almost like I was a pastor in vocation before it became like an occupational pursuit.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: And so people just saw me as a pastor before I ever said I want to be a pastor or go
10:57
SPEAKER_01: into ordained ministry.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: So I tried to change schools.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Stayed on staff at my church,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: commuted to the big state school I was going to down at Mobile,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: the University of South Alabama.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: The following year,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: through a music scholarship,
11:11
SPEAKER_01: I was able to transfer to the University of Mobile,
11:14
SPEAKER_01: which is a small Southern Baptist school.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: But my dad had been on faculty there.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: My dad, my mom, both my half brothers had all gone there at one time or another.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of a second home to me growing up.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: I was very familiar with the campus.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Met my wife there, graduated, headed to Asbury.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: And then got appointed to a church in Florida as an associate pastor
11:35
SPEAKER_01: and began my pastoral ministry there.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: So that was kind of the journey.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: What was your experience like as an associate, if you're willing to share?
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: So I should specify because my experience as an associate was not great.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what everybody else's is.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: My experience, I mean,
11:57
SPEAKER_01: the best way I know to summarize it is just that it was
11:59
SPEAKER_01: an outstanding First appointment.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: It was an incredible learning season for me.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: I was appointed to a large church,
12:07
SPEAKER_01: Shalimar United Methodist Church at the time was somewhere between 850 and 1000
12:13
SPEAKER_01: in weekly attendance.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: I was one of four pastors.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: So we had a senior pastor,
12:19
SPEAKER_01: a worship pastor,
12:21
SPEAKER_01: an executive pastor and me, which I eventually became the discipleship pastor.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: And I served under two different senior pastors each for three years.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: So Larry Breyers, who's a presiding elder.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: So Larry was my first senior pastor.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he got me.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: He was the chair of the Board of Boarding Ministry and he saw me coming through
12:41
SPEAKER_01: the interviews and he called me.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know where Shalimar was,
12:45
SPEAKER_01: but when I pulled it up on Google Maps,
12:48
SPEAKER_01: It was like a couple miles from where my family had vacationed during spring break
12:52
SPEAKER_01: when I was in high school.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: It was beautiful.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: I just thought, this is not suffering for the gospel.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: I almost felt guilty because it was at the beach.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: So I served under Larry for three years, and he went back on the cabinet.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: And then a pastor named Philip McVeigh,
13:08
SPEAKER_01: who had also been a district superintendent,
13:09
SPEAKER_01: came off the cabinet and became the senior pastor.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: And they were so different, but I learned so much from each of them.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: I did get burned out and it was very much a large church experience.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: And so just that pace and I had such a drastic shift.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: Another great learning experience when I was appointed for the next four years to be
13:31
SPEAKER_01: the senior pastor of a church in Robertsdale, Alabama in Baldwin County.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Where the average was like 170.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: And it was mostly older congregants, more of a rural farming community.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just such a drastic change from the Air Force culture and
13:48
SPEAKER_01: the transient beach community of a large church in Shalimar, Florida.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: So very different experiences.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: I was one of only two full-time staff positions for a while.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: I was the only full-time staff.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And then we hired a full-time youth pastor who kind of also functioned as an associate pastor.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, a couple of other part-time staff, smaller church.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: And then came to Mulder about five and a half years ago.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Mulder is a church in Wetumpka, Alabama, close to Montgomery.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: And the weekly average here is about 500.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I've really experienced a wide diversity in churches and appointments.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: And it's just been really good to see.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: It's been really interesting meeting some folks from across the connection
14:32
SPEAKER_00: because some people have different perceptions of things.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: And so we were doing this ILI training.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And Scott Patterson was there from the Great Lakes and he was telling us a story
14:42
SPEAKER_00: about when he went to this,
14:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:44
SPEAKER_00: really small town of about 8,000 people and everybody in the upper Midwest who was
14:47
SPEAKER_00: in the room just laughed at him,
14:48
SPEAKER_00: you know, because we said 8,000, we have counties that are smaller than that.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And so you think about the fact that,
14:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:55
SPEAKER_00: you talk about, oh,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: you were,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: at one point there were only two full-time people and it's,
14:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm just laughing a little bit because I think the number of congregations in
15:02
SPEAKER_00: the upper Midwest that have more,
15:04
SPEAKER_00: that actually have two full-time Ministry staff people,
15:07
SPEAKER_00: I think is probably less than 10, you know, across our whole annual conference.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: It might be more than 10, but less than 20 for sure.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: So that's just an interesting,
15:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: dynamic where,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: you know, my rural context, you know, we have probably about 120 and we are.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Certainly not the largest in our annual conference,
15:26
SPEAKER_00: but we are, we're certainly in the top 20 largest churches.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: So it's just,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: it's interesting about some of the dynamics and that leads me to also have
15:33
SPEAKER_00: the question of, so you,
15:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about two things that have to do with your time of coming to Mulder.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: One of them is you went to Mulder right after COVID and right before disaffiliation.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: So I am curious about that story.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And I'm also curious about,
15:47
SPEAKER_00: you know, what,
15:50
SPEAKER_00: About what,
15:51
SPEAKER_00: how many,
15:52
SPEAKER_00: what percentage of the Methodist churches end up joining the Global Methodist Church
15:56
SPEAKER_00: in Alabama and that area of Florida that's now the Alabama Emerald Coast?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: And you mean, I didn't tell you about that one.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't have.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't have an exact number.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: I can say there was a virtual annual conference,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: a special called Zoom annual conference for a large number of churches.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: All wanting to disaffiliate at one time.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: And it was May of 2023.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: And it was that one where churches were trying to get under the wire to use
16:25
SPEAKER_01: the paragraph approved at general conference.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: And Mulder was one of, I believe, 193 churches that disaffiliated in one day.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: But the annual conference had about 600.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: So I would say that was closer to 250 total,
16:41
SPEAKER_01: counting the churches that disaffiliated on their own at different times throughout
16:44
SPEAKER_01: that process.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: But in one day,
16:45
SPEAKER_01: 193 churches left and That was primarily due to the actions of
16:51
SPEAKER_01: the jurisdictional conference that had just preceded in late fall.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: And there were three pieces of legislation that, I mean,
16:59
SPEAKER_01: we were in the Southeastern jurisdiction,
17:01
SPEAKER_01: which is the most conservative jurisdiction in the nation.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And when those three pieces of legislation passed,
17:07
SPEAKER_01: it became very clear that the writing was on the wall,
17:11
SPEAKER_01: that essentially the United Methodist Church,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: which had lived in tension since 1968, 1972,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: Was clearly going in this other direction, just totally going in this new other direction.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: And the churches like ours were saying,
17:27
SPEAKER_01: we've got to figure out what to do to stay who we are and
17:29
SPEAKER_01: to continue doing what we do and believe what we believe.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: And so we went through a discernment process.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: And it was two-part, like most churches, deciding whether to disaffiliate.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: And then if we do disaffiliate, where are we going to go after that?
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Because the votes are going to happen on the same night.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: So we did a lot of research, decided the Global Methodist Church.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: It was interesting because by becoming a part of a new denomination with a new name,
17:55
SPEAKER_01: changing the name, changing the logo, which we really didn't.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: We changed our church sign out front,
17:59
SPEAKER_01: but it says Molder Church, which is what we had gone by for 30 years.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: But by changing all that, that was the path of staying most the same.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: That was how we decided we would have to change the least by becoming Global Methodist.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: If we had become a Wesleyan church or a free Methodist church,
18:22
SPEAKER_01: all great traditions, but they have a different historical line, right?
18:26
SPEAKER_01: They have this whole history that we haven't been a part of.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: And so we wanted to be a part,
18:32
SPEAKER_01: we wanted to stay connected with churches who shared not only our theology
18:35
SPEAKER_01: and doctrine and practices, but also our history.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: So the reason why I asked about that is because we probably had
18:41
SPEAKER_00: a much smaller percentage of churches as affiliate.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: Now part of that is because we're in the upper midway.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: No, what do we call it?
18:46
SPEAKER_00: We call it the north central jurisdiction.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: And in doing that, we had several folks...
18:54
SPEAKER_00: We had a couple of folks who were really arguing that if you want to stay the same,
19:01
SPEAKER_00: you have to leave.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: What was interesting about some of that is that some of the people who were
19:05
SPEAKER_00: the most vocal about that then remained an independent Methodist church,
19:10
SPEAKER_00: a term that bothers me because I don't know that you can be really
19:13
SPEAKER_00: a Methodist church and be independent because of the nature of connection.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: The reason why I say that is because I'm not really interested in general of kind
19:20
SPEAKER_00: of rehashing the past,
19:22
SPEAKER_00: but I get the feeling at least that there are some congregations who said,
19:26
SPEAKER_00: great, we're going to make this transition so that we don't have to do anything.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: And I, and I wonder how much of our, um,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: how much momentum did we lose,
19:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:37
SPEAKER_00: or did we,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: or at least potential momentum could we have had if,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: because some people,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: I think,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: and again,
19:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how this is in Alabama,
19:43
SPEAKER_00: um, But I know that I get the feeling that some folks are like, well, great.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Now we don't have to do anything because we've secured our theological heritage.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: But if their practice is still not actively engaged in the gospel ministry
19:54
SPEAKER_00: in their community, then staying the same is not what they need.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: They do need to do something new.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things I appreciated about the Globe Methodist Church
20:02
SPEAKER_00: and General Conference is this idea of we're not just a retrieval movement.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: We are moving forward into this heritage that we've been given.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: I just wasn't sure because someone who's from far away,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: the perception in the North is that the South kind of disaffiliated en masse and
20:19
SPEAKER_00: then kind of was able to basically just kind of step from one culture into
20:21
SPEAKER_00: a new culture and might have a different set of issues.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: But it sounds to me like it wasn't as universal in Alabama as it was in some places
20:29
SPEAKER_00: in Texas, for example.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably so.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: And I would be curious since you asked me that question of looking up
20:36
SPEAKER_01: and seeing how many churches have I think to your point, um,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: I am so glad to be a part of a church that has momentum and had momentum.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think they cared way more about coming out of COVID than they did
21:11
SPEAKER_01: about disaffiliation on the whole.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: Because I would say two of the core values of Mulder Church are connection and authenticity.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard to live both of those out or either one of those out
21:23
SPEAKER_01: when you're kind of stuck in lockdown and very limited
21:27
SPEAKER_01: and how you can gather together or do things that are in person.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: They were meeting outside.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: The pastor was preaching under the fire escape for a while
21:36
SPEAKER_01: and setting out folding chairs in this parking lot.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: And so the church was desperate to get back to being the church and gathering
21:43
SPEAKER_01: in groups and growing spiritually together and getting back on mission,
21:47
SPEAKER_01: which is something that I've had a great privilege and a lot of fun doing in my five
21:50
SPEAKER_01: and a half years here,
21:52
SPEAKER_01: getting to where we're taking mission trips again and defining what we do in terms
21:56
SPEAKER_01: of missional outreach locally.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh, regionally slash nationally and then globally with, with mission partners across the world.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: And so, um, all of that, I feel like just fits with the global Methodist DNA.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Number one,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: to have and maintain a global perspective,
22:11
SPEAKER_01: but number two,
22:12
SPEAKER_01: to be a part of a movement that's actively reproducing disciples
22:17
SPEAKER_01: and reproducing churches, planting churches.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: So for the first time,
22:21
SPEAKER_01: I think in our history,
22:22
SPEAKER_01: maybe not,
22:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there are other pastors before me that have cared about this
22:26
SPEAKER_01: and I don't know if they've broached the subject and where that went,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: but we're talking seriously about having another building project because we're out
22:34
SPEAKER_01: of space again.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: And we were at this place about 15 years ago because
22:39
SPEAKER_01: the community was experiencing this growth wave of lots of housing developments.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: And we're back there.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: We're in one of the fastest growing counties in Alabama.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: But what I told the leadership was before we just expand our facilities and grow,
22:54
SPEAKER_01: We have to define what growth is and we have to define what we want growth
22:57
SPEAKER_01: to look like in game on this campus.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, is it a thousand people?
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Is it 4,000?
23:03
SPEAKER_01: Because churches sometimes just never have that conversation and they just assume
23:07
SPEAKER_01: that more people is growth and all growth is good.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: And then they look down the road and say, well, how did we get here?
23:14
SPEAKER_01: We've lost who we were.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that just happens by building buildings.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And so we don't want to do that.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: How big are we willing to be on this campus to be able to maintain who we are
23:26
SPEAKER_01: and how we do church and what our core values are?
23:29
SPEAKER_01: But then at what point would we say, you know what?
23:31
SPEAKER_01: We've swelled and this is great, but now it's time to plant churches.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And now we're having those conversations, I think, for the first time.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: So I think you're interviewing Jeremy Smith coming up in an episode.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
23:43
SPEAKER_00: That's the plan anyway.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: Crosspoint, yeah.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: If you get to interview Jeremy,
23:48
SPEAKER_01: ask him about this because we're currently in a process with Jeremy
23:52
SPEAKER_01: and some other pastors.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: And at Crosspoint, they've been doing this for several years.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: First of all, they've been multi-site and planting churches.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: But they just have a vision for creating disciple-making movements in local churches.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: And our church is part of that.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: So we're trying to learn from them and adopt what practices we might need to take
24:12
SPEAKER_01: the next steps and actually work.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't
24:19
SPEAKER_00: know how wide this is.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: This may be far beyond our annual conference.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: I know that we've got a director of our multiplication team in the Upper Midwest,
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Zach Kingery,
24:29
SPEAKER_00: who's also heavily involved with Kingdom Advancement and a bunch of other stuff.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things, at least by Yeah.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Now,
24:56
SPEAKER_00: we're an interesting spot in the Midwest because we have so much space between towns
25:00
SPEAKER_00: and that if we planted another church in another community,
25:04
SPEAKER_00: it would not achieve the same ends as we're expanding our sanctuary
25:08
SPEAKER_00: a bit is what we're doing coming up soon.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's really interesting though,
25:13
SPEAKER_00: but to have that attitude of always be asking the question,
25:15
SPEAKER_00: how can we be planting churches?
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Because a movement that's not planting churches is not going to stay in movement for very long.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the fact that we were constantly being reminded of that importance,
25:27
SPEAKER_00: I think, is crucial.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: And something that I don't think we heard a lot of.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Because at least in our annual conference before,
25:33
SPEAKER_00: there was a certain sense of we are managing the decline.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, how can we kind of hold on to what we've got for as long as we can?
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Kind of having given up the idea that we might actually genuinely be a vital movement of God.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: We had George Acevedo.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Come and speak at our annual conference from Florida one year.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: And I loved what he said one time.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: Because their church, I mean,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: we had him speak because of the perceived success from afar
26:00
SPEAKER_01: of what their church had been doing and how they were increasing and multiplying.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: But he said, what did he say?
26:07
SPEAKER_01: He said,
26:08
SPEAKER_01: He said,
26:08
SPEAKER_01: I like to say our church is the least mega church,
26:10
SPEAKER_01: mega church,
26:11
SPEAKER_01: because our idea of planting
26:12
SPEAKER_01: a new campus is like finding some abandoned warehouse downtown somewhere
26:17
SPEAKER_01: and sending 30 to 40 people to start a new Celebrate Recovery community.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: And that would be like, you know, our church's south campus.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: And I love that because it was so authentic and it was so much about ministry,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: not just about like,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: how can we Put up another building and another notch in the belt to say,
26:35
SPEAKER_01: here we are, we have this other site.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: But we wanna actually send people to where there's needs.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: We wanna meet those needs.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: And that's how the kingdom of God spreads.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: And it's small.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like our staff came back from New Room last week.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: The conference was put on by Seedbed.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: And the whole point is meeting with Jesus and sowing seeds for the next great awakening.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: And one of my big takeaways from New Room was just this revived conviction
27:01
SPEAKER_01: That Jesus used the small metaphors of the kingdom of God intentionally.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: And that while doing things on the group level and to scale is great if you can do that.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, certainly Peter standing up on Pentecost and reaching thousands of people
27:17
SPEAKER_01: in one sermon, like that's great.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: But in the kingdom more often,
27:21
SPEAKER_01: it's the one-on-one conversations like Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch when he was
27:24
SPEAKER_01: a lay person, he wasn't even clergy.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Those one-to-one conversations, those one-to-one discipling relationships.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: And so I came back with a conviction of in a church the size of Mulder,
27:39
SPEAKER_01: what percentage of our people can even name a one-to-one discipling relationship
27:44
SPEAKER_01: that they have of either someone that is Spiritually could use their influence
27:48
SPEAKER_01: and guidance and wisdom and just to bounce ideas and talk with someone
27:52
SPEAKER_01: about what God's doing in their life and how they're trying to live out their faith
27:54
SPEAKER_01: or someone who's spiritually ahead of them that they can glean, learn from, imitate.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: The same man,
28:01
SPEAKER_01: like you're just not called to wake up every weekday and figure out how
28:03
SPEAKER_01: to do this life of faith on your own.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Like you're just not.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: But I think the vast majority of people feel that way.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And so it's a bit of a ramble, but a conviction that I hope spreads throughout our church.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been really struck by in the last couple of years.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: I remember I had a couple of summers ago, I started to preach through First Timothy.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: And part of what I did during the summer was there were a couple of passages
28:24
SPEAKER_00: that could come off as inflammatory that I'm like,
28:27
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have a smaller crowd because we were one of those folks that goes down
28:30
SPEAKER_00: the summer a bit.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you,
28:33
SPEAKER_00: God kicked me in the face pretty hard with that whole letter,
28:36
SPEAKER_00: which I did not see coming.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: And I was just really gripped by the fact that the disciples,
28:41
SPEAKER_00: when they went out and were the disciples,
28:43
SPEAKER_00: were the apostles, they had been following Jesus for three years.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: They hadn't been to seminary.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have a Master of Divinity.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine having someone in ministry who doesn't have a Master of Divinity?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Gosh, it's a scandal.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: But they went out, and apparently God used them anyway, even without that degree.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And so I was trying to remind folks that if you've been at this for a while,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: and by a while,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean a couple of years – Then what that means is you should be having somebody
29:14
SPEAKER_00: that you're pouring into.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And if you're really brand new or you've been away from the church for
29:18
SPEAKER_00: a whole long time and you're just getting back into it,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: getting back into your faith,
29:21
SPEAKER_00: then take a time,
29:24
SPEAKER_00: take like a year and kind of pour into yourself spiritually so that in
29:28
SPEAKER_00: a year's time you can do it.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many people really took me up on that,
29:33
SPEAKER_00: but I know I preach it pretty heavily for a solid year.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think, I hope that we're getting away from, who was it?
29:45
SPEAKER_01: They coined some graphic way of putting it.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: It was like we're spiritual ticks.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: We're just feeding on all of the curriculum.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: And every time we finish a Bible study or a Sunday school class curriculum,
29:58
SPEAKER_01: we're just asking the pastor to help us find another one.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: And we're sinking all this money into these workbooks and learning all that we can
30:04
SPEAKER_01: about the book of Daniel or whatever.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: To do what?
30:09
SPEAKER_01: And of course, we're part of a denomination that says, Bible study is important.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: That's a huge means of grace.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: We want to grow in understanding.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: But the whole point of that is to turn it out into social holiness,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: into loving your neighbor as yourself,
30:24
SPEAKER_01: loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: And so that praxis of,
30:28
SPEAKER_01: as Kevin Watson said,
30:30
SPEAKER_01: when he wrote about the class meetings and the band meetings,
30:32
SPEAKER_01: asking the question of when is our life going to become the curriculum?
30:36
SPEAKER_01: When are we actually going to Live the discipleship that Jesus is calling us to.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: I want to be a part of a movement that that's what we're trying to focus on.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: Even if we're struggling to do it,
30:46
SPEAKER_01: kind of pushing back against the cultural models of we'll just provide all
30:51
SPEAKER_01: of these services and goods and we'll come and have all these groups and classes
30:54
SPEAKER_01: that are learning fascinating things just to go home and wake up
30:57
SPEAKER_01: and do it all again tomorrow.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was going to say,
31:00
SPEAKER_00: if you hadn't mentioned Kevin Watson,
31:01
SPEAKER_00: I was going to say it sounds like the kinds of points that Kevin Watson makes
31:04
SPEAKER_00: in his book on the class.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: I haven't read his book on the band meeting yet.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so I think that's just a vitally important thing that we are going out and living it.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important that on the one hand,
31:15
SPEAKER_00: we have reclaimed the historic name It's not just a book of disciplines.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: It's a book of doctrines and discipline.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Emphasize the fact that doctrine needs to be very important.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think it's a coincidence that we also still maintain that it's
31:28
SPEAKER_00: a doctrines and discipline.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: That it's not just what we believe.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: It's also what do we do with it.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: I think it's vitally important.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: And very Wesleyan.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: That it was never...
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Wesley would be aghast if we were to take the Global Methodist Church
31:43
SPEAKER_00: and transform it into nothing more than kind of an Orthodox Wesleyan perspective
31:48
SPEAKER_00: that was not alive to God.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I think he would be furious with us.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that needs to be lived out in various ways.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: I want to highlight.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: Like we would say, look, Father Wesley, we've got the form of religion without the power.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: I think he would be just utterly aghast at us.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a couple of quotations that say more or less
32:06
SPEAKER_00: that explicitly that's his big worry.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: So I want to highlight,
32:11
SPEAKER_00: so one of the things that was fascinating about General Conference is the means by
32:14
SPEAKER_00: which, at least speaking for myself, that I met people.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: And...
32:19
SPEAKER_00: So there's some people you get this kind of like a built-in structure
32:22
SPEAKER_00: that you meet folks who are in your committees and your subcommittees
32:25
SPEAKER_00: and things like that.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: And you were an alternate.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I've heard from some folks is that actually being
32:31
SPEAKER_00: an alternate is a great job because it means you get to kind of go everywhere
32:33
SPEAKER_00: and meet everybody and talk to everybody.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: So if I wasn't assigned to doctrines and sacraments,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: which is where my heart and soul beats,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: being an alternate sounds like a pretty good gig.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: But the funny part is...
32:48
SPEAKER_00: And I talked to somebody recently,
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Lathan Postel,
32:52
SPEAKER_00: and it had to do with some strange little thing that we interacted with.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: But I want to share about the strangeness about how you and I connected.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: You and I happen to connect because we just happen to be getting water at
33:02
SPEAKER_00: the same time two days in a row.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: And we kind of made a comment about that.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: And then you pointed out something that I actually happened so long ago,
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I forget that I've even done it.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, I recorded John Wesley sermons and I put them on YouTube.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: And you thanked me for them.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of did a double take because I'm like, wait, what do you mean?
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: It's just it was such a long time ago.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's fascinating.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I share that is simply to say
33:28
SPEAKER_00: that you never know how you might make a connection with somebody.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: You never know that the stuff that you do today may not have discernible fruits in
33:38
SPEAKER_00: the moment,
33:39
SPEAKER_00: but it may have discernible fruits down the line
33:41
SPEAKER_00: and you have no idea what may happen.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to thank you for highlighting that because,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: of course, you know, You meet somebody and you're just crossing paths.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: You make some comment like that and it kind of caught my attention
33:52
SPEAKER_00: because people are not actually approaching me on a general basis with those kind
33:56
SPEAKER_00: of things.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: And then it turns out we were staying in the same hotel.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: So we had breakfast a couple of days there.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to encourage people to – I'm saying this as somebody who
34:05
SPEAKER_00: by nature am truly awful at networking.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm really bad at it.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And the only reason why I was able to make connections,
34:12
SPEAKER_00: I think, at General Conference was I decided in advance.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: I said, look, everybody I have a conversation with that's even halfway pleasant.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm adding them on Facebook.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to try to make some kind of connection.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage people to find ways to make those connections and to cross
34:25
SPEAKER_00: over those gaps because you never know who you might meet and how you might connect
34:31
SPEAKER_00: with somebody that you didn't know who they were
34:33
SPEAKER_01: the day before.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: And I would encourage anybody that if you see a YouTube influencer
34:41
SPEAKER_01: that you have watched so many times in real life, just go up to them.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: They're just a normal person.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Travis was so humble, even though he is this massive personality on YouTube.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: I just sat in the guest room of my house mispronouncing Greek words when reading Wesley.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: No,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: so there's a nugget of truth in that is I have a frankly outrageous number of hours
35:11
SPEAKER_00: on YouTube.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: I do not know that that translates to me being a YouTube influencer,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: but I am grateful for the connections that it has made.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
35:19
SPEAKER_00: somebody asked for a small bio at one point and I shared the information
35:24
SPEAKER_00: and they said, oh, hey, I think I saw some of the sermons that you recorded too.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: I went, oh yeah, I kind of forgot about that because it's been so long.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: It was a seminary project that became...
35:32
SPEAKER_01: It was really handy.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: So when I was at Asbury, Dr.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Ken Kinghorn had published these paperback three or four volumes of Wesley's Sermons
35:43
SPEAKER_01: in Modern English.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: And so tremendously helpful because it's the only resource of its kind.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: And no one, before I stumbled on your YouTube videos, how long ago did you do that?
35:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was watching them eight years ago.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: You had recorded them before that.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: So I started recording them when I was in seminary.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: What happened was I was getting ready to take my theology of John Wesley class at seminary.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: And I was also at the same time,
36:06
SPEAKER_00: I'd already read through Wesley's writings at that point because I'm a super nerd.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And I...
36:12
SPEAKER_00: I started realizing I really wanted to kind of crawl inside of his words,
36:16
SPEAKER_00: like really kind of learned it really well so I could kind of listen to it.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I started recording a couple of them because I was going to lead them
36:22
SPEAKER_00: an adult Sunday school class.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: And then I'd already,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: so by the time we had these,
36:26
SPEAKER_00: the syllabus come out with the sermons that I'm like,
36:28
SPEAKER_00: well, I've already done two thirds of these.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: I may as well,
36:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:31
SPEAKER_00: do the rest of them that are on the syllabus and make them available
36:33
SPEAKER_00: for my classmates, you know, because of the public domain and all the rest.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And then I got into full-time ministry and I,
36:38
SPEAKER_00: there's a whole long story about why I had to find projects like this to do.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: But I realized like, well, shoot,
36:44
SPEAKER_00: by this point,
36:45
SPEAKER_00: I've already got a third of all the ones that are in the public domain.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: I may as well,
36:48
SPEAKER_00: because I didn't do the bicentennial edition because
36:51
SPEAKER_00: to whatever degree those are different than the ones in the previous edition,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: they would not be in the public domain.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of stuck to what I knew was the public domain.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, why not?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of resource that I would have found helpful when I was in seminary.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: So I would have started that in 09, something like that.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: So it's been a long time ago.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was significant.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: That was a significant amount of time before I even discovered them.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: But I found them because I was searching for audio versions of Wesley Sermons
37:21
SPEAKER_01: that I could listen to.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: And then I stumbled on your whole YouTube channel and One
37:25
SPEAKER_01: the things I've heard you say about yourself is that you're a fast talker.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: And I remember I was in the back,
37:31
SPEAKER_01: fly on the wall in the Doctrines and Sacraments Legislative Committee,
37:36
SPEAKER_01: just watching y'all do amazing work.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: And I heard you struggling through that because you were dealing,
37:42
SPEAKER_01: how many languages were in the room?
37:43
SPEAKER_01: Four or five languages?
37:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, at least, because I know in my subcommittee, we had a gentleman who only spoke Spanish.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: We had someone from Nigeria who spoke kind of relatively little English.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: We definitely had a couple of folks who spoke only,
37:54
SPEAKER_00: maybe not only Russian, but definitely preferred Russian.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: And we knew we had somebody who needed a French translation as well, at the very least.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: There may have been somebody else as well.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I actually appreciated,
38:04
SPEAKER_01: I haven't told you this yet,
38:06
SPEAKER_01: but your talking speed as you were reading Wesley's sermons was helpful because
38:10
SPEAKER_01: a lot of times I will listen to things on 1.1 or 1.2 and just speed it up
38:15
SPEAKER_01: a little bit.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that with me.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: So I found it very helpful.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: But if I was preaching on a certain subject and I knew that Wesley had preached
38:26
SPEAKER_01: about that,
38:27
SPEAKER_01: at least within one of his sermons,
38:28
SPEAKER_01: then I would go find that just to refresh my memory
38:31
SPEAKER_01: and recapture what exactly he said or
38:35
SPEAKER_01: his theological pontifications on that verse
38:39
SPEAKER_01: or passage.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: And that was very helpful.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's just kind of wild for me that I forget it's out there.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: And I do,
38:46
SPEAKER_00: every once in a while,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: someone make a comment on one of the videos saying,
38:48
SPEAKER_00: thanks, it's helped me through seminary.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad it's helpful.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: What is funny is- That is wild.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: More rarely, I get a comment that's trying to explain to me why Wesley was clearly a heretic.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of like, I don't know what you're trying to do here.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: I do have my very favorite comment I ever got.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: It's not a kind one, but it's my favorite.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: It said, the sermon is great.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: The reader is terrible.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Racing through a text at top speed is not the best way to do it.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, all right, that's fine.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: I liked your speed.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely interesting.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: To which I have people who will remind everyone once in a while when it's too fast,
39:24
SPEAKER_00: they say, you know, you can slow it down too.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to speed up.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: You can slow it down.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: That is wild though.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: 17 years later in South Africa,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: you're from Iowa, I'm from Alabama, and we connected at the water cooler.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: You never know who you're going to meet.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's cool also about our movement.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, it is a good size and it's growing.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we are not so big and so established that...
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Even what you could call our celebrities are often fairly approachable.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: That was a huge difference that I noticed at General Conference,
40:09
SPEAKER_01: which of course you have to go, which is a big endeavor just to buy plane tickets.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even Costa Rica was quite an endeavor to go and be there in person for me.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: But once we got there, I was trying to remember if Mary Lou...
40:26
SPEAKER_01: Jones was the only bishop's spouse who was a page in Costa Rica.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, in Costa Rica.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in South Africa, they were basically all there.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: It was crazy.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: But I noticed that.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: I felt like she kind of led the charge in Costa Rica, so she didn't apologize.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to put down anybody else who might have been there.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: But as you said,
40:44
SPEAKER_01: in South Africa,
40:46
SPEAKER_01: almost all the bishop, if not all, the bishop's spouses were wearing yellow vests.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: They were running around all over the floor.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: They were getting things for the delegates and helping and putting candy on the table.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
40:58
SPEAKER_01: it was so neat to see the servant leadership and then the approachability when
41:02
SPEAKER_01: the sessions would end.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: You know,
41:04
SPEAKER_01: we're all Segregated and Robert's Rules of Order and the bishops are presiding
41:08
SPEAKER_01: on stage as you have to do to efficiently conduct the business at that level with
41:13
SPEAKER_01: that many hundreds of people.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: But as soon as we would let out for a break,
41:17
SPEAKER_01: everyone's just milling around and the bishops are in the hallway with one hand
41:20
SPEAKER_01: in their pocket,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: holding a cup of coffee,
41:22
SPEAKER_01: just talking to whoever will walk up to them and thoroughly interested in the goings
41:27
SPEAKER_01: on of every local pastor and local lay person and what God's doing in their context
41:32
SPEAKER_01: in their local church.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: I just thought this is a cool movement,
41:36
SPEAKER_01: like to see this much global representation in one room,
41:40
SPEAKER_01: worshiping together, worshiping in other languages.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just felt like a snapshot of heaven.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: And then that one of the ways that I would,
41:48
SPEAKER_01: and I'm curious as to whether you picked up on this,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: when people asked me about my experience of general conference,
41:54
SPEAKER_01: one of the things I was not expecting was what I would call like a palpable,
41:59
SPEAKER_01: almost allergy to politics.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: That when something political would start to kind of surf, I mean,
42:07
SPEAKER_01: people could smell it and quickly people were rushing to say like,
42:12
SPEAKER_01: we're not going to do that.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to let that set the tone or we're going to address whatever
42:17
SPEAKER_01: that thing is pastorally, prayerfully.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, wow.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think I thought Costa Rica would be kind of the honeymoon.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, everyone's happy to be here.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: So excited to be part of this new movement.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: But then two years later when we really Open wide to the full legislative work of
42:35
SPEAKER_01: the book and anything's on the table.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: I thought probably going to be a little bit more raw, honest, and that's okay.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: Was not expecting the level of kind of aversion to the politics that we experienced.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: And I was pleasantly surprised.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was surprised.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: My favorite part was I really appreciated the Doctrine and Sacraments committee work
43:00
SPEAKER_00: in a way that I would not have expected.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: And what I always try to say is the rest of the world sees the nearly unanimous vote
43:10
SPEAKER_00: on the floor.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: And they generally have heard that the legislative committee passed the Articles
43:14
SPEAKER_00: of Faith out of our committee with unanimous vote.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: But what they didn't see firsthand anyway is the fact that we did not walk into
43:21
SPEAKER_00: that room united.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: We weren't adversarial.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: We didn't come in with animosity toward each other,
43:28
SPEAKER_00: but we definitely – Did not start that conversation all seeing things in
43:32
SPEAKER_00: the same way.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: It was not just let's go along to get along.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: It was people who had spent their lives studying some of these things,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: having these kinds of discussions and debates,
43:43
SPEAKER_00: and in a very real way,
43:44
SPEAKER_00: like disagreeing with each other and being quite happy to explain why they thought
43:47
SPEAKER_00: that the person was wrong.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: And to see God bring the kind of unity that was there by the end was genuinely
43:53
SPEAKER_00: a moving experience, unlike what I expected from a committee meeting, you know?
44:00
SPEAKER_00: And and yeah,
44:02
SPEAKER_00: I think it's also interesting that I think it's very special about
44:04
SPEAKER_00: a place like General Conference is that we were not on American soil.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: We were surrounded by people who are not Americans,
44:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
44:14
SPEAKER_00: that we may not we may still be struggling with what does it mean to be
44:17
SPEAKER_00: a global church?
44:18
SPEAKER_00: I know that there's a commission that's going to be working on kind of D.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: Moving America out of the center of our book of doctrines and discipline because
44:25
SPEAKER_00: to find the ways which we've kind of implicitly assumed that America is normal.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate all that.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: But to be reminded, like,
44:35
SPEAKER_00: to be honest,
44:35
SPEAKER_00: one of the things I'm actually glad that occasionally those who didn't speak English
44:40
SPEAKER_00: or who are aligned to the translation software,
44:42
SPEAKER_00: you know, were to remind us, you know, that not everyone here speaks English.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: Because I think just that very their very presence and the very fact that
44:51
SPEAKER_00: the differences of language actually got in the way sometimes is a reminder
44:54
SPEAKER_00: of saying, oh,
44:55
SPEAKER_00: if we're going to bring up something that's pretty overtly an America issue,
45:00
SPEAKER_00: maybe we should calm down a bit.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we should try to stay away from some of those things
45:04
SPEAKER_00: and not just bring our American baggage to the whole world.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that, you know.
45:10
SPEAKER_00: I hope that we can more and more just be constantly reminded of the fact
45:14
SPEAKER_00: that this gospel is not a distinctly American phenomenon.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: It is a global phenomenon that God has loved the whole world and calls all of us to
45:24
SPEAKER_00: a unity in him that honestly is in tension every once in a while
45:28
SPEAKER_00: with our other loyalties.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: And I hope you can always feel that tug to be reminded that the ways
45:37
SPEAKER_00: the world operates are not And the need to submit every aspect of our lives to
45:42
SPEAKER_00: the Lordship of Jesus.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, yeah,
45:46
SPEAKER_00: so I agree that it was,
45:47
SPEAKER_00: you know, there's some of those kind of things that were really fascinating.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: And what I also care about is that,
45:54
SPEAKER_00: to be honest,
45:55
SPEAKER_00: my bigger fear,
45:55
SPEAKER_00: I think, at the moment was not necessarily that we would get into politics.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: My concern was that we would try to meet what we perceive as being almost
46:04
SPEAKER_00: a ham-fisted,
46:06
SPEAKER_00: I
46:11
SPEAKER_00: was really struck by the care and the nuance and the pastoral sensibility
46:17
SPEAKER_00: that we responded with.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: We have the convictions that we have.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: We're not apologizing for the convictions that we have,
46:22
SPEAKER_00: but recognizing that we're not just trading one ideology for another.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: We are attempting,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: at least,
46:29
SPEAKER_00: to be rigorously faithful Yeah,
46:32
SPEAKER_00: it makes me think of the passages in Paul's writings especially where,
46:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:36
SPEAKER_00: we live in a time where even the existence
46:38
SPEAKER_00: the Global Methodist Church really arose
46:57
SPEAKER_01: Out of political forces.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: And our theology informs our politics,
47:03
SPEAKER_01: of course,
47:04
SPEAKER_01: but Paul and his writings seem to say in multiple ways in multiple places,
47:10
SPEAKER_01: even politics, we don't do the way the world does.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: Even government and how we respond to government.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Even government that's in opposition to our faith.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: We don't respond the way the world would respond.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: And so just seeing that,
47:23
SPEAKER_01: like not just wanting us to do it differently, but seeing it done differently.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: Even after what everyone currently in our denomination has been through and come from.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: It just gave me a lot of hope to say maybe the Holy Spirit really is
47:40
SPEAKER_01: And God's grace really is powerful enough to rid us of those things,
47:46
SPEAKER_01: like sanctify that out of us,
47:48
SPEAKER_01: take our baggage and not have us just destined to carry it for,
47:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:53
SPEAKER_01: because it's easy to think, well,
47:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:55
SPEAKER_01: one or two generations is going to be affected by some things,
47:58
SPEAKER_01: but time will eventually work it out.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: And to see that, no, the Holy Spirit can go ahead and start working that out now.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: It's a great thing.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I, one of these guys, I, you talk about how we all went through a season.
48:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to realize that we didn't though,
48:11
SPEAKER_00: because like a good portion of the Indian annual conference joined,
48:15
SPEAKER_00: not from being formerly United Methodist and the more churches that could plan,
48:19
SPEAKER_00: the more people go into ministry afresh that we,
48:22
SPEAKER_00: we all the more reason why we cannot be,
48:24
SPEAKER_00: we can't live our lives looking backwards,
48:26
SPEAKER_00: you know, as we are at the plow and, and that's very true.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: So you're right.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: That is a general rule.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: That's certainly true.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: But I think that it's increasingly less true and that, We,
48:37
SPEAKER_00: for whom it is true, need to make sure that we are not being trapped in that past.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: That's a good word.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: Because there have been those that have come into the Global Methodist Church even
48:47
SPEAKER_01: over the last two, three years from other denominations as well, correct?
48:51
SPEAKER_01: Especially in countries outside the U.S.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: And then there are some who are coming to faith through the Global Methodist Church,
48:57
SPEAKER_01: and it is the first church they've been a part of.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: You're absolutely right.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: That's so good.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: So one of the things I also always ask everybody every time is I ask
49:06
SPEAKER_00: if you can identify a sickness that you've seen in the church.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: And I always want to make sure I'm really clear about the fact that the point
49:12
SPEAKER_00: of identifying sickness is not to stand in judgment,
49:14
SPEAKER_00: but the point of sickness is that the solution to sickness is not judgment,
49:17
SPEAKER_00: it is diagnosis and treatment.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: And we can't treat something that we don't know exists or that we're blind to.
49:23
SPEAKER_00: And so I was just curious,
49:25
SPEAKER_00: in all of your experience,
49:26
SPEAKER_00: wherever you've been,
49:27
SPEAKER_00: have you seen a common sickness that needs healing in the church?
49:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is fresh for me and I'm always mindful.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: I tend to be a very subjective thinker in general, just by my disposition rather than objective.
49:44
SPEAKER_01: But I just preached on this, I think it was the end of September.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: And sadly,
49:50
SPEAKER_01: I would say that it's one of the same predominant ailments that Wesley faced
49:55
SPEAKER_01: in his day when Methodism began, the reason Methodism began.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: And it's what I would call cultural Christianity.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: And what Wesley called nominal Christianity, Christianity in name only.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think in many similar ways, some different.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: Just the idea, like,
50:17
SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest,
50:17
SPEAKER_01: even as a kid,
50:18
SPEAKER_01: I remember learning about The Amish and the Quakers and the Shakers for
50:23
SPEAKER_01: the first time thinking, man,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: they're just really different in some cool ways and learning like,
50:30
SPEAKER_01: oh, they're Christian.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm a Christian and why does their life look so different?
50:34
SPEAKER_01: And I was so intrigued by how easily identifiable based on someone's lifestyle
50:44
SPEAKER_01: And I think,
50:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:45
SPEAKER_01: we live in a culture,
50:46
SPEAKER_01: you and I,
50:48
SPEAKER_01: and this is why I'm grateful to be a part of a global movement because, man,
50:51
SPEAKER_01: I was so hyper aware that in Africa,
50:53
SPEAKER_01: it just looks very different to be a Christian and the cost of being a Christian,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: a global Methodist.
50:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were praying for a pastor and church members while we were there
51:02
SPEAKER_01: who had been arrested and put in jail.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: And after praying for them, we got to celebrate their release all during our general conference.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: And it just makes me aware of how many Christians in the US are ignorant to
51:18
SPEAKER_01: the plight of what it means to follow Jesus outside of our context
51:21
SPEAKER_01: and how easy it is to just kind of marry cultural comfortability
51:29
SPEAKER_01: with authentic Christianity.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean that we can't.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: You and I are wearing everyday clothes.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing we drive everyday vehicles.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: But there's constantly that tension of at what point is this more than just context?
51:45
SPEAKER_01: At what point is this kind of cultural compromise?
51:47
SPEAKER_01: Or I've just kind of slipped into the flow of everyone around me.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: And I have opportunities to live out my faith in certain ways
51:55
SPEAKER_01: that I'm just not doing right now.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: For one person, it may be I go to church every Sunday and that's the extent of my Christianity.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: For others,
52:03
SPEAKER_01: it may be this legalistic,
52:04
SPEAKER_01: ritualistic, well, I read my Bible for this amount of time every day.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: How can you say I'm not a Christian?
52:11
SPEAKER_01: And especially in our tradition where those spiritual disciplines are important
52:14
SPEAKER_01: and we want to be practicing them all the time.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: But again, I think Wesley would ask, yeah, but what are you doing with that?
52:19
SPEAKER_01: What are you doing with what you're reading?
52:21
SPEAKER_01: What life is being lived out of the life that
52:25
SPEAKER_00: God is pouring into you?
52:26
SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the biggest tensions I see being a pastor in the local church
52:30
SPEAKER_01: and trying to participate in this awakening I believe the Holy Spirit's doing
52:34
SPEAKER_01: and wants to do.
52:36
SPEAKER_00: I think about John Wesley,
52:37
SPEAKER_00: he had the general rules, avoiding evil, doing good, using the means of grace.
52:40
SPEAKER_00: And it was so important that if you didn't do it,
52:43
SPEAKER_00: if you refused to do it, you couldn't remain part of the Methodists.
52:45
SPEAKER_00: And yet he would occasionally...
52:47
SPEAKER_00: He would occasionally urge people to make sure they're looking out.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: They don't fall into just the empty,
52:52
SPEAKER_00: dead shell of religion,
52:53
SPEAKER_00: which he describes as avoiding evil, doing good, and using the means of grace.
52:56
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
52:57
SPEAKER_00: It's crucial.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: You've got to do it.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: But if you ever at any point substitute and you imagine that
53:02
SPEAKER_00: because you're doing those rules,
53:03
SPEAKER_00: that therefore you're alive to Christ, it's a dangerous thing.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: You talk about cultural Christianity.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: So I had my kind of coming to faith in high school,
53:11
SPEAKER_00: but then it was really only in college that I had really
53:13
SPEAKER_00: That really taking my faith seriously.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: And so I was graduating from high school and we had a graduation Sunday at church.
53:19
SPEAKER_00: And I had been a relatively recently moved town
53:23
SPEAKER_00: and actually had only even more recently become an active participant
53:26
SPEAKER_00: that church.
53:27
SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at all the seniors in our high school that year who were graduating
53:31
SPEAKER_00: from that church.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: And I realized I know any of them,
53:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:33
SPEAKER_00: never saw my church, never saw my youth group, never saw any of those things.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: And I had those moments where I had this moment where I could tell now
53:39
SPEAKER_00: that it was God saying something because I wouldn't have come up with it on my own.
53:42
SPEAKER_00: And my first thought was, oh, these kids, they don't really take their faith seriously at all.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: And I remember I had that voice saying,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:52
SPEAKER_00: how many adults do they have in their life that are taking their faith seriously?
53:55
SPEAKER_00: And if none of the adults in their life care about Jesus in their actual daily life,
53:59
SPEAKER_00: why in the world should they care?
54:01
SPEAKER_00: And I just was,
54:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:02
SPEAKER_00: which was a remarkably mature,
54:04
SPEAKER_00: you know, thought about that, that I still, I know that didn't come from me.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: And it really has emphasized the importance in my mind of,
54:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:15
SPEAKER_00: if Jesus is not important to the people in the church,
54:17
SPEAKER_00: why in the world should those outside of the church care?
54:20
SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
54:21
SPEAKER_00: I just saw this morning,
54:21
SPEAKER_00: I saw a report that was talking about some huge number
54:25
SPEAKER_00: of evangelical Christians talk about that the Bible is very important.
54:28
SPEAKER_00: But then when they are asked, do you read your Bible outside of Sunday mornings?
54:32
SPEAKER_00: It's a dismally low percentage.
54:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, if it's important, why don't we live by it?
54:39
SPEAKER_00: It's actually remarkably not as big of a book as you might think.
54:43
SPEAKER_00: There are audio Bibles now you can get on your phone for free.
54:45
SPEAKER_00: I use those all the time.
54:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: We try to make sure every semester when we're putting out the groups and classes
55:11
SPEAKER_01: that we do on Wednesday night,
55:12
SPEAKER_01: which we have ongoing groups and classes that meet outside of that,
55:15
SPEAKER_01: but we try to do semester-based opportunities for folks too,
55:18
SPEAKER_01: especially because there are new people that come in every semester.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: But we market it to people that are new to Christianity,
55:24
SPEAKER_01: new to the Bible, or new to Mulder Church.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Especially if they've gone through our recent membership class to be baptized or to join.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: We encourage,
55:34
SPEAKER_01: make this either your first group opportunity or we encourage you to do this early
55:37
SPEAKER_01: on.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: But I can listen to a lot of the homework in one trip to Walmart.
55:45
SPEAKER_01: Just play it all the way there, all the way back, and I'm done.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: Right.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: That's the thing.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: It's so accessible.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's even less than that.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: So you could read the Bible, committing just that much time each day.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: It's like three and a bit chapters a day on average.
56:18
SPEAKER_00: We'll get you the whole Bible in the year.
56:21
SPEAKER_00: It's just not that big of a commitment if you do it one day at a time.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to make a kind of commercial out there for that.
56:29
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else that's burning in your heart that you want
56:31
SPEAKER_00: to make sure you share with the world out there who may be watching this?
56:36
SPEAKER_01: I think just the level of hope.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: I just have a general hopefulness.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: And we've talked a lot about the Global Methodist Church because you
56:43
SPEAKER_01: and I are Global Methodist Church pastors,
56:45
SPEAKER_01: but our church is in partnership with a non-denominational church down the road.
56:50
SPEAKER_01: And we're up on,
56:51
SPEAKER_01: our church is up on a hill And I live in a neighborhood that's south of our church.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: And at the bottom of that neighborhood is this other non-denominational church.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: And the pastor and I are really good friends.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: He's one of the first friends that I made when I moved here.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: And he jokes that they're at the bottom of the hill and we're at the top of the hill
57:07
SPEAKER_01: and we're just assaulting the community with the love of Christ for the kingdom.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: And we do things together.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: But in all the different denominations,
57:16
SPEAKER_01: I think like you shared,
57:17
SPEAKER_01: there are so many narratives, especially in the U.S., of decline.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: And they're true.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: Like the numbers are true and some of the stories are true.
57:26
SPEAKER_01: But I think there are just so many other stories that aren't being written about.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: And there's also,
57:31
SPEAKER_01: like if we could take off,
57:32
SPEAKER_01: like you've talked about our ethnocentric lens and see that what's really dying in
57:37
SPEAKER_01: the U.S. is mainline cultural Christianity and it needs to die.
57:42
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
57:42
SPEAKER_01: And the stories of the churches that are popping up all over the world,
57:47
SPEAKER_01: including our own country,
57:48
SPEAKER_01: and the expressions of faith that are happening among young people
57:52
SPEAKER_01: and college students and Gen Z and the little sparks of revival.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: The Asbury outpouring got lots of press,
57:59
SPEAKER_01: but there have been a lot that haven't gotten as much press.
58:02
SPEAKER_01: They're happening all over the place.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: And it's just so clear to me,
58:05
SPEAKER_01: which is so encouraging because when I went to Asbury,
58:09
SPEAKER_01: I met people that had been praying for this for decades.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: And we were already starting to see it.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, man,
58:15
SPEAKER_01: what a gift for me to come into this story that God's been writing and recognize
58:20
SPEAKER_01: that I am getting to watch the beginning of what the saints
58:24
SPEAKER_01: before me have been praying for their whole lives.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's happening, like it's starting to happen.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: And so I just,
58:31
SPEAKER_01: I offer that as a word of hope and encouragement that whether it's in this tradition
58:36
SPEAKER_01: or any other Christian tradition that's part of the family tree,
58:39
SPEAKER_01: um, God is doing some really cool stuff right now.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: And I think as this massive generational handoff takes place during years
58:48
SPEAKER_01: in my lifetime, Travis, I just can't imagine the new expressions and the new Yeah.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, with that, Jonathan, would you be willing to close us in prayer?
59:26
SPEAKER_01: I would love to.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: God, I thank you for my friend and brother, Travis,
59:32
SPEAKER_01: who you've called into ministry and Lord,
59:34
SPEAKER_01: just the years of faithfulness that he's given to your kingdom,
59:39
SPEAKER_01: to the local churches that he served.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: And I thank you, Lord,
59:41
SPEAKER_01: that his story began far before that,
59:44
SPEAKER_01: that just like in the words of John Wesley,
59:46
SPEAKER_01: before he was your servant, he was your son.
59:48
SPEAKER_01: And that is true for every listener.
59:51
SPEAKER_01: Lord, wherever we are in whatever shape our callings take,
59:54
SPEAKER_01: our first calling is to that grace-filled voice that is trying
1:00:00
SPEAKER_01: to reach your children, your sons and daughters to bring us home.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_01: So Father, thank you for doing that work.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, thank you for doing that work.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit, thank you for doing that work.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_01: And we pray that you would continue to breathe life and awakening.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: Into all corners of our world.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: And Lord,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: we praise you for the ways that we're seeing your church spring up and link arms
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: and even where places around the world that are going through persecution,
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: the stories of faith and the stories of just miraculous things because
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: of what you're doing.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: We give you all praise, glory, and honor for that.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: And I just pray for every listener,
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: wherever they are, Lord,
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: that you would meet us in our particular contexts,
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: that you would speak in ways that we can understand.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_01: And we thank you that you're a God who wants to be known,
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: who chooses to reveal yourself,
1:00:48
SPEAKER_01: and who speaks in our language and who comes to be one of us.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that whatever incarnational form you take in the lives of
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: the hearers today, God,
1:00:57
SPEAKER_01: that you would awaken our spiritual sensitivities to see you,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: to hear you, And give us the boldness to join you in what you're doing.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in Jesus' name.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you very much.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: This has been what you have seen and heard with our guest this week
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: of Reverend Jonathan Hart from Wetumpka, Alabama.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: And again, I want to always take people's recommendations and all the rest.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: And so especially if you're in the upper Midwest
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: and you know somebody who's doing exciting work,
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: send me an email at pastortravisatmarcusgrace.com.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: But if you're stumbling upon this now that it's got a little more of
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: a wider interview, folks,
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: you know someone who should be lifted up,
1:01:32
SPEAKER_00: who's someone who's got some ministry that maybe...
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: Not enough people know about yet.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_00: Please send me an email and I'd love to talk to them.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for watching or listening and we'll see you next time.