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Episode 3: Church Vital Signs, How to Invite Unchurched People to Your Church and Peanut Butter Soda?! · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

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Chase: Find health, encouragement, practical advice, soul care, and resources that
0:20
Chase: work together to build up your local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.
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Chase: Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole
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Chase: and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission Association, led by Dr.
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Chase: Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry and aim for the goal
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Chase: of making every church flourish.
0:35
Chase: Hello, everybody, and welcome into the Every Church Flourishing Podcast.
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Chase: I am your host, Pastor Chase Thompson, and I am joined by...
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Chris: Christopher Cole.
0:45
Chase: And Pastor Christopher, you are with the Great Commission Association,
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Chase: and our whole goal on this podcast is to equip pastors and church leaders to
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Chase: have churches that are healthy and flourishing.
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Chase: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the GCA.
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Chris: I am the Associate Director of Missions here at the Great Commission Association.
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Chris: I have been a pastor now for 36 years in ministry.
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Chris: Yeah, a good while, still learning, still trying to grow in our understanding
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Chris: of what we can do to equip and encourage the churches to see them flourish and
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Chris: see their communities transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Chris: And over the years, I've served in a number of different roles as a missionary,
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Chris: a seminary professor very briefly,
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Chris: done disaster relief and a number of other ministry type of roles,
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Chris: all of it aimed at trying to see communities reached with the good news of Jesus Christ.
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Chris: And Chase, you've been here in our association as one of our pastors for quite
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Chris: a few years now. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
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Chase: Yeah. So this year, at some point in June, I will have been here in California
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Chase: for eight years with Valley Baptist Church in Salinas.
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Chase: My family and I come from Alabama, and that's where we lived our whole life before that.
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Chase: You said you've been in ministry for 36 six years, you don't look that old.
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Chase: And I've been in ministry for
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Chase: 32, 33, something like that years. And I don't feel that old,
2:17
Chase: but I guess the fact of the matter is that we're both kind of long in the tooth
2:21
Chase: and I did not plan on going into ministry.
2:24
Chase: I was going to be an FBI agent in young little Chase's dreams and somehow stumbled
2:31
Chase: into an entirely different thing.
2:33
Chase: And maybe we'll tell that story at some point down the road.
2:37
Chase: You've got a law enforcement background as well. You were a homicide detective,
2:41
Chase: police officer. What did you do, Chris?
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Chris: Oh, no, no, no detective work. I was a police officer with the Tucson Police
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Chris: Department while I was supposed to be planting a church, which is another story
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Chris: we could tell another day.
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Chris: I like to tell people I was an accidental police officer, but the Lord opened
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Chris: some doors for ministry through that.
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Chris: Even when we thought we had one ministry assignment, God was doing something else.
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Chris: And the diversity of those experiences, I think, has helped shape my ministry
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Chris: and helped shape how I try to interact with and encourage pastors from all different backgrounds.
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Chris: But it does help me to know how, like when I'm speaking to our bivocational
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Chris: or co-vocational pastors, what some of those challenges are.
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Chase: Yeah, for each one of us, I bet we have a lot of stories of different jobs we've
3:30
Chase: had over the years as we've pastored.
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Chase: I know I probably have 15 or 20, different one of those, and none of them quite
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Chase: as interesting as being a Tucson police officer.
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Chase: So I hope you're going to throw in some stories every now and then from the mean streets of Tucson.
3:47
Chase: So how did this podcast come about? What's the origin story, to use a comic book term?
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Chris: Yeah, I think this podcast,
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Chris: podcast's origin comes from our association's
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Chris: passion and really kind of a clarification of our passion to realize that we
4:06
Chris: needed to focus in on guiding our churches to places where they are becoming
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Chris: intentionally what God has created them to be.
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Chris: In John chapter 15, Jesus makes it clear that if we are walking in intimate
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Chris: relationship with him, if we are abiding with him, as he says,
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Chris: then the overflow of that reality will be fruitfulness or flourishing.
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Chris: And Jesus uses a lot of agricultural analogies when he talks about the church.
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Chris: He talks about the kingdom of God being like that small mustard seed that turns
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Chris: into this great big tree. For.
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Chris: So the origin story here is that our team, our Mission Advance team within the
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Chris: Great Commission Association, as we were praying through and thinking through
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Chris: how God wanted to refine our mission, we really settled on two key priorities.
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Chris: That we wanted to see the churches in our association and churches across California
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Chris: come to vitality and flourishing with everything that that means and do it in
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Chris: such a way that the communities around them are impacted and transformed by the gospel.
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Chris: We feel like those are our two primary passions and everything we do,
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Chris: we want to aim towards that because we think that's ultimately what the mission
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Chris: of Jesus is for all of our churches,
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Chris: healthy churches and communities that are being transformed and engaged by the gospel of Jesus.
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Chase: So if you're a pastor, if you're a church leader, if you're a youth pastor,
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Chase: children's worker, just a Christian that cares about the church in general,
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Chase: we're going to try to blend stories about the church,
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Chase: practical advice, and you hopefully will be able to listen to this and on the
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Chase: one hand, be inspired and encouraged that, hey, it's possible to go from a different
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Chase: place than where our church is now.
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Chase: If your church is in a place where it's not flourishing, hopefully we're going
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Chase: to encourage you in that direction, but also give practical steps to kind of get there.
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Chase: My hope is that the podcast will
6:13
Chase: be both have some pretty deep spiritual elements, but also nuts and bolts.
6:18
Chase: Both of us went to seminary and I've had a lot of time in seminary. I'm a fan.
6:23
Chase: You're a professor. I've been a professor in seminary too. But the one thing,
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Chase: probably in my experience,
6:31
Chase: 20-year experience, both as a student and as working for seminaries,
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Chase: I feel like we lack that practical nuts and bolts.
6:41
Chase: Here's how to lead a church towards health and flourishing.
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Chase: And as we look around some of the statistics and the church attendance fall off in the last 25 years,
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Chase: I think it demonstrates that our pastors and leaders might have a little bit
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Chase: of a blind thought there in that area.
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Chase: So Krista, if I was a young pastor and I came to you and this actually happened
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Chase: to me when I was in my twenties, I was in a church. It was a good church.
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Chase: It was a flourishing church. It was a growing church.
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Chase: We had vibrant worship, a great pastor.
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Chase: And all of the sudden he decided that God was calling him to be a missionary,
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Chase: which is a great, wonderful kind of calling, except he never actually became a missionary.
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Chase: He just basically quit being the pastor and handed it off to me and a couple other guys.
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Chase: I was the senior pastor now at age 27.
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Chase: I had no idea what I was doing. So if I were to have known you then and come
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Chase: to you and said, Pastor Chris, you're with the Great Commission Association.
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Chase: I don't know what I'm doing. What are some things you would say to me?
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Chris: Well, in that story, you know, one of the things that stands out to me as you
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Chris: share that story, Chase, is that there were probably things happening behind
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Chris: the scenes that weren't visible, right?
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Chris: And that is so true in almost every church that finds itself in a place where
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Chris: maybe they're not as flourishing as they thought they were.
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Chris: You know, when Jesus is speaking to the church in Laodicea and Revelations,
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Chris: for example, one thing is because, hey, you think you're rich, right?
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Chris: But it turns out you're actually poor, you're pitiable, you're blind, you're naked.
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Chris: And there's typically a very big pattern, I think we'll talk about this more
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Chris: in the future, where churches often don't have a strong diagnostic sense.
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Chris: So right off the bat, I think one of the first things I would say to you is,
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Chris: I'm so sorry this happened, but some things are being revealed.
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Chris: Some things are being revealed by the work of the Holy Spirit.
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Chris: There's a temptation to either run away or to first try to fight it without
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Chris: even really knowing and diagnosing where you're at.
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Chris: Being able to sit with what God is revealing for a time is probably one of the
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Chris: best places you could start if you really want to become a flourishing church.
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Chris: You have to be willing to let the Holy Spirit speak into what God is doing,
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Chris: and that starts with prayer, radical honesty.
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Chris: Healthy self-assessment, and getting churches to the place where they can do
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Chris: that is a key step in guiding them and all of us, you know, individually.
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Chris: This is true of our individual spiritual lives as well.
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Chris: We so often want to skip past the diagnostics that God wants to do,
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Chris: that God wants to reveal some of these realities to us.
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Chris: And then And he's inviting us. You know, one of the things I think that.
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Chris: So many churches, and I've been there, I've been there in the declining churches.
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Chris: You know, when I was a 24-year-old lead pastor that didn't have a clue what to do,
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Chris: so often we want to rush past the moment of letting the Spirit speak into our
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Chris: lives and the time that that takes to let God really diagnose what is happening
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Chris: in our church spiritually and structurally and methodologically and missiologically.
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Chris: The reality is that skipping that is just lethal.
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Chris: You can end up trying to come up with human solutions instead of letting yourself
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Chris: be in the presence of God.
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Chris: So I think one of the things I would say to you is, hey, brother,
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Chris: there's going to be a big temptation to run away, and there's going to be a
10:25
Chris: big temptation to try and fix a bunch of things quickly.
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Chris: Maybe the best thing you guys can do is just slow everything down.
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Chris: Get to the place where you can say, hey, something's being revealed here,
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Chris: and we need to slow down. We need to listen to the Spirit.
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Chris: Henry Blackaby wrote this wonderful little book now 35 years ago or something,
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Chris: a little book called What Is the Spirit Saying to the Churches?
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Chris: And obviously, that also comes from Revelation 2 and 3.
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Chris: Jesus says over and over again, he says, if you have ears to hear.
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Chris: Why don't you hear what the Spirit is saying? And I think that that begins the
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Chris: place of reposturing your heart and mind to bring you to a place of abiding
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Chris: in Christ, letting Him diagnose what is happening in your church.
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Chris: And so getting people to that posture is a big priority of what we try to do right now.
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Chris: We do that through spiritual exercises, like getting churches to do 40 days
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Chris: of prayer together or doing some particularly challenging Bible studies that
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Chris: are diagnostic in focus,
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Chris: and then helping them do assessments and things like that that help them analyze
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Chris: and hear the voice of the Spirit so that then they can begin to say,
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Chris: hey, here's what God wants to do in the life of our church.
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Chris: Here's what it will take for us to recenter our relationship with Christ and
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Chris: step into a place of flourishing.
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Chase: Okay, so you've used a word about seven, eight, nine, ten times that we actually
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Chase: didn't discussed before the podcast, but I'm going to zero in on it anyway,
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Chase: because I think it's very crucial to talk about.
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Chase: In healthcare, diagnostics are really important.
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Chase: I go to a doctor and I asked him a question two or three years ago about some symptoms I was having.
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Chase: He said, we need more data. He ordered some tests to get that data.
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Chase: And of course, Paul, the apostle of 1 Corinthians and other places,
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Chase: he compares the church to a human body. It's fair to use that term diagnostics to talk about that.
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Chase: I think you're probably not merely talking about the amount of offering on a
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Chase: Sunday morning or Sunday morning attendance.
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Chase: So beyond those two things, which I think every pastor probably pays pretty good attention to,
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Chase: What are some crucial diagnostics that a church should look at to determine its level of health?
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Chris: Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I do think diagnosis is such a good analogy here, right?
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Chris: We want to, in our bodies, we want our bodies to flourish. We want us to be
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Chris: healthy and free and able to do all that we want to do.
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Chris: So some of the diagnostic parameters that we use as we sit down with churches
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Chris: is to say, let's take a look at things like, what's the vitality of your prayer life as a congregation?
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Chris: Is prayer meeting your least attended event of the week?
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Chris: How can you be abiding in Christ if your prayer life is so incredibly weak?
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Chris: And there's wonderful books out there, Jim Cimbala's Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire.
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Chris: He talks about the critical reality of if you want to see the Spirit move in
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Chris: your church, but church doesn't have a vital prayer ministry.
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Chris: And it's something, a prayer ministry that goes beyond just sort of praying
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Chris: for God to relieve the aches and pains, temporal tribulations of the congregation.
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Chris: We should pray for those things, but prayer that is missional,
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Chris: prayer that is broken for the community.
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Chris: If you want to see your community reached with the gospel, and that's your passion,
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Chris: but no one's praying for it, no one's praying for neighborhoods.
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Chris: So vitality of prayer life is certainly one of them.
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Chris: The vitality of the Word of God as it is being preached and centered,
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Chris: has the Word of God somehow slipped into a pragmatic manual?
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Chris: Or is it being really the Word of God, the people of God being fed from the
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Chris: Word of God persistently?
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Chris: Those are two immediate things that we would look at, the preaching and prayer.
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Chris: And then we would be looking at things like, what is the community's actual
14:33
Chris: health like? I've yet to step into a church that's been honest enough to say.
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Chris: Hey, we really aren't that close with each other. Almost always they'll tell
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Chris: me, oh, our fellowship is good. We're known as a church of love.
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Chris: And yet very often what I find is there are hidden conflicts.
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Chris: There are unhealthy relational dynamics, or they're just very shallow.
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Chris: I've talked to people, for example, they've gone to church together in small
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Chris: churches where there's a group of 25, 30, 40 people, and they've been going
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Chris: to church together for 20 years, and they say, oh, we love each other very much.
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Chris: And then I say, great, tell me what their kids' names are. And they can't.
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Chris: They're not at that level of relational awareness. Well, if you don't know someone's
15:15
Chris: children's names, if you aren't even that close to them, likelihood is your
15:19
Chris: fellowship's very shallow.
15:21
Chris: So we're looking at things when we say, as a church flourishing,
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Chris: we're looking at things like, what's their relationship to God?
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Chris: What's their relationship to each other look like?
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Chris: And then the third thing we're going to look at is in a big category,
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Chris: and we could break this out later, perhaps in some other episodes,
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Chris: is we're going to say, what's their relationship to their community like?
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Chris: Are they engaged with their community? Are they oppositional to their community?
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Chris: Very often we find that churches have adopted postures because the community
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Chris: has changed demographically or socially, politically.
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Chris: The church is against their community. They're not for their community.
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Chris: When Jesus says to us things like, don't be of the world, or scripture says,
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Chris: don't be friends with the world, it's not saying to us, be against the world.
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Chris: Jesus did not come into the world to be against the world, but to be for the world.
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Chris: Now, he was not of the world, but we want to see our churches shift in their dynamics.
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Chris: It's very hard to be flourishing if you have an unhealthy relationship to God,
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Chris: an unhealthy relationship with each other and an unhealthy relational dynamic with your community.
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Chris: So we would center our diagnostics, our tools, our engagements,
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Chris: our questions around those three things.
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Chris: And I think that's what I would say to that young pastor that you were talking about earlier is to say,
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Chris: hey, when you're listening to the Spirit, ask Him to reveal to you what's our
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Chris: relationship with you like, what's our relationship with each other like,
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Chris: and what's our relationship with the world like.
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Chase: Yeah, that's awesome. One of the key diagnostic questions I look at,
17:01
Chase: and it's not like money ball, it's not like batting average or a statistic like
17:05
Chase: that, but I, as a pastor, for years have had a
17:10
Chase: a mantra almost. A motto is probably a better word, that everybody plays ball.
17:15
Chase: And for years, I've been very persuaded by Paul's understanding of spiritual
17:20
Chase: gifts in 1 Corinthians 12,
17:22
Chase: 13 and 14, and just his teaching through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
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Chase: that every member who is a Christian is supernaturally empowered for ministry.
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Chase: And so in any church I'm trying to lead, It can't be a one-man show.
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Chase: For one, I'm not a good enough man to be a one-man show. I don't have those kind of talents.
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Chase: I've got a couple of things that God has gifted me to do, and I've got some
17:49
Chase: glaring weaknesses and a lot of areas in between.
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Chase: And so we're not like the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team of 15 or 20 years
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Chase: ago when it was LeBron James and just a bunch of role players.
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Chase: That's not how the church is, but a lot of pastors approach church that way.
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Chase: They think they're the all-star MVP that's got to do everything.
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Chase: And it's tempting to fall into that. And I think one of the most important
18:20
Chase: Diagnostic criteria for whether or not a church is healthy is sort of the percentage
18:26
Chase: or the number of leaders that are actually involved in doing ministry.
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Chase: And for our church, a goal, and it's a pretty easy goal, but a goal of mine
18:38
Chase: on pretty much every Sunday is to have five, six, seven leaders on the mic at
18:44
Chase: some point, whether they're reading scripture,
18:47
Chase: fraying, just doing announcements or mentioning the offering or something like that.
18:52
Chase: And I want to have those rotate across kind of a broad swath of our congregation
19:00
Chase: so that not only do we have that philosophy of everybody plays ball,
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Chase: but on a Sunday morning, which usually for a church will be the most visible
19:11
Chase: kind of expression of ministry that we have,
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Chase: I want everybody that comes to the church to see that strategy It's a reality
19:20
Chase: that manifests every week.
19:23
Chase: So if you come to our church three out of four weeks in a month,
19:27
Chase: you'll probably see 15 or so different people on a Sunday morning having some
19:34
Chase: sort of significant role.
19:36
Chase: You mentioned prayer earlier, how important that is. And we end every service
19:40
Chase: in an extended time of prayer.
19:42
Chase: And I used to kind of have the microphone during that ministry time for whatever reason.
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Chase: But over the last couple of months, I've handed that off to a different leader,
19:52
Chase: a different deacon every Sunday.
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Chase: So that again, we get more and more people involved. And I think it's a hard number to define,
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Chase: but I think one of the factors in diagnostics of whether or not a church is
20:07
Chase: flourishing is how many people you have that are actively engaged in making disciples.
20:15
Chase: Do you have a stat like that? Do you have a diagnostic? like that.
20:19
Chris: Man, that is so good, Chase. Everything you just said, I would amen.
20:22
Chris: And by the way, I've been to your church and I would amen that very thing.
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Chris: We've seen that the very first time my wife and I visited your congregation.
20:31
Chris: My wife turned to me and she said, I love this. He's doing what we have always
20:36
Chris: prioritized in our ministry as well.
20:38
Chris: You have all of your people engaged in so many different elements of worship there.
20:43
Chris: There's so much to commend, brother, in that everything.
20:46
Chris: And we've seen your congregation's prayer life too.
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Chris: And I would just, by the way, I would say everything you just said is so true
20:55
Chris: based on scriptural argument that we are in fact not supposed to be the center
21:01
Chris: of the church as pastors.
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Chris: Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus is the center of the church,
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Chris: and he is at work amongst all of the people.
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Chris: And part of the pastoral role is to invite people into that ministry to one
21:16
Chris: another. As it says in Scripture that everyone has a word, and everyone is bringing different things.
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Chris: So that's a phenomenal thing.
21:26
Chris: Quick test to see, you know, hey, is the church healthy? Is it flourishing?
21:32
Chris: I think maybe one other quick diagnostic I would say is how many lost people
21:38
Chris: are coming to your church?
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Chris: It matters if you don't have lost people regularly, whether that's Sunday morning
21:44
Chris: attendance or lost people attending your small groups or your people regularly
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Chris: engaging lost people in some particular form.
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Chris: I think there is a critical test there as to whether or not the church is flourishing,
21:59
Chris: because if the church is not engaging the lostness around them in a regular fashion.
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Chris: Then that church is either plateaued or declining, even if their outward numbers don't yet show it.
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Chris: How often are lost or unchurched people, people without a personal relationship
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Chris: with Jesus Christ or without a church family regularly attending your church?
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Chris: And what proportion of your congregation do they make up?
22:29
Chris: The church worship services are for the people of God, but even in Scripture,
22:35
Chris: there's the assumption that lost people will come in and say.
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Chris: Surely God is among you. There is a,
22:42
Chris: a reality that if we are engaging people regularly in our personal walk with
22:49
Chris: Christ, in our workplaces, in the highways and byways of life,
22:54
Chris: that those people should be showing up somewhere in a small group or in a after-church
23:00
Chris: barbecue or in a worship service.
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Chris: So where are lost people showing up when the church is gathered is another really
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Chris: good, quick diagnostic.
23:09
Chris: And if the answer is, hey, we haven't had a lost person, person without a faith
23:14
Chris: relationship with Christ, show up in a worship service in any regular significant
23:19
Chris: way for two or three or five years,
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Chris: then it's a very strong indicator of how unhealthy the church is.
23:27
Chris: Healthy churches regularly have lost people show up because they're curious
23:32
Chris: to know about the hope that the people of God are living out in their lives.
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Chris: That should be transformative in a way that people are saying.
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Chris: Hey, I want to know what is happening there. I want to see if God is really amongst them.
23:47
Chris: And again, that may not just be on Sunday morning worship services.
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Chris: It may be when a small group gathers or it could be when two or three couples
23:55
Chris: from your church get together.
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Chris: Do they regularly invite lost people to join them?
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Chris: Are the people there being engaged? If the answer is no or it's very minimal,
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Chris: then you have a pretty good indicator that the church is already plateaued or
24:10
Chris: in decline and is on its way out of flourishing.
24:15
Chris: And sometimes that can take quite a while for church people to realize.
24:20
Chase: Totally agree with that. And you know what? People are listening right now,
24:24
Chase: church leaders, church members, pastors, of course, and they're saying,
24:27
Chase: well, yeah, great, Pastor Chris, I'd love to have lost people beating down the
24:32
Chase: door of our church and it's not happening.
24:36
Chase: And so in a moment, I'm going to ask you the question as we go into the second
24:41
Chase: part of our discussion of healthy churches.
24:45
Chase: How are some practical ways we can encourage lost people, non-church,
24:52
Chase: unchurched people to come visit us?
24:54
Chase: But I tell you what, right now, Well, I'm kind of thirsty.
24:57
Chase: Me too. And I think this would be a great time to take a break.
25:02
Chase: And we are not yet sponsored by Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Dr.
25:08
Chase: Pepper or any of the major Red Bull, that sort of thing. Maybe one day that'll happen.
25:13
Chase: Chris, how did Grace run down all of these sodas for us?
25:17
Chris: I don't know, but I do think there might be a bit of cruelty involved here and
25:21
Chris: a little bit of a wicked sense of humor.
25:24
Chris: But also, I think, just an adventuresome spirit. I think those things must have
25:29
Chris: driven her because I have looked over the sodas that she has gotten us to try
25:35
Chris: and I'm eager to try some, less eager on some of the
25:39
Chris: But today, today we, we're going to try this one right here.
25:43
Chris: This is Lester's Fixins, right?
25:47
Chris: Peanut butter and jelly soda.
25:50
Chase: I don't know who Lester is. Do you?
25:52
Chris: I do not. Okay. But there's a picture of him here. So yeah, he looks like a
25:57
Chris: lot of Baptist deacons that I've known.
25:59
Chase: He would totally be home in a 1980s Baptist church.
26:03
Chris: He definitely would. And perhaps that's where he came from. But this is the.
26:07
Chase: Probably so.
26:07
Chris: The peanut butter and jelly soda from Lester's Fix-In. And this is made in the USA, right?
26:15
Chase: Yeah, yeah.
26:16
Chris: And not all of our sodas will be made in the USA. In fact, we're going to try
26:20
Chris: some sodas, I think, from around the world. Is that right?
26:22
Chase: Well, one of the sodas I noticed is like Spetsnaz orange soda or something like that.
26:29
Chase: It's like Special Forces from back in the day. I don't think it's actually Spetsnaz,
26:33
Chase: but it reminded me of that.
26:34
Chase: So we're going to do that one down the road. But for now, I'm going to pop the
26:38
Chase: top on my peanut butter and jelly.
26:41
Chase: I got to ask, Chris, are you a peanut butter and jelly fan? Because you picked
26:45
Chase: this one out for the first episode.
26:46
Chris: I am a huge peanut butter and jelly fan. I have to be honest and say that, you know,
26:51
Chris: sometimes when I've had a long day and I don't feel like making a dinner or
26:55
Chris: something else, I am prone to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
26:59
Chris: and have a nice big glass of milk to go along with that.
27:02
Chase: What's your favorite jelly?
27:04
Chris: Oh, man. I love so many good jellies. Pretty much any cherry jelly.
27:08
Chris: Cherry jelly. Wow. Cherry preserves.
27:12
Chase: Nice.
27:13
Chris: Cherry preserves are, yeah, they're the bomb.
27:16
Chase: That's a good call. I love cherry. Yeah. I am not a peanut butter and jelly man traditionally.
27:23
Chase: Okay. Although I'm not a hater. I'm kind of a neutral. So I'll be a good judge
27:27
Chase: of whether this would be a good soda for your average Joe, And you'll be a good
27:32
Chase: judge of whether or not this will be a good soda for a peanut butter and jelly aficionado.
27:38
Chris: All right.
27:39
Chase: Are you ready? Here we go.
27:41
Chris: Hmm. Now, I'm getting a lot of like the peanut butter flavor.
27:46
Chase: I I've had a lot of sodas in my life. I mean, a lot.
27:51
Chase: I am a real connoisseur of sodas and I've never had one that tasted like this
27:56
Chase: or looked like this, to be honest with you. It's kind of pinkish Brown.
27:59
Chris: It has, I'm getting a, you know, it's weird. Like, you know,
28:04
Chris: I like the peanut butters on the back end and the jellies on the front end.
28:07
Chase: That's great. Yeah. It's got a little bit of a, it doesn't look thick.
28:12
Chase: It's got a little bit of a thick mouth feel.
28:15
Chris: It does. It feels like my mouth is getting coated with peanut butter.
28:19
Chase: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I would not, I would not say unpleasant.
28:23
Chase: I would say this is a, if I was on a picnic right now and it was about 75 degrees
28:28
Chase: outside, I was fishing next to a lake.
28:30
Chase: This would be a refreshing beverage.
28:33
Chris: I wonder if there, you know, if I had a glass of milk and I drank this and then
28:38
Chris: took a sip of the milk, if it would taste like having a glass of milk with a
28:42
Chris: peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
28:43
Chase: Yeah, I wonder if you're right. It's got pure cane sugar, so this is not a diet beverage.
28:50
Chris: No, 170 calories here.
28:52
Chase: Yep, that's a lot.
28:53
Chris: In this soda. I'm not sure where I would place this in some kind of rating.
29:00
Chris: What would you give this soda?
29:03
Chase: It's a great question, and I'm going to give you an answer to that.
29:06
Chase: How would I rate this? Well, we're going to rate our sodas on a scale of zero
29:10
Chase: to five Spurgeons, because we're both kind of Charles Spurgeon guys in a lot of ways.
29:15
Chase: And this is a Christian podcast, so we got to use a Christian podcast rating.
29:20
Chase: And for me, a zero Spurgeon beverage would be tab. Have you ever had tab?
29:26
Chris: I have. And I'm about to confess something. There's a weird taste to tab.
29:32
Chris: That somehow I like.
29:35
Chase: Wow. Okay.
29:36
Chris: And I, and I know, and not, not like I would say it's my favorite beverage,
29:40
Chris: but it's got all of that chemical flavor that somehow in my,
29:44
Chris: my mind, maybe it's like some resonant memory from my childhood,
29:48
Chris: like where tab was like this, like adult thing, like, you know,
29:51
Chris: cause kids were drinking, you know, sugar sodas and stuff.
29:55
Chris: Only adults drink tab. Maybe I thought it was sort of like the Baptist version
29:58
Chris: of having a, an adult beverage or something.
30:01
Chris: So growing up in a teetotaling home, maybe I thought that tab was sort of like,
30:06
Chris: Hey, that forbidden thing that only adults can have.
30:09
Chris: So, so, so, so tab is a zero Spurgeon for you.
30:13
Chase: It's for me. Yeah. It sounds like you kind of like tab.
30:16
Chris: Well, I don't know if I like it. I just think it's got a weird little thing.
30:19
Chase: My mom drank about a pallet of tab, uh, every week.
30:23
Chase: I mean, she was so into tab and I couldn't stand it. Now I'm saying that it's
30:28
Chase: been probably three decades since I've tried it.
30:31
Chase: So if we can find some tab, we need to do a re-review.
30:35
Chris: So if Grace, if you are watching this, we need to find some tab for Chase and I to try.
30:41
Chase: T-A-B, yeah, tab.
30:43
Chase: I would love to see how it holds up now. So Tab would be Zero Spurgeons for me.
30:50
Chase: Five Spurgeons would be Mountain Dew Baja Blast, the new Coke Zero cherry.
30:58
Chase: Those would probably be the pinnacle.
31:00
Chase: Or Crest Better Lemon, which is a beverage you can get in Africa,
31:05
Chase: in parts of Africa, Tanzania, and Kenya.
31:07
Chris: And we want to try that one at some point, I think.
31:10
Chase: I would love to try that one. Yeah, it's really, like, it's weird.
31:14
Chase: It's not everybody's jam. It really is kind of bitter and lemony.
31:18
Chase: And it maybe was because I was in Africa and our beverage choice was limited.
31:24
Chase: But I love me some Crest Bitter Lemon. And Coke Zero Cherry and Baja Blast Mountain
31:31
Chase: Dew. Those are the pinnacles.
31:32
Chase: And I'm going to give this, I'm going to, gosh, it's so cowardly of me,
31:37
Chase: two and a half Spurgeons.
31:38
Chris: Two and a half Spurgeons.
31:40
Chase: Right in the middle.
31:41
Chris: Right in the middle.
31:42
Chase: I don't hate it. It's pretty good. I don't, I wouldn't marry it. What about you?
31:47
Chris: I think in this case, I, I'm kind of with you, you know, it would be somewhere
31:52
Chris: between a two and a three Spurgeon.
31:54
Chris: So, and one reason why is that sort of weird peanut butter mouth feel that I
31:59
Chris: think you would have to have if you had a peanut butter thing,
32:03
Chris: but it sort of stays with you in your mouth.
32:05
Chris: And I'm not sure I think that's a particularly pleasant aftertaste.
32:09
Chris: So I definitely wouldn't put it on the upper end. Not a lot of the jelly flavor.
32:14
Chris: You know, I'm just going to go with a solid two Spurgeons.
32:17
Chris: It's not, I wouldn't throw it away necessarily, but I don't know that I would
32:21
Chris: go find this in a cooler full of ice on a warm day and say, I want to have another
32:26
Chris: one of those peanut butter and jelly sodas.
32:28
Chase: Pastor Chris, we're going back into our final topic, the big practical one you mentioned earlier.
32:35
Chase: Okay, so I'm a church member listening. I'm a deacon.
32:37
Chase: I'm a Sunday school teacher, Wednesday night leader, small group leader.
32:41
Chase: I'm a pastor, a youth pastor. Lost people are not beating down the door of my
32:45
Chase: church. What's going on? How can I change that?
32:48
Chris: I think that once again, you have to be careful about the diagnostics here,
32:52
Chris: about the why, and every church and every person is going to be a little bit different.
32:56
Chris: But there are some persistently consistent habits.
33:01
Chris: Number one, I would say is to ask yourself, how many lost people am I in relationship with?
33:06
Chris: How many, just start right there. How many lost people do I know?
33:09
Chris: Many times Christians have isolated themselves from ordinary friendships with lost people.
33:16
Chris: And if that is where you are at and you realize, hey, I don't really have any
33:21
Chris: lost friends, then I would say, well, go out and make friends for Jesus.
33:25
Chris: Whether that's joining a different golf foursome or joining a different yoga
33:31
Chris: group, some fitness center or something like that. Get out.
33:36
Chris: Do something where you start connecting with lost people and start there praying
33:40
Chris: for lost people. Start by praying for your neighborhood.
33:43
Chris: Pray that God will open doors for a relationship.
33:46
Chris: There's a wonderful book called Bless.
33:48
Chris: John and Dave Ferguson wrote a book that It was based on a bunch of strategies
33:52
Chris: that were developed across the United States by a variety of church planters
33:57
Chris: and pastors that Ferguson sort of just put it all into a book.
34:00
Chris: It gives some really good strategies for building relationships with lost people.
34:06
Chris: Start by praying for them.
34:08
Chris: Get into relationship with them. Learn how to listen.
34:12
Chris: To lost people. A lot of times the church is in a posture of telling lost people
34:17
Chris: where they are wrong and trying to correct them.
34:21
Chris: And instead of having a posture of humility and listening and understanding
34:26
Chris: what are their life questions, what are their challenges, what are they going through?
34:31
Chris: And then try to get into a place where you're literally eating with lost people.
34:38
Chris: You know, Jesus ate with lost people a lot.
34:41
Chris: That's one of the key things we, in fact, see him doing.
34:44
Chris: His first miracle was at a party, and after his resurrection,
34:48
Chris: when he shows up with his disciples, he even makes them breakfast.
34:53
Chris: And throughout his ministry, you see him eating with the Pharisees and with
34:58
Chris: the tax collectors and the sinners.
35:01
Chris: He's eating with and in fellowship with all these people. So try to get people
35:05
Chris: to come over to your house. Have a barbecue where you invite lost people and
35:09
Chris: maybe only one couple from your church.
35:12
Chris: Get into social relationships with people.
35:16
Chris: Take a coworker out for lunch. Buy somebody a cup of coffee and use that time to do the listening.
35:22
Chris: And then find ways to serve them, to engage them with some need in their life.
35:28
Chris: And sometimes we tend to think of service in project basis rather than personal
35:34
Chris: basis. Here's what I mean by that.
35:36
Chris: We'll go out and we'll do a big project for ministering to homeless people or unhoused people.
35:42
Chris: And that's wonderful. We should care for the poor and the indigent that are amongst us.
35:46
Chris: Your next door neighbor, they may have a house. They may have a car.
35:49
Chris: What they don't have is someone to go to the doctor's appointment with them,
35:53
Chris: and they've got a scary diagnosis coming up.
35:56
Chris: And maybe they share that. Your coworker shares that, says, hey,
35:59
Chris: I got this doctor's appointment. I'm not sure what the outcome is going to be.
36:03
Chris: Just ask them, hey, do you have anyone to go with you? I'll take off work for
36:07
Chris: the afternoon and go with you.
36:09
Chris: So that you don't have to be alone. Find ways to serve people where they are at.
36:14
Chris: And they don't have to be people that are impoverished or uber needy,
36:20
Chris: but they, all of us need to be served in different ways or encouraged in different ways.
36:26
Chris: And then find ways to begin sharing the story of Jesus, the story of what Jesus
36:32
Chris: has done for them, your story of Jesus.
36:35
Chris: And through that, invite them into relationship.
36:38
Chris: Don't make the first conversation you have with someone generally inviting them to church.
36:44
Chris: Make that conversation happen out of the overflow of all of these other things
36:51
Chris: that I've been talking about, where you're trying to build relationship.
36:55
Chris: And I think if you have churches that are doing this, they're praying for lost
36:58
Chris: people, they're listening to them, they're eating with them, they're serving,
37:01
Chris: and as they're being given opportunities, They're sharing their story of how
37:06
Chris: they encountered Jesus Christ or what Jesus has done in small ways.
37:11
Chris: That becomes the place that then you can begin inviting people to come instead
37:16
Chris: of depending on the church to be the primary way of presenting the gospel.
37:21
Chris: You start by being a good neighbor where you are at. And I think that disconnection
37:29
Chris: is what has caused so much challenge for so many of our churches.
37:34
Chris: Our lost people aren't coming to our churches, even though our communities are
37:39
Chris: overwhelmingly without a saving
37:41
Chris: faith because church people aren't in relationship with lost people.
37:46
Chase: That is huge. We had a burst of baptisms last year and a fair amount this year.
37:55
Chase: Looking back, how did that happen?
37:59
Chase: One of the key answers to that question is something so simple is that there were some people...
38:06
Chase: At their work. In this particular instance, Home Depot, who built relationships.
38:11
Chase: They didn't go to work saying, oh, I'm going to become friends with non-Christians
38:15
Chase: so I can invite them to church and they'd be baptized.
38:18
Chase: But they built relationships intentionally with people and eventually invited
38:23
Chase: them to church and they eventually came to church.
38:26
Chase: And as you say, we have to be neighbors and friends and in relationship with
38:33
Chase: people, not like church used car salesmen.
38:37
Chase: Like we don't go knock on a hundred doors or shake a hundred hands and say,
38:40
Chase: hey, come to church with us.
38:42
Chase: Sam Chan, who is a pastor, gives a great tip on how to kind of build a culture
38:49
Chase: where the church people will invite other people.
38:53
Chase: And he says, go to their things before inviting them to yours.
38:57
Chase: He says, if we never go along to the things our non-Christian friends invite
39:02
Chase: us to, but we expect them to come to our things, we're acting like Amway salesmen.
39:08
Chase: It's awkward, it's embarrassing, and it's unlikely to work. So be a bro,
39:13
Chase: be a dude, be a cool person, be a real genuine person.
39:18
Chase: Get involved in these people's lives so that when you do invite them to church
39:23
Chase: or when you do have a spiritual conversation with them, when you do bring up
39:28
Chase: Jesus, it's not coming across like you're a salesperson.
39:32
Chase: It's coming across like you're a follower of Jesus and you have a genuine concern for them. Yeah.
39:39
Chris: Loving people.
39:41
Chris: Is in fact what Jesus commended as the second and greatest commandment,
39:46
Chris: right? Loving our neighbors as ourselves, genuinely.
39:49
Chris: Sometimes we hear that and we think that Jesus is primarily talking about the church.
39:54
Chris: And while I'm not saying the church shouldn't have a special place in the heart
39:58
Chris: and mind and actions of the believers,
40:01
Chris: the reality is those neighbors include people who vote differently than us,
40:05
Chris: who think differently than us,
40:08
Chris: who have different values, and who have a different moral commitment set and
40:14
Chris: who have a different way of thinking about life.
40:18
Chris: And they may even be followers of another religion. But when you can love your
40:22
Chris: Hindu neighbor or your coworker that is LGBTQIA+,
40:29
Chris: or you can engage someone who voted differently than you did in the last election,
40:36
Chris: and they maybe have very high political opinions that are very different from yours,
40:41
Chris: when you can love people like that, that love is something that the world is not used to seeing.
40:48
Chris: And loving them in a way that does not mean you agree with them.
40:51
Chris: It does not mean that you affirm them. It does not mean that you affirm their sin.
40:56
Chris: But what it does mean is this, that you understand that all of us are sinners
41:00
Chris: who are saved by the grace of the living God, and that each of us needs to be
41:06
Chris: encountering the love of Jesus.
41:08
Chris: And so when your commitment is, hey, I want to bring the love of Jesus Christ
41:12
Chris: into my workplace, into my neighborhood.
41:15
Chris: Into my gym, into the places that I go on the highways and byways of life,
41:20
Chris: and I want to do it in a way that draws me into real relationship with lost people.
41:24
Chris: That intentionality is huge in helping guide a church back to a place of flourishing,
41:31
Chris: And praying that God will open those doors and looking to see where God may
41:37
Chris: be at work, I think, is key to seeing some churches take some steps back towards
41:41
Chris: that flourishing health.
41:43
Chase: Absolutely. Chris, to close us out, do you have a good resource you can recommend? Yeah.
41:49
Chris: You know, I think one of the resources that came to my mind when we were talking
41:53
Chris: about this is that I find that so many of us, and maybe this is just me and
41:59
Chris: the group of leaders that I hang out with,
42:01
Chris: but very often one of the biggest challenges is that we don't have margin to do ministry.
42:07
Chris: We spend so much of our life busily engaged with so many different kinds of activities.
42:14
Chris: There's not a lot of margin with our time to go spend time having a barbecue with a lost person.
42:21
Chris: Or we don't have time to go and have a prayer meeting.
42:25
Chris: We're so busy doing life. So if you're a church leader that is overwhelmed with
42:30
Chris: the busyness of life and you're trying to figure out,
42:33
Chris: How can I find that margin in my life so that I can be more present with my
42:38
Chris: family, more engaged with my community,
42:41
Chris: more fully alive while I'm in worship together?
42:45
Chris: There's an amazing little resource here. It's called Redeeming Your Time.
42:48
Chris: It's by a business leader named Jordan Rayner, who is a believer,
42:52
Chris: is a wonderful believer.
42:54
Chris: He coaches a number of pastors on this very issue and other religious leaders.
42:58
Chris: But Redeeming Your Time, it's just one of the best resources that I've come
43:03
Chris: across in the past few years that has made a big impact on how I try to manage
43:09
Chris: my schedule. How do I try to manage the tasks that I have?
43:12
Chris: And how do I focus on stewarding the time that I have?
43:17
Chris: And it's a wonderful encouragement to say, wow.
43:21
Chris: Hey, we can't do everything. We are creatures. So we're going to have to make some choices.
43:26
Chris: And one of the things I've learned from Jordan is that I have to make choices
43:30
Chris: about what I'm going to invest in and therefore some things I'm not going to invest in.
43:35
Chris: And then how do I use my time in ways that are not only efficient for efficiency's
43:41
Chris: sake, but so that I can be more.
43:44
Chris: Engaged with the people that I want to show the love of God to,
43:48
Chris: whether that's my wife, my children, my family, or my co-workers?
43:52
Chris: And also, how can I be more fruitful in the ministry, more flourishing with
43:58
Chris: the ministry that God has given me?
44:00
Chris: So I just wholeheartedly commend that wonderful little book that's easily available
44:05
Chris: on Amazon and a lot of other places.
44:08
Chris: I think it's got an audible version if you're a person that likes to listen to it.
44:12
Chase: Jordan Rayner, Redeeming Your Time. Folks, you'll be able to find pretty much
44:17
Chase: every resource we mentioned today,
44:20
Chase: as well as transcript and show notes and graphics and all of those goodies at
44:26
Chase: our website, everychurchflourishing.com.
44:30
Chase: That's everychurchflourishing.com. And that'll be your home to subscribe to
44:36
Chase: the show, share it with friends and read a transcript and see what we said,
44:39
Chase: see what you missed and all of that kind of good stuff.
44:42
Chase: Well, that is it for us for this episode.
44:46
Chase: Join us next week as we further talk about how to make your church healthy and
44:52
Chase: flourishing and doing well.
44:54
Chase: And if you have questions for the show, just come to the website.
44:58
Chase: There will be a place where you can record a question or you can send it through
45:02
Chase: a message box. See you next time.