Latest / Real Life Theology Podcast / Courageous Discipleship | Corey Trimble

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Courageous Discipleship | Corey Trimble · Real Life Theology Podcast

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  Welcome back, everyone, to the Real Life Theology Podcast. Today's episode features Corey Tremble,
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  who will help us embrace courageous, Spirit-empowered discipleship. I hope you guys enjoy this episode.
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  They have to do this because I write all their paychecks. Everyone over there, they have
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  to do that. And I made them all come today. So, no, I wanted to say, one, thanks for sticking
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  around. So, before I became a Christian, I used to play music for a living, and being
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  a headliner was kind of a double-edged sword. It was, one, an honor that they asked you
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  to go last, and then, two, it was kind of a challenge because either everyone was too
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  drunk to listen or they had fallen asleep because it was so late. So, thank you for
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  not doing either one of those and for being here. I appreciate that. So, I also wanted
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  to say thanks to Bobby for letting me go after the woman who taught at Princeton and whose
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  book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Follow that up. But here we are. So, listen, I always
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  start by praying. And every sermon I teach, I'm not saying that to sound like I'm extra
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  holy. I'm saying that because I'm a very insecure person. I haven't been a Christian for an
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  extremely long time. I got saved in late 2002. I was 23. I was about to be 23 years old.
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  And Johnny Cash said, if you are not nervous, it's time to stop doing whatever you're doing.
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  And I have never stopped being nervous. So, I pray every time I speak, right before I
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  speak. And so, I'm going to do that, and then I'll let them throw up the slides, and we'll
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  start working our way through a very, very short lesson. I do want to say this before
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  I pray. You guys have heard a lot of good information today, and it's all been kind
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  of 30,000-foot view information. So, almost selling an idea, selling a vision and a mission.
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  And when we leave here, I don't know if anyone else has been to a lot of conferences. I've
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  been to a lot of conferences. I really liked some of them. I really did not like some of
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  them. And something that frustrated me with a lot of people is they would go to these
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  conferences and hear all this wonderful information. They'd be given resources. They'd be given
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  a charge and a mission and a vision, and then they would go home and do nothing. So,
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  take what you've learned today. Take the charge and the mission. Man, pick up those resources.
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  A hundred bucks for a box. And I don't have to sell you on my book. You've already bought
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  it. So, I don't have to sell you on that. So, I'm not trying to do that. But even the
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  book that you have in your hand that I wrote, I feel like God gave me that. And some of
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  the things I'm going to say that are kind of 30,000-foot view stuff, the book will tell
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  you the practical way that our church has done that. And it's worked well for us and
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  hopefully it'll work well for you. But take all these principles, put them into action.
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  That's why we're here. I also wanted to give a shout out. I am from St. Louis. So, this
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  whole group over here. Yeah. First time in a long time I've been in a room where more
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  people are from St. Louis than not. So, that makes me really happy. So, I'm from St. Charles
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  and I was born in that area. My mother lives in Forest Park. And yeah. So, love you guys.
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  So, let me pray. Don't throw this stuff up here. I'm going to take 15 minutes of your
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  time and then hopefully kind of give you a charge to go out and make these things that
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  you've heard and learned today into a reality in your city, in your town, in your church.
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  Okay? All right. Father, Lord, we love you. God, we thank you. Lord, it has been very
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  humbling today, God, to hear some really, really phenomenal leadership, to hear some
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  really phenomenal stories. God, to see that video of that young lady getting baptized
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  and then turn around and baptizing her brother. Lord, that's really what all this is about
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  is that. It is seeing the fruit of people getting to know you and not just becoming
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  disciples but being disciples that then they go out and they make more disciples. Father,
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  that's why we're here today, God. Lord, we love you. We thank you. We praise you. God,
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  keep your hand on everyone in this room. The position that they've been put in, it's because
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  you have given them that authority and that leadership. So, God, bless that. Anoint them.
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  Send them back to wherever they're from. Lord, I especially want to pray for my brothers
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  and sisters from St. Louis, my hometown, God, that you would send them all back, God, and
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  continue to do great things in my hometown. And Lord, for all the other churches and all
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  the other places represented here today and people who are watching online, God, please
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  fill us up with your Holy Spirit. Lord, we have a big mission and we can only accomplish
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  that by the power of your Spirit, Lord. So, we love you. We thank you. We praise you and
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  it is your name that we pray, God, in Jesus' name. Amen.
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  Okay, so I love the book of Revelation. I know a lot of people either kind of, I don't
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  want to say hate, that's terrible, but either love or you're terrified of the book of Revelation.
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  I love it. Taught it three times through, line by line, word by word, and I kind of
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  fell in love with it years ago. If you've never read it, which I imagine most of you
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  probably have read it, towards the end of Revelation, all the crazy chaos, the horrible
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  stuff has happened. It says, as John is writing, that God is going to wipe away the old heavens,
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  the old earth. Everything that is old is going to pass away. He's going to make everything
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  new. And at the beginning of chapter 21, you see that there is a new heaven and there is
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  a new earth. And from the heavens, which means the sky, the city that we're going to live
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  in for eternity comes down and rests on that earth. And this is what it says. It says,
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  the one who conquers will inherit these things, all the things that we see at the beginning.
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  And I will be his God and he will be my son. And this is interesting. Look at this. But
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  the cowards, the faithless, detestable murderers, sexually immoral sorcerers, which can be associated
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  with drug use, idolaters, and all liars, their share will be in the lake that burns with
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  fire and sulfur, which is the second death. That's hell, right? Now, this is not anything
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  groundbreaking to any of us, except for the fact that we're so quick to identify sexually
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  moral people. We're so quick to identify those who are faithless and of course, murderers,
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  things like that. Very, very black and white. Those people do not go to heaven. But the
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  fact that this verse, verse eight starts off with cowardly people, lets us know that being
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  a Christian and courageous are synonymous with each other. That there is no way to be
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  a Christian without courage. They just don't go hand in hand. It's like oil and water,
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  right? To be a Christian and not have courage, it doesn't mix, it doesn't blend. So because,
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  and I'm not trying to pick on the North American church, but there's a lot to pick on right
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  now, because the North American church has not been courageous, I would say for several
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  decades now, that it has finally caught up to us. And because we have not been as courageous
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  as we're supposed to be as a church body, all of us, right? There have been two polar
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  extremes that have taken place within Christianity in the United States. Now here, here's what
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  that book that you got for free. I mean, you paid for it, but anyways, that book, the reason
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  why I wrote that book was to, to tackle these two extremes and to, to make the argument
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  that there is a place in the middle. Because people have lacked courage, this is what happens.
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  We either go to one or two sides, okay? First, we either isolate ourselves of fear of the
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  outside world, right? Put your kid, and please don't, I'm not trying to be offensive, but
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  put your kids in a Christian daycare, put them in a Christian elementary school, put
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  them into a Christian middle and high school, make sure they go to a Christian college the
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  whole time. Do not let them listen to anything except for Christian music and watch Christian
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  musics. And if someone starts to swear, you make a lot of noise so they don't hear that
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  word and you do everything you can, right? Anyone else done that as a parent? I've done
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  it, right? You hear the word start to come, you wave your hand so your kid doesn't hear
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  it. Anyways, we go to one extreme to where we actually pretend like the real world doesn't
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  exist and we isolate ourselves so much from it because we're terrified of it. Or we go
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  to the other extreme, and I think this is the extreme that we're actually seeing more
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  in the United States. And again, I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings, but we're seeing
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  it with the United Methodist Church right now, right? We've seen it with the Episcopal
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  Church. We've seen it with a lot of huge organizations and we've seen it with a lot of the non-denominational
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  churches that instead of addressing the wrongs in culture from a biblical standpoint, instead
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  of going to the extreme of isolating ourselves, we go to the other extreme of giving into
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  culture and compromising our biblical integrity in order to be relevant. We want to be accepted,
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  right? And so we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. This is why most churches don't
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  teach expository straight from the Bible stuff because quite frankly, we don't want to read
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  what the Bible has to say to a large group of people because we're afraid that we will
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  lose people over it. I remember the first time I taught the book of 1 Corinthians. That's
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  a fun one to read in front of a group of a lot of people. We have about 5,000 people
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  that come to our one campus and then we have a couple more campuses that float around.
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  And so I remember years ago I was teaching 1 Corinthians and if you've never taught 1
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  Corinthians chapter 6, it just has a laundry list of all the people who will not inherit
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  the kingdom of God. Of course it goes on and gives us hope, but I remember having to sit
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  there in front of a large group of people and read that all these different kinds of
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  sins will keep you from inheriting the kingdom of God. Not a very popular or easy thing to
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  do. So we go to these extremes, right? We either isolate ourselves from the world and
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  we just do not participate at all. We don't engage. We make sure that our kids don't see
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  anything or talk about anything. We go to this extreme or we go to the extreme to where
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  we cower, right? And we sacrifice our biblical integrity. So the question that I hope that
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  book addresses and the one that we'll just kind of throw out there today is, is it possible
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  to not only have a church that welcomes anybody in the door, anybody in the door, is it possible
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  to have a church where anyone can come in and feel welcome without compromising what
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  the Bible says? So not only as a church can we do that, can we do that as individuals?
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  The first kind of section of that book you got is about personal culture, which is what
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  is the culture of me? And when people are around just me, not my church, not my pastor,
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  not my team, whatever the case may be, when people are just around me, am I being loving?
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  Am I being inviting? Am I being engaging? But am I holding on to my biblical integrity?
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  Am I doing this? So this is the big question and this is the conundrum that most of us
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  in this room probably find ourselves in. So I want to make the argument that this can
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  be done. And I think in our church, the experienced community church, we've done the best we've
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  could with this. And so let's talk about it a little bit. Let me go to the next slide.
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  If we're going to do this, first we have to... Oh, I skipped one. There is one missing.
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  If you can go to the one that says insulation versus isolation, whoever's back there. They're
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  out of order. Let's do that. Oh, there it is. Okay, so the Bible never tells us to isolate.
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  So let's talk about that one extreme. The one extreme is to completely stay away from
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  anything that is from the world. We are not told to isolate in the Bible, but we are told
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  to insulate ourselves. So we use this verbiage a lot in our church. The Bible nowhere condones
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  isolation of the believers. In fact, when Jesus says, I'm going to send you out like
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  sheep among wolves, there is no isolation in that passage. It is you're going to have
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  to insulate yourself with the Holy Spirit, right? And you're going to have to cover yourself
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  up with me and be full of me. And then we're going to go out. Okay, then we're going to
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  go out and engage the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, if we're going to
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  do that, if we're going to engage the world, right? If we're going to, and I'm talking
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  about the fringe of the world, if we're going to engage the transgendered community, if
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  we're going to engage the LGBTQIA2 plus S community, right? I don't know how long it's
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  gotten now, but if we're going to engage that community, if we're going to do cross-cultural
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  things, if we're going to help to start multi-ethnic churches and crossover cultural lines, right?
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  If we're going to do these things, we have to have the power of the Holy Spirit and we
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  have to train people. We have to equip them. We have to educate them. Of course, we have
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  to pray for them. And then we have to give them the means to be sent out. And when we
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  do that, we have to be willing to create relationships with people that are dramatically different
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  from us. I love what the scripture says. The scripture says, well, even non-believers can
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  hang out with people like them. That's what the Bible says. Even non-believers, even the
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  pagans is what it says, can hang out with other pagans. But we, being the representative,
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  the ambassadors, the followers of Jesus Christ, we should be able to go out and be able to
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  love people, to be inviting to people, to build relationships with people diametrically
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  opposed to us. And in the South, I don't know how it is in other places, but the church
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  has become so politicized. We don't think that Democrats can go to heaven, right? We
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  don't think extreme right-wingers can go to heaven. We don't believe people that have
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  different ideological differences on certain things can go to heaven. And we've gotten
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  to the place to where we push so much on that—that's my next slide, I think—that we have come
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  to a place where there's a false narrative to where, with all people, we think we either
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  have to condone sinful activities, that we have to accept how they live, or that we have
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  to condemn them. So the crossroads the church is at right now—and I say this to my daughter
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  all the time. I have an 11-year-old. And I tell her, she goes to a very, very liberal
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  school. My kids go to public school. I know that makes some people gasp when I say that,
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  but my kids go to a public school, and they both go to what's called magnet schools. And
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  my oldest one goes to—it's the best school in the state of Tennessee, and you have to
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  work really hard to get into it, but it's extremely liberal. And the first day that
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  my daughter was in there, she was shown around the school by a transgendered girl. And so
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  we came home, and we've talked about that way on the front end. My daughter's 11 years
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  old. We've had a lot of these conversations, and I always tell her, listen, you don't have
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  to agree with how people live in order to love them. And the world has taught you a
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  false narrative that if we disagree, we must hate each other. And that's not what it is.
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  So we have to unashamedly teach straight from God's Word. We cannot let go of God's Word
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  while teaching our churches to also love and respect all people, regardless of what we
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  think about their choices. This is where I think the church really drops the ball.
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  Because this person disagrees with me on abortion—I'm talking about hot-button issues—because
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  this person disagrees with me on the idea of gender or sexuality, that we cannot be friends
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  with them. And that's not the case. Listen, we can't be friends with those people if we're
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  not full and insulated by the Holy Spirit, because we're going to slip up. But if we
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  have the Holy Spirit in us, I would challenge and push back and say that we should have
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  tons of friends that don't believe in the same God we do in the hopes that we can be
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  the light to invite them to church and start that relationship with God.
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  So there's a guy in my hometown where we live in Murfreesboro—not far from here—and
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  without saying too much so I don't identify this individual, several years ago I was going
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  through the lines in Starbucks and this guy was wearing a Chevron shirt—white and black
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  Chevron shirt—and I rolled up and I was getting my coffee—this was about two years
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  ago—and I said, man, that reminds me of Twin Peaks. If you're about forty-something
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  years old in here, you remember Twin Peaks? And I said, man, that's one of my favorite
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  TV shows—Twin Peaks. And he goes, really? I bought this shirt because of Twin Peaks.
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  And I was like, really? Look at that. We can be friends, right? We have something to agree
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  on. And we had this thing. And anyways, we got to talk and I said, hey, I'm going to
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  come in. Let's talk. Let's talk about Twin Peaks. Came in and we started talking. I got
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  to know him a little bit. He was getting to know me. I never told him what I did for
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  a living. We were just talking. Long story short, I found out that he was married to
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  a man. He and another man had been married for quite some time and he didn't drive.
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  But anyways, we just got along really, really well and someone ended up telling him what
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  I did for a living and he was like, are you comfortable talking to me? And I'm like,
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  well, sure. You like Twin Peaks, right? Let's talk. So long story short, we just got to
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  talking more and I said, man, do you dig movies? And he said, yeah, let's go to a movie. And
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  I was like, totally. Let's go to a movie. And he didn't drive. So I met him at Starbucks
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  one day, picked him up. We went and saw a movie. I made the mistake of letting him pick
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  the movie. It was the new Halloween movie. So it was funny. I'm sitting in a theater
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  watching a horror film with a gay guy. And I was like, man, if someone saw me right now,
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  this would be an interesting conversation. But I didn't care. And that was the culture.
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  That's the culture of our church. The culture is to somehow build those bridges, right?
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  I don't condone what he did for a living, what he does for a living, and I'm not for
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  a living, but his lifestyle. But I don't condemn him either. I love him and I care for him.
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  And we have remained really, really good friends for the last couple of years. So we have to
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  teach the truth, but we have to balance that truth with a genuine love. We also have to
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  have the courage to lead the way God wants us to lead. So that insulation, we've been
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  talking about the word discipleship a lot. We have churches from all over the country
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  that get a hold of us and say, how is your church growing so fast? And we say, well,
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  before we get to that, what is your plan for discipleship? And they'll say, well, we get
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  people to church. And I'm like, that's not discipleship. It's easy for the most part
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  to get people to an event. It's easy if you're giving away free food, it's easy to get people
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  to show up, right? If you have a famous speaker come and it's easy to get people in the door.
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  But discipleship, true insulation, being full of the Holy Spirit, covered and protected
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  by the Holy Spirit. This takes time and it takes energy and it takes money and it's not
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  easy and it's not instant gratification. But this is the way Christ told us to build the
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  kingdom by taking the time, pouring it into people, getting to know people, walking through
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  the scripture with people, pulling out hard truths, talking about life, digging deep,
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  getting to know people. Now, insulation takes time and teaching the word of God takes time.
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  If you're a senior pastor in this room, I'm a huge proponent of expository teaching. Take
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  a book of the Bible and start working through that sucker all the time. Again, those same
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  churches that call and ask why we're growing so fast. There's a couple of different things
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  I tell them, but one of them is we do expository teaching. We do word for word, line by line.
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  We've been in the book of Matthew the entire year of 2020. We've been at the whole year.
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  We've been working through it. We'll get done with it about January, late January.
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  We'll get through it. And I always tell people this is one of the reasons why we've grown
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  so much because the word of God addresses cultural idols. It addresses sinful behavior.
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  And what it does is it pushes us to have to talk about really, really tough things, but
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  we get to talk about it through the lens of the Bible. I always tell people teaching expository
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  like that is great because God can handle the pressure of what he said. I can't. Like
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  I'm broken, right? But I can read 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and say, man, I didn't say that. Jesus
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  said that through Paul, right? God said that through Paul. So blame God. This is God's
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  parameters and it takes that pressure off me and puts it on the word. And someone said
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  it earlier today. It might've been Renee or it was David. It was one of the two said that
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  if we claim to be Christians, that word, right? That has to be our anchor. So it puts all
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  that pressure on God. So we have to have the courage to lead God's way. Do we really love
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  people? We say we do until they vote differently than us. And then we don't love them as much,
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  right? I loved what angel said. He said, we love them until we find out that they support
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  BLM, right? And then we don't love them as much. We love them until we find out they're
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  a Trump supporter and then we're not as big of a fan anymore, right? We don't love them
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  as much as we thought. We love them until we find out that they have sexual struggles
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  and that it's uncomfortable to address these things, right? So the question for us is,
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  do we love people as much as we say, and as much as God commands us to, are we willing
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  to get into the mess of our world? With openness and authenticity comes tough problems and
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  uncomfortable situations. I remember about two years ago, he used to be one of our elders
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  and now he works at the church. Muhammad, who's sitting back in this back corner, called
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  me one day and he said, Hey, one of our small group leaders just came out as transgendered.
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  The man was in his mid fifties, married for 30 years, came out and said he wanted to be
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  a woman, right? We walked with that person, prayed with that person. Person has not changed
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  their mind, but I continue to pray with that person, talk with that person. We text about
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  every other week. It's uncomfortable. It's messy. We don't always see the eye to eye,
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  but I love this person and I'm willing to walk through those things with this person.
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  It's uncomfortable, but so is leading in a church, right? Do we trust that God's methods
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  work better than ours? Again, we say we do. I loved with, uh, the one gentleman said earlier
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  who was from Louisville, we put all this stock in the huge lights and man, I'm not
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  against lights. I'm not against music. I'm not against neat looking churches. We have
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  an old hundred and 15 year old factory that where our church meets and we own that building.
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  It's a neat place to be in, but we think that is what's going to grow church. And so I remember
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  one year we had all these guys from the Southern Baptist church and I'm not picking on the
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  Southern Baptist church with 30 or 40 ministers from the state of Tennessee and they took
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  a tour of our building and they kept saying, Corey, what is making the church grow? And
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  I talked about discipleship and expository teaching and benevolence and community service.
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  And the whole time they're looking around, they're like, but who did this artwork? And
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  I'm like, look, the artwork is great. That's not what grows the kingdom of God, right?
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  The lights are cool. Yeah, we got great music, but that's not what grows the kingdom of God.
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  It's these bigger principles. Do we believe that it's not just a catchy sermon series,
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  right? And again, if you did this, forgive me, but we thought like when 50 shades of
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  gray came out, 50 shades of grace, that'll grow the kingdom, right? We'll teach 50 shades
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  of grace. We'll do something really catchy like that. And it just seems like a gimmick
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  and it kind of falls flat. Do we believe that the word of God, the principles of God, true
• 22:22
  discipleship, do we believe that those methods work? Those are the God methods. Do we have
• 22:27
  the courage to walk by faith? Do we have the courage to teach and live the hard truths?
• 22:34
  And do we have the courage to honor God with how we lead? Living courageously, living courageously
• 22:41
  means you're going to get hurt. It means some people are going to leave guys. It means some
• 22:46
  people will flat out, hate your guts, flat out, hate your guts. All you have to go back
• 22:52
  and do is look at the example of Jesus Christ and Jesus reassured, right? A couple of his
• 22:57
  followers, when they asked, can we sit at your right and left? He said, are you ready
• 23:01
  to drink the cup that I'm drinking from? Those two men were murdered eventually, right?
• 23:07
  For their faith. Interesting. Interesting. So I want to challenge you. Um, we are called
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  to make disciples that go out and make more disciples. We don't do these conferences.
• 23:20
  We don't write books. We don't start churches so we can somehow give glory to ourselves.
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  Jesus says, go out and do your good work so they will glorify your father in heaven. There
• 23:29
  is no greater glorification of the kingdom of God than to reach out to someone, disciple
• 23:34
  them, see them give their lives to Jesus Christ. Our main mission is to keep less people out
• 23:39
  of hell and put more people into heaven. That is our end game, right? That is what we're
• 23:44
  called to do. And we cannot do that unless we have courage. Okay? So again, I've gone
• 23:51
  over five minutes. I'm going to pray. Um, and then if Bobby needs to say anything, thank
• 23:56
  you guys again for having me. I hope that was, uh, somehow beneficial and I hope the
• 24:00
  book blesses you. I think it will. Um, if you take the time to read it. Okay. Let me
• 24:05
  pray. Father Lord, I love you. God, I want to thank you one more time for everyone who's
• 24:09
  in this room. I want to thank you so much God for what you've done for us. I want to
• 24:13
  thank you so much God for, for Harpeth Christian Church and for Bobby doing all the work he
• 24:17
  does with renew and discipleship.org. I want to thank you father for all the men and women
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  in this room who are doing what they're doing in their cities who have given up and sacrificed
• 24:27
  Lord that they've been obedient. God, Lord, I just pray that you give us the courage to
• 24:31
  go back to wherever we're from and to start pouring into the messiest people in our cities.
• 24:38
  The hardest to reach. I pray that we have a heart for the atheist. I pray that we have
• 24:42
  a heart for the extreme liberal. I pray that we have a heart for the transgendered and
• 24:46
  the gay. I pray that we have a heart for the drunk and the idolater. I pray that we have
• 24:50
  a heart God for the apathetic person that thinks they're a Christian, but they don't
• 24:55
  live like it. Anyone who whose heart doesn't belong to you, God, I pray that you break
• 25:01
  our hearts for them and give us the courage to go into whatever dark corner of society
• 25:05
  we have to, to advance your kingdom Lord and to make more disciples. Father, we love you.
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  Thank you. We praise you for all these things in your son's name. God, Jesus name. Amen.
• 25:20
  Thank you guys for listening to this episode on the Real Life Theology Podcast. I hope
• 25:33
  you guys enjoy this content. Please comment, like, subscribe. We would love to hear from
• 25:37
  you guys. Hope to see you guys on the next episode.