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Hard Conversations Require Relationship - Jim Putman · Real Life Theology Podcast

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  Welcome back everyone to the Real Life Theology Podcast. Today's episode features
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  Jim Putman talking about having a hard conversation requires relationship.
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  I hope you guys enjoy this episode.
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  You know, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to meet with this group of people.
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  And I'm excited to get to see some of my friends from around the country again.
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  Love you, Bobby. Appreciate all of you.
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  You know, many of you know my story if you've read the books or heard me over the years.
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  My journey started in a pastor's home.
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  Very sincere couple that met in Bible college, but neither of them had really been discipled.
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  And so they were undiscipled individuals who went to Bible college and were educated.
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  And now their job was to lead a church.
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  So they had education. They understood the key doctrines and a lot of that.
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  But, you know, they didn't have good theology with flesh on it growing up as kids.
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  And so my family lived through the growing up process.
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  Meaning that as my parents sincerely grew in Christ, they made a lot of mistakes along the way just like we all do.
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  But, you know, they didn't actually start with a good idea about what it meant to be a church leader.
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  And then to have another sphere of your life called home.
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  And when do those two overlap? What does it look like to parent kids?
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  I mean, again, neither of them.
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  My mom came from a single parent divorced home and my dad from an absentee sort of a situation.
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  So they were trying to make it up as they go.
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  And then you add a rebellious person to the mix who's got his own sinfulness and brokenness.
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  And then you add everything that life piles on, choices people make.
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  And you end up with a view of God and church that's inaccurate.
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  And so I rejected the God I knew.
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  The God I'd been shown by the church.
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  And as I went out into the world to, you know, kind of make my own way and live according to the plan that I had in my mind,
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  I came to what many of us have come to.
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  I am a terrible God.
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  I am, I don't, this whole compass inside of me that if I just follow it, it would lead to happiness.
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  The compass inside of me does not lead to happiness.
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  It's broken.
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  It's a broken compass.
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  And, you know, many of us, I'm a hunter.
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  I've been in the woods with wrong directions, turned around, lost, and it leads to bad place,
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  especially when you're leading people who are following you.
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  Your loss, their loss doesn't lead to a great environment.
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  I came to the conclusion that I needed Jesus.
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  But then my journey went, okay, I'll accept Jesus, but I will never accept the church.
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  And many of you have heard me say that over the years.
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  And that led to a conversation with my father who, along the way, acknowledged that he had not led a balanced home or a balanced church.
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  Especially in his younger years, he acknowledged, first of all, he pursued relationship with a person who had pretty much destroyed him,
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  which showed that there was something in him beyond himself.
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  But he also, along the way, would say he was sorry for the issues that he had caused in his growing up process.
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  And so it kept me in the game with him.
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  And it led to him being able to speak into my life and to say, Jim, the church is God's idea.
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  Matthew, you know, Jesus says, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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  And so the church is Jesus's idea.
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  Well, that led to a conversation of me saying, well, if the church is Jesus's idea, then it's a bad idea.
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  And how can you have a good God who has a church that looks like that?
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  Which led to a conversation where my dad said, Jim, first of all, people are broken and God is a God of grace.
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  But he made this very clear.
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  He said, Jesus didn't say he would bless a church, not your church, not my church.
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  He didn't say that my church was a good idea or your church was a good idea.
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  He said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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  And he said, is it possible that the church has become too much our church and not enough his church, which is why it looks so bad?
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  It doesn't work.
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  It doesn't win.
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  And the fact that he would acknowledge that question as a pastor was important to me.
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  And he gave me the freedom to go, Jim, I really want you to go through and take it rather than react to what you've been shown or from the atheist perspective.
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  Remember, I at one point was an atheist.
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  I just said, you know, I unfortunately I saw what the church looked like.
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  A broken church looked like from within.
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  But I also saw what it looked like from without.
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  So I had kind of a double whammy.
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  It doesn't work on the inside and it certainly isn't worth being a part of on the outside.
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  He said, let's go back to God's word.
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  And I want to encourage you to look into God's word.
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  And then, you know, I was a coach.
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  I was, you know, an athlete.
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  He said, what if you were to create something that looked more like what God had intended?
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  And I said, why would I create something like, I'm not the, this isn't my field.
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  I don't really care about that.
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  And I'm going to go do my thing out here.
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  And he said, well, is that God's calling in your life?
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  So there was this discipleship process that happened.
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  One of the reasons I'm so passionate about discipleship is because I got to see what it looked like to go to church.
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  And that didn't really make any difference in my life.
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  And then I got to be discipled by, I don't remember a sermon my dad ever preached.
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  But I do remember the phone calls, the conversations, the relationship in the middle of the night.
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  I remember being discipled, and it changed my life.
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  And then I started to look and go, wait a minute.
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  Most people have gone to church, but they've really never been discipled.
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  They may have been educated, but they were never discipled.
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  They may have received some information, but they hadn't really been through transformation.
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  And so as I was going through this whole process, I understood this.
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  Being a college wrestler and a brawler, I understood that this whole process of coming to know Christ,
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  part of that process was me coming to the understanding that there really is a spiritual battle.
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  There really is demons.
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  There really is this war on.
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  And to be a Christian, there's a war.
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  There's a fight.
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  And there's deception.
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  And not only does it hit you from the outside, the devil really targets the inside.
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  I mean, because using a football metaphor, if he can get, no matter how talented the team is,
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  if he can get the fight, the guys on the team in the huddle to fight with each other,
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  then he owns them on the line of scrimmage.
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  And so there's this spiritual battle that I came to understand.
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  And as I came to understand this, there were two issues that I thought was important.
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  But one, I assumed, wrongly I might add, I assumed was a given.
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  And the other needed to be worked on.
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  So as I started diving into this and the Lord moved me into actual ministry,
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  something I said I'd never do,
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  I realized that I was supposed to take responsibility and try to do this.
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  And there's two issues.
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  One was a doctrinal issue, was a doctrine.
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  Now, in wrestling, a doctrine is like the rules, right?
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  There's rules in wrestling.
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  And there's ways, you know, there's names of things.
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  There's belief systems in wrestling.
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  And then there's the actual practice of what is the right methodology
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  to get that person from knowing about something to actually doing something well.
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  So as a coach, there's teaching them the rules,
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  and that's a single leg, that's a double leg, that's a, you know, whatever.
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  There's informing them about something,
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  but that's not what a coach does, just to form them about something.
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  Their job is to get them to actually be able to do it.
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  And do it for themselves.
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  And maybe even teach somebody else.
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  You know, there's this developing a program
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  where the parents eventually are teaching their 5-year-old to wrestle,
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  and the program is actually benefiting from a parent
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  who actually taught their kids from 5 years old until they actually hit school.
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  And then, you know, this raising these people to understand this
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  and be able to do this, that was the goal.
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  And again, there's two issues.
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  There's the rules of the sport, the doctrines, belief systems about the sport,
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  and then there's the methodology of getting people to actually live that out well.
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  And so as I started to understand the church,
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  in my mind, the doctrines were set.
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  The belief system for all throughout history, orthodoxy, was set.
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  I mean, most people I knew, though they might add things,
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  you know, they certainly weren't taking away things.
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  And so, for my way of thinking, I was like,
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  I'm getting rid of everything we added.
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  I want to get back to, you know, who was the master wrestler spiritually?
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  It was Jesus, right?
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  And I'm going to get back to the right doctrine.
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  And everybody kind of has the right doctrine for the most part.
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  The problem for me was we got to get to the method of how we pass on right doctrine.
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  Because what was happening is, people could tell you,
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  if they were to take a quiz, what the right doctrines were,
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  but when it came to faith and practice, they weren't actually discipling you, buddy.
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  They couldn't make disciples.
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  They were spectators.
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  Somewhere along the line, they went from being wrestlers who learned how to wrestle
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  to spectators who watched somebody else wrestle.
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  And so, for me, it was like, all right, if we're going to get this straightened out,
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  we got two problems.
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  On the left side, we got, what's the right doctrine?
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  That's given. We don't need to worry about the left side.
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  What we got to do is worry about the methodology, the right side.
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  We got to teach people that they were saved to be a disciple maker
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  who helped people come to know Christ.
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  That they were not spectators.
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  They were to be a part of the body of Christ.
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  And we got to start teaching pastors that your job isn't to gather a crowd.
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  You're an equipper of the saints.
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  Winning is unleashing an army on a community,
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  not gathering people out of a community so you can inform them about the things of God.
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  No, your job was to get them involved so that they were not living vicariously through a pastor.
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  They were living out the Christian life.
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  And so I was like, okay, somehow we got the doctrines right.
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  Now we got to get the methods right.
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  And so we got to start going back through definitions.
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  What is success?
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  Disciples who can make disciples.
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  What's the best method for that to happen?
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  Well, that led to something you've all heard me say
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  a thousand times if you've been around where I've been.
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  It's you don't divorce the teachings of Jesus from the methods of Jesus
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  and get the results of Jesus.
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  So this assumes some things.
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  That not only is there the teachings of Jesus, the doctrines,
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  all the way, all scriptures God breathed.
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  Old Testament, New Testament, same thing.
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  Scripture, right?
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  All scriptures God breathed.
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  Okay, we got the teachings.
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  And pretty much everybody has got the basis of that.
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  Well, now we got to get to the greatest disciple maker in history was Jesus.
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  And when he sent people out to make disciples,
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  he didn't go do it any way you want.
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  He meant go do what I just did with you.
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  How did he do it?
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  He did it in relationship.
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  Now, in my mind, that's circling back to how did I get saved?
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  It wasn't going to a church building,
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  and it wasn't listening to my dad on the stage.
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  It was my dad doing life with me, sharing the gospel with me,
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  walking through with me, not only helping me find that I could be saved,
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  but helping me find I have a place and a purpose,
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  and how he walked me through that.
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  And I'm going, oh, wait, Jesus did that.
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  And so it came down to methods.
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  In a sense, in a sense, it's like this.
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  In wrestling, if I were to wrestle a match,
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  I would, unless it was with a little kid or whatever,
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  I wouldn't do so with my hand behind my back.
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  I would use both hands.
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  There's two sides.
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  You have to defend both sides.
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  If you're going to fight, you don't fight with one fist.
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  And so methodology or, excuse me, doctrine was the left side.
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  If you're going to win with an opponent who's any good at all,
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  you're going to have to learn to use both hands.
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  Would you agree with that?
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  We are in a war.
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  We don't wrestle against flesh and blood,
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  but against the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms.
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  And so for me, it was, okay, doctrine and method,
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  having the right definitions of words equals a church
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  that is something, not that people go to,
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  but they're a part of something.
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  There's a common mission.
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  We're doing this together.
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  We actually were saved.
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  We're created anew in Christ Jesus for good works,
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  which God planned for us to do before time began.
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  And the equipers of the saints, equipping the saints
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  so that they'll do their good work
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  so that the body of Christ could be built up
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  and so that we'd all reach unity of the faith.
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  And so for the last 20 years, it's been doctrine,
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  doctrine and method.
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  I assumed doctrine.
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  Here's the most disappointing thing
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  that I'm dealing with right now.
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  We assumed this and we started teaching this.
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  Now everybody's going, it's the method, it's the method.
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  And you know what?
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  They've given up the left hand.
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  Now it's, hey, for the sake of unity, anything goes.
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  And people are actually quoting to me my stuff
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  on relationship and methodology
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  and maturity in Christ is to be in relationship.
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  And it's almost like they're saying relationship at all costs.
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  It's like, hey, we can be all unified together,
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  but then we can decide that we're going to give up
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  what God's word says.
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  And they'll say, well, it's not the gospel.
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  So why can't women be the preachers?
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  Why can't women be the elders?
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  I mean, come on, they believe in Jesus.
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  And what we've done is we've forgotten that God's word,
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  it makes us wise into salvation,
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  but it's also the standard of righteousness.
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  And God is the designer,
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  the architect of every part of our life.
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  And Jesus made it clear.
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  If you hear my words and you put them into practice,
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  that means you've allowed me to be the architect
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  and I'm going to build your house on the rock.
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  But if you hear my words
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  and you don't put them into practice,
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  it's like your life's going to be built on the sand.
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  And so what we've done is we've allowed our culture,
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  feminism, pressure, LBGTQ and whatever other,
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  we've allowed ourselves to go back to, hey,
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  winning is just sharing about Jesus
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  and you just need to believe in Jesus.
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  But we don't really have to agree with him
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  on what he says in his word for 2000 years,
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  how it's been understood.
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  Everything's up in the air
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  because now relationship's so important
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  at the expense of truth and righteousness,
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  as God defines it.
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  And again, so now it was like, okay,
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  we're fighting with this one, let's use this one.
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  Well, now it's like, let's use this
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  and let's drop this one.
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  And you know what?
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  The enemy is, he doesn't come at,
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  it's like, what's the big deal?
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  When we create a hermeneutical pathway
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  that allows us to do something
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  that makes us more popular with the world,
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  do you not understand that you just created a pathway
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  that you can, you take that scope in hunting,
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  I create a scope, I can hit that target.
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  I may not always shoot that target over there,
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  but I could and I've created a scope
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  and now I've got a hermeneutical pathway
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  that I can attack this in anything else I choose to
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  because I've created a way that I could be more popular
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  and somehow I can gather more people
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  at the expense of people's foundation
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  in every part of their life.
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  And so my warning to the church is this.
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  God gave us his word
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  and if he has something to say about something,
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  he is the creator
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  and he knows what he's talking about
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  and to get it wrong actually costs us.
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  Listen, trying to be popular in the world,
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  Jesus told us we wouldn't be.
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  Trying to make it so that there, you know, listen,
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  the gospel in itself is offensive to unbelievers
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  because there's one way to salvation.
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  There's real heaven and hell.
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  There is a judgment day.
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  It's already unpopular.
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  Why?
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  What are we doing?
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  This passage really sticks out to me
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  and it's in, and I'll close with this.
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  It's in Jeremiah chapter six
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  and it says this.
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  This is what the Lord says.
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  Stand at the crossroads and look.
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  Ask for the ancient paths.
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  Ask where the good way is and walk in it
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  and you will find rest for your souls.
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  But you said we will not walk in it.
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  I appointed watchmen over you
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  and said listen to the sound of the trumpet
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  but you said we will not listen.
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  We live in a world that wants to hear
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  what it wants to hear
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  and we offer the truth of God's word
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  given by the righteous one
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  who every command he has ever given is for our good
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  and to compromise means that there is weakness
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  and contamination in whatever we compromise in.
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  We are called on to be two-fisted fighters.
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  Standing on God's word, using his methods,
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  being about his business
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  and then let the cards fall where they may.
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  Our success isn't determined.
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  I mean there's a lot of people
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  who think they're successful
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  that they'll find out they're not
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  and there's a lot of people that will think
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  that they weren't successful
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  and on that day they will hear
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  well done good and faithful servant
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  and they will be.
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  We let God do the deciding.
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  We don't give in to the people.
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  We follow King Jesus.
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  We're responsible to him
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  as shepherds and stewards of his flock.
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  Two-fisted fighting.
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  It's not one or the other.
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  It's both and.
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  Thanks.
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  Thank you guys for tuning in
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  to this episode of the Real Life Theology Podcast.
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  Stay tuned for more great content
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  down the road
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  on disciple making and theology.