Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you. Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations
with your hosts, Ben and Spencer. Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through
the powerful lens of love. In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing
fresh insights and gaining deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith
in practical ways. So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love in the
context of the Bible intersect to transform our lives.
Welcome to Love in Context podcast. You all excited?
I'm excited. Okay. I'm sure they said yes too.
I raise up in the morning and I'm like, woot, woot, it is time.
Right? I actually say it exactly like that. And
Tara's like, what did you say? And I'm like, nothing.
Nothing. I said nothing.
You see those reels where it's like, where it's like the tired one, one person's tired
and they're like, oh, and they're like, and I married a morning person and they like come
running in the room like, Hey. Yeah. That's my wife.
Yeah. Yeah. She is. She is. I think we hit eight
30 and she's like, Oh, I think I should go to sleep. And then four o'clock in the morning,
she's up and she's like, gotta get my day started. And she's like, I just, I feel like
my day is wasted. I was like, well, part of it is because you went to sleep before the
day was done. Yeah. Like, like Lindsey works at, she leaves
the house at three 30 in the morning for work. Yeah. And so a couple of times a week I'm
like, I meet her on her lunch break at eight AM.
Yeah. Yeah. There are, there are some people who are listening, who are going to feel that
because they are morning people. Um, we, I, I personally am not one of those. Um, I do
get up at the same time pretty much every day and I have worked to make myself functional.
Now the interesting thing is I have two boys and one of them wakes up like Tara and one
of them definitely wakes up like me. And the one that wakes up like Tara doesn't understand
that the one that wakes up like me, you can't just come and start yelling in his face. It
does not work well. Well, I mean you can, there's just consequences,
right? See, my daughter woke me up this morning and I was like five more minutes. I need five
more minutes and I'm sure she gave it to you. She actually did. Oh, that's surprising. Yeah.
She actually went back to her room and got ready and gave me five minutes. That's great.
So before we get into today's episode, uh, we're, we're doing, uh, there's going to be
this episode and one other one that's going to come between our spiritual gifts. And then
we're going to be talking into the book of James. Uh, we are currently lining up our
times to sit down with the people who are going to be guests during the book of James.
And that's why we decided to put a couple of extra episodes, things we thought were
fun to talk about, but aren't part of a mini series per se.
Fun fact about Alaska. People are horrible at texting you back. I'm talking about you,
Kate King. They are horrible at texting you back. It's
just, it's, I mean, and that, that's not a, uh, that's not like just a local to where
we are thing. That's like across the state. Like I have friends all across the state and
I'll text them and it'll be like two days later you get text back. Well, you also run
the thing in Alaska. Summers are strange here because everybody loves being here during
the summer, but for whatever reason, right when you hit the summer, everybody travels.
Yeah. Right. Everybody loves the summer here, but we always travel during the summer, mostly
because there's more flights, they're less expensive, all those different things that
kind of come. But, uh, so trying to get people like lined up to sometimes difficult. Yeah.
So today we're going to be talking about the idea of safe places, safe places, which, uh,
it's like in baseball when you slide into home plate and like safe. Not at all, actually.
Not at all like that, but, uh, uh, we might be upsetting the apple cart a little bit on
this one. Um, so just, just note that this conversation probably is going to be most
relevant for people who are in some sort of ministry leadership. Um, at this, but it's
not going to be unrelevant for those who are not. Yeah. It's not exclusively for them.
Yeah. It's not exclusively for them. First off is we want to disclaim saying that we're
going to speak generally. Like there's, uh, you know, the situations in your ministry
and your community, stuff like that. Uh, we are going to speak generally. So, so this
might not directly apply to your specific location or it might. And then the second
thing that I would just want to just cautious caution everybody on is even though we are
upsetting the apple cart on this, we do want to do it and we were going to try to do it
in a way to where it feels approachable. Yeah. Um, so just, just be warned on those two things.
Yeah. So, uh, largely today we're going after this idea of should the church be a safe place
and what does it mean to be safe? Yeah. Right. So in case you have not got, uh, turned off
from us from their women in ministry and our talk about tongues and healing, we're, we're
going to just make sure that we, uh, just go all out and just make sure like you actually
want to be here at this point. Yes. And so, yeah. Uh, so let's dive into the idea of a
safe place. So, uh, I have talked with pastors and ministers over the 16 years I've worked
in ministry and a common thing that comes up is like, Oh, we're just trying to create
a safe place. And the issue with that is the definition of safety means to be void of risk
and the gospel is actually increases your risk in life. Right. It doesn't. So, so when
you're saying, Hey, we want to be safe. You're actually saying you're actually limiting your
capacity to deal with the mess in people's lives. And so we want to just kind of address
that a little bit. And first thing I want to address is I think the heart behind what
people are getting at here is good. Like they want to create a place where people feel like
they can let their guard down and let the mess in their life be dealt with. Right. Which
I think that is good. The problem is, is that's not safe because when you are dealing with
mess in your life, it actually brings it. Oftentimes it brings up trauma, brings up
things like addiction in the past or whatever. And often takes a lot of time to, uh, process
through. So an example of this is I, there's a church I talked to about five years ago.
Um, and they were like, yeah, we just want to create a safe place. And I'm like, awesome.
And they're like, we're, and we're starting a new ministry. I was like, Oh, that's awesome.
What are you doing? Like we're doing prison ministry. Yeah, it's not going to be safe.
Do you know why those people are in prison? Yeah. I mean, because they broke some law.
Right. Right. And, and I mean, and I want to have percent applaud them doing the prison
ministry, right? But it's like, that's not going to be safe. Well, and it's, but it's
a hundred percent appropriate. I think you should do. Yes. Right. Um, but like prison
ministry is not safe. Like you have no idea why people are in there. No. Right. It could
be anything from tax fraud to they murdered someone. Yeah. Right. Or anything in between.
Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's some TV shows. I think, I think, um, psych is one of them
where he goes undercover in prison and then he comes up with some like ridiculous excuse
of why he's there. And the person next to him was like, I killed someone or something
like that. And he's like, Oh, it's much easier. Yeah. Yeah. It's much easier explanation.
Right. Well, so if we can take a step back really quick, this idea of devoid of risk,
uh, it's, I went into that in, uh, in financial things, right? Like that's actually a conversation
that I have with people around the financial basis because, um, people will talk about
what their money, they say, well, I want to grow, but I don't want to have any risk. The
problem is there is no such thing as, um, risk avoidance. In other words, there's always
going to be risk. So in money and in life, um, and let me explain like on a, on a, on
a physical commodity, talking about money, why that's the case. If you invest in the
stock market, you have risk of companies growing companies collapsing companies going out of
business, right? If you don't invest in the market, you now have inflation risk and you
have a, and a number of other risks as well. So whether you put the money in the market
or not, you actually have risk. The question is which risk are you most willing to accept?
Yeah. And you can mitigate risk. Correct. Right. So what we're not saying is we're not
saying, Hey, just go willy nilly with your church and let everything fly. Right. Like
that's not what we're saying. Like should you background check people who are going
to work with adolescents? Absolutely. Right. Should you train up your congregation? Well,
absolutely. Should you have like, should you have things like faith and conduct agreements
where it's like, Hey, if you're going to volunteer, this is what we expect. Absolutely. Those
are great. Those are great things. Like you can mitigate risk. Like same with, same with
the stock market, right? Uh, if someone came up to you and said, Hey, I'm going to put
$3 million in Tesla, we're going to get flagged on that one. You might get flagged on it.
You also might be like, maybe we should diversify a little bit. Right. Right. Or a lot. Um,
but, but maybe we should, maybe we should change up our strategy a little bit. Well,
and it's, it's one of these conversation pieces where that may or may not be appropriate,
but it's not going to be appropriate for everyone. Yeah. Which by the way, it comes back to your
thing is that, uh, when you were talking about individual churches, you know, your situation,
you know, your circumstance, like you're not going to be the same as us. Right. And so
the way that we do our church is not necessarily going to be the same as the way you do your
church because you know, the circumstances around it and what's important for mitigating
risk, but also forwarding the gospel to make transformative places. Yeah. So a couple points
of scripture that we can reference on this. So one is Matthew 10 and Jesus is sending
his disciples out. He says, you're going to heal. You're going to proclaim the gospel,
all this good stuff. Then he gives this call to be like sheep amongst wolves. I don't know
about you. Uh, we don't, so we don't have sheep where we're at, but we've got mountain
goats. Yeah. All right. We do have wolves though. We do have wolves and I can tell you
right now, the mountain goats do not hang out with the wolves. No, they do not. Not
intentionally. And when they do, it's usually not good for the mountain goats. It is not.
No. So, uh, like generally it doesn't go well for anything that hangs out with the wolves.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Wolves are mean. Um, so he calls us to be like sheep amongst
wolves. That's not a safe place to be. Right. Right. Uh, and then he goes on and gets down
to Matthew 10, 28 and he says, Hey, don't fear the one who can just condemn your body.
Instead, fear the one who can condemn body and soul to hell. So we're referring to God
and lots of times we read this passage, we're like, wow, that's a dark verse. But really
what Jesus is saying is he's like, he's like, Hey, everything in this world has to throw
at you. That's okay. Like this is going to be tough. Yeah. It's going to suck. And his
commission to his disciples in here, he's saying that like, Hey, you are going to be
imprisoned. You're going to, they're going to try to stone you. They're going to try
running out of towns. Yeah. All this stuff. So he's giving this call to like, Hey, this
is what it means to follow me and go proclaim the good news. And there's going to be times
where it just downright sucks. Well, and I think, I think Jesus's statement is really
about like, where's your eyesight trained on? Like, are you focused on the person who
might affect your day? Yeah. Or the person who's in charge of your eternity. Yeah. Like,
and the point is not for you. I think the problem when he talks about that is people
focus in on the hell thing and they're like, Oh, if I don't do this, God's going to send
me to hell. No, that's not what the point of the conversation is. The point of the conversation
is why are you worried about somebody who could cause you a little bit of physical discomfort
instead of focusing on this eternal life aspect, like this, uh, this kingdom that is going
to continue to roll out to the entire world. Yeah. Right. And so like, where is your eyesight?
Like, what are you looking at? Yeah. And so re rewind this and look at the history of
how the Lord has led his people. I can tell you right now, it doesn't take a lot of research
to see that he led them to what seemed like earthly unsafe places. So, uh, let's just
start in Egypt. So you have the Israelites enslaved, right? But they have roofs over
the head. They have food. It might not be a lot, but they have some. And then God comes
in, frees them. And while they also have, they, they know what's coming. Yeah. They
know what to expect. Then God comes up and frees them. And where does he take them? The
desert. Okay. What's in the desert? Nothing. Pretty much. I don't know if you know this,
but the desert is really hot. True. It's very hot. It's very hot. That's for you, Jamie.
I think the, they sent us a picture when they were in Hawaii of them wearing their shirts
in Hawaii in the middle of the desert. And yeah, that's pretty sweet. Yeah. Though I
mean, Hawaii, I mean, that's really hard to call that a desert. Yeah. Yeah. So, but, but
anyways, like continuing on with Israel's journey, like then they get to the point where
they're going to enter into the promised land and they send, send scouts over and the scouts
look and they're like, there are giants here. Yeah. And it's only Caleb who's like, let's
go. Like everyone else. Joshua, Joshua. Yeah. But yeah, but Caleb, Caleb is the old man
who's like, let's go. Yeah. He's like, I got this. Yeah. Okay. Then you, then you continue
their journey, say to Jericho. Yep. Right. They're like, Oh, you know, town big walls,
we're gonna have to fight them. Tell you what, here's the strategy. Walk around it and dance
and sing. Uh huh. Right. Then the last day, do it seven times, but then yell at those
walls and they're going to fall down. Yep. Yep. Fast forward a little bit further to,
uh, let's say Gideon. Yep. Where it's like, Hey, I know you're going up against a hundred
thousand plus, but Hey, you only need 300. Okay. That's one of those moments where I
come again. Like is that, is that, am I hearing you correctly? Um, well, or let's even go
to a book of that is a meant to be a satirical book, but it's the book of Jonah, right? Uh,
where the prophet acts like a heathen and all the heathens act like righteous people.
Right. Uh, Jonah is told, he's mad when they act like righteous people. Right. Well, Jonah's
given this instruction. He says, Hey, you know, those people who just invaded you and
completely wiped out your people and took them into slavery. I want you to go and preach
to them because I don't want to wipe them out because they're, I don't want, I want
them to turn from their evil. And like, he's like, well, they just wiped us out. Uh huh.
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's not a comfortable place to have to go. No. You know, and uh,
or uh, which, uh, which prophet is it that had to lay on their side for like three years?
Ezekiel. Ezekiel. Yeah. Not great. Yeah. Uh, so let's just jump ahead to the new Testament
a little bit. Like, so this is post Jesus book of acts. Um, you have the disciples getting
stoned within an inch of their lives being thrown out of city, beaten repeatedly, beaten
repeatedly and what do they do? They, as soon as they can get up, they get up and they go
back into the city or the next city, depending on, yeah. Yeah. Does they just go in? They,
they continue on with the mission. Yep. They continue on with the mission. You have, um,
there's the guy who tells Paul, he's like, Hey, I just had a vision that if you go here,
you're going to get bound up. And Paul's like, yeah, I'm still going. Uh huh. Like I, I'm
aware that I'm probably going to get arrested, but I'm still going anyways. Yeah. You have,
uh, 11 of the 12 disciples being killed in horrific, horrific ways. Right. Um, so like
what were their lives safe? No, they were imprisoned. They were beaten. They were, uh,
I mean, they were stoned, all these things. Peter was crucified upside down. Um, these
are the physical things that happened to them too. There was a lot of like, um, you think
about even like Paul, who was a, one of the great apostles, right? He had people in each
of the cities who were like talking smack about him when he wasn't there. Yeah. Right.
That he has to clarify. He's like, no, this, these are my credentials. This is, this is
the authority that I've been given. Yep. And when I come here, we'll see if you have the
same snark when I come here to talk to you. Uh huh. Yeah. And then, and then you also
have like, you also have the, the difficulties of disagreement between the disciples. Like
you have a whole section in Galatians where Paul's talking about how he confronted Peter.
And then you have Peter in his book saying, Paul is quite difficult to understand. Yeah.
Right. Like you have, you have these buddy, buddying of heads of prominent church leaders.
Barnabas and Paul had to split ways because they had a disagreement about how things should
go. Yeah. Doesn't seem to be that they, uh, disliked each other. They're just like, Hey,
it's more important that we go forward with this than we sit here and bicker. Yeah. And
so following Jesus is not easy. No, it's not like, uh, and so we have, we need to put that
in context there of like, it's not easy. It's not safe. We're called to be sheep amongst
wolves. Um, another, another passage that you can look at this, and this is a little
bit of different interpretation on this, but is in the Beatitudes or Jesus says you're
the light of the world. So don't hide your light under a bushel. Yeah. Okay. In wartime,
what do you do to be safe? You hide, you hide your light. Yeah. So world war two, when the
blitzkrieg was happening over London, they had mandatory blackouts across the city so
that it was harder for the city to be bombed. And they actually set up, they actually set
up fake, fake communities around the city to try to lessen the impact on a city. Yeah.
Stuff like that. Right. So in ancient times, like if you know someone's coming to attack
you, you don't leave all the lights on. You, you actually hide those lights. Well, and
for two reasons. One is that one, they'll be able to see you from a long ways off because
it's not our modern infrastructure. Like we've talked about this in the past, but about how
night is dark. Yeah. I mean, you got maybe stars moon, like, but depending on, you know,
of course, like clouds and those type of things, but it's, it's dark, dark. Yeah. Like, so
it's not like, uh, when you walk around your city and there's still street lights and no,
there's none of that. It's dark. You only have that light from people's houses. And,
uh, and so like, if you have your light on one, another thing that happens is that you
also can't necessarily see into the darkness because your eyes aren't adjusted to the dark.
Yep. Right. So you let everybody see you and you can't see them. But on the flip side of
that, if you're also going to be a city of hope for people who are lost or wandering
or on the road, then you also have to have your light shining. Yeah. And if you hide it,
then they're not going to know where you are. Yep. So, so for us to shine our light, to
shine the light of Jesus and community around us is an unsafe thing to do. Right. It'll
lead to in American context, it'll lead probably the more like ridicule shame, like people
trying to shame you, guilt you, make fun of you, stuff like that. But there are contexts
around the world where it leads to imprisonment and death. Correct. Yeah. We have brothers
and sisters in Afghanistan and a lot of the middle Eastern, uh, regions that are going
through that right now. Um, I was actually watching an interview with, um, a pastor X
who is, uh, has to remain anonymous and, uh, he made a statement. He says, you know, people
are encouraged by the fact that we're willing to die for crisis. As I often wonder, like,
are you willing to live for him though? Yeah. And I was like, ow, pastor, that hurts.
Ouch. Right. So it hurts in a good way because it, it's like, it's not a, it's not a piece
of shame. It's a piece of conviction. It's motivating me to be a better version of myself.
Yeah. So what we want to do as churches, we want to actually create a transformative place,
correct? A place where people can come for healing and they can be transformed. They
can experience the redemption that Christ offers. They can experience the forgiveness,
the salvation that comes through Christ. Um, but in order to do that, we have to be willing
to accept the mess. Correct. Well, we talked in, um, a number of our series, we talked
about the mess that is equipping people for ministry too, right? We've said, how many
times have we said that if you let people speak on a stage for any period of time, they're
going to spot heresy. If you put, uh, people to train and worship leading some days, they're
going to be out of tune, out of key. You know, it's not going to be good. Yeah. Uh, you could
be like this last week at our church was, was kind of, uh, it was just a house of cards
of everything went wrong. Uh-huh. But one of the main thing was we couldn't get logged
into the computer so we couldn't even put words on the screen that I don't know if you
know that if you don't put words on the screen, people have a hard time, like, cause people
don't typically memorize the songs, you know? So it makes it difficult. Yeah. Um, it's going
to be messy like that. There's just a process and all of that. Uh, we, I know that whenever
you train a new sound person, it's messy. Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, you, and look at the
more like social justice side of church too. Like if you're going to say, Hey, I want to
adopt. You're entering into trauma. It's going to be messy. Guaranteed trauma. Guaranteed
trauma. If you're, if you have, if your church has like a alcoholic anonymous ministry or
a narcotics amount, anonymous ministry, uh, it's going to be messy. Right? Like when you're
talking to people who are in active recovery, yeah. Like that's messy. Right. Right. Like
there's, there's going to be times where they're going to want to relapse. There's going to
be times where you're going to see relapse. There's going to be, and how, what do you
do in those moments? Right. Well, and there's also a bleed in from that night, not just
alcoholics and narcotics, but like people who are forgiven by Christ and are being,
um, continually formed into his image are going to have relapses too. Yeah. Right. And,
uh, I was actually just listening to, I'm going to recommend a mini series that's on
walking the text right now. It's flora and fauna from, uh, Brad gray. Yeah. And they
were talking about the fig tree when, when Jesus comes out and he curses his fig tree.
And I'm not going to give you the whole spiel because there's a lot of good stuff in there.
Yeah. Uh, go check out the episode. Uh, Jesus come, he curses this, this fig tree. And one
of the things, make statements that they make is that, um, how often is God coming to your
branch and it's all leaves and no fruit. And, uh, and he quoted from Josea when it says,
um, that when you, when you have inauthentic worship, right? When you, when you're saying,
trying to say the right things, but you're not doing any of the right things. When your
orthodoxy doesn't line up with your orthopraxy, right? Uh, with your duology does not line up
with your theology that he's going to put an end to your parties and end to your worship
and end to your Sabbaths and, uh, and redirect. Yeah. Right. And it says like your fig fig trees
will not produce figs, which is actually the connection into, um, that portion in Mark. But,
uh, I was sitting there thinking, I was like, man, how crazy is it? Like, cause we, it's,
when you're talking about creating a safe space in the church, I feel like sometimes what you end
up with is you end up with a branch with all leaves and no fruit, right? If we want it to be
safe, that's the risk is we end up with all leaves and no fruit. Yeah. I want to even say
that's a risk. I would say that's a guarantee. Yeah. Cause the more you step into that, the more,
the more that you realize that you limit, you lose your ability or even know how to get out
in the community and reach the lost. Right. Cause, um, being a church that is transformative is,
I would even say dangerous, right? Because some of the people you're going to be welcoming in are
going to be people that, that your neighbors might look at you and be like, are you sure you want them
in the same building as your children? Right. But the reality is, is the gospel is for everyone.
Right. You know, it's interesting. We have this concept of dangerous, right? Uh, cause people are
like, why wouldn't do anything dangerous? It's like you drive a car, you drive a car 60 miles
an hour down the road. Yeah. Right across the line from a person driving 60 miles the other way.
Uh huh. If they, they forget what they're doing for one minute and cross over you,
you're hitting each other at 120 miles per hour. And it hurts. Uh, one of the things we do a lot
in Alaska is we get in these like big metal tubes and we go up in the air and we go from one place
to another. Like, uh, that's dangerous. It's just, uh, they've mitigated risk inside of that.
But if, if the engines fail and we're 10,000 feet in the air, I got news for you. It's not good news
for us. Right. It's a dangerous thing. Um, there's a lot of things that we do that are dangerous,
right? Even down to, uh, like our eating choices. When we talk about fast food, eating fast food is
really dangerous because of the saturated fat and everything that is inherently in there. People do
it though. And yet when we get to the church, we're like, well, it needs to be completely safe.
Yeah. It's, uh, so I worked in the challenge course industry for like 14 years. And one of
the first things they teach you is they're like, do not say the word safe. Like they're like,
talk about how you really mitigate the risk. Right. Because if you are putting someone 50 feet off the
ground, tethered from a harness, some ropes, some cable, whatever, however they're doing it,
because there's a bunch of different systems, there's going to be risk. Right. Right. And,
and so mitigating, like even coming back, let's come back to the Bible because, uh,
let's talk about the new Testament, right? Jesus does mitigate risk. One, he's taken these disciples
and they've walked with him. He's taught them, they've walked through tense situations with him.
Yes. So it's not like they've never been in tense situations before. Right. But now they're going
without him. They're going by themselves. Or you take, for example, after Jesus ascends, now there
is the, um, there is the council, right? Uh, there's the three apostles that, uh, Peter, James, and
John. And when Paul is going and he's actually ministering to all the Gentiles and they're like,
Hey, we need to figure out exactly what we need to do for them. They come back and they have a
conversation and Paul says himself, I'm going to submit to whatever they have to say. Right. Yeah.
There is, uh, there is things set up for the safety of the people, right? Like for,
to mitigate the risk, uh, in that conversation. But what it's not going to do is it's not going
to mitigate the risk, uh, to the point where you're not actually moving out and doing. Yes.
Right. Coming back to our idea of a car, like I drive my car, I, but if I stick within the speed
limits and also I put on my seatbelt, I'm still engaging in something dangerous, but I'm also
mitigating the risk to my body as I go into it. Yeah. You also fix what's broken when, when like
parts of your car fail, you make sure it gets fixed. Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. Right.
A hundred percent. You mitigate the risk. Yeah. Um, so this kind of rolls into our next thing,
which is reputation. Um, and so the idea there is oftentimes we put on this guise of safety for the
sake of the reputation we want to maintain. Um, so like to put on it, to just give a really practical
example of this, a lot of times I'll hear churches say like, we want to have a good reputation in the
community. So we want to be safe, which is like, okay, I hear what you're saying there, but there's
a couple of things wrong with that. Right. A couple of things that maybe you should think. I like the
first half. Yeah. I don't know if I love the second half. Yeah. First half with the reputation
is who are you trying to please? Right. Right. Paul addresses this. He's like, am I trying to please
man or God? Right. And, and he redress, he, spoiler alert, he addresses it as a rhetorical question.
Right. There is a, there is a correct answer to that. This is, this is a, as a friend of mine
likes to say, Paul was being sarcastic in this moment. Yeah. Well, he's like, am I trying to please
man or God? He's like, come on guys. And then Paul also addresses this. He's like, who are you
following? Like, are you following, like where he's like, some of you say you follow Apollo's, some
say you follow Peter, some say you follow Paul. And he's like, well, spoiler alert, we all follow
Jesus. Right. Like let's follow Jesus. Um, I think, I think a lot of times churches, but actually what
they want is they want a reputation of doing good. Yeah. Right. Like not a good reputation, but they
want a reputation of doing good, you know, and being a place where people can come if they're
broken. Yeah. Right. People can come if they're hurting. Yeah. People can come and they're going
to be accepted. Yeah. But not, uh, left where they are. Right. Are you going, are you going for the
Christ like reputation? Like, do you want to be a church that's known for being Christ like, right?
Cause if you do, you're going to enter into some messy places. Right. Like to your point is Jesus
was known to socialize with tax collectors and sinners. You know, it was not shocking for there
to be prostitutes at his table. No, he partook in the forbidden free time activity of laying hands
on lepers. Yep. Right. Like, um, he was known for pushing the envelope and going to places where
people were like, are you sure about that? Yeah. His, his reputation with the Pharisees was not
good. No, his reputation with the, with the people was really good, but it wasn't, he did not, he
never let people stay where they are. He invited them to a deeper reality. Yeah. Right. A good
example of this is John four, the woman at the well, right. Where, where I, I like to view it as,
as kind of like a first reaction video from the disciples point of view, cause they're like, okay,
we're going to get some food. And then they come back and here's Jesus sitting with a Samaritan
woman and they're like, what do we do about this? And they don't know what to say. So then they go
up and they're like, are you hungry? You want some food? You want some food? I have food that
you didn't know about. Did he go in and get bread without us? Right. Right. Uh, and so, uh, but that
woman did not stay where she was at. She was transformed because Jesus sat down with her.
Well, and, and Jesus was never going to force you to come with him, but he is always going to extend
this invitation. Cause she's like, Hey, I recognize you're a prophet. And then she puts out the big
dilemma that was between the Samaritans and the Jews. That time you're like, we worship on the
mountain. You worship in Jerusalem, like which one is right? And he's like, well, that's actually
not the point. Cause when Messiah comes, you're going to be able to worship in spirit and truth.
And I'm going to invite you into that. Right. And he's like, spoiler alert, spoiler. That's me.
Yeah. And she's like, Oh, and, uh, and then he also makes, gives that invitation of living water.
Yeah. Right. It's like, there's living water. That's going to bubble up inside of you.
Yeah. Do you want to be a part of this kingdom that is quite different? Yeah. And now in her case,
she is quite enthusiastic about it and runs back and tells everybody about him. Uh, one of the best,
uh, evangelism stories in the New Testament. I love it. And there's other times where Jesus puts
this invitation out where like the, the richer young ruler, which doesn't specifically say like
rich, like that's, that's a whole nother conversation. Yeah. But likely a landowner
of significant quality quantity. Yeah. Likely. Um, and, and Jesus is like, he's like, well,
what do I need to do to follow you? Jesus lays down, he's like, well, I've done all these things.
He's like, all right, now go sell everything you have. And then he's like, uh, okay, hard pass.
Sorry. Yeah. Um, and so you have these, you have instances where people say yes,
and you have instances where people say no. Yeah. So, but the question, but the coming back to
reputation is like, whose reputation are you going to follow? Right. And if you say Jesus,
okay, then you really need to look at who Jesus was and how he lived. Yeah. Coming back to the
idea of Samaritan to Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan, right? And it's in response to the
teacher of the law about who is my neighbor. And he tells a story that the Samaritan was the guy
who gave mercy, right? And he says to the teacher of the lies is go and do likewise and you'll live.
Right. Which to a teacher of a lot to have someone say, go be like a Samaritan.
Yeah. It's like, it is, it is not a, not a fun conversation, but it is, it is an invitation
once again, which we don't actually know what the teacher of the law does now. Uh, and, and I, I
think there's a, there's a good, uh, learning lesson is that there's a tension in like this
invitation is given, but what actually happens. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So there's that, there's that
piece of reputation, right? Whose reputation do you want? Are you, are you just trying to
look like nice people in the community where you're actually trying to be like Jesus? Yeah. Now
Jesus, that was probably poor turn of phrase. Jesus was a nice guy. Yeah. Okay. That's it. I'm
cutting that out and, and snipping it and being like Spencer is saying that Jesus was not a nice
guy. Not at all what I'm saying. Yeah. Um, well, nice doesn't always mean that you're going to say
things that people always want to hear either. No. Right. Because it's not nice to not tell
people truth. Yeah. But it is also not nice to tell people truth in a really despicable way. Yes.
Hence, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go back like four episodes and check out the
kingdom of trolls. Yes. Um, so those are, those are a few thoughts on that. And then kind of the
last piece of this conversation is stewardship. And so how does stewardship tie into this? And
really the answer that I would have for you on that is that stewardship is not just how well you
take care of money, but it's how well you take care of everything that's been entrusted to you.
Look at the parable of the talents, right? The people who were like, Hey, I took, I took five
and I multiplied it and here's 10. I took 10. Now here's 20. And then the person who was like,
I took the one and I buried it. That was a person where the king was like, why? Well, and the whole
idea of, um, because this comes back to a Roman idea. If you don't mind me going on to tangent
here really quick with the, um, the talents, because I think this is really going to help us
understand the stewardship idea. Um, Jesus is using a very Roman idea because, uh, Israel is
under Roman occupation at that point. So the way Rome, um, did things is they would come and they'd
conquer an area. Then they leave behind a bunch of people to change the area that they came to,
to look more like Rome, right? And they would give them a certain amount of money and then they
would move on and they go conquer in the next area. And then a leader would come in and, and
travel around in this, in this different areas, right? They come back in a certain amount of time
to check what you did with what you were given, right? Did you actually do what you were supposed
to do with what you were given now? That's called a, um, and, um, um, by the way, these people that
are left in these places to make it look like the place they come from, they're called apostles,
right? Uh, it's a borrowed word from Roman culture. Uh, apostolic means that you're taking
where you come from to make it look like, or where you're going to look where you came from.
And if we come from heaven, then we bring heaven to earth. Right. Um, so this idea, and then this,
this really would come out and you'd go and you would meet them halfway out from the city or you'd
have all the people come out and greet them. It's a thing called a Perusia. You would actually come
and meet them. And then you would bring them back to this area and you would talk to them about all
that you did with what they left. And, uh, in the story of the talents, you have the guy with the
10 talents. He goes and he puts it to work and it creates 20 more. Right. And you have this guy's
given five talents. He puts it to work and it creates five more. There is no distinction in
the way that the master treats either one of them. They were both faithful with what they were given.
Yep. Some was given a lot and some were given a little, but they were both faithful, which does
suggest that the guy who's given one would also have been recognized provided he had put it to
work. But instead what he did is he buried it in the ground. And there's a couple other like fun,
uh, things that are going on, but I'm not going to get into it. He buried it into the ground
because he was afraid of losing what he was given. Yeah.
And the master's like, man, you could have at least pop that puppy in the bank and earn some
interest, but instead you're like a tree that has a bunch of leaves and absolutely no fruit. Yep.
And I'm going to take this coin away and I'm going to give it to somebody who's actually going to use
it. Yeah. And so in your idea, like conversation about stewardship, we have been given a deposit
of a changed life by the grace of Jesus Christ and a deposit of the Holy spirit, which we just
talked about all these spiritual gifts, right? Yep. And what are we actually going to do if we
don't, we can't take our talent. Yeah. Can't take our deposit and bury it in the dirt. Yeah.
It's actually meant to be used. And at the very least, you should pop that puppy in the bank.
Yeah. Right. At the very least, you should be popping that puppy in the bank.
At the very least. But there are segments of our faith that people just buried in the dirt.
Yep. Very true. And so the idea of stewardship is like, are you actually taking care of what's
been given to you? Right? If you're a church leader and you are a ministry leader and you have
a group of people who are trying to spread the gospel and you're not doing that,
are you taking care of what the Lord's entrusted to you? Are you taking care of that? And so coming
back to the idea of stewardship in safe places is like, if we're stewarding the gospel well,
it's not actually going to be safe. Correct. There's going to be risk involved.
If you're managing money well, there's going to be risk with the money. Yeah. There's just no way
around it. There's no way around it, right? Even if I buried in the dirt, there's risk. There's risk.
All of these things have risk. Okay. They all have risk. We can mitigate the risk best we can,
but we need to steward the gospel well into our community to the point where we are saying,
okay, there's going to be risk this, but we're going to do it anyways.
And I think maybe a good question that you have, because there's a lot of churches that do this
really well. Yes. They do it really well. But healthy churches, healthy organizations have
conversations that are uncomfortable. Yeah. So I think one of the questions that you can ask is
in our church, are we taking enough risk? Right? I think sometimes the question is,
are we being safe enough? Right? But the other question you should be asking is,
are we taking enough risk? Yeah. Is there a place in our life that we could afford
to just lay it out just a little bit further on behalf of the gospel? Because God is a
looking for fruit. And I want to really stress this. If God moves on your heart in your church
to make a transformative difference in the way that you're going to do things overnight, sure,
go and do that. Trust God. But more likely what he's going to do is over the next year, five years,
he's going to take you from where you are to closer to where he wants you to be. And you can't rush
that because you need to be able to steward that through everybody. Yeah. I have a tendency in my
life to be like, here are all the changes we're going to make to our church. And I think that's
the only changes we're going to make. We're going to do it all at once. Right? And it always works
wonderfully every time. So then oftentimes when I get into ministry positions that I've worked in,
I will look back after year one and be like, man, nothing got done. I'll look back after year two,
be like, man, it feels like nothing got done. I look back after year three and it's like, man,
it feels like I didn't do anything. But then it's like, okay, let me just pause, look back
three of those years and a lot of things changed. Right? The Lord moved, He worked in His timing.
So it's okay. And it's okay to step out and be like, hey, we're going to try something new.
And if it doesn't work, it's okay to be like, all right, that didn't work. Maybe that's not for now.
Maybe we just need to put a pause on it. Maybe we need to never do that again. Right? But you
got to take risk. You got to step out and take some risk. When I am interviewing people for
volunteering with ministry, I've had people ask me, well, how do you make sure they're trained up?
And I'm like, well, I don't. To start off, I was like, one, I want to make sure their heart
posture is great. And that's where I want to start. We'll make sure their heart posture is great.
And they're like, okay, well, how do you make sure they're spiritually mature? I was like,
I want to see that they're growing. And they're like, well, what do you mean by that? I was like,
well, I want to see that they are continually growing in their walk with Jesus. That's how
I know they're spiritually mature. If they are being stagnant, then I actually have some red,
I have some questions I want to ask. Right? If they're like, hey, I got this all figured out.
It's like, let's talk. Right? That's not a place. And there's the other side of the two is like
in a conversation with a person in a coffee shop or in an office or something like that,
you're not really going to have an idea of who that person is. Now, if you put them in a situation
that's tense, you're going to have a much better idea. I think it was Sun Tzu in the, in the art
of war, which I'm not by the way, endorsing his book, but that he just has a statement that it
rings true. It says, if you live with a man and his family for 40 years and you eat with them and
you dine with them and you work with them and do all these things, and you really know this person,
and then take that person to the edge of a volcano and, and dangle them over it on that day,
you'll truly meet the man. The point being is that adversity actually shows you who you are.
Yeah. And so your point is like, how do you make sure somebody's spiritually mature? I was like,
we go out and do ministry and we see what happens. Yeah. I keep an eye on them because I am okay with
the mess because I'm going to come in and pastor it. Yeah. Right. Right. I'm going to, I'm going
to come in and know that there's, it's going to be messy, but the only way to actually understand
what you're learning and what you're putting into practice is to actually take a test. Yeah. Yeah.
And so doing life with them, like that's just a big part of it. Yep. Um, I have a, I have another
friend, he went to ministry, he went to ministry school, got his M.D.V. all this stuff, got his
first pastorate. And I was, and I was like, and he was like, do you know what ministry school taught
me? I was like, what? He's like, that I know nothing. Like that's what, that's what he's,
he's like, that's what it taught me. He's like, I came out with all these fancy words that I was
like, these guys are, don't know that I have to now simplify all these terms that I learned. And
I have to essentially unlearn what I learned to a degree. Right. But so often we're like, well,
we need people to be super well trained before they can go proclaim the gospel. It's like, actually
we need to just walk alongside them while they do it. Yeah. We need to let them mess up a little
bit and be there in those moments and do life with them and pastor and shepherd them. That's the way
of Jesus. Yeah. That's what Jesus did with his disciples. Right. One of my favorite stories
about Jesus doing this. Okay. So James and John, they're coming out of Samaria and the people
treat them poorly and they're like, all right, Jesus, burn it down. You want us to call fire
from heaven. Right. And he's like, no, that's not what we're going to do. You know, that's not,
that's not what's going on here. And immediately after that, he commissions people to go out and
preach the gospel in pairs. James and John included. Yeah. And Jesus was okay with a little
bit of a mess, but he was willing to step in and pastor that. Yeah. And to, and to teach that.
And, and there's going to be mistakes. I mean, shoot, Peter rips out a sword and chops off a
guy's ear and he's like, Peter, that's not what we're doing. That is not what we're doing here.
You know, or, uh, and like there's a lot of those, those occasions, right. In the, in the
gospel, I mean, we could go forever. Like Jesus has a lot of these occasions. He's okay with the
mess and he's fine with just stepping in and being like, no, this isn't what we're doing. This is why
we're doing this. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So if I was to boil this conversation down to three things,
it'd be this, that one, we don't want to be a safe place. We want to be a transformative place.
Second is we want to have the reputation of Jesus.
Nothing else matters. We want to put on the reputation of Jesus. We want to put on
the armor of God, everything that displays Christ to the world. Right. And then third is we want to
steward what we've been given well. So we want to be a place that takes risk. We put on the armor
of God. We're ready for what the world throws at us. And we want to steward what Christ has given
us well so that our communities can be transformed. I love it because if we're playing it safe,
I hate to break it to you. Our communities aren't going to be transformed. At least, I mean,
let me take them back. They might be transformed. Jesus still might do something miraculous,
but it's not going to be with you. It's going to be in spite of you.
Yeah. One of my favorite quotes from a pastor was he was having a conversation with some of
his students and they were talking about their city and they're like, our city, our churches,
they're just so dark. And the key note of darkness is everywhere. And he's like,
well, you're the light of the world. Why don't you flip on a light switch?
Which sounds like really simple, but you physically being present in the midst of
chaos brings peace. But for that, you have to go into chaos. And that's the hard thing to do.
And one other caveat, I would say this, you're not called to do it alone.
Correct. Called to do it in community.
If we're talking about creating a transformative place, putting on the armor of God, putting on
the reputation of Jesus, and being a place that stewards what's given to us well, we're doing this
as a community. All too often churches put the full load on the pastor. But that's not what the
body of Christ is supposed to do. They're supposed to do it together. And I do have one final caveat
before I stop talking. Thinking about something we talked about earlier is that we're going to
send you sheep among wolves. It's going to be a dangerous place. People aren't always going to
like what you stand for. I've made this statement before and I just think it bears repeating again.
If people don't like you because you look like Jesus, that's called sharing the gospel.
If people don't like Jesus because of the way that you behave, that's called sin.
Make sure that people don't like you because you look like Jesus, not because you're just a jerk.
Right. And if you need clarification on what we mean by that, do we have a couple episodes ago,
Kingdom of Trolls? Yep. Right. So this has been a fun talk. I like this. I think it's good. We have
an episode coming up next week. We're going to be talking about hypocrites. That's going to be fun
where this word doesn't quite mean what you think it means. And some things that we can learn,
it actually applies a lot to what we're talking about today about how we actually live in this
world and not of this world. And hopefully we're going to have a guess for that, but I'm not going
to say a name just in case we're not able to get them scheduled. But we will see you guys next week.
Next week. Till next time. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Love and Context. We hope you
enjoyed this engaging conversation and gained valuable insights into the powerful message of
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