reChurch Podcast
Welcome to the reChurch Podcast, hosted by Justin and Brooke Knoop.
As we speak, there is a massive number of people leaving the institutional Church...but interestingly, they aren’t walking away from Jesus. Many of us have noticed a significant gap between what we see in the Bible and what we experience on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it.
reChurch Podcast
The Church System is Broken! Is It Your Responsibility to Fix It?? | #reChurch Ep. 18
What if leaving the institutional church didn’t lead to bitterness, but to freedom and joy? In this episode, Justin and Brooke share their personal journey of stepping away from broken systems—not to critique them, but to follow Jesus into something simpler, deeper, and more alive. If you've felt the tension between tradition and truth, this conversation might be the permission your heart has been waiting for.
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You get to see God show up because you're not manufacturing something. You're actually trusting the Lord to lead you everywhere you go. A church.
Speaker 2:What does it look like practically to have this revelation, have this understanding, realize you've been doing things wrong, begin to step out and do things right. The people who you thought would support you the most come against you. How do you stay joyful for the Lord?
Speaker 1:Worship is your weapon. There are monitoring spirits that watch us everywhere we go. Those spirits' job is not to live inside of you or to demonize you. Their spirits are to minister to you and discourage you and to get you distracted and off track or whatever the case may be, and I've realized that the burden that I felt of having to do all of these things and the so-called ministry, and now I'm like man.
Speaker 2:No, this really is. The Great Commission is as you go. This is really an as you go life, a church. Welcome to the ReChurch podcast. If you're tired of business as usual Christianity and you're ready to live like Jesus, you found yourself in the right place. I'm your host, justin Knoop. I'm here with my lovely wife, brooke I place. I'm your host.
Speaker 1:Justin Knoop. I'm here with my lovely wife Brooke. I feel like it's been a while. Yeah, you've been having all these guests on.
Speaker 2:I know it took your place.
Speaker 1:No it's great, I love hearing their perspectives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're back with the original cast and crew. I'm excited for today's conversation. A lot of times, these podcast episodes are birthed out of conversations that Brooke and I have off camera, when we try to think back of things that we were wrestling with, struggling with things that we've overcome, going through the process of what I feel like a lot of our listeners are going through, and that is having the revelation of maybe just the issues that are going on in the church system, and again we're not pointing fingers at the people, but the system itself. That is broken. It's obvious here in the West, and so one of those things that we were thinking about and that we were talking about recently was, when you look at the magnitude of the issue that's at hand, it seems like an insurmountable well, I don't know what the right word is but it seems like a massive undertaking to try and fix a broken system like that, like the broken church system, so it can be overwhelming at times.
Speaker 2:Um, you can start to get a almost a cynical or critical attitude where you're just constantly thinking about this and you're overwhelmed about it and what do you do? So how? I want? I want to work through that today and maybe ask some questions about, or maybe talk about, have a discussion about how we started to take our eyes off of the problem if you will and start to focus more on the solution, so that you could actually be joyful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know that God brought you this revelation, that you're seeing more fruit and not just be so concerned with with, you know, fixing something that's broken.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And the hardest part for us, I think, going back, was that when we stepped out of the building of church, a lot of people were trying to push us back into the building, saying, well, if, if, if it's true what you're saying, just go maybe you should go back in and fix it from within the walls.
Speaker 2:And I started to think myself, like what would Jesus do and, knowing you know what he was doing and what he was coming up against? The religious system he was coming up against, or, yeah, I guess, against in a way, with the Pharisees and the religious system of his days? He didn't new, if you will, and I know Jesus has already. He started that new thing. So we're not talking about that, in a sense, but he didn't take the approach. Basically, what I'm trying to get is he didn't take the approach most people recommended to us.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Why do you think that doesn't work, going back in and one person or two people trying to change the system from within?
Speaker 1:Well, I think, if you even look at the scriptures, like you know, when God first gave the law, that wasn't his first original plan, right, his plan was that people would have relationship with him, the Israelites would be in communication with him. And when Moses went on top of the mountain, you have Moses who's on top of the mountain, has this revelation of God for 40 days and he comes back down to tell the people and what are they doing? They're worshiping a cow made of gold, right? And Moses is distraught, he's upset, he's angry. He goes back to the top of the mountain and that's when God gives him the Ten Commandments. Because the people told Moses when he went to the bottom. We do not want relationship with God. You just tell us what to do and we'll do that. You mediate for us, right?
Speaker 1:So the law was given to us as kind of like a tutor, as in to like give boundaries in a safe situation, because the people weren't ready for an open relationship with their heavenly father. So God had to prepare them. He allowed them to go on a journey through the desert, go and live in the life in Canaan and go back into prison and I mean as prisoners, and all of these situations until the right time came where Jesus could come and say hey, by the way, I still have that open, that open, honest situation where I really want to be in relationship with you, right? And so, instead of him coming, it was a tutor. So instead of him coming and just saying, hey, I'm going to add to the law, he actually said, hey, I came to fulfill it so that you and I can be in healthy relationship, you can be set free from sin. So he didn't moderate or modify the Ten Commandments or add to the Ten Commandments. He fulfilled them and said, hey, there's a new way, there's a new relationship to be had.
Speaker 1:So I think a lot of people, when it comes to doing church the way that Jesus commanded us to do, just go, make disciples, god will build the church. They want us to go and actually like fix the walls or moderate or add to the walls, instead of just actually doing what Jesus told us to do, which is it looks totally different than the way that they were doing it in the Old Testament, right? So why are we going to go back to sacrificing animals again? No, we're not. So why don't we just do it the way he's commanded us to do, instead of trying to grow into something and fix what was broken and only was supposed to be used for a time and try to make it like, revamp it and make it a new thing, and try to fix something that actually isn't what he's asking of us now it's not ideal, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. That's a really good point. I hadn't thought about it in a while. With that perspective, and that is what you're talking about is divine accommodation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's what we see and it's why people struggle with some of the laws of the Old Testament, like why would God say, do this? And these things are so confusing what we read in the Old Testament. But understanding divine accommodation, god was meeting people where they're at, because we see God commanding sacrifices, animal sacrifices and then later saying I never desired your animal sacrifices. It can seem on the surface like a contradiction, but what it is is God was meeting the people where they were at in their time, culture and understanding, trying to gradually bring them out of that into a new place.
Speaker 2:And I think what we do is we take God's accommodation right A lot of times and we turn that from a tradition into a law, and then we can't function outside of that law.
Speaker 2:And so I think what we have done over the years in church history is we've created all these accommodations that is like, hey, we don't have, you know, maybe we can't, we have too many people and it's very difficult to meet with them one-on-one or to baptize them one-on-one or to do all these things.
Speaker 2:So let's accommodate and let's do this for this event, and it ends up working right that time. And so we're like now we've created this law out of it, we've turned that tradition into a law, and over time you begin to build, build, build, build, build all those traditions and all of a sudden they're set in stone. And so, going back to my original question, I think what happens is so many pastors, leaders, church organizations if you will have all of these accommodations that they've made over time, things that are not explicitly taught or commanded in scripture, right, and they've turned into traditions, and then all of a sudden they're set in stone. And so for us to come in there and tell them that you know, maybe we should start changing things is going to throw everybody in an uproar because, it's like.
Speaker 2:it's like who are you to come in and do this? And so you're, you're fighting against that and you're like why I'm not going to, I'm not going to come in and like, cause division and do all these things. And so you know, going back to that, you may be feeling this, you are listening or watching that. You're just frustrated, like maybe people aren't understanding you, people aren't listening, people aren't getting it.
Speaker 2:Or you've gone to your pastor and you've tried to tell them and you're showing them in scripture, but they're just I'm just not getting it or not budging on it. That's fine, you know you do you? Fine, you know you do you. But it's not, it's recognizing, it's really learning how to listen to the leading of the spirit and say, well, where where is the spirit working, where is he leading and where can I work productively, as opposed to trying to spend all of my energy trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced. It's fine. Like I'm not against you, like we're not against people in the institutional church, we're not against pastors and leaders, like, if you're truly a born again believer, we want you to win.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:And there are many even relationships and meetings that we've had recently with people that are in the institutional church and we don't sit down with them and immediately criticize them or try to pull them out, like if they're doing good and they're bearing fruit and all that stuff, and that's the, that's what they need right now. Fantastic, like, do that. But if you're going to really ask me, I'm not going to say that that's God's ideal right Do you know what I'm saying? I'm not trying to pull people out. Well, just like orphanages.
Speaker 1:Orphanages are not God's ideal plan.
Speaker 2:We're not going to shut down the orphanage.
Speaker 1:Right. So I'm actually going to support the orphanage in a sense of like, hey, we're going to try to like make sure they have food to feed the kids and things like that. I'm not going to sit there and like tell every orphanage to shut down and have a bunch of homeless kids on the street. But it's not God's ideal plan. So if there is a different way that is ideal and a different command that he's given us an example to, why not try to practice that? And what if practicing that causes less spiritual orphans in the world? We don't hate orphanages and want to shut down an orphanage because the orphanage serves a purpose, but it's not God's ideal plan.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying. So God's ideal plan is that every child has a mother and a father in the home and raises them in the ways of the Lord and raises them up to be fruitful, productive adults and sends them into the world to be fruitful and multiply right. So what? If we actually did what Jesus commanded us to do, which was just make disciples live a holy life and make disciples right, we would have a lot less spiritual orphans in the church. You know what I'm saying. So it's not like we go and shut down every orphanage on the that's exist. No, we're actually like, okay, we understand your purpose, but it's not ideal. So if I look at scripture and I look at the Jesus's life and I actually evaluate what he did, did he ever build a building? No, did he ever get a leadership team?
Speaker 2:Some people probably argue that he did, but no, I don't think he did. Well when.
Speaker 1:I say leadership team. Did he go make them fill out a resume on paper? No, did he make them go to school a seminary school? No, did he make them go to school a seminary school. Did he make them do all the things that we do? Go get a 501c3. Go do all of those things? No, he never did any of those things. He just said come pick up your cross, follow me, obey what I teach you to do and then go reproduce that in others and if they don't receive your peace, move on to the next town. And if they do receive your peace, stay for a while and give them the best shot you got. And what happens? When they did that, church began to happen in the cities organically and it cost them nothing to do it. When you remove money from a situation, it becomes so natural and it actually becomes about the relationship and the person's well-being spiritually, and you remove all false motives, pride, any other situation that might cause somebody's motives not to be completely pure.
Speaker 2:You know so yeah, I agree, I think, because it's not like money is a bad thing like people can't give or anything like that, but it's when it's, it's the dependency on it give or anything like that, but it's when it's, it's the dependency on it, it's that the fact that we're creating a system that literally has to have this certain amount of budget and money to run or else it fouls, and that's when it starts getting tough for for leaders in the church.
Speaker 2:Because now, man, if people don't tie the people don't give which is tied into our uh, um membership and how many people are coming, then we're in big trouble, then we get shut down and then I don't have a job and I don't have a career and I can't feed my family, and so it's like detaching from that. And so there's many, there's so many different, you know, things that we can talk about, about why, why the the system isn't accommodation and it's not the ideal Um, but I think, going back to uh, you know, helping people step out and then also just be joyful and just be able to focus and recognize that, um, man, it's amazing. It's amazing and it's not easier.
Speaker 2:It's not easier, but it's an amazing journey stepping out and learning to just function organically. We were having this conversation with someone the other day and that was back in North Carolina, Like that was technically our hometown.
Speaker 2:And so we had a lot of relationships that were already there prior to Christ and so when we started planting house churches, making disciples, a lot of those were birthed out of those relationships that were preexisting right, and there's a lot of them that were new people, but the majority of them, I would say, were preexisting relationships. And now that we've moved to Texas, you know, we felt, like the Lord said, to kind of start from scratch and organically just start to build relationships and people you meet in the grocery stores and on my you know my job and the workplace and stuff like that. And it's been so cool because it's almost like you're not that you're putting the gospel to the test, but you're seeing it work in a whole different environment.
Speaker 2:And it just builds your faith to see like this thing works no matter what, and we don't need all these other things, and so that's when you begin to question all of the things.
Speaker 2:Because I think a lot of people have the mindset that these things, when you ask them, what do we need for church to exist, it's all this, this, this, this and this. But when you strip it down it's almost like I think about, about. You know, there's documentaries and stuff out on on minimalist living, right and um, and even I shameless plug, even I, uh, spent a few days on an Island with no food or no water, and bare minimum things to exist, and what that taught me over those three days is that what you need to survive is really uh uh, food, water, um shelter.
Speaker 2:You just need simple basic things to exist and when you actually survive doing that, you realize everything else is extra and that's kind of where you need to get to.
Speaker 1:Let's get back to that, yes, as the church.
Speaker 2:As the church, Because what that did for me, I know, was it freed me up from the burden that I felt of having to do all of these things and in so-called ministry, Right, and now I'm like man. No, this really is like the. The great commission is as you go. This is really an as you go life, Right, so so?
Speaker 1:then your kids don't feel neglected, you don't get burnout, you can be genuine with people like you, actually love and thrive and and honestly you you get to see God show up because you're not manufacturing something.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You're actually trusting the Lord to lead you everywhere you go. You know a church setting is a manufactured situation, Like most likely nothing's going to go wrong, you know, and if it does, we got somebody quickly to like dismiss whatever's going on.
Speaker 2:But like this is yeah security.
Speaker 1:Straight to jail. Straight to jail.
Speaker 2:Sorry, that's an inside joke you worship too much, straight to jail. You don't worship enough straight to jail.
Speaker 1:Welcome to our kitchen table. At home, we live with a bunch of boys who have huge personalities, and that's an inside joke in our home, but anyways, yeah. So I think that's what's happened. Is you know you've created this? Well, I just think of an animal, you know, if I take a, well, I think of Clarence, the hermit crab we just bought. You know, my five-year-old has a hermit crab named Clarence.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Clarence.
Speaker 1:Oh, clarence, he's a thug in the crab life Another inside joke, anyways. Yeah, so we have this hermit crab and Justin went to buy the hermit crab and he had to buy an environment for the hermit crab to live in and you had to imitate as much as possible. It's natural environment. We started out with mulch, realized that wasn't his favorite thing. Got sand, realized okay, sand's better than mulch, but he's still not thriving because he doesn't have another hermit crab to be with. You know, we know we need to get him another one and he just doesn't move a lot because the space is kind of small, it's just an artificial space. So he does very minimal effort to live, he just exists and that is what the church has become. It's a non, it's not a real habitat, it's a artificial environment that's been created that just allows Christians or professing Christians or unbelievers to just exist and not actually have to live a real faith. Sure, it takes no faith to live in a box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And again, we're saying all this just to free you up of like, yeah, we'll get to it in a minute, but talking about how, like it's not your responsibility to fix this whole thing.
Speaker 1:It's not.
Speaker 2:It's really not, and we'll get in just a minute. We're going to talk about what Jesus actually commands you to do and where you'll find joy in that.
Speaker 2:That's right, and freedom in that and freedom from the burden, and be able to live and not be so concerned about what everybody else is doing and they're doing it wrong. And it's not about wrong and right. It's about pursuing Jesus, obeying him to the best of your ability and really living a fruitful life as a disciple, because all those other people are going to have to answer to him based on the revelation that they had.
Speaker 2:Right, and so you have to do the same Right and think about if you stand before Jesus. He gave you this revelation. You know you step into this life of fruitfulness and then you spend the rest of your life miserable because not everybody else is doing it right. You know, and then it's just not a good way, you know, to sit for him, but I was thinking about too. Francis Chan uses a different example of like the artificial wave pool.
Speaker 1:Have you ever heard that you?
Speaker 2:know that's like what we're trying to create in the church, but the interesting thing that I was thinking about is, I think, the reason that we have done this and we try to create these artificial environments, which it's not bad to set a certain environment If you're trying to facilitate a certain type of meeting there's nothing, nothing wrong with that. It's like what we create in our home. Um, you know, organic things happen in our home conversation meals, things like that.
Speaker 2:But we set our home up to be like a nice, comfortable place to be. But home is not our, our overall destination.
Speaker 2:So, I want you to like work through this with me, as a family home is a nice place to rest, relax, to bond, to do all those things, but it's not our purpose. Our purpose is to go out and to do what God has called us to do. The problem is that the church has become this artificial environment that we've created. That we've also made the destination. That's right, and you can even hear it in evangelism. We're inviting people just come to our church and that's where you'll experience everything, and if we can just get them in the building, then we've succeeded. They're at their destination and it has become the destination Right, and so that is why everything is moving in the direction of the destination we're setting, of the purpose that we're setting.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And what we need to realize is that the church gathering is not the destination. It's the place that you connect with other Christians, that you are equipped to go out, right, but we're not going out and doing the thing. We're bringing people to the destination. The destination is Jesus. We're bringing people to the destination. The destination is Jesus. We're supposed to be bringing people to Jesus. So, to think about it like that, you don't actually need the building to bring people to Jesus. You should be doing that at the restaurants, in your workplace, you can baptize people in your home, and so then all of these things become kind of icing on the cake.
Speaker 2:Right and now, when you have the freedom of realizing that you don't need all of this extra stuff to gather and be obedient to Jesus, it frees you up in the financial aspect. Just think about all the things that are necessary to run the typical megachurch. It frees you up from having to come up with all those things, and I was talking to somebody about this the other day and that was it's so much more easily reproducible. And if we're trying to bring the gospel to all nations, trying to make disciples of all nations and reach a lot of people like planet earth. We want something that is easily reproducible and that can multiply quickly. That's right, you know. I wish and would love to sit down and have with with pastors and be like I'm not sitting here saying all of these things are anti-biblical in the sense some of them probably are but can we just clear the slate?
Speaker 2:Let's look at what scripture says about what is actually commanded and required and then kind of start from scratch and see okay, if Jesus calls us to love people, to love God and to make disciples right, every structure that we put around that should facilitate, uh, the command in our relationship with Christ. Then we can start looking at the traditions that are either neutral, like they're not helping at all and maybe they're expensive, they're taking up a lot of resources in our time and they're just not producing fruit, and we can give rid of those Right, right, or we can look at things that are hindering that. And the example here's a good example. Um, if, if you know, like Paul says, when he's making a disciple, his goal is to present people right, um, mature to Christ. So so he doesn't just want to lead them to Christ, he actually wants them, at the end of their life, to mature, to become more Christ-like. And so if we want mature disciples, we know that, based on the definition in the Bible of maturity, that is, their faith has action to it.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Right, they've learned to discern good from evil by putting into practice the things that they've learned. Now we say, okay, the environment that we set up in the church is extremely passive, meaning one or a few people do all the work while the other people sit passively and listen. Uh, unless they get plugged in and like there's all these hoops to jump through and stuff like that, okay, that's not facilitating maturity, that's facilitating passivity, which is leading people, which is stunting growth and leading people to stay as adolescents in Christ and so, or children or babies in Christ, as the Bible would say. So then we can just look at that, evaluate that and say, well, let's either do something differently or not do that at all, like that's what makes sense. So I don't know, that's just the logical way that I think about looking at things that maybe aren't exactly black and white in the Bible, about how we're supposed to do things, and think, well, are they helping or hindering the goal?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a girl reach out to me we get a lot of people reaching out through DMs and things like that from listening to the podcast. And this one particular girl reached out and she's like you know, I've been in the church world, institutional church world for a long time like a pretty big church with multiple services. And she was like you know, what do I do now that my family and I have stepped out? Like what's the first step? And I told her like the first step is detoxing your family from what you've just came out of, because doing church this way it's polar opposite, you know. So detox yourself.
Speaker 1:And then I told her, like don't try to fix the people that are in the church. Like, don't try to go rescue people out of the church. Like, just live your life fruitfully, naturally, before man, people will be drawn to you by the Holy Spirit. You know the Bible talks about like your scent of aroma for those who are, you know, receiving eternal life, and your the stench of death to those who are perishing. So the ones that are not perishing you're going to be a fresh aroma to, they're going to be drawn to you and then you can share with them what you're doing and God's going to begin to develop this community around you.
Speaker 1:You know, as you change your mindsets and how you're thinking about church, how it should function, and I said then after that there may be people that reach out to you from the church asking you what's going on and want to know more, and then some might not. And if they're happy there, leave them there. If they're not happy, show them the way. Show them the way out, like you saw, and lead them in that direction. But don't go in and try to fix and rescue and change the system, because the system cannot be fixed and changed. The system is the system. It's been the system since Constantine. Right, you can't change it now, but what you can do is pray, seek the Lord, detox yourself, and then God will bring people around you that he's doing the same thing in and revealing the same thing to you. And it's more than you think, because my DM box says so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again going back to that, that's not just. Look at the example of Jesus.
Speaker 1:What did?
Speaker 2:he do. He began to live his life and obey the father as he was led by him, led by the Holy spirit. People saw that and the people that God was drawing or God was speaking to in that way were drawn to that and those were the people that he ministered to and spoke to.
Speaker 2:He wasn't chasing down Pharisees you know what I'm saying and trying to convert them and all of that stuff. He was doing what God called him to do and I think that's where you'll find your joy and that's where we have found our joy in it. But that's not to say it doesn't get frustrating at times. I know we've ministered and talked to a lot of people that are frustrated because they feel duped in a way.
Speaker 2:They feel like they have spent years or decades thinking that they were serving Jesus when they were serving an organization. Organization, how would you say? Because I didn't spend as long as most people do in the traditional church world, so I don't know what it feels like to be 20, 25 years in serving on boards, on the, you know all these different teams and serving in that way, and then to find out like most of what I was doing was just serving an organization, not Jesus, like Jesus didn't ask me to do those things, so I don't know what that feels like. So what would you say for people? Is there a time like where you step out, where you can kind of grieve that?
Speaker 1:or yeah, definitely. I think there is a season of grieving, because it's the Bible says you know, um, when you come into a true walking with the spirit, like a part of there's something that has to die, like fleshy things have to die, and a lot of the ways that the institutional church is set up is a lot of flesh work. It's not a lot of always spirit led work I'm not going to say always but a lot of it is just fleshy, day to day things that are not technically kingdom or commands of Jesus, and so, yeah, that's got to die and it's gonna feel like the first day you met Jesus. It's and so, yeah, that's got to die and it's going to feel like the first day you met Jesus. Your flesh is going to be uncomfortable, you know, and it needs to be crucified. So, yeah, I understand what you're saying in the sense of it can be very frustrating.
Speaker 1:But I also didn't experience a lot. I was raised in the church but I was like smoking pot upstairs. I wasn't serving the church in any way, shape or form before I met Jesus. And then, when I met Jesus, we did get involved in some ministry, but it wasn't a very long time until the Lord began to like well, really, when we went on the mission field, he opened our eyes and we're like what are we doing in the Western world? Because this is not fruitful, this is not reproducible, this isn't what's going to change the world at large. So that's where God began to shift everything.
Speaker 1:So I didn't feel like I also wasted a ton of time either. But one thing I thought about last night you just sit there and you ponder things with the Lord and a lot of the comments we get are like these people must be hurt by their church, their church must have treated them badly and they had a bad experience. And I think we've mentioned this a few times. And this thought popped in my head last night was like, honestly, we've never been hurt by the institutional church actually, like we didn't have a bad experience or anything like that. I've been more hurt doing house church and organic church than I have done actually institutional church.
Speaker 1:I've never had a bad experience in the institutional church. Well, I do. I do take that back as a kid. I had a bad experience with a youth pastor once Like he told me I was a fake Christian because of my physical body, like the way I was built and designed. But I mean I had to actually just think of that now because I don't carry that around really. But in my adult life, like in the church, I didn't feel hurt, like I've experienced more hurt doing church this way. But it's because I realize like the way we're doing things is very uncomfortable and it challenges people to really like own their faith. And that's my greatest desire is to see people own their faith and actually like become fruitful disciples of Christ and obey the commands that Jesus has given us. And the way that the institutional church is set up it hinders that kind of growth.
Speaker 2:So yeah, no, I think that's good and I think that's a good point for people to understand and freeze people up to think that, because some people may think, oh, once I step out, it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be doing it the right way and all of this stuff and it's not, it's, it's in many ways it's actually more challenging because, again, like in an orphanage, the child in the orphanage doesn't have a ton to worry about because he knows three times a day his meals are going to come this, that and the other. There's no hardships really, like they just kind of are in this like really predictable schedule. You know what I'm saying. But in real life and a real home, like we know like things come and happen and situations come up and and organic church is the same way.
Speaker 1:Like situations happen, things come up, whatever the case may be, and that's when the spirit of God has to come in and try to like lead you in these situations and you have to listen and submit to that. So it is, it's much messier but it's so much more fruitful. Like I look at the life of Jesus and it was messy, like tables got flipped, you know, demons came out, people got thrown in fire, dude walked on water then sank Like it just looked a little crazy. Does your church service look like that? If not, get out of the boat?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're going to flip tables.
Speaker 1:Yeah, flip the tables. That's hilarious.
Speaker 2:Yeah it is. It's messy, but it's just like family.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:If following Jesus has become predictable in your life. Get out of the boat, get out of the box, leave the system. Spice things up a bit.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm going to make you do it, but yeah, but I'll encourage you, yeah, but I do want people to know that it's not. It's not easier in the sense of you won't have trials with relationships, you won't have hardships to go through, you won't have moments where your faith is tested and challenged, you won't have attacks from the enemy.
Speaker 2:In many ways, we've received more attack and gone through more spiritual warfare because we're coming against the kingdom of darkness more, that's right, and I think the enemy can work in the church system so much and so easily, by lulling people to sleep and just keeping them in this constant state of Tradition and Of a hamster wheel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Of a hamster wheel, and I think in the same way it's funny because I feel like it follows the culture in many ways where you can get caught up in the hamster wheel of just, hey, my goal is to just work a nine to five, you know, until I can retire, and then I'll retire and then I'll be able to live my life. Do you know what I'm saying? And in many ways that's what the church system has followed suit, because we've gone into this business mentality and this is what we are gonna consider as a success. And so we follow the business world, we implement all these things and, you know, you serve in the church and eventually, after you do your, you know your nine to five would be your Sunday 11 to one or 11 to 1230 or whatever it be, and you do your time and you feel like this is, this is what the Christian life is, and that's not just speculation. You ask the majority of Christians what their Christian life looks like or what they've done for the Lord, and it's going to involve their service to the church organization first and foremost. And so we have to ask ourselves, when we start to answer our questions, those ways, and it doesn't have much to do.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying nobody, but I'm saying that the average person, their response is going to be more about how I served in church, or I served this ministry, or I led this program, or I led the Awana group, or I led this group or served in youth ministry and do all these stuff and all I hear is organization, organization, organization, organization. But what if your life looked like well? What have you seen the Lord do in your life? What if your life looked like well? What have you seen the Lord do in your life? Well, I was in the grocery store the other day and I met this girl and just gave her an encouraging word and she broke down in tears and blah, blah, blah. And we've been meeting for three months now and just led her to the Lord and baptized her in my bathtub and now I'm one-on-one discipling her.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I'm saying? And that's just one person, right, but to me that sounds so much more incredibly like Jesus and like being led by the Spirit than listing off how many ministries that you've served. You know, and again, please hear my heart, this is not attacking the people or attacking what you're doing for the Lord. It's just saying when we really look in Scripture, that's the example that he set. Him and His disciples were going around, going into people's homes, meeting the needs of the people in a practical way, and, in turn, lives were being changed.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And I've noticed that there is a lot. It's a lot easier to share the gospel with people and minister to people when they're asking you the questions.
Speaker 1:Yes, so good Asking you the questions. Yes, so good, and when?
Speaker 2:we live our faith out in public and we actually make radical faith decisions for Jesus. When people ask us regular questions like why are you in Texas, or why are you here, or why are you at this job, or why did you do this, every question has to lead into a conversation about Jesus.
Speaker 1:I'm like every, almost every conversation I have in public leads to.
Speaker 2:Jesus, because everyone's like how did you do this, or where did you do this, or what do you do for a living, or what do you do that? And if Christ is really the meaning behind it all he's leading you. Every decision has been led by Christ.
Speaker 2:Therefore every conversation turns into a conversation about Jesus, Um, and it's so amazing. And then the thing I want to see is people equipped to know what to do with those conversations when the person starts to ask or show interest in Jesus. Because I think, honestly, the biggest way to throw water on that flame or that fire is hey, you should come to my hear a sermon from my pastor. Do you know what I'm saying? And again, I know many people have had that testimony that that's where it started and now they're believers, and so people will say, well, no, not in my church, not my pastor. That was my experience and stuff like that. And again, I've just said this on other podcasts before A lot of times that stuff doesn't happen because you've invited somebody to church. It happens in spite of that.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Right, that person was ready, but what would happen if we started to live out our faith by actually preaching the gospel to people and inviting them into our homes, having dinner with them and taking the responsibility of making disciples on ourselves? Number one, that would would take all, most of the pressure off of the leaders and pastors who are literally every week, falling right into chaos, into sin, and ministries and churches are crumbling around the world and around the US and stuff like that. It would take the pressure off of them.
Speaker 2:I just don't think that's.
Speaker 1:It's not, it's just not.
Speaker 1:It's not what it's meant to be, because I think it's funny how, you know, biblically, the Bible says, you know, teachers are held to a higher standard and all those things. But it's like the Bible says, you know teachers are held to a higher standard and all those things, but it's like we put so much pressure on a few men and women I guess there's a few women, I guess, that are leaning in churches and stuff that I think the pressure crushes them and they end up, you know, falling into sin because the target is so much bigger, because if the enemy can, you know, demonize them and get them to slip in a situation gosh, it gets plastered across the news nowadays. You know what I'm saying. Like if Joe in the church sat down and did the same thing Pastor Scooby did, like Joe would sorry, I don't know. You know Joe would be like, oh brother, it's going to be okay, let's pick up our boots and move on.
Speaker 1:But like, because we've created this hierarchical system where the man at the top, if he even sniffs the wrong way, like it just destroys his entire life because we put them on this pedestal that they that doesn't exist and now their entire lives are destroyed. You know, yeah, they should. Consequences should happen for all sin, no matter who it is, but it's just made so much bigger and there's almost no recovery after that, unfortunately for some of these people. So, yeah, it just sucks.
Speaker 2:Or they recover and are put back into the same position.
Speaker 1:Yeah and not fully dealt with 100%. It's been a dangerous thing before 100%.
Speaker 2:I don't know when we're going to get it, but going back to that, what we started talking about initially, what does that look like? What does it look like practically to have this revelation, have this understanding, realize you've been doing things wrong, begin to step out and do things right. Have the people who you thought would support you the most come against you, against you, yeah, and how do you stay joyful for the Lord, yeah, I've been learning that in this season.
Speaker 1:I've learned that worship is your weapon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know there are monitoring spirits that watch us everywhere we go. You know those spirits' job is not to live inside of you or to demonize you. Their spirits are to minister to you and discourage you and to get you distracted and off track, or whatever the case may be. And I've realized that the greatest joy comes from worship, like when you begin to worship as much as they love tormenting you, they hate and are repulsed by the spirit of praise and worship to Jesus. So, I think, sit at His feet, worship Him with the purest of hearts, out loud, let them hear it and watch them flee and watch the joy of the Lord come.
Speaker 1:True praise and praise.
Speaker 1:I don't mean like it's a really pretty song, I'm like a song that comes from the heart, like from the spirit, from deep down in your spirit.
Speaker 1:You know, sing from that place, worship from that place, and the joy of the Lord will remain. You know, and bless those, bless those around you that criticize you, whether you bless them with a prayer, bless them with a financial blessing, bless them with a gift, like, whatever the case may be, bless them and pray for them and that's really all the way that you can really keep your joy in the midst of the situation and just know that God is faithful to that. He'll never leave you or forsake you and he is with you always, until the end of the age. And I just look at the story of David and Job, like David literally cries out and says God, even my own mother and father have abandoned me. And then God, he's like, but you never have you know. So, just remembering that the Lord will not leave you if you're stepping out in faith to fulfill the true mission that he described in the book of Matthew, mark, luke, john and Acts, you know so he'll be with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so good. I was, um, I was thinking about this yesterday in the car, like it's the balance of understanding. Yes, we are in a. We are in a war, you know, a spiritual war and the mentality of this.
Speaker 1:Take the seriousness of the commission, the seriousness of the great commission, the seriousness of the fact that people are dying, people are going to hell, like all of that stuff you know, but also learning to enjoy life you know, and just just like have fun and continue to share the gospel with people around you, like there's someone in my life right now that the Lord's drawing to baptism and they're getting baptized and it's like all the other stuff and the accusations and the this pastor said this or this person said that it all kind of gets wiped away when you see the gospel work through your life. You know what I'm saying. Let them say what they want to say. The fruit is the fruit is the fruit. Other people are encountering Christ because the life that Christ has changed through me. So I just got to keep doing that and, honestly, when you see the gospel work, you stop worrying about what Sandra thinks or Susie, you know and you actually like, really enjoy the ministry of Christ because you see people's lives genuinely change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the last thing I'll say is even within the walls of the traditional church, in the building, you'll see people get very, very critical, start complaining about the worship, start complaining about the. Get very, very critical, start complaining about the worship, start complaining about the carpet color, all of that stuff. The reason people are complaining about those things is because they're not actually doing what they have been commanded to do.
Speaker 1:They're not putting action to their faith.
Speaker 2:Because when you start doing that, you start to see fruit, you start to be focused on the fruit and you forget Right, or you don't have time to pay attention to the distractions. So that's our word and our encouragement to you guys out there listening. If you're finding yourself getting frustrated with the overwhelming task of trying to fix the broken system, stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stop trying to fix it.
Speaker 2:Stop trying to fix the broken system. The system doesn't want to be fixed, but people want to be loved and people, people, most people, genuinely want the truth.
Speaker 2:And so you start living out the truth, living in obedience, fruit's going to start bearing in your life. People will be attracted to that. Some people won't Don't worry about those people, but the people that do will begin to ask questions and come to you. And that's when you take those opportunities to share the truth with them. And that's what's actually gonna bring joy in your life is seeing God work through you and seeing the fruit that you can bear through him.
Speaker 2:So, thank you guys for tuning in today. We're actually probably in the next week or next two episodes or so we're gonna start getting into the gifts of the spirit. We've been kind of holding back and not sharing a lot on that, but we have experienced so many amazing miracles in our life and healing and people being set free from the casting out of demons and things like that. So that's a conversation we want to have coming up soon. So stay tuned for that and we will see you guys in the next episode.
Speaker 1:Bye.