Welcome to Season 3.5 of the Church Renewal Podcast from Florist Coaching.

I'm Jeremy. I'm Matt.

This is the second of our three-part conversation with Dave Miles from Vital Church. If you've missed the last show we did with him, you'll find it linked in the show notes. Now let's jump back in.

You both are responding to the same issue here. It's not an issue of a broken praxis of ecclesiology, if you will. It is we've lost the plot. And the distinction here that I'm hearing is that Dave is jumping in because he's looking and saying, systematically, organizationally, the church has lost the plot. You're looking and saying, hey, the church has lost the plot, but your step into this, your threshold, the doorway for you, is a church is in transition and they're not sure how to make the step. And you have the opportunity then to step in, and it's a part of what's going on as they're transitioning. Address this, this huge gaping hole in we've lost the plot of what it means to be the body of christ and the follower of Christ as an individual NS congregation, and that's the underlying issue here.

Yeah, the underlying issue, for sure.

That's a lot bigger than transitional pastors. That's a lot bigger than a temporary thing. That's huge, that's world-changing.

It is, it is and I think that it, I, my sense of the future is that the kind of work, that vital church and flourish, the kind of work that we do, is going to be more needed and it's going to accelerate in time because the supply of pastors is growing. Did you see that stat out last week, miles, that uh, rainers expected 15 000 churches will close this year? It's staggering. That used to be 3 to 5, which was bad enough, right, but that's like 50 a day. It's obscene.

And then another 15,000 aren't going to be able to afford a full-time pastor Investor right. And then that Christianity by 2030, and we're kind of bleeding into the end but by 2030, 25% of all the pastors and churches in America are going to retire. That's what they were See, and so you've got. But it's not just that, it's the mindset of what a church thinks about itself. So I look at Matthew 16, you know I will build my church. Matthew 16, you know I will build my church.

To me, part of that call, when I really looked at that passage, what I've discovered is that the church does not exist for itself. Now, that's that's. You know. When you look at that, you got to do the exegesis. Well, I remember I'm like, oh my gosh, look at this. You know we're tied back to the gospel goes back to the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12 and 15, which is to be a blessing to all nations. So we are now the people of God I would say an extension of the people of God, israel, and that's the way I would put it. I know that some people might not look at it that way, but you know, we are the people of God and as the people of God. We are to continue, you know, giving that blessing, the gospel, the cross, and so most churches don't think that way, in my experience, matt, at least the churches that I go to, right.

No, you're exactly right, and we're sometimes seen as the bearer of bad news that we sometimes get accused. Well, you want us to be something that we've never been. Well, let's look at this is the way I'm starting to put it, miles let's look at the New Testament, after the book of Acts, all the way to Revelation 4. What is all of that? All of that is, jesus has an ideal for his church in his mind, and all of his churches are not up to the ideal, and so he's kind and loving enough to let them know what the ideal looks like, and, if they understood the gospel and could apply it, that they would live in these ways. That's the way I see, now that I see almost all the entire New Testament. I see, now that I see almost all the entire New Testament, which is when I tell people that they're like, oh, that that seems right and it just is. We've never looked at it. That was how. That's not how. You were taught in seminary. So I was taught in seminary. No, no, which is, which is um odd. So let me, um, let's see. There's so many different directions that we could go here, miles.

Let me go back to a phrase that I heard in February of 2013 for the first time, and that phrase that I heard from that team that Vital Church trains was this phrase the pastor of that Diller Church that team could identify was not a non-anxious presence. Right, he was an anxious presence, and that was the very first time in February of 2013 that I'd ever heard that phrase, Right, and so that phrase rattled around my brain from February 2013 until July of 2014. And in July of 2014, I found myself I'd gone to a week-long doctor of ministry class with the guy that I was coaching and his wife had the audacity to have a baby that week, and so I was left by myself, and so I am in a beer world. Hopefully that won't offend some of our listeners. I was in a beer world in Orlando, florida, and this phrase had been rattling around my brain for a year and a half, and I pull open my phone and I look and see where does this come from?

On google, and I bought an electronic edition of Edmund Friedman's A Failure of N nerve right, and I began to read it sitting in beer world and then more in my car, and it was as though I was in a house and there was a wall and suddenly there was a window in that wall that I didn't know was there, and through that window was a world that I didn't know existed, and that world was family systems theory. So tell us a little bit about our listeners will know, because I talk about it a lot. We may do an entire. We may do an entire next season about the interaction maybe we'll have you back of family systems theory and transitional work, because I find it so crucial and helpful. So tell me how that got introduced into the work that you guys do, how did you first run into it and how does it affect the work that you guys do?

I had finished my first intentional interim pastorate, complete with several cases of church discipline stuff. We had to do Things happening that I didn't understand on a lot of levels, okay, and I said to myself why is this happening, like what is going on? Why are these people so angry? Where is this conflict coming from? It doesn't seem to have any you know place. I don't want to go into all the details, just simply because it would be easy to trace back what I'm talking about to you know. But I was given a book by Friedman, one of his initial works, which is called From Generation to Generation. It's a hard read, okay.

And then I was invited, with a friend of mine, to go to a class at Eastern Seminary on family systems. So I'm reading Generation to Generation and I'm auditing this class and then during that, the quarter dropped, the penny dropped or whatever it is, depends on how much the soda cost when you used to put the thing on the thing and make it. Yeah, give me my drink. Remember that that was a long time ago.

It's a long time ago.

Yeah, so now you've got to slip dollar bills into those things. But it dropped and I went oh my gosh, this is what was going on. What looks like the problem is never the problem, ever, and you don't deal with the problem unless you deal with the thing that creates the problem to begin with, which is, by the way, oftentimes idolatry. Ouch, almost every time I can tell you situations. In fact, I just got to be super careful that I don't you know out anybody in this conversation Reveal the guilty? Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm the guilty, see. I mean, ultimately, every one of our sins, I believe, goes back to idolatry. I'm the guilty, see, I mean, ultimately, every one of our sins, I believe, goes back to idolatry.

But what happens in local churches is that thing. That is the sin beneath the sin, the issue beneath the issue. If you don't deal with that what Friedman calls the emotional process, process and content, if you don't deal with the process, you don't get to the content. And that's when it became real to me. And things like, for example, uh, reactivity, hurting this like group think, blaming other people, quick fix, all of this stuff, that's all what free would say. All of that creates that failure of nerve that's the title of the book in in a lot in addressing the issues that need to be addressed, which is why so much of what happens in churches or organizations in general just stays the same because the real problems are never actually dealt with. Ever Always the symptoms, but never the real problems.

And this is why an in-depth diagnostic like Vital Church does or our church health assessment, we're actually trying to get to the underlying issues that are there and call those out and say Jesus is better than the way you've been operating. If you understood the gospel, if you understood what you've been given by your father, you wouldn't need to hold on to this. But you're holding on to this is what's messing everything up.

Exactly, and that is an issue of discipleship, See, and so, in a lot of ways, what we were trained to do in institutional churches and seminary and I love the seminaries that I went to, they were great, okay, great experience in my seminaries but they trained us to preach, they trained us to do exegesis, but they didn't train us to think what am I going to deal with? To address this particular issue in a person's life and what we discovered? Other people discovered it and we were able to read them. That's the only way you actually address and get to the bottom root of these things is to address the emotional process underneath the, the symptom and many times people are bringing in stuff from their own family of origin and then they're bringing in.

So you have a collection of leaders who've all had their own growing up experiences and they're bringing that into their collective leadership, many times very unreflective about it. No one ever having had a conversation with them that really helped them move forward in their discipleship related to the issues that they experienced growing up and that they still live in light of now. Scudero was the best who's you know, 50 miles from where, 40 miles from where Miles is sitting, the church and the ministry that he's led, and he's so free and open about this with his own experience and that's been so helpful to me. Even growing up in a good family, you just have all of these effects that, if you're not reflective about it, you have undiscovered areas in yourself where you still react in those ways because of the way that you grew up.

And that word right there. You still react in those ways. I, to this day, struggle with my reactivity and there are certain things that push my buttons. Man, you start blaming me for something that I really it's not my fault. I start getting reactive and that, going back to what Matt said earlier, jeremy, that non-anxious presence that takes that reactivity and it drops it down. And as soon as you have a non-anxious presence and anxiety in the system, the emotional system dissipates. Now you can actually say why did I say that? Why did I do that? Why am I thinking that? Well, that's self-awareness and the ability to love others.

Well, that is what Pete would call spiritual and emotional maturity. He'd say you cannot be spiritually mature if you're not emotionally mature, and that non-anxious presence then flows out of that. Again, I would say it's the byproduct of the gospel. The gospel drops the anxiety in your heart so you can take an honest look at what's going on. Now you've got to bring that as a transitional pastor or a diagnostic team into a church, but there's no guarantee, jeremy, that the church itself will respond well to that. No guarantee. You can try, but their own reactivity is. There's so much fear in the system. There's so much. Oh my gosh. Oh, you know they're all uptight. Just you know, drop the emotional RPMs. Now we can start hearing what the Spirit is saying to the church and to us individually. The job of Vital Church and Flourish is, I believe, in some cases to go in and to try to lower that so that people can take an honest look at what reality is. Not a guarantee they're going to accept it, but we can try.

I'm going to test a hypothesis here real quick, In a one-word answer from each of you what is the thing that every person in a church is looking for?

Wow, I mean I like Kirk Thompson's answer on this, which is that we all come out looking to be loved, right? We all come out of the womb looking for someone who's looking for us, because we were made to be in a relationship with God and we're made to know his closeness and we experience that many times through we're supposed to, through people in the body of Christ, People are looking to be loved. I don't think it's more complex than that.

Yeah, you know what I like that answer. I wish I'd come up with that before you did, but then I would feel significant, then I would feel loved. You know it's all about me. You know I'm not I like what Matt said. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how I would answer that. Apart from that, right now I'd have to think. People are looking for something significance, value, worth. I would even say that we're worshipers, we're looking to worship something, and whatever we worship, we're going to serve, and so we're looking to give our lives to something bigger than ourselves. I think that's part of it.

My hypothesis because I would answer that either as Matt did, or I would say acceptance or belonging. Acceptance is a word that comes to my mind and as I'm listening to you guys talk about the things you've seen and the history that's here, I see people, individuals, who walk around coming out of the womb, looking to be loved, looking to be accepted, running into problems because at some point someone failed them at that level. They carry that wound forward. Right, don't examine that wound. And then they come into an organization that says, hey, you're here and you're completely accepted in the beloved uh, addendum, unless and until and if you do x, y and z, and then we're gonna. You know we're not gonna say it, this is the unspoken, but this is the agreement Live up or we're going to look at you askance.

And you have guys like us who labor in seminary under really good teachers who teach us how to do the things that we have to do, the tactical things. But it's really hard to take someone in a four-year setting and say, hey, we're going to take a year here and just focus on how you experienced the love of your heavenly father through the people in your life that he gave to you, to mediate that love and how you see him and how you're carrying that forward to the people. He's called you to be an agent of his love, an ambassador of his kingdom, walking out to this part of his character in a world where there's no other place you can get this right. Everything else is a counterfeit, a cheap, blinged out counterfeit Right.

In terms of the real church. Yes, yes, there are some people who get more of what you just described at Beer World Absolutely, you know. Or in their running class, in class, absolutely you know more acceptance, more belonging, more kindness, more grace in those environments than they would in a local church. And so, yeah, it's, you know. I just read a great book by Michael Reeves called Evangelical Pharisees, and he opens up some of this reality about our. You know, the Pharisees failed to understand the depth of their need or the depth of God's benevolence, and their false view of God then led them to treat others in the same way they thought God was treating them, so it was often harsh and unyielding and ungrace-giving. And so the gospel, obviously, is the exact opposite of that and we want to present that when we go into these churches. But it's tough, it's just, it's a hard, I can't even say it. It's a hard sell in some cases because it's so foreign.

Stay tuned for part three of our conversation with Dave next week. We'll pick it up right here. Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy.

If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, go to our website, flourishcoachingorg, or send an email to info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook X and YouTube. We appreciate when you like subscribe, rate or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. A huge thank you to all our guests for making the time to share their stories with us. We are really blessed to have all these friends and partners. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Till then, god bless.