Speaker 1: 0:02

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

Speaker 2: 0:06

I'm Jeremy. I'm Matt.

Speaker 1: 0:08

Thanks for joining us. This is Part 3 of the conversation Matt and Jeremy had with Dave Miles from Vital Church. The first and second parts of our conversation will be linked in the show notes below. Now let's pick up where we left off.

Speaker 3: 0:21

So I know from our previous conversations, Miles, that idolatry is a big deal in what you guys do. So I know you're affected, as both of us have, by Keller and by his work in idolatry and the stream that he sits in. Talk to us a little bit about the unholy trinity.

Speaker 4: 0:40

Yeah. So what happened was? I'll tell you a little story here. So I was in an intentional interim setting Easter Sunday I had set up. It was the first church that had ever done this best I understand had taken the platform. In Presbyterian circles you might call it a chancel. I didn't even know what a chancel was, you know for years.

Speaker 4: 1:02

You know or an orthex I thought it was a body part. I'm going to have my Narthex removed next week. There's all this religious language that I didn't know anything about, but you know, up on this platform or whatever you call it, and I made it into a living room and, uh, read to my younger. My youngest daughter at the time was about seven or eight, and read the book Adam Raccoon in Forever Falls, which is a story of Easter. And then I preached, and so one of the elders I think it was after the we had several services on that Sunday came in, saw the way the stage was set up and said oh my goodness, the most sacred day of the year and they've moved the podium. Wow, and he was serious.

Speaker 3: 1:54

Yeah, it was a who moved my cheese moment. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:57

They moved the pulpit for crying out loud, I mean on the most holy day of the year, and I thought why?

Speaker 3: 2:07

Why did he say that that's fascinating?

Speaker 4: 2:09

Yeah, and so I began to think about it, and so I ran into Keller. I started reading. There was a book called God A Promised Life of Faith. A guy named Scott I can, um, I can't remember got it over here somewhere. Ah, there it is. Yeah, scott hafeman.

Speaker 4: 2:31

Okay, great section on idolatry. And began to realize, because we kept running into the same thing over and over again idolatry, conflict and power over and over and over. And we simply started saying, look, this is the unholy trinity. And so, while you've got to deal with that sin, beneath the sin, the systems issues, that are all the systems. A lot of times the presenting problem is idolatry, conflict or power. And that became the unholy trinity.

Speaker 4: 3:02

And then we have two more that we call don't laugh at me, guys, don't laugh the hypostatic disunion, which is, yeah, institutionalization, which means now the church's ministries aren't built around its vision, but the vision is built around the ministries even though those ministries are no longer valid or effective. Institutionalization. And then a lowering of the theological bar and which is more often than not seen in moralism American churches are very moralistic and there's just you know, I came, I got a church growth degree from Fuller, which I thank God for again. I thank God for Peter Wagner and all these people, but the church growth movement, the ugly side of it, or the I wouldn't say that's not the right word. So I apologize to many of my fuller family. It was accidental.

Speaker 3: 3:50

I've discovered it was accidental, it was not intentional. They were all about evangelism and discipleship, but some of their disciples didn't fully embody that, unfortunately.

Speaker 4: 4:00

Correct. So it became like five ways to make your money better, six things to do to make your marriage work. Well, you can say all of that stuff without Jesus, and so it became very moralistic and so, consequently, churches weren't rooted in. You know, this is your justification by faith, your union with Christ, you know, your sanctification. All this stuff was not even spoken about and hasn't been for years in many cases. And I grew great big churches in christendom, but but it led to a real, a shallow spirituality, which is one of the things that pete's because arrow will beat on over and over again. This shallow spirituality. We need to slow down our lives, be with god, and out of that comes this ministry that we do. And so that unholy trinity and the hypostatic disunion. That's all part of returning a theological center to the churches, which in many cases have lost it or they're not aware of what they had.

Speaker 3: 5:00

Yeah, a couple years ago I was privileged to sit at a conference with Carl Ellis I don't know if you know that name, but Carl Ellis, a long-term professor, african-american gentleman, brilliant, and his wife too, just as brilliant as he and he talked about that institutionalization that you know, a church starts with a vision for what God might use them for in a place, right, and eventually that organic thing grows big enough that you need some structure around it to support it. But then eventually, if you don't pay attention to the structure serving the vision, it begins where the structure begins to be its own thing, right, and when it becomes its own thing it becomes institutionalized. So that's Ellis's description and that was really, really helpful to me, because many times when we walk into churches we're just inquisitive, right, we're just Miles. And I walk into a church we're like well, why is that there? People are like well, you know George Jones, he donated that or you know he was always excited about that and we're like and that serves the vision, how, and churches are like, and it has been disconnected for so long, and it has been disconnected for so long and it's institutionalized in budget and staff and ministry structures, what I call the givens. Right, there are all of these givens and I've just turned to being shocking.

Speaker 3: 6:19

I know this will shock you, miles, but I've just turned to be shocking. I'm like all right name for me, all the things that Jesus requires of a local church. And it is shockingly few things that you can pull out of the New Testament that are required of a local church. And I do that with churches because I'm like you have to realize you made all of these choices and they may have been good and godly choices when you made them. I'm not picking on your decision-making process at the time, but because they were choices, you can re-choose. You really can. You're free to, if you will take that liberty in Christ that you have and re-choose, because Jesus really doesn't care. In fact, he might care that you re-choose, not not that you stick with this.

Speaker 4: 7:05

And so, going back to your family systems discussion, you go in as a transitional pastor into a church like that and you run up against that. Now what happens? People get anxious because you're attacking their thing. The anxiety goes up, they start reacting to you and your propensity my propensity I'll speak in the eye, my propensity is to go okay, we won't touch anything, right.

Speaker 4: 7:32

But what you've got to do as a transitional pastor is do what Titus did set in order the things that remain unfinished. You've got to go after that stuff. That's the idol that you've got to show is less important than Jesus Christ. And in some cases it means, hey, we're going to shelve this ministry for whatever, because other things are more important at this point in time, and you're going to get pushback, you're going to get angry people. In fact they're going to leave because their idol is no longer something that they are allowed to have. And so that non-anxious presence that they are allowed to have, and so that non-anxious presence lower the anxiety, don't get reactive and move towards what Christ wants for this particular church. That's the hard thing of these intentional interim and transitional pastorates, because the interim pastor has got to do that.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Has to be the one, that's the mature one. Our friends in the EPC first pointed me towards Jack Shatama because I started with Friedman's failure of error, which is like that's quite literally, that's like graduate school level sort of stuff in family systems, and so for years I tried to work backwards. I was like I started at graduate school and I go back to kindergarten so I can get the basics first. And eventually our friends in the EPC pointed me towards Sritama and his little.

Speaker 3: 8:59

If you met my family, you'd understand, which is the first thing that I hand people. My wife devoured it in two days because she was like, okay, thank you. Now you've given me something that actually gives me a beginning window into this kind of stuff, and it's been marvelous for me personally and for our ministry and for the way that we train people to give them different eyes and help them go. Hey, this is one of the good things about being a transitional is you actually never get into that you, you have the opportunity to not get into that mode of hey, this is my church because you're supposed to be working yourself out of the job, right, yeah, which is which is good yeah, but it's the fact that you can go in and be a separate from the system allows you to address the things in the system.

Speaker 4: 9:52

But it does mean also that you're going to be the object of people's antagonism and wrath and frankly, sometimes that's been hard to. I've not always done well with that, me either.

Speaker 3: 10:05

Me, either Me either.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Well, we can say I've had 100% success in all the churches I've been in.

Speaker 4: 10:14

That's because of your age, Jeremy. It's because of your age.

Speaker 3: 10:18

Because we've also done this kind of work. Yeah, all right, so we're getting to the end here, myles, so let's talk a little bit about the future of this kind of work. Right? You're now the guru of your organization. You're mostly in home base, you're supporting your staff, which is awesome Writing, which I'm looking forward to seeing and getting to enjoy. So what do you, as you, look forward for Vital Church? What do you think this is going to look like in five years? What do you think it's going to look like in 10 years? You know what's this kind of work going to look like in five years. What do you think it's going to look like in 10 years? You know what, what, what's this kind of work going to look?

Speaker 4: 10:53

like Do you think, wow, boy, I wish I knew, I mean, I can, I can, yeah, I can only guess. Um, we, we know that, uh, statistically speaking, the need is going to only go up in the next five years. There's going to be a dramatic need. We also know that, in many cases, all people want in an institutional church is for someone to come in and act like a chaplain and just keep things the way they are, and I would go so far as to say that, more often than not, that's what people want. They want an institutional church that hangs on to those things that will, in the end, actually result in their demise.

Speaker 4: 11:37

Yeah, so I I see the future for this being some people need to pastor those kinds of churches, so you need to have chaplain type people that are called to help churches die in a godly, redemptive way, and if 15,000 churches are going to pass this year, there's going to be somebody to care for that, and I believe that God has raised up some people to be chaplains. I'm not one of them, okay, but I'm behind those people that God has raised up to do that, because these are still the people of God. Yeah, but you're going to have way, you're going to have a lot of that. I don't know what the church is going to look like in the future, because I think churches you're going to have to have churches planted that understand how to deal with post-christendom. Yeah, and so millennials, uh, jeremy, uh, millennials, like millennials, I believe. You're a millennial right, or are you a Gen X? You're a millennial, I'm an Xer.

Speaker 4: 12:35

Okay, xer, okay, millennials are rethinking how you do church and I don't know what exactly that's going to look like. There's just so many things going on. I'm not sure that I have that kind of insight right now to say I do know that the churches the institutional churches that are around are going to have to make some changes about the way they think. To Matt's point they've got to think outward and missional. They've got to think what is Christianity and why does it make sense. They've got to think evangelism as being with people and engaging non-Christian community with intention, and so interim pastors going into those kinds of churches need to facilitate that happening in a church. Can we move this congregation towards becoming a disciple-making, disciple-thinking church and raising up people who've got that skill mix? That's what I see the future is for interim ministry, the kind that you and I are doing. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:36

Yeah, yeah, no, that's super helpful. Yeah, our friends in the EPC. I recently heard Bob Stauffer, who's older than both of us and he's been doing this for a long time very much a seminal leader in this kind of work, very much a seminal leader in this kind of work. And I recently heard him say in a training that 50% of the EPC's pastors will retire in the next five years. Right, which is insane.

Speaker 4: 13:59

Baby boomers, they're all baby boomers.

Speaker 3: 14:02

It's the last end of the baby boomers. Yep, that's it right there.

Speaker 3: 14:07

And what the people in the seminaries would tell you is there's many fewer people, even with hybrid and long-distance programs or whatever that are getting trained for the ministry, and many fewer that even want to be senior pastors. That's what we see in our circles Many fewer. Recruiting has become much harder of pastors, because it used to be in the 90s and the 2000s that all these young people would go do crazy things. Right, you know. And now you can't get people to go do crazy things. You really can't. It's really odd how much it's flipped in the last 20 years. It's so different. So it's going to be challenging. We're constantly you guys probably too, dave we're constantly recruiting people because we're like I'm going to find the best and the brightest who are willing to do something dangerous. And it's challenging. It's going to be an interesting five or ten years, that is for sure.

Speaker 4: 14:59

That is what I see from my seat yeah, going to be an interesting five or ten years, that is for sure.

Speaker 4: 15:03

That is what I see from my seat. Yeah, I think that God is raising up people who are called to facilitate the change that he wants in his church. They're called to ask the hard question what is the Spirit saying to this church? And then can I, you know, how can I facilitate that? We'll tell churches we're not the ones making changes Now we'll get blamed for it, okay, but we're not the ones making the changes. We'll facilitate you making the change in your church, in the church of Jesus Christ in this geographical location, and raising up people who think that way and then have the flexibility. That's another thing.

Speaker 4: 15:35

What I'm finding is most of my ministry is built in medium to large churches. That's how we figured out how to do this and they had the resources to. You know, fly me or whoever around. That's changing too, and so we're taking more of a geographic approach to things, and you know what you and I talked about this summer. What a great conversation. You know we're looking at that resourcing piece way more seriously, where we're just going to specifically speak into this situation in a local church and move it as a transitional pastor would, even if we're not the transitional pastor.

Speaker 4: 16:11

So thinking like that and raising up, you know, flourish and Vital Church and organizations like that that think like pastors, that's another thing. Matt Bolling is a pastor, and I don't like the C word. You know A consultant, but Matt is a pastor. He thinks like a pastor, he acts like a pastor. Jeremy, when he goes in as a consultant, he's still a pastor, and so we're trying to have people shepherd. This is God's people for crying out loud. This is not an organizational reengineering. These are people for whom Christ died and we want to keep that in the forefront of our mind.

Speaker 2: 16:55

Are you guys hopeful as you look forward? Hopeful? Do you see a good future for the church? Do you see God snatching the fire away from churches? Do you see?

Speaker 3: 17:06

I see a winnowing that 15,000, although it's shocking based on what we see in churches, I think that Jesus' letters of revelation are not dead letters. They're just as live now. They're just as live now and there are a lot of churches I have a board member that talks about churches that persist on the arm of the flesh and I think there are a lot of churches that have persisted on the money of the people and the arm of the flesh. And Jesus left the building a long time ago and we're just the bearers of bad news saying, hey, jesus threatens this as he left the building. Are you about what he's about? And that message is, as Dave said, it's not received terribly well sometimes, even if it's true, you know. So the winnowing doesn't surprise me. It saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 4: 17:59

Yeah, that's a good word. That's a good word, matt. There is a winnowing, you know, will the church be the church? And you know, in some cases the answer is going to be no. I mean, one of the scariest passages in the Bible for me is you know, I'll remove your. They're in the latter part of those churches. I'm going to pluck, I'm going to snuff out the candle. Gone Done. He doesn't need this local expression of the body of Christ, because he's going to build his church in other ways and Jesus will raise up his people. You know, american Christianity is this kind of institutional Christianity is really not Christianity. It's just religious culture, christendom, and that's done. We're done with that, it's over.

Speaker 3: 18:53

Yeah, past is by. We may not recognize it, but it's past is by, it's done, yep. Well, dave Miles, there's a couple more conversations I'd love to have with you, if we can record them in future podcast episodes. We are going to do some work on family systems in our podcast. We're going to do some work actually on discernment. So I've recently written about 20 pages of single-spaced. Jeremy has been a very good dialoguer about this, about what I'm labeling community spiritual discernment, and I'd love for you to look at that paper and us talk about it, maybe I would love to do that, yeah, and so thank you, thanks for taking this time.

Speaker 3: 19:27

We really appreciate it. We appreciate you, my friend. I would not be doing what I'm doing if you had not been doing what you've been doing, and so I'm greatly indebted to you, thank you.

Speaker 4: 19:39

Thank you, matt. It's been a pleasure to be on Jeremy with you. Really, I hope we can do it again.

Speaker 2: 19:45

Well, I want to say this to you guys after listening to you and after having the benefit of being able to hear you both and also, I think, hearing the voice of Jesus, the label here that I'm hearing is one of love. And I think about going back to Keller, the prodigal, god Right, and as we're working with churches, whether we're doing so as interim pastors or just as the layperson walking with a group of people who are flawed, there's two sons that were living with this father. One said, hey, I don't feel loved, so I'm going to take my money and I'm going to run over and I'm going to try to get loved any way I can. And there was another who didn't realize that he had everything at his disposal already and he missed out on it. And the voice from the father to both is come back to me. And at the same time as we can say absolutely that Jesus will snuff out that candle, the same God said I will not break a bruised reed and I will not snuff out a smoldering wick.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Good word, yeah. Part of the Father says to his people, wherever they are, however far they've run, however wrong they've gotten at, turn back to me because I love you and I have all of my riches waiting for you right here at my heart. You know this, matt. Dave, I'm sure this comes through. I love God's church. I love the bride of Christ because I love Jesus. I love the bride of Christ because I love Jesus, and his passion and the love of his father sent his son to the cross on our behalf. There's nothing he won't spare us from to get attention, but there's no riches that he won't give to us when we turn to him.

Speaker 2: 21:37

So, with that said, dave, thank you so much for your time. Man, you're welcome your time. You both are very generous. I have really been privileged to be with you guys and look forward to doing this again very soon To you, our listener. Thank you for being with us. We hope that this sort of content both encourages and stimulates your thinking. If you have questions, you can reach out to us. We will post the information for Revital Church. Thank you. Ministry Ministry.

Speaker 4: 22:05

Revital Church Ministry without the IES Without the plural. Yeah, without the plural.

Speaker 2: 22:10

We'll post all that. If you have questions for Flourish, you can reach out to us at flourishcoachingorg or you can email us at info at flourishcoachingorg. We'd love to hear from you Until next time. God bless, we'll see you soon.

Speaker 1: 22:24

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.

Speaker 1: 23:01

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.