Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Season 4 of the Church Renewal Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:06

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

Speaker 1: 0:08

Dysfunction is not accidental. It stems from humanity's fallen nature and our propensity to break relationships with God, with ourselves and others. In this episode, matt and Jeremy will lay the theological groundwork for understanding why dysfunction appears in churches and why the gospel is the only solution that can bring healing and renewal.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Welcome to season four. Season four Can you believe that Of the Church Renewal Podcast Unbelievable. I can believe it because I've been working my little tail off trying to get this ready, all these papers.

Speaker 3: 0:40

See, there's real papers right here.

Speaker 2: 0:42

See real paper plans. This is fully a video show. Hopefully you got that full effect right there. Matt, it's good to see you again good to see you too it's been a while since we've been in person and this is always refreshing to me and, honestly, dude I am. I know the mic is right here and I know I'm using jare podcaster voice, but in all sincerity, it is easy for the mic to disappear and it's already doing so for me.

Speaker 3: 1:08

Seriously, um this is a fun conversation that we have been looking forward to for a long time. We planned this season before the last season was done no, so we did.

Speaker 2: 1:17

It was uh, this was, I think, the first thing we really talked about, but we, we, we recorded season three, right, I think april of year 2024.

Speaker 3: 1:26

We're now May of 2025 recording this and coming to fruition.

Speaker 2: 1:31

So we're going to try to deliver here, in about 30 to 35 minutes, a season of some number of episodes that you will become very familiar with as you're listening through to those episodes, and our goal is to unpack family systems, therapy and the way that you, in particular Matt, apply it to the work that you're doing with Flourish, working with churches, but also the way that we think about churches walking through transition, dysfunction, healing, the whole gambit Right, and where we want to start and this was your heart. So if you want to speak to this, I'll jump into your podcast, but you wanted to really tackle this from a biblical point of view, from a theological point of view. What is the groundwork, as christians, that we're looking at this and saying we can take a psychological model of right therapy? Um, but let's be honest, we have brothers and sisters who are there.

Speaker 2: 2:25

They They'll balk at that. They will. There's a level of mistrust there, some rightly, some not so rightly. We want to lower that bar. We want to deliver useful tools, useful paradigms, not just because they are utilitarian, but because they line up with what scripture shows us about God, about ourselves, about how God has called life to work. So, from your perspective, what's your top line view of the theology behind church dysfunction? Sure, where does that come from?

Speaker 3: 2:57

So I think maybe the first thing to say is a family system theory is useful for Christians because it's an observation of human behavior. Yeah, it's not a solution for human behavior, it is an observation of human behavior. And Murray Bowen, who developed family system theory in, I want to say, the 50s, observed families that were there in his counseling practice and developed the theory from it. And so it's primarily from the observation of families and most congregations are the size of an extended family and most people, even if they're in a larger congregation, have subunits that act themselves like extended families, a small group, a shepherding group. They act like extended families by and large. Remember, 90% of all congregations are under 200 people. 80% of them are under 100 people.

Speaker 3: 3:54

Most average congregation post-COVID Rainier statistics are that it's 64. So think about 64, that's the size of a family reunion, right? So it's not a big stretch to take what was learned about the observation of families with dysfunction and just port it over and apply it. That's what edwin friedman did in generation to generation and also failure of nerve. Edwin friedman took the insights from bowen and applied it to the church. There's lots of stuff that'll be in the show notes of links to books and other podcasts and things like that.

Speaker 3: 4:30

There's a lot of stuff that's being done in this space. That's really helpful. But we want to give you sort of an introduction from our perspective and try and be helpful to our typical listener. Where does dysfunction come from? That's where you wanted me to start. That's where I want you to start. Yes, yeah, so dysfunction.

Speaker 3: 4:47

I think if you look at the grand narrative of Scripture, right, you've got creation, fall, redemption, consummation or glory, right, so you have that broad arc. So where does dysfunction come from? Dysfunction was not there at creation Things were perfect and it will not be there in consummation. It will not be present in the new heavens and new earth. Dysfunction in systems is a result of the fall and the only way for it to get better is to recognize it as dysfunction and then work at it with the gospel. And that's basic You've heard that in that podcast is that the gospel is the solution to everything.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Because when the apostle Paul looks at churches, his one heuristic is there's a gospel problem here. And that is always the problem in dysfunction in churches is there some kind of gospel problem, but we have to recognize it as dysfunction and then figure out how to attack it with the gospel. Anyways, that's the basic of what it is, but describing what kinds of dysfunction happen, how to recognize it, how to think about it as a leader, how to grow yourself as a leader. That's what we're going to try to do in this season.

Speaker 2: 6:02

So I'm going to posit that the basic dysfunction of every organization is a relational conflict. It's a relational dysfunction, absolutely. He's agreeing with that. So I guess we're done here. Let's move on to episode two. But let me go further here. So my background, as you know, is in counseling and in the counseling program that we did, we talked about CFR. But we actually intentionally, right at the beginning, in laying a foundation of theology of counseling, we rolled back to pre-creation, we rolled back to eternity, past.

Speaker 3: 6:37

Okay, and the relationships in the Trinity, I'm guessing.

Speaker 2: 6:39

Boom.

Speaker 3: 6:40

Yep, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:42

In the work that you do. The first question that you ask in the three buckets that you're working with is what?

Speaker 3: 6:48

Yeah, when we think about our work, particularly when we're thinking about a transition in a church, we have these five questions that we're trying to work through right. So where have we been? Where are we? Those are the questions we try and address in church health assessment. Who are we and where are we going? That's what we try and address in envisioning and then in pastor search. There's just one question, which is who can take us there. But the responses to the us is a much more dense response because of the work that's gone on previously. Right, we have a much greater sense of our history and our present and our identity. So we have a richer, deeper sense of the us and we have a sense of what God's calling us to right, Of the there, and so we're more thoughtful about the who that could be helpful to us as we sense God calling us to go there.

Speaker 2: 7:39

So this is why I'm asking that question. So when we started looking at eternity past, eternity past I was talking with one of my kids about this the other day what was God doing in the beginning? When we go back to Genesis 1, and he gives the typical answers, he made man, okay. Well before that, what was he doing? Well, he was thinking about it Because he asked me the question why did Jesus have to die?

Speaker 2: 8:01

Okay good and the only answer I can give is because, before the foundations of the earth, christ was sacrificed. That's what scripture makes exceedingly clear to us. That sort of pulls back the curtain to what was going on pre-creation. So when we look at a model like CFR of thinking through, which is absolutely useful, that's creation, fall redemption. That's creation, fall redemption. Thank you, that's my jargon coming through. You, pca guys, you get this right. Okay, where are my people? Anyway, in this pre-creation site, we have God in Trinity relating to himself. We have Father, son, holy Spirit in perfect harmony. And let's unpack this a little bit. We're going to talk about concepts of differentiation, right, right, yep, and here you have a Godhead made up of three individual persons, each with their own role, their own identity, their own personhood. Each with their own role, their own identity, their own personhood. Yet they're working together in complete harmony, because the foundation is relationship.

Speaker 3: 9:05

Yeah, it's a relationship of love among three. If this is an odd sort of space for you, delighting in the Trinity is a marvelous, marvelous book to help you think about this thing that Jeremy's just been talking about, and we'll link it in the show notes.

Speaker 3: 9:22

But it's tremendously helpful for you thinking not just about how to formulate and speak the doctrine of the Trinity, which is important and helpful, but also the so what. So why does it matter that the persons of the trinity are in a relationship and how does that change uh, the way that we think about uh humans and relationships?

Speaker 2: 9:48

right, super important because we go from there to creation. But in creation, what we, what we see, is god does this whole creation thing, but then he gets to day six and all of a sudden we have a change in how he's doing it. All of a sudden we have this, this introduction in the theological terms, going back to latin, we have imago dei, right in the image of god. God created them. God created man in his image, in his create, in his likeness. Image he created, created them. Or I think the King James says created he them, which is delightful.

Speaker 3: 10:23

Yeah, so the God already in relationship creates relational beings.

Speaker 3: 10:29

Yes, made for a relationship, there it is, but with the fall those made for a-relationship people easily fall into dysfunction.

Speaker 3: 10:40

It's important to say too, I think, here that sometimes we think about relationships just as simply as relationships between people, which, of course, is exceedingly important and we'll take up most of our time. But it's important to realize too that when the gospel comes to you, it's also trying to help you not only with your relationship with God but, interestingly, your relationship with yourself, because one of the things in family systems theory that I think is really important is you can only work on yourself. You can't change somebody else. God can change you as you lean into the gospel and you rely on the Holy Spirit to be changing you from within, but you can't change someone else. But you yourself can experience change, and that's important. When we get to talking about pastors and how they process the change that they're trying to lead in congregations is how do they think about themselves well, when things have not gone the way that they would have hoped to. This applies to your relationship with God, your relationship with yourself, and those things impact your relationships with others.

Speaker 2: 11:47

Well, tell me if you agree with this In terms of the order that these have to go in. There is a concentric circle. I'm going to first relate to God, I'm then going to relate to myself, I'm then going to relate to you. There's an outward flowing from my relationship with God that then affects everything, but it goes. The second stop on that cycle is my relationship with myself, which isn't to say I love myself because I'm such a nice guy, which maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Actually you are Jared, but that's nice.

Speaker 2: 12:16

But that being one of the terms that I think I may have used here before, when I think about humility and I think this even came up in Friedman's work humility is acknowledging reality. I think Shatama said it and we'll link to Jack Shatama, if you met my family to understand Living in reality is what it means to walk in humility. So for me, I look at a verse like Romans 12, 3. Absolutely, but don't think more highly of yourselves than you ought, but in accordance with the gift that God has given to each of you, soberly, right, yes, yeah, honestly. But there's an implication there too that stretches a little bit when it says don't think more highly of yourself than you ought. There's an inverse of that that we should also take as true or controlling. Don't think more lowly of yourself than you ought, yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:08

Yeah, we can critique God by not acknowledging that individual Psalm 139 shaping that he did of us in our mother's womb, and we can critique God for not acknowledging that work that the Spirit begins at regeneration. But remember the Spirit's not like a house flipper where it comes in, changes it and then leaves right. The Spirit is Holy. Spirit comes and takes up residence within us An amazing, beautiful truth, residence within us, an amazing beautiful truth but stays there to keep, to keep changing us, and expresses himself through fruit, expresses a fruit of the spirit right, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, yep, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. I'm sure I missed one in there wealth. Wealth is no, that's a different podcast oh, that you, holy Spirit.

Speaker 2: 13:57

I thought you said venture capitalists.

Speaker 3: 13:58

No, no, no, Sorry, okay, but Holy Spirit also expresses himself through fruit, but also through gifts. He expresses himself through every believer, we're told in the same Romans 12 passage, through spiritual gifts. And so we can think too low of ourselves, not in the sense that we're not depraved, not in need of grace, not in need of forgiveness, not in the sense that we're not depraved, not in need of grace, not in need of forgiveness, not in that sense but think of ourselves less than we actually ought to, and that messes up your self-concept and your relationship with yourself, which then bleeds over into your relationship with other people and I don't want to get too deeply into this right now.

Speaker 2: 14:37

But when we talk about what it means to be self differentiated whether we're talking about a Bowen definition or a Friedman definition knowing who you are is key to that. And from a Christian perspective knowing who you are I think it was JI Packer that said it the proper place to start when man is studying himself is with the study of God Right. The proper place to start when man is studying himself is with the study of God Right, which is where I'm coming from this and saying from the beginning. Here is we're laying the foundation for why we're looking at church dysfunction and how we can apply family systems therapy.

Speaker 2: 15:07

When you go into a church, the question you ask first in a church health assessment is where were we? Where were we? Where have we been? What's the starting point? And that's what I'm saying here. The proper place to start is where were we? Well, the answer is we didn't start in the garden. That was Started in the heart of God. That was where the story that we are in starts. But what actually started was way back in eternity past, where God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are completely unique in their own rights. Completely unique in their own rights and yet united in harmony in a relationship of love, sounds kind of like being a non-anxious presence yeah, they were.

Speaker 3: 15:47

I like how a freedman who wrote a couple of very significant books that you'll hear us, you know, go back to over time, I had forgotten this. But it was freedman who taught me at least the idea of being comfortable in your own skin, which is very common parlance, but I didn't realize it was a Friedmanism, but that sense that I'm comfortable with myself, I'm comfortable being who I am. You know that the concept of differentiation is I'm comfortable being who I am. There's a very good paper by Creech that talks about Jesus as the most differentiated person. And when you think about Jesus and the way that he walked around earth, he knew who he was, he knew who he's about, he knew whose he was and that gave him a solidity and anchoredness in his relationship with his father that enabled him to maintain the basic definition of differentiation of self maintain your own goals and values while staying connected to other people and not giving in to surrounding togetherness pressures. That's the basic definition of differentiation of self. So think about Jesus, think about all the times that people tried to pressure him to do something right and he knew what he was about. He knew when it wasn't his time. He knew what wasn't his role. He could wake up to a line of people waiting to be healed and say to his disciples we need to go on to the next town. And so he knew and was comfortable with himself, who he was in relationship with the Father, what he was sent to do, and it fostered his entire way of being. You see this in a lesser way in the Apostle Paul, but in a similar way is that Paul stands up to great pressures from outside to conform to something else and does it because that 14 years he spent in the desert right learning. He had a true sense of his father and of the impact that understanding the gospel deeply, applying it broadly across his life, does. And so it enabled him to plant churches and visit churches and write to churches and to teach other people Timothy and Titus how to go pastor difficult churches, and it gave him again that relationship that he understood with his father. This application of the gospel to his own heart gave him this solidity.

Speaker 3: 18:23

And so family system theory is a great observation of dysfunction. It's not an answer to dysfunction. We'll talk about eventually that one of the things that I've only, I think, contributed only a couple of things to this conversation, but the couple of things that I have, I feel like I can contribute we're going to try and do in this podcast. But one of those concepts is the gospel can help you to afford to differentiate, and we'll unpack that more. But I think that it's super important because anybody like me, a coach can come along and say, well, you really need to differentiate. But what I found, as I've tried to help people with that, is that can feel like a new law. Like Jerry, you know, your marriage would be a lot better with Hannah if you would just differentiate and it's kind of like, okay, great, I'll get at that Right and I'll just kind of work hard and work away. And, boy, I really need to differentiate.

Speaker 3: 19:16

But the challenge in differentiation is that you, well, you have problems with yourself. So do you know your own goals and values and do you have a solid sense of your own identity in Christ? And what do you do with surrounding togetherness pressures? Can you stay connected but not conform to them? I'm struck here in a way that I haven't before.

Speaker 3: 19:39

When Jerry and I sit down at these microphones, it's very interesting.

Speaker 3: 19:42

We actually don't know what's going to happen, and we've had a number of these experiences through time as we've worked together.

Speaker 3: 19:48

It is very interesting that in that same Romans 12 that Paul talks about not being conformed to the world, the message is not being don't let the world push you into its own mold. Right, and our own us culture, I think, has moved from when I first became a christian 35 years ago to now where it was very much a guilt culture right, a guilt innocence culture, and it has moved over time not as far as as a lot of Eastern cultures have, or Middle Eastern cultures have sort of persisted in something that's predominantly shame and honor, but ours is much more. You can't have a cancel culture without it being much more of a shame and honor culture, absolutely Right, and of course, all that's bunk and it's not scriptural Right. This is the gospel is trying to solve guilt and shame and fear, and those are some of the roots of anxiety, which we'll eventually get into, which is another Bowen theory, but that's the roots. That's how families, individuals, churches end up in dysfunction is that they feel anxious. We'll get there though.

Speaker 2: 20:56

We're going to go to this next step, though in sort of the foundation here, because it's exactly what you're talking about. So we answer the question of where were we? And the answer to that is we find that answer by looking at the way relationship is meant to be, as we see it in the Holy Spirit. Okay, we're created in that way, and this is where the concept and I'll throw it in there just to give props to Dr Kellerman, who I studied under throw it in there just to give props to, uh, dr kellerman, who I studied under the the jargon that I use is rrvep. That stands for relational, rational, volitional, emotional, physical. It's how we are comprised. It's how I think of people as I'm sitting them in a counseling room and saying how are you being affected? What's going on?

Speaker 3: 21:32

I'm thinking through all of these, say those again slower relationship or relational, rational, volitional, emotional and psychological. So it's not as though people are like, those are parts of people. It's the sort of the if you think about frames multi-perspectival approach. It's when somebody acts in a certain way, all of those things are impinging on them at the same time.

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yeah, this is not about whether you're a trichotomist or a dichotomist or a quadchotomist. It doesn't. What I'm trying to see here is how are things being affected? And as I think about this, the model that I use is that the relational is right. There, there's three concentric circles and in the very center is the relational, but that relational is trifurcated into my relationship with God, my relationship with myself and my relationship with others.

Speaker 2: 22:24

And they feed into each other, in and out of each other, and then, surrounding that, I've got my volitional, my emotional and my psychological. How do I think, how do I feel, what do I choose? And outside, and containing all of that think not necessarily in in the best way for this analogy, but there's a physicality because if if an issue is not biological, it's relational.

Speaker 3: 22:47

that's interesting yeah, and because we're in sold beings. We are right, yes, yeah, absolutely, we're in sold bodies and that's uh, and that physicality is important, um, because it will persist. That's why jesus was resurrected, because everything physical is going to be renewed as well. And that physicality is important because it will persist. It's why Jesus was resurrected, because everything physical is going to be renewed as well.

Speaker 2: 23:04

Correct. So as I'm in my relationship with God and that relationship becomes distorted and I'll talk in a second about why I think that happens but what ends up happening to me is that I either start over-functioning or under-functioning.

Speaker 3: 23:23

So there's a couple of bone things out here for you, so let me define those and let them come back to him.

Speaker 3: 23:28

So, in a place where people have varying degrees of emotional maturity, some people in a relational system function in a healthy way. In a relational system function in a healthy way. Some people under function, which is that they do not do what they should and can do on their own, and in that environment, others over function, where they do for someone what they should and can do on their own. So my son gets into a car accident and sure we could go there and rescue him and pick him up and call the tow truck for him and all those kinds of things. Or he can call on a cell phone and say what do I do? And we say call AAA. That's why we buy it, just stay there till they come. And that's functioning.

Speaker 3: 24:19

We didn't rescue him, we let him face the challenges, but we supported him Right and that was healthy functioning. Yes, if we'd gone and rescued him and took care of all of it and not forced him to sort of grow up and do what adults do, we would have over functioned for him. For him, that particular child as well tends to under function, though it's interesting as we have learned how to function in a healthy way. It has helped him to function in a healthy way, and that's how this over-functioning, under-functioning goes away.

Speaker 2: 24:54

Okay, but it feeds out from me to you. In what way? So you talked about your and shame, right, and this is where I want Three basic things that flow out of the fall. This is where I want to move to next, because those come from a very particular place. Right, but whenever there's fear, guilt or shame, that's a fracturing of the shalom relationship that I'm called to be in with God. Right, when there is shalom, there can't be fear there can't be Right.

Speaker 3: 25:24

Right Because there's peace, there's harmony. There's peace, there's wholeness.

Speaker 2: 25:26

Yes, yeah. So when there's not that and all of a sudden I'm afraid, I'm guilty, I'm shamed, I start to either try to control the situation around me by over-functioning, I start to abdicate my responsibility by under-functioning, and that immediately starts impacting my relationships with the people immediately around me and then flowing out from there. And so, in the way I think about this, all of these things flow out first from our relationship with God, but then immediately flow outward through relationship to the people around us, which absolutely includes our churches, our church leadership, even starting within the families that make up those church leaders.

Speaker 3: 26:07

Yep, yep.

Speaker 2: 26:09

Now here's where I want to land on this one, not for the episode, because we do need to get to the gospel, because the whole theology here is where were we? Where are we now? Where are we going right? Yep, yep, satan, satan has to come into this and I want you to talk about this, but I'm going to set you up.

Speaker 3: 26:26

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:26

I think Satan has a pincer move that he always uses. Describe that Okay. He comes in from both sides. On the one hand, he comes in and he says God's not good, god's stingy. God's not good, god's stingy. You need to take care of yourself.

Speaker 3: 26:40

And then, as soon as you do, he comes in with the other hand and punches you in the head and says you better not go back to God because you screwed up and now he's going to reject you, so encourage you away from God and then tell you you can't go back and that you're stuck, yeah, when that's. The core relationship that we need to have restored day by day is back to relationship with God, because it's what we were made for and without it we can't function well, because we don't have the ability as humans and this is, I think, the challenge of a gospel-less view of family systems is that you can get all the direction that you want, but it doesn't give you the power or the place to go back to in order to have a restored relationship with God, yourself or others.

Speaker 3: 27:36

Some of our listeners may be unfamiliar about thinking about Satan in an appropriate and helpful way. So remember Satan is a fallen being. He was one of the angels but became proud and rebelled and took a bunch of angels with him, and he stands defeated, but not absent in the current age in which we live. So he still 2 Corinthians 4, 4 blinds the minds of unbelievers. So there's an active blinding of people that don't know Christ. The Apostle Paul, in two different places, talks about whether the people in the church know the wiles of the devil. No matter what your view of how long human history is, satan's had a very long time to practice his craft and he is crafty. We are young as individual people and even as a Bible people, in comparison to Satan. So he is crafty and is the enemy of your soul and of God. One of the places that he gets into relationships, into families and into churches is in this way of breaking up relationships.

Speaker 3: 29:01

Apostle Paul talks about not giving a foothold to the devil, and that was, in particular, about anger. Anger is interesting. It comes up quite a lot in churches. Anger is a secondary emotion is what the counselors would teach us and it's related to being hurt, and people are commonly hurt in churches because of change, because change represents loss and loss induces grief, and many times people respond to grief with anger. And so there's a complex sort of dynamic here where Satan wants your own relationship with God to be messed up. He wants your marriage relationship and your family wrecked Seems to be doing a pretty good job with that, best I can tell and he wants churches to be wrecked because it's the place where people are restored to relationship with God, and so you should not underestimate this roaring lion. Cs Lewis, I think it was said that there's two mistakes that Christians make related to Satan. One is that he's in every place. He's right behind the microphone chair. Be careful, sorry that hisses.

Speaker 3: 30:10

Or that he's nowhere, and there's a sobriety about the way that we think about the enemy of our souls, absolutely, and yet that we don't have to be fearful and live in fear, because he who lives in you is greater than he who lives in the world. There it is. That's what Jesus said right. So Holy Spirit living within us is meant to help us not fear the devil, but be conscious, be aware of him. That's the language that we're told and I ask myself when I get in my Bible reading, try and listen through the Bible every year and in my Bible reading I come across those passages about the wiles of the devil and I ask myself would I recognize it? Would I see it? Can I see it what his wiles are? And how would I see it? What his wiles are and how would I address it? My own life, my own relationships and in the churches that we get to help, can we see it? Do we want to or do we want to just say, well, that person just doesn't get it Right.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Which is easier. If we simply got rid of that person, this problem would be solved. Oh yes, that is almost always what happens in church.

Speaker 3: 31:22

I read that book when.

Speaker 2: 31:23

I was in seminary, yeah. So Satan comes in and he says, hey, fear God. And then, as soon as we do, he's like, hey, you're guilty. By the way, you should be ashamed of that. That's awesome. That's what he does.

Speaker 3: 31:37

That's awesome. It's what he does, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:45

And it's so, it's so, it's so. Man, it really does make me angry, because I I see this a lot and he's so effective at it and he doesn't really have to do anything. But that, right, that is. It is a tried and true method to get to us, because we, as broken, fallen people, are looking for security, we're looking for a guarantee. And he's like, hey, there's no guarantee with god.

Speaker 2: 32:09

So let me tell you something else over function right, control the situation and as soon as we do yeah, you really did he starts telling the truth here.

Speaker 3: 32:20

Here's the reality.

Speaker 2: 32:20

Yeah, you messed that up too. And then he says just as a kicker, by the way, under function, don't go back to gut, you can't handle this, he's going to reject you. And it immediately blows out into all these other relationships. And, as good Christians and as good church leaders, we hide it, we hide from it within ourselves, we hide it. We hide from it within ourselves, we hide it from our families, we hide it from the brothers that we walk with who are supposed to hold us accountable. Because we are ashamed, because we are afraid, because if something is seen, we might get the boot, we might lose the security, and Satan's back there the entire time laughing, and it makes me angry.

Speaker 3: 32:59

So what's the answer to this?

Speaker 2: 33:00

That's where we need to land the plane for this app.

Speaker 3: 33:02

Right, so it's fascinating to me that this, you know we've been thinking about Romans 12. We sort of landed on that in a couple of places here in this episode. It's very interesting to me Romans 12 is the Romans 12 one's the hinge in the book of Romans. So think about, think about the mind of the apostle Paul. He looks at the Christians in Rome, the hinge in the book of Romans. So think about the mind of the apostle Paul. He looks at the Christians in Rome, the church that's there, and he goes man, you guys, you got some problems there. I want to help you with those problems. They obviously had some challenges with gifts, with spiritual gifts, right, at least among others, right. And he says how do I help those folks in the church in Rome be more mature Christians, be a better family together?

Speaker 3: 33:50

as a group of people, yeah, and he spends eight chapters re-preaching the gospel to them. Yeah, and so this is instructive. When we see dysfunction in ourselves, when we see dysfunction in our relationships, whether it's marriage or friendships, or in a small group in your church, or among the leadership in the church, or in a whole church, what does the church most need? It most needs to hear the gospel again, and that I don't think that that, that, while a simple answer, I don't believe is simplistic, because understanding the gospel deeply and learning how to apply it broadly across your life, I think is growing as a Christian. Right, it's, and it's what's growing in maturity as a Christian, because if I live as a person who no longer fears because love casts out perfect, perfect love casts out fear I no longer feel guilty because all of my guilt has been taken away in Jesus.

Speaker 3: 34:50

God can't find my sins because he hid them behind his back, he threw them in the ocean, he separated them as far as the East is from the West. I couldn't possibly be guilty. Instead of shame, which produces distance between people, God says I want you in my family and I want you in my family so much I'm going to give up my only son for you. And so it's the opposite of shame and distance. It's drawn near, it's invitation to the family. And so this is why the gospel is the solution for our dysfunction, right, it's what takes away our fear, our guilt and our shame, restores relationship with God and that gives us hope that relationship with ourselves and others can be better than they've been.

Speaker 2: 35:37

That same relational healing flows outward. In the same way, the fracturing flows out in impact. That healing flows out, that restoration flows out from my relationship with God to my relationship with myself, to relationship with all the people around me. And at the end of the day, jesus didn't die just so I could be free from sin, right, he died so that I could be adopted as a son into the family of God. Yep, have that relationship, the relationship that existed within the Trinity in eternity past, that I could be brought into that. Yeah, yep. Did you read the Screwtape Letters? Yeah, so at one point, the Screwtape Letters is a great story.

Speaker 3: 36:21

It's marvelous one-man show if you've ever seen it as well.

Speaker 2: 36:22

It is uh it. The basic premise here is it's being written from the perspective it's a conversation between a demon lieutenant and a demon underling, as the demon lieutenant is teaching the demon underling how to be a proper demon and rescue a human from the clutches of the enemy, who is God. At one point, he's talking about the enemy's purpose. That, this being God's purpose. His purpose is that he would bring the humans into himself so that they would share oneness yet still be distinct, still maintain their distinctiveness and their personhood inside of him, which is disgusting, our father. His purpose is that we would take the humans and completely consume them.

Speaker 2: 37:11

Take them into ourselves eat them, consume them so that they are no more, and we have taken their power. That picture has been very instructive of me. For me, yeah, as I consider, what is it god's after? Because it's god did not die so I could have a good life. God did not die simply so I could get over my porn addiction or my alcohol addiction or my cigarette addiction or whatever addiction it is I have, that I'm trying to cope with this life through right, cope with my anxiety in this life. Yeah, god sent his son, who willingly came and laid down his life, so that I could be a child of God, welcomed into the family, welcomed into the inner sanctum of his home as a full partner, as a full family member.

Speaker 3: 37:58

And the challenge for you is how would you be different as a person if you believe that, if you own that, if that was what was the mainstay of the way you thought about relationship with God, relationship with yourself and relationship with others? That's what we're trying to say. A family systems theory is a good observation of how dysfunction happens and gives good descriptors and ways of language and things like that, but it is not a solution.

Speaker 2: 38:27

the gospel is a solution in the next episode we will start to unpack a theological basis more for for family systems therapy as a whole, so we'll get into some definitions there. We invite you to stick with us. This is going to be a fun season, I believe. I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. Thank you for stopping by with us and, you know, tell a friend, we'd love for you to share this with someone. Give us a like, subscribe, whatever those things are that you can do. We invite you to do with absolute pressure coming from us for you to conform to this requirement from me. That's said tongue-in-cheek.

Speaker 1: 39:03

We'll see you later. Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast on 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: 39:42

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. Bye for now, thank you.