Introduction to Church Systems

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Welcome to the Church . Renewal Podcast .

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I'm Matt . I'm Jeremy .

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Churches , like families , are systems that seek stability , for better or worse . So when equilibrium is built around dysfunction , churches instinctively resist change , even healthy spirit-led transformation . In this episode , we explore why congregations gravitate back to the status quo . We'll unpack key systems , theory concepts like homeostasis and the identified patient , and consider why leaders must emphasize process over content if they want to guide their people toward gospel-centered renewal .

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We're going to jump right in . I don't know how I'm doing the intro , so maybe I'll just cut all this out , but if I don't , you know , welcome to season four of the Church Renewal Podcast with Jeremy and Matt Not the same listener . Anyway , that's a waste of space right there . In olden days that would be tape that someone would actually have to cut out and drop .

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And then take the yeah magic tape to the next section . I've heard of guys .

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I've heard stories about guys who , while the tape was rolling , could take scissors and just snip it in real time to then . That's crazy and it's it's insane . I mean , we're talking about guys who have like 50 years experience right tape in that . Anyway , that's not what we're here for . So here we are , episode two of the church mail podcast and , uh , season four .

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In the first episode we laid a foundation of theological groundwork for church dysfunction . Why does it happen ? What does ? What is church life supposed to look like ?

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In this episode I wanted to lay a foundation for why we would apply a family systems theory to church coaching and and the perspective that I want to kind of approach this from is going through and gaining a better understanding of the family motif that is throughout scripture .

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Because , where I come from , it's really easy to think about the fact that Jesus died for me , because he loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life , because he wants to sanctify me , because I have been accepted in the beloved , and there's a whole lot of individuality in this . Obviously , I'm responsible

Family Motif Throughout Scripture

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for my walk with God . I'm responsible to be growing in the disciplines . I'm responsible to be guiding my kids and my wife and my family and doing those things , but I'm an American . I'm responsible to be guiding my kids and my wife and my family and doing those things , but I'm an American . I'm a red-blooded American and I think predominantly in terms of what my individual responsibilities are , what my individual rights are and what you can or cannot correctly require or expect of me , because I am a separate person .

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Don't tread on me yeah , this is one of the things that came up a lot in coven . This is kind of like no , the most important thing for any governmental organization or other person to do is to honor me as an individual . That is the most important thing , full , full stop .

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Full stop . And there's a very large swath of our evangelical brethren who would fall into that harder line , libertarian view that there really should be no governments over me other than God and so , as long as I'm not hurting you and you're not hurting me , there shouldn't be any kind of control , because I am the most important letter .

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Which misses , scripturally , the connection that we're made for between other people . Right Differentiation of self is that I hold on to my own values and goals while remaining emotionally connected to you and yet being willing to stand up to surrounding togetherness pressures . And so the thing that's missed in Western individualism is the unity of relationship between persons in families and in collections of families that we find in churches . And so there's a mistake , if you will , that we're trying to help correct , which is that we're as much made for relationship in family and church as anything else . Relationship will persist in the new heavens and new earth . Collections of people will still exist , and so we're made for community , and one of the ways that is addressed in the new family of God is community , is local congregations , so the things that get messed up in families end up leading over into churches . So let's think a little bit Jared . When you think about family throughout the scriptures , where does your brain go ?

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The first place it went , as I was thinking about this conversation , was Luke's genealogy of Jesus Because , unlike Matt , why are all the genealogies there ?

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Do you know the answer to this question ? Of course I do . Excellent , I've been waiting my whole life for this .

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That's in next week's podcast .

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Oh , you're going to make me wait .

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Luke gets to the very end of his genealogy and he says Adam the son of God . I could be completely wrong about that , it might be Matthew , it could have been Tiberius , but I'm pretty sure it was Luke . So if I'm wrong I'll just snip that up too , but I'm sure it was luke . And he says adam the son of god , going backwards from jesus and backwards from jesus in this genealogy , talking about not just laying out but demonstrating that that there is a line from God to Jesus . He is the king , a family line , a family line . Now . We started in the last episode and we talked about the fact that relationship started because it comes out of who God is in his triune nature . And when I think about scripture , I think about the motifs that are used in scripture . Motif is a word that theologians in Bible doctrine classes love to use . We talked about motifs of this and motifs of that , and I got sick of motifs , but it's the right word here .

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Reoccurring literary device . There it is .

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When I think about the relationships that are described in scripture , I think about Adam being described as the son of God , being created in the image of God , and the very next example that we see of something being created in someone's image is Adam having his own son .

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We then move forward and we have motifs of the family of Abraham , we have the family of Moses , we have the family of Israel and of Jacob . We then move into the kingdom period and we have the family of David and the family of Saul , and we have the outworking of these very specific individual relationships impacting the entire community , while , in the context here and I want to say this clearly David was a king , there wasn't another king running around , at least for most of his reign , for a lot of his reign , there was another king running around , but that's a Bible document , of course , I guess . Anyway , I like those little excurses . When I think about the New Testament , though , and even when we talk about the church , we talk about the church as the bride of Christ . We look at the Old Testament , and we see Israel being talked about as a faithful or a faithless bride , as the betrothed of God . We have Christ coming so that we can be adopted as sons .

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Brought in family as sons and daughters .

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All of these are family descriptions . They're not corporate , they're not community , even it's not neighborhood ,

Western Individualism vs. Biblical Community

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they're family . It's fundamentally family . I see that all over the Bible and while we can talk about the church as a building , we can talk about the church as a body . The primary way that's talked about in the New Testament is as a family .

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Now in our circles we talk about covenantal solidarity . Right , there's a covenantal solidarity with Adam and that has changed in Christ , but it's not a covenantal solidarity that is personal , but not merely personal . So I do have a personal relationship with God , a one-to-one relationship with God , but the point of having that restored relationship with God is that I can take my place in the family of God . That's what I'm restored into , because it's what I was made for . So your picture of the New Heavens and New Earth ought to be groups of people having good times together . It's not just a bunch of individuals . It's not just a bunch of individuals going out on their own and exploring the cosmos , which will be really fun maybe jerry and I'll do some exploring together but it's not simply a group of individuals .

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If your picture of the new heavens , new earth , is that it's just you and you get to go do what you want , what you've always wanted to do , and it requires no , involves no relating to people , which I I think I can understand why ? Because relating to people , which I think I can understand why ? Because relating to people is difficult , right , it's full of anxiety and fear and guilt and shame , the things that we've already talked about . We'll talk about more . So I understand why people would resist relationship , but we're trying to lay out that ideal . What we were made for was a relationship with God , so we could be restored into the family .

Speaker 2 10:02

What's really funny about that ? What makes me chuckle , is that what you're describing right there the antithesis of the proper view of heaven is what Lewis in A Great Divorce describes as hell Lewis . In his fun book , the Great Divorce , he describes this gray city where everyone who comes to live in that city eventually , very quickly , actually moves further away . And so when you get to the bus stop in the center of the city , there's no one there , there's just a whole bunch of empty houses . And millions of miles away someone has just moved again so that they can be further away from their closest neighbor to be able to be on their own . And that's how Lewis , at least for this , is drawing .

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This analogy of . This is what a fractured relationship , a broken relationship with God leads to , because ultimately we want to , we are driven to be completely alone . And when I read Complete Guide to Christian Denominations or something like that , which is a fascinating book that'll put anyone to sleep , I'm reading about the Puritans , and correct me if I'm wrong , but there's some love between the PCA and Puritans Is that correct .

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Okay , and correct me if I'm wrong , but the Unitarian Universalists derive their direct lineage from the Puritans Yep , okay .

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Which is interesting . There's an interesting , actually , that , following the doctrinal history of the Congregationalists , in the .

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Northeast is fascinating , yes , it is . So I will attempt to not offend my independent Baptist brothers here . They are not easily offended . I've heard they are not easily offended , I've heard it . So , yeah , I mean , I think that there's , there's something about the .

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Some people would say that more Eastern cultures are are collectivist . I like to say they're communitarian , because I think that it's it's , it picks up on the on the positive aspect of it . So we've picked on Western individuality , so now we can pick on Eastern communitarianism , because I think that both of them get the biblical view of family wrong . Western individualism says I am an island , I can live on my own , and I think this is a while of the devil , right , right , it's why we have a loneliness epidemic and that's actually turning interestingly . It's turning culturally , which is actually kind of fun to be in church ministry , I think , at this time , because there's some things that are turning , because things got tweaked out so far that people saw that it was a road to nowhere and now they've turned back and that's wonderful for those of us who get to do gospel ministry in this time . So where Western individualism gets it wrong is to say I am an island and that that's the best place to be .

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Where ? Lewis is right that that's actually a description of hell , right ? Where does Eastern communitarianism or collectivism get it wrong ? Right , that that's actually a description of hell , right ? Um , where where does eastern communitarianism or collectivism , um , get it wrong ? I was just coaching a pastor last night in ministering in doing anglic ministry in an asian church very common kind of scenario . I'm doing the english ministry for a first generation immigrant church where the main service is conducted in the , the home language , uh , the folks , which is marvelous , and this pastor working with the English ministry , the kids of the first generation .

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And one of the things that happens in those sorts of churches many times is that there's a lot of surrounding togetherness , pressure to conform , to be a certain way , to act a certain way , to live a certain way , and not necessarily biblical things . And so that's where a communitarian sort of structure that better gets the importance of family and being in groups and being restored to the family of God . It gets that better than Western individualism does . But where it falls off the side of the horse is that it tries to critique and shame people into conformity instead of letting people live out their personal relationship with God in the way that God would have them live it out .

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So I'll say this tongue in cheek , because I think that there are some western individualists that will look at jesus and go like , why would he be with those ribs all those time ? He should have just gone on in his own . So that's where western individualism gets jesus wrong is jesus got the family of god and got being with people and he got community . I think where , where eastern communitarianism gets it wrong is they're kind of like oh , jesus was all wrong . He went against his family , right , he didn't conform to what was expected . And they would see Jesus as doing wrong too where Jesus has obviously done all right . He did everything .

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Yeah , Jesus has done all right for himself .

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Jesus did everything right . So when we look to Jesus as the model this is why Creech's paper about Jesus being the most differentiated human is so helpful is it helps you get a right view of what does it look like to keep your own goals and values ? So differentiation itself . Keep your own goals and values , but stay in emotional connection with other people while standing up to the surrounding togetherness pressure that would push you into something else . Communitarian cultures end up doing the , pushing you to somebody else Western individualist cultures . Their error is they don't necessarily stay emotionally connected to other people in real , vital community .

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Correct , and you know I brought up the UUs , but I could bring up the Brethren as well . You have an entire community built around the guiding light , right , the enthusiasm . And this is getting somewhat deep , I'm sure , for many people who may have no idea what I'm talking about . But in the Quaker movement there was the idea that the light of God was born in each of us and we could follow that . It's what they called the enthusiasm or the God within us . We could follow this , we could know it , it was internal to us and it was our job to find and follow it . When the Reformation happened and Luther stands up and he says hey , this is scripture alone , by faith alone in Christ

Identity and Acceptance in Community

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alone , there was an automatic ditch . That was made possible because one of the impacts of what Luther said was the authority of the Pope is wrong .

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Surrounding togetherness pressure is wrong . Surrounding togetherness pressure .

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Unfortunately , one of the things that can come out of that and I think has come out of that when it's taken to its illogical but an understandable full growth is that all authority is wrong and that's where you have this breakdown Again and we have to look back to the Trinity , where there's authority within the Trinity . There's no question about that . Whatever Jesus was really clear . My Father is the authority . I only do what he tells me to do . I only say what he tells me to say . I'm accountable to him and co-equal to him and accountable to him and my mind goes right , it's a lot to try and take in , yeah .

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As a result of that overthrow of authority , that moving away , that breaking of the authority structure that again comes out of who God is is an all of creation as a part of God's good design for creation , including in families , including in churches . Some churches started to pursue this and say , well , all we need is the Bible . Okay , we don't need the Pope , we just need the Bible . There we go , natural , understandable conclusion from the Reformation . And then some people could say , well , if all I need is the Bible , then I don't really need that preacher guy either yeah , what is ?

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matheson calls this um solo scriptura , not sola scripture , but solo scriptura . Right , which is me and my private interpretation of the bible . One of my transitional pastor one of our transitional pastors calls us the right of that . I retain the right of private interpretation .

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I retain the right of private interpretation .

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I retain the right to be wrong . Yes , sometimes wrong , but never in doubt . That's right .

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That's right . Just ask my wife .

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So this , this ditch that Jer is describing , is that we can sort of fall off on the side of this Western individualism where it's kind of like I have the right to figure everything out on my own and I don't need anybody else , I don't need correction , and of course that's a loss of our sense two things at least of depravity , that I'm going to mess things up on my own , I'm going to interpret things in a way that serves me .

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But it's also the sense that I've lost , the sense of even , apart from depravity of my creaturely limitedness . In the new heavens and new earth some people will need new jobs , other people won't . People who are teachers won't need new jobs because there still will be a lot of learning to do , because we won't automatically know all things and we couldn't know all things . We'll all be on a path of learning , and so that loss of a sense of both limitedness and depravity shows itself in people that sort of just sort of live on their own and they don't embrace the goodness of the family of God , which I think is the ditch that , at least in our context here in the US , is more likely for the people that we are going to run into .

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They need to be aware of this one . Yes , yep , absolutely , um , and there is , there is , and it's been talked about a lot , there's a lot of literature especially recently it's been written about it that there is a togetherness , pressure , even within the evangelical church , that is pushing back against that with from an authority perspective , from a basis of authority , even if they aren't calling it the basis of authority and this is a whole other podcast branch , if you will here , but I'm bringing it up because of this . I believe there are at least two things that we cannot give ourselves , that we must receive from someone else , at least for the context of this conversation right , identity and acceptance . And we , we cannot live a life of integrity , and by that I mean non fractured . A mirror that doesn't have a crack in it is a mirror that has integrity . A mirror that you've thrown a shoe at and now has a very nice stained glass effect , is a mirror that is fractured , that has lost its integrity .

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For us as individuals , for we as humans , when we don't have identity and when we don't have acceptance , we are fractured , and this is where I am very grateful for all of my colleagues in the helping professions , whether religious or secular , who see the hurting and the brokenness of people and are motivated to go

Gospel-Centered Renewal in Churches

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towards them with help . The problem is , as we ended the last episode with , unless you have the gospel , you can't get to identity or acceptance . They are always marginal and always contingent and , at the end of the day , where , because of how we built our psychological models and our western self-actualization , religious thing , all of that ultimately we are told should come from within us . And it's preposterous , it's absurd . I can never tell myself who I am .

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I was born not accurately not no , I was born into a family . I received a last name , I received a heritage , I received an expectation of what it meant to be a man , a boy , a son , a father , a sephirati a christian , a sibling , a community member , a neighbor .

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All of this I received from the people into whose family I was born and this is what I'm passing on to my family . This is what it means to be a young man . This is what it means to be a student . This is what it means to be a sibling .

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This is why you don't hit your sister , this is why you don't grab your brother and start scratching at his eyes , because this is what you've been called to and even though this is what you want , even though , I agree , you feel this deeply , it is legitimately a desire that you have right now to do , and you have the freedom and the control of yourself to make yourself do this . It's wrong and it's not who you were made to be , and I know that because you're my child and I'm asking you to trust me and to listen to me in this moment , to receive the identity that I'm handing to you so that you can live a life of integrity . That , what I just said , goes against the backbone of the American Psychological Association , the American Social Work Association , but it is fundamentally scriptural .

Speaker 3 24:05

That identity is received , not… my way of putting it is it's received , it's not worked for . If you try and work for an identity , you try and work's received , it's not worked for . If you try and work for an identity , you try and work for acceptance . That's where you get paralyzed , and yet it's the gospel-less way to try and help people solve their problems is you're the manufacturer of your identity , you're the manufacturer of your acceptance . So go do it , pull yourself up by your bootstraps right when , in Bible terms , we're supposed to receive identity , first from God as accepting into his family , and then in his providence , to receive that I'm a son , I'm a brother , I'm a husband , I'm a father , I'm a friend , and those are different aspects of identity to receive , not always easy to receive , but they're meant to be received and even enjoyed , despite the fact that they're very , very challenging at times because of my own brokennesses , my own sin as well as those around me .

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Talk about why acceptance has to be in community .

Speaker 2 25:18

Well , let me tell you where I get this from . Jesus goes down to the Jordan River . His cousin John sees him and says Behold , the Lamb of God Goes down to the water , comes up out of the water . I can fast forward . He's on this mountain of peter and james and john and all of a sudden there's two more party crashers , there's elisha and moses , and they're bright , they're very bright . A lot of oil , a lot of glisten I don't know if they had the foundation on that day .

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And out of the heavens , in both cases , comes this voice that says this is my son , in whom I am well pleased . Would it have been enough for God to say this is my son , because that could have ended with this is my son , listen to him , this is my son , trust him , this is my son , obey him . Could have been this guy's doing really well , I approve , but it wasn't . In both cases , god out of the cloud says this is my son . Identity , in whom I'm well pleased . Acceptance , those two things equate to shalom , they equate to peace within the relationship . Wholeness . And when we walk into a church , when we enter into a body of believers , as you say , a covenantal relationship that represents the family of God into which we have been grafted , into which we have been adopted . There's two things that come with that An identity of who we are in Christ , with this group of believers , and there's acceptance . As Paul says , we've been completely accepted in the Beloved . And I come here and I fellowship with you , whether it's on Sunday morning or on Wednesday morning or on Thursday night or whenever it is , or over coffee on Tuesday morning at 530 in the morning , because that's what Christian guys do . We say to each other yeah , you're right , you did screw up there . Yeah , you're right . That was . Hey , you're wrong . The way you spoke to your wife I saw it last night that was pretty bad and you should be doing better . And yet you're accepted because of Christ .

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And here's the thing , right . So we talked about fear , guilt and shame . Fear is God's not going to take care of me , and because God's not going to take care of me , I'm going to start over-functioning and I'm going to work for this for myself . I got to take care of myself Exactly . And here's the thing Jesus did everything , perfectly Thankfully , the work that we feel compelled to do . He did the guilt that we are rightly accused of . He said I'm going to take that , the shame that we rightfully should feel . He said I'm going to despise that . I'm going to do this . I'm going to pay the that . I'm going to do this . I'm going to pay the penalty here for your debt and in exchange , as the great exchange passage says , I'm going to give you the righteousness of God . I'm going to take your sin , I'm going to give you righteousness in the worst deal that God has ever made and the best deal man has ever received .

Speaker 2 28:42

Identity , acceptance means integrity , peace . So when I look at a church and I see a church , that's you know , it's just , it's grooving along wherever it is in its church cycle . If you want to know more about the church life cycle , go back to the previous episodes from the last couple of seasons . Churches go through phases . They go through growth , they go through loss , they go through pain , they go through grief , they go through a transition , transition and it's a whole group of people called by one identity to be together , accepted together and accepting each other because of how we've been accepting christ . And that's what this function starts to come in . When those things get messed up , we lose it , I lose it , I forget that god has accepted me . I start trying to work for my own righteousness , my own salvation . I said it tongue-in-cheek but I think it really does bear . I asked Matt a question before we started recording . I said so . Should we talk about how the Westminster Confession of Faith leads to a prosperity gospel mentality ? I hope you listeners are laughing at that statement .

Speaker 3 30:55

Mm-hmm , that was the promise Of sorts for sure , right ? If you put the quarter in the slot machine , pull the handle . This is the result you , I'm your symbol , yeah , yeah , and I think that this is one of the reasons why I think it's Pete Scazzaro who says that the mark of maturity as a Christian is love , and I think that's just echoing , paul , what you just said . So I think that there at PCA by the way , it's Presbyterian Church in America , it's a denomination that I'm ordained in and that some of our listeners , at least , are a part of I think what you're trying to point

Self-Differentiation and Church Health

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out is that sometimes we look at church dysfunction and we think , if only people were taught well , all would be well , and it's a part truth concealing a whole truth , because the whole truth , right , is that , yeah , people do need to be taught well .

Speaker 3 32:36

That's part of discipling people , but we're discipling people into profound gospel belief . If you look at 1 Timothy 1.9 , I believe it is that the way that Paul imagines the gospel is that it sits at the hub of other doctrines . Everything flows from or flows back to the gospel , and so that's what we're trying to get people grounded in , not just that they can articulate certain views , but that when the gospel sits at the hub of their identity and their own acceptance , then they reflect that to the people around them in marriage and family and in church . And when they don't , that's where we see church dysfunction come from , and so do people need to be taught the doctrines of the Bible . Of course they do right .

Speaker 3 33:27

That's part of what it means to disciple people . But what are we discipling people into and what's the tools that we're using to disciple them ? I like the newer phrase that we're apprenticing people to Jesus , because I think it more accurately represents what the scripture talks about when it talks about discipleship that there's a way that Jesus walked and operated , and that's what he calls us into , to the kind of identity and acceptance that he experienced and wants us to experience in the family of God .

Speaker 2 34:03

And as we do that , we build and we strengthen that family , yep , and there are authority structures that are rightly there and there are responsibilities that flow out of that authority structure . We'll talk about this , I think , in the next episode , about how relationship dynamics work , with the distance between relationship , the direction of that relationship , the strength of the relationship , all those things We'll talk about , I hope , the Trinity and the way that the Trinity works in that . But I'm thinking right now about Job who , out of love for his children and because of his responsibility as their authority , as their father , made sacrifices for his children's sake in case they may have sinned . Interesting .

Speaker 2 34:54

There's so much wrapped up in this that doesn't fall into I'm an individual , I'm answerable to god alone . To the other end , that says I'm . I'm not an individual , I'm . I'm a cell that's about to be eaten up by all these other cells , which I think is called cancer .

Speaker 2 35:13

Um , there's a way here that is right and that way family systems theory talks about as being self-differentiated , able to know who you are in the midst of surrounding , togetherness , pressure , while also remaining emotionally present and engaged , connected . Yeah , that's what we're going to spend the rest of the season talking through , cause you know , Matt and I think that this is really important to um , not just to understand , but to be able to walk out well in churches and in families and in communities , and those concentric overlapping circles , what it means to be made and those concentric overlapping circles , what it means to be made in the gut . With that , we can stick a fork in it here and call this episode done . We invite

Closing Thoughts and Resources

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you to share this with a friend . Send someone you want , we'd love that and join us again when the next episode drops . We'll talk to you soon . Bye-bye .

Speaker 1 36:18

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Speaker 1 36:56

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