Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Church. Renewal Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:04

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

Speaker 1: 0:06

Systems, whether in families, organizations or churches, naturally strive for equilibrium, but when that equilibrium is dysfunctional, it fiercely resists healthy change. In this episode, Jeremy and Matt explore the foundational concepts of family systems, theory, homeostasis, emotional process process versus content, triangles, sabotage and differentiation. Through vivid analogies and church-centered applications, they unpack why anxious systems resist transformation, why change is always experienced as loss, and how wise leaders can shepherd congregations through resistance, with patience and gospel-centered hope.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Welcome back to WCRP, your jazz radio, where we're going to slow it down now. So grab someone special and settle in. Matt, we're going to pull back and talk about differentiation. We're going to dive a little bit deeper today and over the next this episode and the following we're going to talk specifically about some concepts of differentiation that are both critical and some that may even be missing, that we want to add to the whole conversation now to make it stronger. So I'll set you up here.

Speaker 2: 1:22

The idea of differentiation you and I were just talking about before we got on mics started in biology with cellular structures from simple cells same, all of one kind, and as they multiply, at some point a cell distinguishes itself. It becomes distinct in kind from the other cells. Up until that point, the cells can multiply as many times as they want to or need to, and they can also differentiate into any other type of cell. But once a cell has been differentiated, it is no longer free to be any other kind of cell. It now can only reproduce itself as the type of cell that it is.

Speaker 2: 2:15

And the concept of cancer is that cells come in because they are misshapen and they want to take over Because they also have a not a volitional thing, but they just want to multiply because that's what life does at a very basic level. Differentiation, uh, discomfort with differentiation is me saying hey man, I'm not comfortable with you being you because I'd like you to be more like me. So if you could maybe hurry up and get to that, and if you don't, I'll sabotage the relationship.

Speaker 3: 2:49

Yeah, so think about in your abdomen, your stomach and your liver touch each other. The cells of the liver and cells of the stomach touch each other, roughly speaking, think about it that way. So a stomach cell is not a liver cell and a liver cell is not a stomach cell, but they touch each other. Roughly speaking, think about it that way. So a stomach cell is not a liver cell and a liver cell is not a stomach cell, but they touch each other. They're in connection, right, and actually they're dependent upon each other. So take that over to humans. They are two distinct people, each made in the image of God, each made individually by God and designed to be their own people in connection in community. So when I talk about differentiation, when I try and help people with this, I ask them to think about Jared and I are sitting at a round table. I ask them to think about that. There's a line down the middle of the table and that line is what separates the two of us.

Speaker 3: 3:42

There are errors that people make related to differentiation. So remember differentiation is me holding on to my own goals and values while staying emotionally connected to you and resisting the togetherness pressure that you might apply in our relationship to conform to something. So that's a basic idea, all right and so appropriate differentiation is that I'm somebody who can come right up to the line and I can relate to you at the line. You can hug over the line. If you're a married couple, you can make love over the line. You can get very, very close right at the line.

Speaker 3: 4:18

But the errors that people make in differentiation are a couple. One of them is some people never get up to the line. They've been wounded, they've been hurt. They're family of origin Didn't equip them for a relationship and you can scream from way back from the line and not ever end up emotionally connected to people. And that's an error in differentiation. You're so scared to that you'll be taken over, probably because it was in your history that that did happen, sadly that you never get up to the line, you never get to the place where a close relationship is possible.

Speaker 2: 4:55

That's it. Just ask a question here. Does that not getting? Is that staying far away from the line? Is that what you would also describe as under functioning?

Speaker 3: 5:04

Actually, I would think about it more like like a cutoff, like in Bowen theory. Cutoff is that I can't find a way to bear with the anxiety in the system, so I basically leave it. So I cut myself off from relation. We even talk about that. I cut her off and Bowen that's what he would call cutoff. Right, is that the one way to react to the anxiety in a system, or the anxiety that I feel about the system, is just to stay distant from it? But the staying back from the line we can all relate to people that keep their distance right. We use that right, and so I'm trying to help people kind of have visual ways to think about it.

Speaker 3: 5:42

Okay, so that one error is I never get up to the line. Another error is I step over the line. So when I exert surrounding togetherness pressure on someone else, I'm stepping over the line into their space and trying to influence them towards something. And this isn't influence them towards good things. This isn't try and tell them the gospel. This isn't love them in their disciples, gospel. This isn't love them in their discipleship. This isn't help them see something kindly that they're not seeing. It's not any of those kinds of things. It's more. It would be more like this Jerry, you really shouldn't drink coffee anymore. It's not good for you, it's bad on your blood pressure and you yeah, you know you, you shouldn't, you shouldn't drink coffee anymore.

Speaker 2: 6:27

We, we both have coffee cups in front of us. I heard that should. So where there's a should, there's shame, right.

Speaker 3: 6:33

So surrounding togetherness pressure, uh, we use the it was just your Thomas illustration last time or sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, right, that's a surrounding togetherness pressure, and sometimes it's innocuous, like hopefully that Shatama's in-laws could laugh that off. Sometimes it's not so innocuous. Think about kids in school and it's kind of like you don't have the cool clothes or you don't have the cool shoes, or you can't buy the newest glasses or the newest phone, or you're that family like ours where you don't get cellular until you're 16. Right, right, and that surrounding togetherness pressure is not so innocuous and we see it in kids, but it's huge in adults too. Once you begin to see this, you can't unsee it.

Speaker 2: 7:23

Recognize that almost all advertising and marketing is an attempt at surrounding togetherness pressure to conform you towards something we've we touched on this a little bit in one of the last two episodes, but it's the concept here is there's something that I want you to know and do, but instead of coming to you and saying, hey, I'm asking you to make this change because I'm uncomfortable with the situation, is I try to make you uncomfortable with the situation so that you change to what I want.

Speaker 3: 7:52

Right, and in that you step over the line into someone else's space, the space that God has given them to manage. You're trying to manage their space for them, and the worst cases this ends up as a person who's controlling. In the very worst cases, this ends up as a person who's abusive, right, okay. So one error is you never get up to the line. Another error in differentiation you notice that I'm labeling these as errors, and I think that's important. I think that sin can happen here, but many times it's more in the arena of mistake or error. Okay, so another mistake. So some people don't come up to the line at all. That's a mistake.

Speaker 3: 8:36

Some people step over the line into other people's spaces that's a mistake. There's also a mistake, when someone steps over the line into your space, that you don't give them a gentle shove back across the line. Okay, and so that's an error in differentiation as well, because you fail to the person who's been stepped into. You're like what did I do wrong? Well, what you didn't do is you didn't defend your space, you didn't hold on to your values and goals in the face of togetherness pressure. So the way that some people react to that is they retreat. They would call that in family systems theory. They call that adaptation. Right, you give up on it, you let the line move, you step back and draw a new line.

Speaker 3: 9:22

The way other people react to someone stepping into their space they get angry, they blow up, they're reactive, they don't give up on their goals and values, but they kind of blow up when other people step across the line. Not that one of those are helpful, by the way. Attitude or reactivity, instead, it's to say I hear what you're, it's the gentle shove in the chest back across the line. Dear Gentle, shove in the chest, back across the line. Jerry, I hear what you're saying, but I really love iced coffee. My doctor has told me how much I can have each day and my blood pressure will be fine if I stay within that amount, and that's the gentle push back across the line right and when we don't do that.

Speaker 2: 10:04

That's an error in differentiation as well. I just want to jump in here to say what you're talking about. You're using differentiation, but this also hits very solidly on identity.

Speaker 3: 10:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:15

I want to be able to define your identity and the way that we are talking about differentiation is I am responsible for maintaining my identity, which means you can't give me my identity. You're my father okay, you're going to give me my identity. You're my pastor.

Speaker 2: 10:32

You're going to give me some parts of my identity, but fundamentally, my identity was given to me by my heavenly father because he adopted me as his son, by my spiritual older brother, because he called me his friend and his brother and has given me all of his riches and has given me his reputation and told me his record, yep, yep that's where my identity fundamentally comes from, that's where it's based on and when you come in and you, you want to now apply pressure to change my identity, it's my responsibility and the gift that god's given to me to say god's already defined this for me and I understand it makes you uncomfortable, but that's your problem, you and god issue that's a you problem, me issue.

Speaker 3: 11:16

Yeah, one of my friends I I love the way he put it he's had to go into very difficult background. Uh, has been sexually abused by a cousin when he was a kid and has been doing counseling and he's gotten free at saying and I think this is good that sounds like a you problem and I think that that is really really helpful, because a lot of times, people will come to us because they're uncomfortable and Jared's pointed this out they're uncomfortable, so they come to us to relieve their discomfort, when God has no expectation on us to be different than we are. One of the things that is freeing about this, when we think about trying to apply these concepts biblically, is that Jesus always lived on the expectation of his Father and felt very free as long as he was within that expectation of his father, just to keep going whether he met other people's expectations or not. And that is something that Christian leaders would do well to get closer to. And this talking about differentiation is an attempt to do that, because if you can distinguish between what God expects of you and what others expect of you God expects of you and what others expect of you and be willing to fulfill what God expects of you, even if it doesn't fulfill what others expect of you or sometimes what you expect of yourself. We'll talk about this in the next episode, but in more depth. But if you can get focused on what does God expect of me and just walk in that each day, that is freedom, that's the differentiated place to be and it's actually what's needed in order to lead with courage and clarity.

Speaker 3: 12:53

The differentiated leader, the non-anxious leader. So let's talk about that. That's a big phrase. That was actually my introduction to all of this was sitting with a group of people who are doing a diagnostic of a church. This is Vital Church Ministry. Dave Miles was on our last season. Hopefully we'll get him interviewed for this season as well. A good friend.

Speaker 2: 13:13

And a team Matt keeps on giving me more work here in the podcast.

Speaker 3: 13:15

I know, in February of 2013, I was privileged to sit in with a team that Dave Miles' group had trained to do a church diagnostic. Yeah, and the people on the team I was unfamiliar with all of this. People on the team were noting about the pastor who was the leader there, that he didn't exhibit a non-anxious presence. So this was my introduction to all of this. I had never heard that phrase before and later. That phrase comes out of friedman and that's what got me into this whole area of study. Okay, so what's a non-anxious presence? The first thing to say shatam was very good on this is that you don't feel like. It's not that you don't feel anxious inside, right? My wife my wife comes to me and she says I don't know if there's enough money to pay the bills this month. There's not a chance that I'm not going to feel anxious inside if she says that. Right, but the non-anxious presence is to say, okay, I may feel anxious inside, but it's not going to be helpful to the situation for me to react to my internal anxiety by being anxious or fearful externally. Yes, what does my wife need in that circumstance for me as the leader of the family, and what does the situation. What's the situation need? What she needs is for me to say, okay, um, we've got money that we can draw from somewhere else, um, I can take care of that for us and there'll be enough money to pay the bills and the Lord will take care of us. Even if we draw down on our savings, the Lord will take care of us. So I can react to what internal anxiety I might have with a non-anxious response.

Speaker 3: 15:08

Sotama gives an example in the book. Jared talked about the Christmas Eve service in a previous one, no-transcript. I could always count on you to tell me how you feel, which is fascinating as a response, because he stays connected to her. He doesn't change what they're going to do. He doesn't respond anxiously. That we felt great anxiety inside.

Speaker 2: 15:54

He gave her a response that helped her stay connected to her, which he confesses, he describes, he felt very anxious, he felt very anxious, but he gently pushed her back across the line and I'll point out, he first pulled himself back to a proper spot absolutely so.

Speaker 3: 16:12

the non-anxious presence is not somebody that doesn't feel this is super important. It's not that you're so, you're such a cool cucumber that you don't feel anxiety. When I think about the nature of system anxiety in this sense and again, this is not the it's important to distinguish here that this kind of anxiety that we're talking about is system anxiety. It's not what you might go to a counselor for where, say, in the post-COVID era, lots of people are experiencing depression anxiety. It's not sort of that generalized. This is within relationships, within church systems, right, that people feel discomfort about many times, about change, and yet we're the leaders coming in trying to bring change and so we kind of induce anxiety by trying to lead change and that's uncomfortable for people and they express that discomfort to us, right, sometimes very freely, very freely, very freely, and what you're saying is a non-anxious presence, is a person who is comfortable with your lack of comfort.

Speaker 3: 17:19

Yeah, so that's the one of the ways that you grow in. This is again Jesus is a great model in so many ways about this, in so many ways about this. But one of the ways that you grow in this emotional maturity, you grow in your growth in this arena as a Christian, is that you get more comfortable with people around you being in discomfort and don't feel the need to relieve their discomfort.

Speaker 2: 17:53

Now I want to be careful here. You're not saying that you're a narcissist a-hole who doesn't care about what people are experiencing and so you do whatever you want.

Speaker 3: 18:02

No.

Speaker 3: 18:03

That would be its own issue, that would be its own issue. So this is more like, let me put it in. Okay, so I talked about my son in the last episode who got in a car accident and called us and one response could have been for us to run right out there and be alongside of him and be there until the tow truck came and you know, and really tried to sort of rescue him, and that would have been what you would define as over-functioning, doing for him what he can and should do for himself, and it should do for himself. And his temptation could have been to under-function, which is to appeal for help because he's uncomfortable and doesn't want to come to emotional maturity himself and handle his own problems.

Speaker 2: 18:44

And this isn't a 16-year-old who's just gotten his license. You have an adult child here.

Speaker 3: 18:48

Right. And so our son coming to maturity is to leave him somewhat in that discomfort and us being okay with him being in discomfort, because the only way that he will mature is if he works through his own discomfort and we don't rescue him from it, which is very hard, which is difficult. It's difficult with children. I was just sitting with some folks last night and we were talking about this. It's very difficult with children not to rescue them, but it's also essential to their growing up, to their maturing, for them to learn how to manage their own emotional discomfort. When we put it in the pastoral setting, many times people come to pastors with their emotional discomfort and the great majority of pastors my estimate is about 75% of people, of pastors they're not just people-oriented, they're people-driven, they're tempted towards people-pleasing, but they're what I would call externally motivated or externally driven Okay. What I would call externally motivated or externally driven Okay. So they their. Their sense of their sense of whether things are okay in the world relates around what people around them think of them.

Speaker 2: 20:05

Okay, I wonder what they're thinking right now as they listen to this and that that that so that can end up.

Speaker 3: 20:14

If you don't, you know, kind of be careful with it, that can end up in people losing, and of course, there's all these warnings to church leaders about not being people losing. So this is not a new temptation. You're experiencing an old temptation. It's not the temptation of everybody. That's not a temptation that I have. Um, no one has ever mistaken me for having that temptation. My temptation is a very different one, which is more related to goals and outcomes and things like that, and we'll talk about those differences in the next episode and the dangers related to both of them, because they can both be dangerous.

Speaker 3: 20:45

The kind of pastor I'm thinking about right now is about 75% of pastors and they go into a room of people. They try and figure out what the expectations are, what's the surrounding togetherness, pressure feel like in this room, and they try and match up to those expectations. Right, and that, I think, is a dangerous way to live. Frankly, it'll kill you because you're not going to the room saying what is Jesus expected of me here? Yes, and so when I go to a room, I've got to think about Jer and I are here today and tomorrow recording, and my prayer is yeah, we've got goals, things to achieve, we've got episodes to get through to record. But what does Jesus most expect of me? He expects me to love Jer and his wife and his kids. That's what Jesus expects of me and his wife and his kids. That's what Jesus expects of me. And if we can simply walk in that kind of freedom where I understand what Jesus expects of me and I'm content if, by the working of the Spirit, by the power of the Spirit, out of the freedom that I have in my identity in Christ, in my acceptance into his family, if I can live in the middle of that, that is an awesome free life, that experience, what I've just described.

Speaker 3: 22:05

Bowen would call that I'm a differentiated self and that I exist in community with other people, connected to other people but well aware of my own goals and values and living in the midst of them. The non-anxious leader is the one who's able to do that. So only if you're differentiated can you be non-anxious, because if I'm not differentiated, right, if, if I'm hooked to other people, yep then then I'm not going to read. Lead with courage and clarity. I, I'm going to lead out of fear. I'm going to lead this. It's funny that two things can come from the same source, but the bully pastor and that the fearful. I can't go forward. I've got to figure out which way the wind is going. Consensus driven guy consensus. There's good consensus, but this is a bad consensus. This is what I'm thinking about, like, like I can't move until everybody's with finger in the wind.

Speaker 3: 23:12

both of those, even though they look very, very different, they're both not well differentiated, right. Right, because they they need something other than the smile of the father for them to feel okay about themselves, and that's the clue that tells you that they're not differentiated, that they don't have their solidity based out of the gospel. So I told Jared that I think that his emphasizing in this so far in the season and this will pervade through identity and acceptance are really really key, because if I have an identity that I've received from God and I know I'm accepted in his family, that the most important things that will ever be in my brief little stint here on earth are already set, and if that is, way down deep in my soul.

Speaker 3: 24:16

then in any exchange with persons, there's not that much at stake. And this is a critical thing for me as I think about things, and this was taught to me by one of our other founders. He's a board member now. Paul Hahn of our other founders is a board member, paul Hahn, a board member now. Paul Hahn he's taught me to think about what's really at stake and in a lot of interactions, a lot of mistakes that I've made as a leader and as a pastor, when I sit back and diagnose them or whatever, at some point, if I can get down to the bottom, I realized that my reaction was because I felt like I was at stake. Now it's really good if you can get all the way down to the bottom of things, and you can. For me at least, when I get down all the way to the bottom and I see that I was thinking that I was at stake, now the gospel can be applied to me.

Speaker 2: 25:11

Now we get to the content level.

Speaker 3: 25:13

Yeah, because I could never be at stake. Right, that's impossible. I'm held in Jesus' hand. I could not be at stake. It's when I can take, when I get all the way to the bottom and I realize that that I couldn't possibly be at stake, that the gospel, um, and this is a madism, but the gospel enables me to afford to differentiate, yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:44

So why do people struggle to differentiate? It's because they're fearful that if they do, if they do differentiate, that there's going to be some outcome that they don't like, and so they don't. They stay back from the line because they're scared. They step over the line because they fear that this person or this outcome won't happen. They don't push people back across the line because they fear the consequences of that. So fear is always behind. Why we don't differentiate? Our own feelings of discomfort. Is that fair? Do you think that's fair, jared? I think it's very fair. Okay, so we don't.

Speaker 3: 26:24

My way of putting it is a lot of pastors that I've coached, a lot of Christian leaders that I've been able to influence and be with. They didn't feel like they could afford to differentiate. They didn't have something that they could kind of revert to other than what they feared they would lose if they differentiated, progressing to the mean and so yeah, and so what the gospel gives me, if I understand it deeply and I apply it and I'm applying it broadly across my life, which is what I take the Apostle Paul to be doing in his letters helping the people in the churches understand the gospel deeply and then apply it broadly across their lives If I'm doing that with myself, then when I get in one of those circumstances where it's a very difficult person who's at the line and they're already yelling at me and I'm tempted to stay back from the line, or there's a person on the other side of the line or really really, really need to do this or else all will be lost, I'm tempted to step over the line and try and coerce them with my togetherness, pressure to do something right, or somebody steps across the line towards me and I'm fearful of them. I'm fearful if I were to differentiate, what will happen? I need some kind of resource that allows me in those moments to afford the differentiate. I need some kind of currency, some kind of capital that, if I do differentiate, that it's going to be okay and to me it's going back to that core identity and acceptance that it is going to be okay. It all might not be exactly as you want it to be in that moment.

Speaker 3: 28:12

That's not what I'm saying. In fact, many times, if you do differentiate, it will evoke a response. That's why people fear doing it. Read painful there. That was not inserted, yeah, yeah it's. It will evoke a response because many times, when you differentiate, you're disrupting the homeostasis of a system and the system will react. I'm not saying if you differentiate, that people won't respond. What I'm saying is, if you differentiate, if you know that you can afford to, it is better. It's better for you, it's better for the system. It's even better for the person that you've now produced a reaction from. Go back to my son, right, did he like that? We said hang up the phone, take out your wallet, grab your AAA card, call the number and sit there and wait. Did he like that?

Speaker 2: 29:18

I'm guessing probably not.

Speaker 3: 29:20

No, he would have preferred that his mother would have come out there with jumper cables and jumped him and disrupted her entire day. He would have preferred to have been left in his under-functioning. But is it better for him that we resisted that temptation to over function, to step over the line into his space, into what he's responsible for? Is it better for him that we pushed him, in a way that was not hazardous to his health or anything else, to mature?

Speaker 2: 29:52

Yes, I think he should have been nicer. It was not hazardous to his health or anything else to mature. Yes, I think he should have been nicer.

Speaker 3: 29:56

It was good for him, even though it was very uncomfortable for us and for him and for him. So so growing up emotionally is hard, yep, and people resist it us and others.

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yeah and it doesn't matter how old you get no so moses was 40 years old when he went into the wilderness. He was 40 years. He was 80 years old. When he came back to egypt he had an older brother named aaron. Aaron was a spokesperson.

Speaker 2: 30:28

They left egypt and moses goes up onto a mountain for 40 days and while he's up there, the people who watched god separate part the red sea, bring them from slavery, watched moses be god's image on earth, his mouthpiece. They're like hey, we don't know what happened and we need a god. And aaron, the older brother, who is at some point he's his later 80s, early 90s old enough to know better he's like yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about this. What I do know is I don't feel comfortable with this. So give me your gold.

Speaker 2: 31:02

And when moses comes down and he's angry, aaron's response is well, I you know, the people wanted something. So they gave me the gold. I threw it in the fire and out popped this calf, and so I just wanted to make sure that we stay in the right track. So I told him this is Yahweh who delivered you. I'm sorry, what? Where was this gold three months ago when we were going through the wilderness? Where was this gold when we were going through the Red Sea. Where was this calf then? But you're going to tell me, because you're uncomfortable with how I might respond to you, because I'm uncomfortable because Moses is gone. You're going to tell me this is my Yahweh, and Moses, rightly, was pissed, and God was pissed, and God was ready to destroy the Israelites. And Moses steps in the way and says Lord, please don't.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Please remember your word, remember who you are. These are your people and this is your reputation on the line. Moses pushed all of that discomfort right back on God's identity and said for the sake of your reputation, don't do this.

Speaker 3: 32:07

So Aaron's response there is very interesting. That's a response to surrounding togetherness pressure.

Speaker 2: 32:13

We see the same thing with Saul. We see the same thing with there was someone else I was thinking of that I can't think of now. So, saul, we see it all over. We see lots of examples. We see it with Adam, you see it with Pilate.

Speaker 3: 32:27

Yep, right. I find nothing, I find no fault in this man. Like, go ahead and kill him, give us Barabbas, right? So he doesn't in that moment, he doesn't differentiate because of the surroundings, togetherness, pressure, and you know, it ends up with Jesus dead.

Speaker 3: 32:48

So courage and clarity in leadership, in church leadership, comes down to whether you have this developed sense of identity and acceptance that gives you the currency that enables you to afford to differentiate and to lead forward kindly, patiently, not a bully, but persistently forward, not with no anxiety in your stomach, right, but saying there's something bigger here. We're here for God's glory. I'm going to love the people as I go, I'm going to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit towards them as I go, but we're going to go forward towards the ideal that Jesus calls us to in the church, and that's what enables you to lead well, here's what's interesting. And then we probably got to finish this one. Here's what's interesting about the differentiated leader. People will have different kinds of responses to you as you differentiate. This happened to me as a pastor when I first came so 2013, I had this experience with vital church ministry and folks, and they that's who got me going on non-anxious presence a year and a half later I ran into friedman's book and understood where it came from.

Speaker 3: 34:06

At the time I had been at sabbatical. I came back from a sabbatical and my quite literally my eyes had been opened that I had not been leading in a differentiated way.

Speaker 3: 34:16

And as I began to differentiate, it was interesting the different kinds of responses that people had to me. Some people, it was very attractive to them because they were like oh people, it was very attractive to them because they were like oh, that's awesome that you're this way. I'd like to be this way because you teach me how that works. And then you have that Hebrews 13, seven thing going on. Look to your leaders, those who taught you the word. Look at the outcome of their way of life, imitate their faith. And so people were seeing that my life was different and that's what they wanted.

Speaker 3: 34:49

So some people are attracted to the differentiated leader. Some people are repelled, they go further back from the line because it's now a threat to them. It's a threat that you're differentiated and that you are no longer going to respond to their surrounding togetherness pressure that they're trying to exert, and that certainly happened to me. Other people will just kind of go quiet or they may stay in sabotage because you're now. You now are a disruptive force in the system. You've disrupted the homeostasis in the system.

Speaker 3: 35:28

So if you begin to grow in this, you begin to realize that you can't afford to differentiate, recognize that you're going to get the same kind of response that the Apostle Paul did when he preached the gospel in Athens Some believed, some were curious and some resisted. And you're going to get a similar kind of response, in that people respond differently to you. Differentiating it still makes it worth it, because it will improve the the maturity of the body. If you act in this way, if you are more like jesus, it will help the body to mature because they'll have an example to follow. That's a good one.

Speaker 2: 36:12

That's a healthy one, paul, such a good example here, yes, I'm thinking of the example of a coach, and maybe we'll start I'll throw that to you in the next episode.

Speaker 2: 36:25

We can jump off there because, as you've been talking, I've been seeing a coach as a good example of a model. But just to underscore this, this differentiation that we're talking about is I know who I am. I'm comfortable with you not liking who I am and I'm comfortable with you being uncomfortable with my not changing who I am. Yep, and I'm going to let God and this is a step on your on your toes here, moving forward, but I'm going to let God worry about what's God's problem and I'm going to worry about what's my problem. So Paul says to Timothy I know who I've believed identity and I know that he's able to keep what I've entrusted to him until the final day acceptance. Paul lives in tremendous, uncomfortable situations with many, many people around him who are very uncomfortable with who he is, and he says yet I know who I am yeah, yeah, I think of um in, um uh ke Keller's little sermon, the booklet Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.

Speaker 3: 37:34

He highlights how the Apostle Paul, in talking to the Corinthians of course he was questioning his apostleship and all this, whatever right and he says functionally I don't really care what you think of me, I don't even care what I think of me, right, because he deeply got the sense that what was most important was what God thought of him and what God thinks of you, if you're trusting in Jesus is this is my son, this is my daughter, with whom I am well pleased. Remember, the key here is understanding the gospel more deeply and applying it more broadly. That's the key to growing as a Christian. So if I have this growing sense that I don't have to judge me and I don't have to let you judge me, because Jesus was already judged in my place, that's the place of freedom.

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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: 39:03

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.