Welcome And Acts 15 Recap

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

In the last episode, Matt and Jeremy looked at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 as a biblical picture of community spiritual discernment. But that council did not reach clarity because someone chose the right meeting technique. Its conclusion depended on the people in the room and on the habits formed before they gathered. This episode moves from the biblical model to those practices. Matt and Jeremy considered the place of prayer and separation, along with the courage to speak and ability to. They also examined the self-reflection and television that brings people into opponents and ask what faithful commitment looks like after a decision has been made.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Alright, Matt, so we the basis here is the Jerusalem Council, right? By way of quick recap, if you haven't already listened to the episode, you can go back and listen to it. It's posted below. In very broad brush strokes, there was a controversy over how Gentile believers needed to enter the family of faith, whether that was through faith alone or through faith plus. Right. And through the controversy and through the working out of community spiritual discernment, the wisdom of Christ, his voice was heard, it was understood by those present. It was then communicated after being agreed to. It was communicated to the church. And that was left with it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that no greater burden should be added to you than this. Don't worship idols, take care of the poor. No sexual immorality. No sexual immorality.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Kind of the buttons. No blood. Sorry, Scott. The blood sausage isn't still off limits. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very, very little. Right. Yeah. Um, but no, certainly not. You must be circumcised or you cannot be saved.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

So yeah. They got there as a group of very different individuals.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Uh, with very different backgrounds and very different experiences. And they came to one accord. And they came to one accord, and it didn't happen in a vacuum. Yes, there was community spiritual discernment going on, but there was a foundation that we want to talk about today. The habits of the individuals and the community that made this possible.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

So some of these habits we have to piously discern, particularly the ones that preceded this meeting and came after the meeting, because we can only observe the habits that were present in the meeting that are told to us. But I don't think they're a stretch to think about the ones that preceded the meeting or that came after the meeting.

The Habits Behind Wise Decisions

SPEAKER_02 2:52

And so let's think about those. Ahead of the meeting, I believe that the individuals that were there prayed. I know that probably sounds trite, but I think they prayed for themselves as individuals. Lord, I might be wrong. That's that's a very disruptive kind of praying, but it's an outwork of gospel humility that I doubt myself, but trust the spirit in someone else.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

I have an active distrust of myself because I know myself to be the worst sinner I know. And so that being distorted in every part of my being, including my thinking, my instinct, my impulses, may be completely wrong because I'm just a tiny, small, frail creature who's also fallen. And so if I've have that gospel humility, my prayer life ahead of a meeting, gathered for community spiritual discernment, I'm humbling myself. I'm asking the Lord, not my will be done. Help me to do that, help me to bear the fruit of the spirit towards those that I'm going to speak with. Help me to love my neighbors around the table. All those traits that are the overflow, the gospel at work in the life of Christians, just go through Paul's letters and see all the ways that he re-preaches the gospel to congregations and then applies it to them. That I believe that the men who gathered there and you, if you're someone who gathers, but again, whether you're a business leader leading your team or a nonprofit leader leading a staff team or a board, a church team or uh an elder board, a session, it requires a certain kind of praying ahead of time by you to be ready to participate well in community spiritual discernment.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Earlier in Acts, we find out those men were known for being with Jesus and not just when he was alive, they had an experience of the raised Jesus by the Spirit that was an active living relationship with God. And so I think that they spent, like their savior did, time in silence and solitude and prayer, um, perhaps even fasting ahead of something as crucial as this. That is not far to conceive. If that's the way that Jesus lived instinctively, their first thought would have been to have prayed in their closet alone. When prayer is spoken about in the book of Acts, it appears that they kept some version of the Jewish prayers that happened at times throughout the day.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Where people pray when they wake and then at noon and before they go to bed, right? And there's various iterations of this. And there's not a mandate that says thou must. Um, but there could be a good habit. Sure. And so this isn't um, this isn't woo-woo, this isn't mystical, this is just kind of like, yeah, I'm probably a danger if I'm not prayed up. This is the reality of Matt's heart.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

It's not shame either. It's not shame. You should have been doing it like Daniel all this time. When's the best time to start praying for what God's about to do?

SPEAKER_02 6:09

No. Right. So I believe that these men prayed much ahead of time. Yeah. Right. They may have prayed together ahead of time. I just wrote a proposal for a church where one of the things I commended to them was that uh I anticipate making two visits to this church to help them, that between visits one and two, that the elders get together to pray but not discuss.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

That is very hard for church leaders. It is very hard. It's very hard.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

And I told him it'll this will take a lot of discipline.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

The truth is it feels like a waste of time.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

I was driving from the airport last night and catching up with a friend who was aware of a tragedy that happened to a mutual friend.

Prayer Is Not A Last Resort

SPEAKER_02 6:44

And as he was recounting this tragedy, and I was thinking through, you know, what is it that that I can do? And it's kind of like, well, I can pray. And as Americans, we go, well, you know, it's not much I can do. I guess I can pray. And we're we're completely backwards. What could be more powerful than to ask the God of the universe to work in me and among us? What could be more powerful than praying?

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Okay, so I'm mini rant here. We have the phrase. We now take a break from mini rant by Jeremy. So we have this idea that's very ubiquitous. Something happens in your life, and I send good thoughts and prayers. Like a postcard that cost me three cents in the mail that has my little encouraging phone. That's true. Yeah, and it and it communicates one way, right? There's no there's no dialogue. Yeah, that's how I view this relationship with my heavenly father, who invites me into his throne room, into his bedroom, to come and sit down on his bed and say, Hey dad, I'm having I'm really struggling with something. Yeah, I need your help, and I do not know what to do.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

And and if you could get into a different kind of praying where you ask the father, show me where I'm still sinning. Show me where I'm still not bearing the fruit of the spirit. Show me my idols, show me my acceptance in you. Show me that in Christ I already have all things, so I don't have to seek that. Um show me where you're at work in in my wife. Show me where you're at work in my kids. Show me where you're at work already in my unbelieving neighbor. Show me where you're at work in my fellow church leader.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Show me where you're at work in the congregants if I'm a if I'm a uh leader. That is a marvelous kind of frame because the spirit is at work in all of those people.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

And he knows what he's doing. And he communicates than I do. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Way better than I do.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

He's not an operating system that's off doing something after I put in my my code and say, hey, please give me back

Praying During Hard Conversations

SPEAKER_03 9:14

this.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

And I think that that if we go from praying ahead of time to praying during, I can imagine that James and those of his party are praying as Peter and Paul and Barnabas are sharing about how the spirit has been obviously at work among the Gentiles.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Show a spirit what you're doing. I can imagine that.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

But I can imagine it. Right? And I think praying in the middle of the meeting, praying yourself silently, um, calling a timeout in a meeting to pray while you're discussing something, and you get to something that seems like an aha moment. Might not be everything, but it might be something. Or a highly fractious moment. We should stop and pray.

SPEAKER_03 10:08

And there's a connection here between listening and prayer, isn't there? Yeah. You said people listen to to know what to say versus listening to hear. Prayer is not a tool so I can figure out what the answer is or what to say. Prayer is a not right what you say it's an attitude, yeah. It's a posture that says, I need to hear.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

And and that I'm needy and that I don't know, and that I don't yet have the wisdom. And that we cannot do this on our own. Apart from me, you can do most things, Jesus said.

unknown 10:42

I got struck down by a bolt blagging here.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Um, no, apart from not even in the message, did you say that? No, apart from me, you can do nothing. And our praying before in silence in our in our own hearts with the group in the meeting and afterwards reveals whether we believe that's true.

Afterward: Rollout Without Regret

SPEAKER_02 11:07

So let's talk about prayer after the meeting. Prayer after something's been discerned. And what's been discerned, you can look at it and you go, I believe that's wise, and that the spirit's worked among us, and and I am in agreement with that. And I know it's not what my wife thinks. And I know that it's gonna make these 10 congregates unhappy. Uh, we discerned a decision when I was a pastor in West Seattle, and as we sat there around the table, it was one of those ones that I looked at and I got my stomach tightened, and I was like, man, this could be an hour knockout drag out kind of conversation. And it was a 30-second conversation because the spirit had already worked the same thing among us, and we just didn't know it until we talked about it. We did spend an hour, but thinking carefully about how would we try and roll out what we had discerned, knowing that some people, because of what we already knew about them, would more than likely be unhappy about it. And they were. But we still sensed it was what the Lord, it was the wisdom that came from above. And it was as obvious as the nose on your face. And so and so we we did, we very thoughtfully, very carefully rolled it out. And I sat at people's dining room tables with the Bible open and I showed them the path that we took. I preached, we did Sunday school classes, we communicated as clearly as we could. We did everything that we could to help people see the work that we had done and to have prayed together. And I'm I'm proud of that moment that we from our side we discerned and we did it well in the communication and the execution. And I have zero leftovers about that incident. It's not every incident, my leadership, but that one for sure. Zero leftovers.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

There's two things that the scripture makes really clear that Jesus has said, one, he will take away the lamp and leave. Two, the father will prune. Yeah, absolutely. Why to bear more fruit? To bear more fruit. Yeah, to bear more fruit. So if someone goes out from among us, it may very well be that God is pruning, and God is the one who has separated out this person or that family. And this was the situation that he used to do so.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

It it can well be, and I think that the sometimes that is done very flippantly by church leaders. Absolutely. And I hesitate for it to be done flippantly. It always it always, like the prophets of old and Jesus, it always be ought to be through tears. It should never be with jubile jubilation, and always ought to be um that we have we have called people to change. Um, and they have chosen not to change but leave. And you know, that's that's too bad when it happens. Two habits afterward is I keep praying because maybe my instinct went out and I feel really great about myself. And that's a very great danger. Um, because I'm tempted to be proud and to think that you know Paul says in the First Corinthians four, maybe it's seven, who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? So even if you came in with the right instinct and something close to your initial viewpoint one out, where do you think that came from?

SPEAKER_03 14:55

The Jack Horner principle. What's that? Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his pumpkin pie, stuck in his thumb, pull out a plum, and said, What a good boy am I? And that's our danger. Matt, this is a defining moment. What is idolatry?

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Valuing something that is not God, like it was God, Paul Tripp would say that we take good things and we make God things out of them. We supersize their importance in comparison to God, instead of leaving them as small as they actually are. So there's a great danger if my viewpoint wins out. There's a great danger if my viewpoint doesn't win out. Because now I could fall under inferiority. Like, even if I believe that the spirit worked in the group, yeah, and we've discerned something that's wise, right? We we believe that we have the wisdom that comes from above. I could kind of feel defeated instead of like, Spirit, you answered my prayers. You gave us the wisdom that came from above, and I pre-admitted that mine might not be it.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

And so there's a habit, a prayer habit, even afterwards, about how I navigate my own heart afterwards, a fear of how it will mean to roll this out, and then prayer to do what are we going to do with this thing that we discerned? Right. So there's so much praying to do before, during, and after. Um, but that's the habits of the believer. If they really believe all that I have, I've received, and apart from me, you can do nothing. That we are saturated in prayer as it relates to discerning things. We just simply must be before, during, and after.

Disagree And Commit To The We

SPEAKER_02 16:45

And and after, um, and we'll talk about this when we get to biblical teamwork, is that I pray for my commitment. What do you mean to what was discerned? Ah, particularly if it wasn't my idea. So in the military, they call this disagree and commit. That even if it wasn't my idea, if somebody comes to me and they say, Well, what do you really think about that? I go, Well, the group discerned. Uh, we talk about in our context of elder-led churches, that there's no I on the other side of a meeting. There is only a we. And it's a great danger if I exist on the other side of something that we've discerned. We exist, and what we discerned exists, but I don't. And if I feel a very great need for I to exist, then I need to resign from that group. Because if I cannot be with the we, I need to remove myself from the we. I pray that for myself, and then as this is rolled out, as this distance is rolled out, it could be with employees, right? It could be with the board or a staff, it could be with uh on a church team that that now is changing direction. I'm doing strategic planning with two different churches in the next month, right? And that's gonna mean difference, and they're gonna have to roll that out well, right? And that can be very nerve-wracking. We discern something, but it's kind of like, oh, you know, Bobby and Mary Sue are really gonna hate that. And you got to pray for yourself that you do the roll out well and that you don't welch on it, and that you don't show any distance between you as leaders because, Lord willing, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that we do this or that, and so that's what's on our lips. We'll have to pray for that in the face of the people pleasing that comes very easily to us as leaders. If you've used a defensible process, it's easier to defend your decision, right? For sure. If you've not used a defensible process, it's very hard to defend your decision. So those are some habits before, during, and after that I think are important in the middle of the meeting.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

No, just to recap, okay, those all sound like habits of prayer.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

They they are habits of prayer, um different kinds of praying or for myself and for others.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Yep, absolutely. So I think that they're a little bit different prayer habits in the different places, uh, but they're but they are all prayer habits, to be sure, right? The one is a prayer habit that shows itself in public, which is that I don't allow myself to be split off from the group by dissonance that others are feeling. Because whenever you make a change, change we've talked about this last season, right? Change is experienced as loss. Loss puts people in grief. People react to grief in different ways, and one of them is by you know, attacking is strong, but even just critiquing or cajoling or trying to convince you know somebody who is a part of the discernment that they're wrong, trying to readjudicate, yeah, and gaining that gospel application um that you see with the apostle Paul in First Corinthians three, I think it's verse four, he talks about three.

Freedom From People Pleasing

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Paul says, But with me, is it a it is a very small thing that I be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself, and there's something incredible that Paul's trying to tell us about the way the spirit is working in him in applying the gospel to him. Right. The the quip that that uh Keller, I think, helpfully has about this is I have a very low opinion of your opinion of me, Jeremy, but I also have a very low opinion of my opinion of me. And that if I can maintain that and not need your opinion of me, then I can say, even to an upset employee or a staff member or board member and a nonprofit or a congregant or another leadership team in our church setting, if I have this gospel application at work in my own heart, I don't need this person to be pleased with me. I can simply explain to them the journey that we took and ask them to pray and not need their approval to be okay. But that is a prayed-for thing. Particularly, two kinds of people need to pray for that. The people who are tempted towards people pleasing need to really pray about that because they can feel that assault in a very personal way. Um, and I think that the people who don't tend towards people pleasing, people like me, have to be really careful and pray for themselves that they're not overly aggressive, because that will break things just as easily as anything else. Even if you write, even if you've discerned it well, if you're overly aggressive and not tender and kind with people, and realize if you're not other aware in that moment of how difficult this must be for that staff member or employee or other leader in the church setting, right? If you can't be empathic towards them and how this is difficult for them. Then you don't, you're not compassionate towards them, you're harsh towards them, and that just doesn't honor the Lord.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Do you in as you consider the habit of prayer, do you include in that you mentioned solitude and silence, you mentioned fasting? We haven't mentioned scripture reading, but obviously that that's a I think all tied into these.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Absolutely. Do you consider the mind of the Lord? You can read the Bible. Just a minor thing, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Right. Do you consider those habits to be a part of prayer? Are they separate in in as you're thinking through this?

SPEAKER_02 22:38

For me, at least they're interleaved.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Right? You know, that I'm praying ahead during and after scripture. I'm asking the Lord to shape me, to show his glory, to show me my sin and my need for Christ and the glories of Christ for me. Yeah, that's that's the way I would think about in the midst of the Jerusalem Council and the habits that we saw there. Okay. So at least two, maybe three, predominate for me. Uh so one we've already mentioned, just as I did the text. One is a willingness to disagree.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

And that there are people who their habit is not to be willing to disagree. There are other people that disagree, I'll say it this way, too freely. Right. Like it's almost like a sport or an enjoyment for them. And sometimes that's the way the family you grew up in, a particular culture in the U.S. I grew up in New York, and New Yorkers are known for not having a hard time expressing themselves.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

And so I have to be really careful because I can very freely express myself. Look at me, I'm on a podcast freely expressing myself. So the willingness for some people to freely express themselves in a non-dominant way, as though any other viewpoint is ridiculous, is important. And for some people to have the courage to open their mouths and to say something is important. So the willingness to engage is a habit.

Meetings That Honor Internal Processors

SPEAKER_02 24:11

One of the ways that you can help your internal processors. So we mentioned this way back, maybe episode one. We talked about the difference between internal and external processors, and that one of the ways that you can help your internal processors when you're trying to gather for discernment about something is to give time. It's to frame the issue, it's to give pre-reading, okay, to lay out the context for them. So they have something to pray through and they have something to ponder ahead of time. If you spring something on an internal processor that needs to be discerned today in this meeting, you will not get their best thoughts. And so that's why it takes discipline on the part of the leader to know hey, this is a decision we can hammer through, or this is something that needs to be discerned. We need to have some pre-time to lay it out. We need time to pray. We need to give it sufficient space and time to actually have the conversation and pray together and make sure that we have heard everybody well and see if can we discern something in this meeting together? And so that's some discipline, particularly on the parts of leaders, of top-level leaders like me, that maybe today is not the day that we ought to make this particular decision, if it's something that we need to discern. Because I might be ready to do it, but my internal processors are not going to be. And I'm unkind to them if I try and force them to, because their best thoughts that we need are going to come in two days in the shower. They're not going to come today. I honor them as a bicep, even though I might be a metatarsal, right? I honor them as a bicep by saying, I will wait for the bicep to have its best thoughts. That's why it's important to figure out are we making decisions that can be just be done as we bounce a few things around, or are we trying to discern something? That's a discipline for leaders to gain. I when I teach leaders how to lead meetings, I talk to them about how in the West where I live, Western US where I live, uh we have a bird called a kestrel.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

So think about something that's the size of a crow. Right. Okay. But it's a raptor. Okay. And its mode of hunting is that it actually hovers in place over places where it thinks there might be uh something scurrying around. Maybe it's something that it saw while it was soaring, and then it hovers in place over it. I try and talk about how leaders of meetings have to frequently be like a kestrel, like they're in the meeting, but they're also looking over the meeting. They're hovering over their meeting. They're asking themselves, how is this going? How is our dynamic? Did we suddenly find ourselves into a place where we actually need to discern something? So we need to call a time and think about this differently. So I think that's important for a habit in the leader of a meeting. Different kinds of topics should be discussed in different kinds of meetings. And I frequently see this in my work with leaders. As a top-level leader, I really think that something needs to be talked about. And so I insert it into a meeting because I really want to talk about it. I've been thinking about it, and so I want to talk about it. But it's a one-hour conversation that I've put into a meeting that could only possibly permit it 10 minutes of conversation. It's not that it's not an important topic, it's just that I put it in the wrong meeting. And if it's something for discernment, it needs a particular kind of meeting or a particular segment of a meeting.

SPEAKER_03 27:51

And you can take a look at the Jerusalem Council and see the it's called the Jerusalem Council, not because everyone who was at it lived in Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

They put people to travel meeting to discern something. Yes, right. And you see it in Acts 6 with the deacons, you see it in 13 in the prayer meeting in Antioch, right? You see it in 15, you see it even in 20 with Paul going to Jerusalem, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:13

They're praying about what's gonna happen to Paul and whether he should go or not. The pace of the change, the pace of the decision making was limited by the amount of time it took for people to travel, yep, to be in one place together, yep, and to pray through it.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

To pray, they had they sent the agenda ahead of time, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it helps your internal processors, right? So they were willing to speak. We're just talking about that, right? That that people actually spoke up, which is important. And many times in a group, as a group leader, you've got to encourage your dominant people to speak a little, and you've got to encourage your more meek people to speak up. And that's the role of a leader in a meeting. Um, Lynn Chenny talks about silent disagreement. Yeah. That is a great liability for a group to move forward in a couple of things. Especially if there's a dominant leader, especially if there's a dominant leader or a dominant member of the team. Yep. Um, silent disagreement is deadly because it's very difficult to sit behind something where you silently disagree with it. And so the Jews and Council, they spoke up. You you know, you're used to seeing Paul speak up or Peter speak up, but Barnabas spoke up. And it's like the maybe the only time I could be wrong, a listener will tell me if we find out that Barnabas speaks at any other time recorded in scripture, he speaks up in the midst of like these luminaries, right? He speaks up. Not an original, right? You know, anyways, it's very interesting. So speaking up is important um for everyone because everyone has a hundred pieces in their pocket. And unless everybody's everybody puts their pieces on the table, you can't make the picture because no one's got the box top.

Listening That Earns Disagreement

SPEAKER_02 30:03

I think that the last one that I would note from the Justin Council, maybe you've got something that you thought of, Jeremy, that I've forgotten, is um they actually listened.

SPEAKER_05 30:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

And it's amazing when you actually listen. Listen to hear is what my acquaintance L. Dayhoff talks about. Like really hear somebody. But in my mind, before you disagree with somebody, you show that you've actively listened if you can make their argument as well as they can. And so you have the right to disagree with somebody once you can make their argument as well as they can. And you check it with them and say, is that what you're arguing? Yes, that's what I'm arguing.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Now that I'm sure that I understand it. And many times when I actually take the work to actually understand it, I find out that we're not 180 degrees out of phase. We're like, you know, a tenth of a degree out of phase. And my emotion level about how excited I am about how different we are goes, I'm kind of like, okay. There's a shade of difference between my perspective and yours. And that is really different than something like saying something like, we're on entirely opposite sides of this, which is not very helpful actually to conversation. It might be true, but even the way you say it could be different. But I think that the way that they listened demonstrated that they actually heard each other.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

That if I understand the other person's needs in this conversation, then I have a way better chance of us coming together.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Which, by the way, is a very easy thing to discover if you ask this question.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

I hear you, what do you need from me right now? If only we would ask that more.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

And it and it is marvelous for diffusing really tense situations. Because sometimes people are just like, I know this viewpoint's not gonna win out, but I just really wanted all of you to just listen to it and say that it's not unbiblical, even if it's not unwise for us. Because it was really important at this church that I went to, and I really bought into it. It might not be wise for us, but it's been really significant in my own life. And I wanted to I wanted to say it and share it.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

I need to know.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

And then you go, oh brother, we love you, and we're so glad that this was so valuable at that church. And yeah, it might not be wise here, but let's let's stop and thank the Lord for how valuable that was at that church and how meaningful that was to you. And you turn something very adversarial into something really wonderful because you you got that deep with somebody else. You chose to, yeah, instead of steamrolling that. Yes, right. There's no steamrolling in this conversation in Acts 15. There's real open and honest listening. And there's indifference, right? There's the willingness that where we land is not where I started, that my viewpoint does not have to prevail, because as far as we can tell, nobody had this viewpoint walking in. It happened in the midst of the conversation. The spirit worked. That's why I think they hung it around the spirit's neck. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit because they believed the spirit had worked in their midst. And James showed himself to be somebody who didn't have to insist on his own way, that he could love his brothers in that way, and nobody else did either, which I think is unbelievably wonderful.

unknown 33:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

That nobody had to insist on their own way, yeah. Right? It's incredible. So I think that they had a way of relating to each other that allowed this to be discernment to end up with one accord and not end up fractured and to end up with something that was beautiful and great for the church.

Fellowship That Holds Conflict Safely

SPEAKER_03 34:15

Our listeners are probably familiar with Simon Sinek. One would think because of how popular his his writings are. I haven't read it, full disclosure, but he wrote the book, Leaders Eat Last. I I think that another book title could be penned Leaders Speak Last. That would be equally true. If there is a habit that you didn't outline for us that I'm thinking of, it's the habit of fellowship. You spoke about it just a moment ago. These guys had a habit of relating together. They were in relationship, not just quote unquote on mission together or bought into a strategy together or on a committee together. They were in a community together with each other. Um my daughter, Tirza, who you know, asked me the other day about the relationship between David and Jonathan. And she says, you know, just help me understand what their relationship was actually was. And I said, Well, sure, let's talk about it. And she says, Well, let me grab the Bible so you can just read what it says here. So, okay. Jonathan loved David as his own soul. And I said, Does that remind you of a scripture in the New Testament? Maybe where Paul says we ought to love one another as we love ourselves, and no man has ever hated his own body that cares for it and nourishes it. Therefore, we ought to love one another as we love ourselves. At the very least, that's what it meant about Jonathan towards David.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

And that's the practice, that's the habit that the church had as a community of believers. Yeah. That had to be that's not something that happens accidentally. That's something that has to be developed, that's something that has to be guarded, to be intentionally pursued when it's not convenient, when it's difficult, when it's painful, when it's uh annoying. Yeah, yeah. And this is what they developed. And you you mentioned this, and I I just want to underscore it again, but the willingness to, in the context of that relationship, engage in uncomfortable discourse, not to withdraw from it, but to say, hey, this is important to us, therefore, this is important to me. And I'm I'm willing to come to the table and to pull out my hundred pieces and to lay them out there and to get into the messy, disconcerting practice of trying to figure out where are the edge pieces, who has the corners, are they in the right place? All right, let's see if we can let's see if we can upright.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Yep. Yep. I think that fellowship is an important one. Many times, groups that are gathered for discernment are continuing groups. They're the leadership team of a business, they're the staff or the board of a nonprofit, they're uh a ministry team in a church that that persists for a longer than ephemeral time period, right? They're an elder board or a session, even an envisioning team in our context, in our work with flourish or a pastor search uh committee, they have more than single meeting time frames together. They have multiple months together, and we encourage them to form, right? And take time to form and be okay with it's gonna take you some time to form, right? And that that's to be expected. That's just part of the journey of being um on a team. One of the things that's interesting in my pastoring in in West Seattle at a sabbatical in 2014, and on the way back on the afterwards in the sabbatical, we had teed me up to have a coffee with the elders and just tell them about sabbatical. No decisions were made or whatever. We had this first coffee after my sabbatical, and I was like, this is great. Let's we did an hour of coffee. It's like, can we do this next week? And everybody was like, Yeah, this is great. Well, we did it for for almost four years. We did an hour coffee, seven to eight, that worked for everybody in our schedules. One of the things that was great about that is that you have very different conversations over an hour coffee than you do in a structured two-hour meeting.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

And it it changed the structured two-hour meeting as well. And that's what you're trying to say, I think, is that that if we have this relationship, I don't treat this person as an opponent with ideas I disagree with. I treasure them as a brother that I want to listen to and figure out how's the spirit at work among us. And that's a very, very different thing.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

The conflict is contextualized by our relationship.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

That's a great phrase. Context is contextualized by our relationship. They obviously valued the relationship among themselves and the Druslam Council. And so I think that's a good heuristic for you. Do you value the relationships in the group that you're a part of or that you lead? And if you do, then fellowship outside of needing to discern something or make a decision is luckily important.

SPEAKER_03 39:32

The conflict is contextualized by the relationship and by the commitment to that relationship. And that I think is a part of the call that we

Self Reflection And Honest Apologies

SPEAKER_03 39:42

have. You talked about this and you didn't name it here today, but I'll I'll highlight it just real briefly. It's the self-reflection.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

Saying, what am I here for? Why am I doing this? What's actually going on inside of me? And what of all the things that God has his finger on in me is he seeking to change in me through this, so that I can better reflect his glory and his grace and better serve these people and better accomplish the mission that he's called us to do.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Yeah, and I appreciate you bringing self-reflection because I think that asking the question, not just what do I think, but why do I think it? Ahead of time when am I praying? During, um, something that I have taken to asking myself in reflection is why is this so important to me? And is it this important to Jesus? That reflecting about what's motivating and driving me many times has kept me from making mistakes. And where I've not done it ahead of time, but I realize it afterwards, it's given me opportunities to go back and to apologize to people because I was motivated with something that was not godly. And if it was seen by people, then they all need to hear that I understand that they saw that and that that was ungodly, and I can ask for their forgiveness, and that's a great privilege and opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

Amen.

Next Episode Tease And Resources

SPEAKER_03 41:02

We'll leave it there.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

A discerning community is formed long before a difficult meeting begins. It's people learn to pray as though they may be wrong. They make room for every voice and value their fellowship more than winning. When gospel trust is missing, however, disagreement takes on a very different shape. In the next episode, we'll examine what Matt calls the inverse of biblical teamwork and the law of doubt that fractures a team. Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal podcast from Flourist Coaching. Flourist exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day, Dawn, 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, floorscoaching.org, or send an email to info at floorscoaching.org. You can also connect with us on Facebook, X, and YouTube. We appreciate when you like, subscribe, rate, or review our show wherever 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. Thank you to Redeemer Anglican Church in Annapolis, Maryland for the use of their facilities to record this episode. We are humbled and grateful for your partnership. 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 Sefferati and Association with Florist Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Bye for now.