Is LCMS Liturgy Still Relevant? with Pastor Matt Peeples

Each podcast confronts real-time struggles facing the local church and a post-Christian culture . Step into the action with the ULC at uniteleadershiporg . This is Leigh Time .

A man who has blessed our team here at Christ Screenfield , blessed the Unite Leadership Collective in general , has been a guest a couple of times in the American Reformation Podcast co-host , but not this is his inaugural journey into the Leigh Time family and his name is Reverend Matt Peoples . Matt , how are you doing , man ?

He's a serial church planner and we're going to be talking about some of his entrepreneurial work in caring for churches , helping to fan into flame a movement , a network of churches who plant churches leadership development as a conversation we're going to talk about today .

Leadership pathway is something Matt and I are very geeked out about , and he has this missional pathway and how to read the Bible curriculum that I think is going to really , really rock your world today . Listener , this is a fantastic day . So , matt , you've been around a bit on the East Coast this is why we didn't get a hang out .

Maybe an opening question . A lot of our church body in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is kind of Midwest . I was just in Omaha , had some good Omaha steak . You know there's every five miles or so , probably less than that . You know every square mile or so . It seems like you bump into a Lutheran congregation .

But a lot of your life has been shaped by ministry on the East Coast . Would you define what it was like , as a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod pastor , to do and to start ministries , namely on the East Coast ?

But you know , when you start getting out to those edges and you don't have a Lutheran church every couple of miles , then you really learn more about why you believe what you believe , when it comes to things like sacramental theology .

But the really cool thing is , especially in church planting , you learn Lutheran theology is the best theology for reaching the lost . We hold on so tightly to grace . You know we forget that the sacramental nature is very tangible and people need tangible things . And on top of that we have this hidden and revealed God doctrine that we always forget about .

That allows us to speak when God speaks , be silent when God's silent and be okay with the tension . And so when you come in with that and all you have to do is kind of place word and sacrament in , it's also this incredibly contextualizable bucket .

And so when I'm stepping into a context and all I have to bring is word and sacrament and everything else can be contextual , it's a game changer . The problem is we don't often lean into that , and so on the East Coast , what I learned is , if I lean into that . Then , man , you're gonna see massive change . And so the church plant side was really fun .

I went up to New Jersey and then trained some guys to church plant but then also did a revitalization and I kind of got to see the pain points of what happens when we get too stuck in the box you know what I'm saying and we get stuck into a model that is really great if , like you said , you've got a Lutheran church on every corner , but a model that

isn't as strong if you're in a place where you've got less Lutheran churches in the district than you do in somebody's circuit , if that makes sense .

Right , it's a problem of evil , a problem of suffering and pain . You know , trying to move into things that God just doesn't say , but he's revealed enough for us in Jesus Christ .

So why don't we just lean into training people to know the macro story of which we're apart , God's grand story of love , and then lead them to winsomely talk about the center point of all of human history , which is a person in work of Jesus who stepped into the problem of suffering and pain and bore it all the way to the point of death on the cross ?

Yeah , I think that's fantastic . How does Lutheran theology mirror or mingle with or intersect with , the grand narrative of scripture ? I think this is a good intersection point , not only for engaging pre-Christians but also for those in the wider evangelical space today . Matt .

So if you just start with the Bible and you read the Bible , you're not doing a lot of theological gymnastics for lack of a better term to get to explain why you believe what you believe and why you have the theological points that you have you can open up scripture and Lutheran theology just makes sense , and I think that is stepping into a post-Christian culture

. That is one of the biggest assets we have , because post-Christian culture you don't have people that have an institutional memory of church , so they don't have this assumption of like . This is what we believe Post-Christian culture .

What most people forget , too , is we're in what's called okay , this is what I call , so I haven't written a book yet , so it's not famous , right , but this is what I call the choose your own adventure culture , and what that means is we don't have this consistent moral thread that everybody agrees on .

Right , we're in a radically individualistic , radically pluralistic culture and we're in a culture that is more diverse than probably any culture in history , and that might be a reach , but I don't think so .

So , we're leaning into a unique space , and in that space you can look at me and say you shouldn't live with your girlfriend and for sake of this conversation , I don't have a girlfriend , I don't live with her .

But if Tim looks at me and says , hey , you shouldn't be doing that , I say , well , hey , that's great in your moral framework , but in my moral framework this is fine . And so what happens is you don't have that consistent point in the middle that you can agree upon to be able to have the moral conversations .

And so you have to be able to start with scripture and you have to be able to find the aspects of the gospel that connect with the pain points people are feeling .

And so , like most Christians are going to lean into their theological tradition , lean into assumptions they think you should agree with , and they're going to lean into a forensic understanding of the gospel , meaning it's that courtroom narrative . And so they're going to say , well , you're a sinner . Well , you can't say I'm a sinner .

I'm a sinner in your moral framework , but not mine . And so , all of a sudden , we don't know how to share the gospel , because we know this one very narrow understanding of how the gospel operates .

But Lutheran theology believes that the gospel is simple but it's not simplistic , and scripture shows you the gospel is simple but it's not simplistic and the gospel has different aspects that it can lead with that actually meet the pain points of the culture that people are in .

And so , in a post-Christian culture , you have to start in scripture , but you also have to start with your story and you have to start with the pain points people are feeling .

And so , while I'm not going to feel that forensic justification pain point , the pain point I am going to feel is the pain point of having to build my own identity from scratch which , yes , is a pain point and then live up to that identity I've created right , in which I will fail , just like I would fail if you gave me the framework I'm supposed to live

into . And so you know , if we're able to start from that point , or whatever point the culture is dealing with , then that's how we're able to engage in a post-Christian culture , and I think Lutheran theology is just uniquely wired to do that well , if we can understand how to do that well .

And it's interesting that as the culture goes in a markedly secular , you know direction , even pre-Pagan , some have said there's no gods , kind of you know agnostic to atheists . And I don't think maybe they believe there's a god , it's a little more agnostic but they just don't consider him too frequently . That then the pull of many in the

LCMS is toward toward pietism , toward Lutheran pietisms , toward kind of virtue signaling we're not that and so we're going to . And then I think the conversation like immediately mat-orients around the liturgy and how well we do the liturgy . I see this coming up and I just think it's it's a conversation that needs to be had .

The contemporary , traditional , the liturgy , the and I'm a liturgical guy , man , I think you are I think the Lutheran liturgy is fantastic , it's a great handle . But people are so far in our culture from having that conversation , like they don't , they're so far from stepping a foot into any of our more traditional worship bases .

They're not , they're not going to be there . So it just our move toward pietism just comes off as kind of culturally

tone deaf for me . Something to say toward that is you see some brothers kind of wrestling with the minutia , the minutia of , frankly , what are audiophore ? Like conversations ? They're not . They're not specifically targeted , and I could go down the line . I don't need to do that .

I can , we can keep it 30,000 feet , but I think understanding where the pain points are , the felt needs of people , and leading with , like the law is there , that's another way to say it . I mean , we're leading with the law and it just it just . People don't even know they're dead , like you know .

We need to meet them , like Jesus did , with their felt needs and lead them to say whoa , I got a lot of other felt needs . The law is going to do its work , and then the gospel is so , so good , but the multiple lenses or frameworks of sharing the gospel were very , very narrow , and I think that's to our detriment today in the culture .

So I'm just agreeing with you , matt . Anything , though , to say about Lutheran pietism . Yeah , I would say .

We're afraid to do something wrong , so we're afraid to innovate . Because we're afraid to do something wrong , we're afraid of the changes in the culture and the fact that we don't understand them . And so oftentimes what happens in that sense , when you have that fear , fear kind of steals trust .

So we have a low trust for each other , even though we're in a season where trust would be a much better virtue to put up . You know , we're in a very missional and a very innovative season . That's what's needed . That's not often what we experience in the LCMS . We experience fear , and because we experience fear , we have a lack of trust .

So we don't trust the person across from us to preach the very simple things that we've been given . It's not complicated , guys , like really and we lean into comfort , comfort in the sense of we don't know what to do , so we stick with what we're comfortable with and we double down on what we're comfortable with when a different behavior would actually be better .

It's kind of like when you're you know , I know you're a big fan of the Harrison too and you know in the Harrison you have these paradoxical traits . And so when you have a strong paradoxical pair , what it's saying is you have two traits that on the surface would look opposed , but you're able to lean into both whenever you need them .

So , like the example would be less is more that we always use when we're walking people through Harrison . Right , you know , like you've ever been in a PowerPoint presentation where less would have been more ? Like you get it like less and more . They're different , but they're paradoxical traits that pair together to really create a true strength .

And so the problem in the LCMS is we're leaning into what we feel like is our strong trait , the thing that we're comfortable with . Traditional Lutheran liturgy preached the way it's been preached and done the way it's been done for , however many years . And in reality we need innovation .

But because we're not as willing to innovate , because of our fear , because of our uncertainty , we lean harder into the thing that we're comfortable with , which we double down on it , because we feel like we're doing something , even though what we're doing is not helpful or effective for the broader culture , and it's causing us to make major steps back .

And so you could talk about the liturgy . You could talk about other issues that we face .

It's the same issue that we're facing with some of the structures and systems that we have that served us well and aren't serving us as well now , and we don't know how to separate out celebrating what served us well for a season and innovating in a way that we need to to be able to step into this new season .

And so it's a symptom when you're talking about leaning into the liturgy of deeper issues that we're not dealing with or addressing .

I don't hear in the wider LCM S conversation many leaders who are connected to the institution and understand why this is from a systems perspective , because they're going to get beat down talking about anything that is risky at all and it's very . If they do talk about it , it's behind closed doors , it's after a cocktail .

Okay , I kind of agree with you , but I'm not , I'm not really going to say it's totally a fear based culture . It really , it really is and it's , it's very unfortunate . The perfect love of Jesus cast out fear and yeah , we're , we're living with it .

And then , because of that fear , you're trying to control the very , very small things , which is not the gospel . These things that we orient ourselves around are not , are not the gospel . They're , they're way more audiophora , and so I'm just praying for guys that have .

You know , and I've been trying to have conversations we'll get off this and move to some other stuff with your ministry , but I've been having conversations with guys that maybe think a little different than I do and I'm trying to listen and learn and care for them and they're great conversations .

Let's just humanize one another and recognize we got different personalities . Really , that's all that it is . This is way more sociological , personality based , and it is anything deeply spiritual or deeply theological . Anything to say that this is more sociological right now . This isn't the battle over the Bible right now , matt , from our parents and grandparents age .

This is not what we're struggling with right now in the LCMS . It's way more sociological . Anything to say to that Matt ?

And when you deal with that high anxiety and you don't take a second to just kind of cool down a little bit , then then you're going to have arguments and conversations that when you look back you're like man , that was kind of , that was kind of silly , that wasn't helpful , that wasn't fruitful .

And I think too , the other thing is , you know , we're noticing the same thing you notice on a local level in a decline . So , yeah , we're experiencing decline . The church to whole is experiencing decline . The problem is we as a denomination are incredibly insular and so we don't like to hear from voices outside our tribe as the experts .

Some people will hear from those voices and they'll bring that in , but we'll only hear from it when the trusted voice has brought it in and is talking about it .

And so , because we're incredibly insular , because we're dealing with high anxiety , because we're dealing with a fear culture , what we're experiencing is this kind of reality where we feel like we're the only ones experiencing this right , when in reality , the church as a whole is experiencing a decline .

You can look at books like the Great D Churching just came out amazing book . Looking at these , you know statistical trends and how you can approach them .

But I think , for the sake of our conversation , for the sake of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Senate , I think what we need to realize is everybody's experiencing it and we need to also recognize what some of those natural behaviors are during that that aren't helpful and healthy , like , for example , everybody's going to try and grab their slice of the pie , right

?

So the reason we don't want to change the structure , the reason we are hesitant to innovate , the reason we're hesitant to try things , is because certain , sometimes , people are holding on to their slice of the pie so tightly that they're afraid if they release the grip just a little bit , they'll lose it , and they're afraid of what they're going to lose over what

they could gain . And so and that's affecting us in a lot of areas that are pretty critical . And so you asked about what it's like living on the coasts . You're living in an incredibly post-Christian area and there's a lot of these things that we've put in for good order , you know , and structure and the sake of structure .

That's very beneficial if you're living in an area where there's a Lutheran church on every corner . Or you know , like I'm living in St Louis now , I drive past more Lutheran churches . Going to the church I attend . Then I drove past churches on the East Coast Right .

And here's the problem we put all these different things in place and they become obstacles that we're tripping over , that we're trying to work around and we've just forgotten that we're the ones that put it there and we could easily move it .

It's like if you were sitting in your living room , right , and you had a couch in front of the door and you were complaining about why that couch was in front of the door and you're always trying to work around it and eventually you start having conversations of literally moving the door . Why doesn't somebody just move the stinking couch ?

Like you're the one that put it there , and now you're trying to do all these gymnastics to get around it , when all you'd need to do is say , hey , that's probably not the best place for the couch , let's move it over .

And final , final note , in terms of the Harrison to land this land , this plane , if I could pray for one trait for pastors , synod leaders , it's the comfort with conflict and managing stress . Well yeah , trait and we don't handle managing stress is on a scale of one to 10 .

Average pastor LCMS and this is a trend again outside the LCMS , just pastors in general it's 3.2 . We don't manage stress well and so when we're passively imbalanced and stress comes oftentimes , then we respond in very passive , aggressive , uncharacteristic ways that leaves people kind of you know their head is turning like what is going on .

This is a very , very strange and we have in general , the wider sociology and culture of the LCMS .

We have institutionalized passive , aggressive behavior in the LCMS and it's going to take some differentiated leaders who are strong in their identity , and I think you're one of these , one of these leaders that can stay within the system and challenge the system at the same time .

For the system Eventually , because it's Lord's Church , I pray the Lord and the Holy Spirit would work in just beautiful ways for us to repent , for us to confess , for us to absolve , for us to move forward in our common confession of Jesus as Lord . So good stuff , man . I love your heart for missions . I love your . Your missional pathway has blessed us .

Your how to read the Bible curriculum is blessed . Our team is going to bless our congregation . Talk to us a little bit about your origin story of saying , hey , I could start to serve the wider church . Some of the stuff that I've kind of implemented starting churches etc . Could be a benefit to the wider church .

So talk about missional pathway , how to read the Bible , your Kyra's network .

And then I started learning more about training and after we planted our church I was like man , this really blessed me , benefited me . I bet there's other guys that are thinking about planting , could plant , and if we really want to see him plant , we've got to pour some of that into him .

So I started building out a training process and we started using vickers that were interested in planting and we brought him out to our church and we trained about four church planters . Three of them planted there , and then we jumped up to New Jersey because it was so post

Christian and they wanted to plant , and so actually stepping into a revitalization was more about training church planters and deploying church plants than it even was just revitalizing . And what I learned about revitalization is you know , all the same skills you need to plant you use to revitalize .

It's the application that's different and the pain points that are different and certain people gravitate toward different challenges . Ministry is challenging . So you'll hear people say , when it comes to church planting , if you can do anything else , do it , and that's bad advice .

And the reason it's bad advice is because it's it's neglecting the fact that ministry is hard and ministry is challenging , but there's different people that gravitate toward different challenges and there's some people that would step into the challenges of church planting and it would be crushing to them and to their soul .

And so when , when it came to stepping into the Kairos network , it was just a point where my wife and I felt like we weren't living into our gifts enough . We were doing what somebody else could do better , and and we were we were fighting with challenges and problems that we just essentially didn't care about , like , for lack of a better term .

I think the thing that kept us in it so long was we had so many lost friends around us and friends that were disconnected from faith in the community .

But it was really hard being in a situation where the care for the lost wasn't wasn't as high as the care for what was going on in the church , and it was also really hard to be in a situation where there's lots of resources but no , no vision for reaching the outside .

And so we decided and it was a really hard decision my wife had started working again after nine years of being home with our kids . She'd stepped back into work and she had a job where she could get benefits and a job that allowed her to go remote .

And so we said , hey , let's , let's try this network thing , let's step back into planting and let's train planters and let's build the resources and stuff that that we would need to see this post-Christian area reached and and the ministry challenges reached .

And one of the things we saw was one of the biggest assets we were leaving untapped was the average everyday Christian . And if we treated the average everyday Christian like a missionary and a gospel planter and a disciple maker ironically , like Jesus had always said we should that we could really see traction and movement in the post-Christian church .

So my wife and I made the hard decision to to leave my call to step down to zero salary , to leave all the benefits and all the fun stuff that come with being a Lutheran pastor and to try and launch out this network . And so over the last year and a half . That's .

That's what we've done , and we've gotten to a place where I actually get paid to do this now , which is fun and you know it's it's built up .

But I think in doing that process what I learned was not only the opportunity to build some great mission resources that are able to help the local church , that are able to help church planters , that are able to help congregations innovate and think missionally , but also I learned what it's like to to really risk for the gospel and to step out and plant something

when you don't have as much backing but you just believe in what you're doing .

And so we had a few churches that backed us a little bit when we stepped out and we use that to pay for the platforms and stuff that host the training and and we just stepped out and did it and God's been really cool and blessed us and let us partner with cool people like Christ Greenfield and Florida Georgia District in Iowa West and Texas and get to do

some really fun stuff and learn a lot along the way . And so the missionary pathway you're talking about was actually created as a way to train that average everyday Christian how to go out and how to make a disciple where they live , work , learn and play . So how to share the gospel when somebody's not going to come into church ?

Because you talked about the liturgy thing earlier . You know the problem with the liturgy conversation and the community stepping in for the liturgy and trying to have this perfect liturgy that reaches the community is you're asking the lost person to be the missionary . Because what's a missionary do ?

A missionary is supposed to learn the culture , learn the context , learn the language to share the gospel . And so you're asking the lost person it doesn't matter what your worship style is , you're asking the lost person to learn your culture , learn your context , learn your language to hear the gospel .

And so what we did is we said , hey , we need to teach you how to be the missionary . And a couple of crazy things happened from doing that One . We started with like 18 people in two cohorts and now there's 337 in 17 countries . There's second generation cohorts launched out after going through it one time , like your church is a great example .

You've got leaders that went through it with me one time and now they're deploying it with people in their church . They're learning to think missionally . They're doing incredible things and it's just cool to see that happen . But the crazy thing is it also did two things .

It allowed you to start training disciple makers without changing anything in your church , so you can step into a church that's already highly missional , already doing great things , and you don't have to worry about what you're going to change to implement this .

But also you can step into a church that's really struggling , that's married to programs they should have let go years ago and people that are very comfortable and set in their ways , and you can actually start implementing missionary pathway and you can change everything without changing anything on the surface and you can begin to train people how to think missionally .

When people learn how to think missionally , then all these other questions get answered in a better way . You know , it's kind of like one of the big problems is not you know , I know how to do all the mission and vision process stuff and build out leadership pipelines and do all this stuff .

But what I've learned from doing all that stuff is that still at the core , your thinking will affect the end product , and so you can walk through the most expensive , most robust mission and vision planning process you can think of . And if your thought is Magnet Model Church , how do we get in ? That's all you're going to get at the end .

But if you know how to think missionally , if you know how to think about making disciples and make disciples in the places you're already going , then when you walk through a process like that , your thinking is there .

It's going to change everything on the surface , and you can apply that same problem to many of the issues that we're facing in the Senate right now .

Like if we had a different framework , if we had a different understanding , if we saw the world around us not as a threat , but if we saw the world around us as the missional opportunity that God's placed us in , then we would think radically differently about things and we would want to start implementing things like this .

And so that was the big step for us is we wanted to stop talking about it and we wanted to start doing it , and I wanted my kids to experience ministry where we were doing that , and not just like hearing Dad talk about ministry in one way and experience him doing it in another way .

One point of clarification so when Matt talks about Cairo's network , that's different than Cairo's University connected to the Luther House of Study . There's a lot of time stuff going on right now Cairo's meeting , meeting time . It is a time for more , more missional plans .

So go , go back if you will , so people can help understand how weird , how weird you are , because some of your frustrations with the local church would not be the average pastor's frustrations with the local church , you know .

You know , the problem for me is my heart is just wired toward mission and I can't help but see what could be , especially when you experience the challenges that are coming , because what you have to do is you have to think of post Christianity as like a wave , right and it's .

It's starting on the coast , but it's moving in this way and people in the Midwest are experiencing that . Now .

They're not experiencing it to the level that you would experience it in the Northeast , but they're experiencing it , and so to be able to step in and help equip people across the country to learn how to do ministry in a way that will allow their kids to thrive in the faith is is really exciting to me and to be able to see new things launched out .

I think probably you know the weirdness for me came from church planting and seeing just how many disconnected people can get connected to Jesus if you're willing to step out and plant a church , because churches that are planted . They're planted for the culture . That is not the culture that was .

They're new things and people tend to gravitate toward new things and connect with new things , and they offer you the opportunity to experiment in healthy ways that will allow you to engage new challenges in in gospel centered and exciting kind of kind of formats .

Like there's so much Lutheran stuff headquartered here , like I can't drive to take my kids to something without seeing something Lutheran . Right , it's , it's what we lovingly call the Mecca , right , but in the Mecca of Lutheranism there's about two , 2.8 million people , if I'm remembering that number correctly , in the St Louis area . Right ,

conservatively , if I was to use the most conservative statistics out there , about two million of those are disconnected from Jesus . See , two million . So let's take St Louis , where there's a Lutheran church on every corner .

If we were to all of a sudden add two million people to our worshiping body , it would double the total number of Lutherans in our tribe period , I think . And you would not have the capacity in our existing churches to handle that . And so I think problem is thinking . But see , most people aren't thinking that way .

They're not thinking about the out , they're not thinking about the lost , they're thinking about their congregation , their church , their preferred styles of worship . And when they think about Lutheranism and they think about the number of Lutherans in St Louis currently , then yeah , we've got enough churches , we can totally handle it .

We're down a little bit because of the pandemic , so we could , we could handle a few more of those Lutherans coming back . The problem is , jesus never called us to only take care of our own . That's that's why he looked at us and said go , as you are going , make disciples .

That's that's why the gospel was a message that went out Even when the disciples were saying hey , are you going to ? Are you ? When are you going to come back and bring us back up and the people of Israel ? He's like , stop thinking about that . Like here's your mission , here's your focus , go , do that . And people forget that .

That makes us radically different in the religious landscape as well , because your Jewish neighbor does not have a mandate to teach you about Yahweh . Your Muslim neighbor does not have a mandate . Your Buddhist neighbor doesn't , none of these other faith groups do . Why is it that ? Christianity , the religion that's radically different than any other world religion ?

Because God's coming to us and it's not making us guess how we're connecting with God . He's being clear , he's being incarnational , he's being contextual . Why is it that that weird religion is asking people to go out and share who Jesus is ? And the problem is we forget that and we often and and this is terrible we oftentimes we miss what Jesus said .

So , like our focus is how do I grow the church and bring people in so Jesus can make disciples ? And I wonder if Jesus is sitting there going what ? Like Jesus told Peter on on this statement on the gospel , I will build the church , I will do it . Jesus , when he was saying I , he usually was referring to himself generally .

Then he looks at us and he says go make disciples . So like we're trying to do what Jesus said he would do and we're trying to ask Jesus to do what he told us to do and we're not focusing on our lost neighbor .

God wants all of his kids back , matt . That's why he sent his son . He wants all people to be saved . We actually believe that , and I mean what you just flipped right there . We're out of our lane . Our lane is discipleship multiplication . Jesus , the Holy Spirit , is going to create and sustain faith . He will build the church .

I think that , listener , go back , man . Your paradigm should have just been rocked . Our call is not necessarily to grow the church . Jesus , the Holy Spirit , grows the church . Our call is to incarnationally go , just like Jesus did , though imperfectly , obviously , not exactly like Jesus but to go and sit with love , care for our neighbor . But how ?

How counter cultural is that I got to share ? I get across a culture here , matt . My next door neighbors for the last 10 years are Muslims Rameen and Sinida and we're building relationship and my wife Alexa and I get to go to Sinida's sister's very , very orthodox Muslim wedding next week and men and women are separate , but she , she goes .

I know we're , I know we're different . And she even started talking about what's going on right now

in Israel and in the hatred , you know , between Palestinians and Jews and even Christians . And she said to me with all transparency this is the , this is the word of God on our heart , the word of the one true God . That makes me sad and we need to become closer as neighbors and I'm like why I should invite you to .

You know , like Right I was , I was confronted like man , I need to invite Sinida to family family wedding , so , so sweet and so yeah , but that's just so , not in our normal , normal way of being . Would you , would you help us understand ?

Let's go deeper into the conversation of felt needs and I've said publicly that the assault against the family right , and there is an assault against the , the nuclear family today , and you know , the LGBTQ stuff , I mean we , we love to talk about that within kind of confessional , conservative Christianity , not just Lutheranism , but Christianity .

Give us a better approach maybe than starting with those types of issues and almost like differentiating ourselves around what's going on out in culture . Give us the missionary approach , counter to counter to that . Yeah , so Paul said .

I think we sometimes forget how offensive the incarnation must have been to God Because he's stepping into a world where , if you think about it like go back to temple theology , like there was a separation in the Holy of Holies and the reason you had all these laws and all these distinct separations is because God , the perfect , holy God , was trying to dwell with

imperfect people and if people came too close to the holiness of God , it was an offense and an affront to God . Now Jesus comes into the world , he puts on human flesh , he gives up his place , he steps into not just human flesh but into the lowest form of human flesh . Right , he's born in a manger .

Right , he's fully dependent on another human being to care for him and then he loves us and he hangs out with the people that you would not expect a religious person to hang out with . And he hangs out with people that are disconnected , that are living lives that are disconnected from God .

But I think he does that because he realizes that he sees those things as a longing for what God always desired to give , and so he represents them with the opportunity to have that and they gravitate toward the more sinful , the more broken they are . They gravitate toward that . That's why you have prostitutes and tax collectors coming to faith , right .

And I think the problem is sometimes we see the world around us like let's take same-sex attraction and the whole gender identity crisis stuff that we see , and we see it as in affront to what we believe and how I'm trying to raise my kids and what I'm trying to teach my kids right .

And the nuclear family we forget that this is somebody that's crying out for meaning and purpose and they're chasing it down in a spot .

They're never going to find it right Because , just like in the Old Testament , they're making their wood idol , they're worshiping it and they're using the other half of it to make their fire right and it's not going to get them where they need to go .

And I think the problem is we've forgotten that everybody worships , that everybody is trying to find this thing that only God can give , and so we see those things as an affront to what we believe , because we don't understand how secure what we believe is Like . Let me just throw this out there Jesus died .

Three days later , walked out of a grave , true Like . Not even death can hold Jesus back . Book of Romans it says neither death nor life , nor angels , nor demons , nor things above nor things below . Nothing can separate us from the love of God Romans 8 .

So if nothing can separate us and if we have this secure faith , why are we not living out of that security and then loving people where they are and giving them a better picture of who Jesus is , realizing that the Holy Spirit is the one that makes dead things alive , and so the Holy Spirit's giving you an opportunity to love the people around you in a

radical way so that they can come to faith . And that was always the key point of how people came to faith they were loved into the faith , loved into it . That's it .

And I feel like sometimes we're trying to justify ourselves all the time . This is just a human condition , right ? This is a problem . The bell is ringing , chapel is starting .

And , theologically , when I was baptized in that living room , I was dead and I came to life and I had nothing to offer God , you know , and I think that's what's so cool about infant baptism is you've got this picture of God bringing you into the family of faith when you have nothing to give and nothing no , nothing you could offer .

And I think we forget that and we start to think oh well , now I planted a church and now I'm a pastor , and now it's like all these successes become our worst enemy to loving the people around us , because we start to think that this grace was me , it's because of what I could do that God brought me in , and we forget that I am loved when I do a lot

and I'm loved when I do a little and I'm loved when I do nothing . Because of Jesus .

Indeed , I'm very , very far from God , and so that should give us remarkable humility as we engage . Our pre-Christian neighbor and I know I have more in common with you my Muslim neighbor , my Mormon friend , you know , whatever , I have more in common with you than I do a holy other God .

I'm not worthy to be in his presence , so we should just live in that wrestle and there's , you know , there's brokenness , there's pain , there's suffering , within and without . I'm just trying to make it , and I realize I can't . I can't make it on my own right , and that's why God sent his son . Anything more to say , though , matt ?

stop seeing these things as an upfront and we just start seeing them as our mission field . And we because when we see , like , youth sports as the enemy to church , it's because they're not coming to church at the time we set , when we wanted them there .

But the problem is , when we blast it like we do , we're not going to affect the person that is already connected to youth sports and is already deep into hockey or soccer or baseball or whatever it may be , and they want their kids to get every experience because they think maybe they're going to go pro .

You know , who we're hurting is the person that's already living intention because church is a value , but they are trying to give their kids this experience and then we're not taking that person and turning them into the missionary they could be . That would lead to people getting connected to Jesus in places they would least expect .

And I think we have to change our mentality , especially in the Lutheran church . We think about workers at this professional , professional level and we're robbing . We're robbing the world of this great theology because we're robbing

them of the everyday missionary that could go out .

Lutheran theology , the missio day being at the center , my love for neighbor and the tension fill Lutheran confessional teachings that come out of the book of Concord et cetera , obviously founded and rooted in the scriptures , like they're there in in our congregation we got a pre seminary to seminary program right now with 20 , some students in our congregation , you

know , and I don't think that should be unusual , I think that should be very , very normal . And they don't , and many of these people mad , they don't , they don't care about recognition , the benefits and all those kinds of stuff . Now they just they want to bring word and sacrament to their neighbor . They want to start house churches .

They I got a brother right now , man , that's starting a cowboy church in and some of our pastors are going to be there and some of our vicar is going to be going to hang out . This is an alpine . While he's there , he's living on mission and he's he .

He made his whole third car garage into a worship space and and they worship like 20 some people this last and they're not in a handful of them , that half of them were like pre Christians . These are not .

These are people that are lived intentionally in their community and now they're inviting them to come and taste and see the goodness of God , connected through word and sacrament , like that's . That shouldn't be unusual .

And when we made it free , Trey and I I wasn't making a salary , so I was like , hmm , you want this thing that I'm spending 90% of my time working on to be free ? I was like my kids can't eat free , right . But we just really felt God was saying no , we need to release these missionaries .

Because we oftentimes forget that when we create other options for training in ministry whether it's a missionary pathway , whether it's a Kairos University and we create different price points for that , we're able to reach different mission fields . Because guess what ? Cowboy Church , who's doing it in his third car garage ?

He needs a price point for ministry that fits the style of ministry he's doing .

Because if we want to reach hard , to reach places , if we want to reach different people , groups , if we want to reach people that aren't white , middle class , you know , making a specific income , then we need to have different models for ministry and we need to have different pathways for ministry and we need to and I know I'll get myself in trouble for saying

this we need to honor them all equally , because we're a body and you need every single part equally .

Oh my gosh , I'm so excited .

And my encouragement to you would be work with the people that want to work and partner well , because the Bible reading toolkit would not exist if it wasn't for Christ Greenfield and it wasn't for Trey Sansom and this willingness to be like hey , trey wrote this great e-book , could we make it a course ? Yeah , can we help ?

Yeah , hey , let's partner and do it , let's go . So we were launching in January and it didn't take the same time that launching another course took because we partnered well . And so I'd encourage you like , partner and work with the people that want to work , partner well . If you want to find our stuff , go to the kairosnetworkcom .

You can find all our trainings there . It's missionary pathways there as well . And then if you want to see regular trainings teachings check out the Kairos network on YouTube or Instagram . We've got all our stuff up there . We always do a regular teaching every single Monday .

That's free , and , of course , there's tons of free courses on there , like Bible reading toolkits coming out in January , the missionary pathway , and then we have some other low end paid trainings like preaching that connects and some of that stuff .

I pray that , listener , you're falling more in love by the power of the Word and spirit , with Jesus , with a God who says you're mine , I love you so much , I sent my son to make you mine , and that fans into flame a mission , all heart that says they're , they're my neighbors . God , you love them infinitely more than I do .

So just give me the right posture , the right . You don't even not , not even the right words that the Holy Spirit is going to give you the right words , but just the . I think it just starts with care . Help me care for them to see them as a sheep without a shepherd who need you , jesus , the good shepherd .

And may it not be weird , lord , help me just be normal as I interact with them and I just want them to meet and follow you . Jesus said there are people If you're a pastor , there are . There are people . Whether you're a traditional confed , whatever , or you're starting churches , multiple whatever , there are people who are there that that are ready to go .

They just need to be shoulder tap and have the I see in you conversation and if the chai ros network or the United leadership collective helps you toward that end in some small way , man we are , we are most honored to God . Be the glory . It's a good day . Go and make it a great day . This is lead time . Thanks so much , matt . Thank you .

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