The Mapp
Life is a journey, and every journey needs a guide—or at least a good story. Welcome to The Mapp, hosted by Michael Pursley, where we navigate the messy, beautiful business of being human. The podcast's name is a nod to both Michael A. Pursley Podcast and the "maps of meaning" that help us find our way in life.
Born during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdowns, The Mapp emerged from Michael’s hunger for understanding. Inspired by long-form conversations that spark insights and refine ideas, Michael dives into deep, authentic dialogues with curiosity and humor. From life’s profound mysteries to its absurdities, nothing is off-limits.
Each episode unearths the treasure of human stories: wisdom, laughter, and moments of profound connection.
At its core, The Mapp is about the human story. It’s a place where problems shrink, purpose grows, and laughter and revelation often arrive hand in hand. For Michael, the podcast is more than a platform—it’s a mission. It’s an effort to create a space where wisdom is shared, ideas are tested, and hearts are healed. Whether through a profound insight or an unexpected laugh, Michael hopes listeners walk away from The Mapp with a sense that they, too, are part of a bigger story—one that is still being written and, in the words of another great storyteller, echoes through eternity.
The Mapp
When Belonging Becomes a Brand: The Quiet Death of True Community
What happens when the Church trades the slow, sacred work of forming souls for the quick, efficient business of managing consumers?
In this episode, we wrestle with a pressing question: how has the industrial spirit once meant to build economies crept into the heart of the modern church, reshaping worship, community, and even our understanding of faith itself?
Tim Churchward and I trace the deep consequences of industrialization: how churches, once centered on covenant and family, have come to mirror factories producing branded experiences, segmenting congregations by age and preference, and measuring success not by lives transformed, but by numbers counted.
The individualism that characterizes modern Protestant culture stands in stark contrast to the ancient wisdom of Eastern Orthodoxy, which sees faith not as a solitary journey, but as life lived in and through community.
The conversation confronts the painful truth: in chasing relevance and scale, many churches have fractured the family, weakened the bonds between generations, and commodified the sacred into the consumable. Worship music, ministry programs, even community itself are marketed like products and souls starve while churches grow fat on attendance metrics.
Yet, there is hope, but it is the old kind of hope: hard-won, disciplined, and rooted in reality. True discipleship demands presence. True community demands sacrifice. Men and women today are not crying out for spectacle; they are yearning for belonging, for truth, for the kind of relationships that weather storms, not just fill pews.
We must ask ourselves: will we continue to adapt to a culture of consumption, or will we return to the hard, beautiful work of covenant? Will we choose the broad road of industrial faith, or the narrow path of slow, costly, authentic community?
The future trajectory of the Church and the shape of the soul of the next generation depends on the answer.
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Hello and welcome to the Map. Today we confront a series of questions that strike at the heart of faith, culture and the human spirit. Tim and I wrestle with the growing tension between individualism and community, tracing its effects from the ancient traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy to the sprawling corporate-like structure of the modern-day megachurch. In a world that prizes autonomy and consumption above covenant and responsibility, the church faces a grave challenge to remain rooted in the eternal truth while navigating a culture that cheapens the sacred into a spectacle. Industrialization hasn't just changed how we work. It's changed how we worship, how we think and how we sense belonging.
Speaker 1:This conversation moves beyond a critique. It calls us to remember that life is not an entitlement but a gift given with the expectation of stewardship. And suffering is not some detour from the path but a forge where character and faith are refined on the path. And family and friendship, true, sacrificial, covenantal family and friendship cannot be bought, it cannot be optimized and it must not be commodified. If the church is going to endure which it will, spoiler alert it must resist the temptation to measure success by numbers alone and instead rebuild the bonds of community with courage, humility and love. The future of faith depends not on adapting to culture, but on standing firm against its most corrupt, corrosive tendencies. You're invited in this conversation. That demands some thought, demands a little bit of honesty and it's going to demand much of you if you're going to act out on it as all worthwhile things do. Again, welcome my friend Tim Churchward to the map 9-0, all engines running, let's go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I don't know if the moderator is just going to be like a wallflower and sitting there and pushing us along and reeling us in, but anyway. So we're talking about ether and orthodoxy and priesthood and talking about how the idea of individualism and an individual can just kind of speak out into the ethos and the traditions, as well as mysticism and how that's really a fairly new thing. And you said I'm getting ready to go on a tirade, so I threw the recording on.
Speaker 2:So fire away. The thing with Eastern Orthodoxy is that it's all about community. So Eastern way of thinking is not about the individual as a unit. As someone who has individual thoughts, I mean, they don't deny that clearly but there is this sense in which a unit, um, as someone who has individual thoughts, I mean they, they don't deny that clearly but there is this sense in which we are a community of people and we create the body of christ. If we are in christ and so we are his body, we are subsumed into that. It's why transubstantiation is so important for all folks in catholicism anyway. But I think there's, there's a really there's.
Speaker 2:This is a really interesting narrative in terms of the Protestant evangelical vision of the individual with their right to their opinion. Normally, when I have I think about this today, whenever I hear someone say you know, I've got my right to my own opinion, I'm like, yeah, you do, but your opinion's stupid, so you probably shouldn't have it or at least think about it differently. For me, it's just a really bizarre thing that we have this individual right to an opinion, even though we have absolutely no grid as an individual for why we think the way we think or how we think the way we think, but not even just that. We feel entitled that what we think must at least be right for us and therefore carry some element of truth, which also is complete rubbish, so anyway. So the individual part of it is just a bit of a bizarre thing for me, coming from a Protestant background, studying Eastern Orthodoxy in some pretty significant depth from this PhD that I'm doing. I do see some of the points that they make. But what I really want to talk about, outside of that little bit, was this idea of the individual becoming a commodity, the person, the human becoming a commodity, the person, the human becoming a commodity in the nature of Protestantism, evangelicalism, pentecostalism, charismania, whatever you want to call it, and particularly in the Western modern understanding of the church on the basis and with a foundation of industrialisation as a root of that.
Speaker 2:So there's this guy called Paul Tillich. I think he died in the 70s or 80s. He wrote in the 60s and 70s for all theologians. He wrote an amazing little book, tiny little book If you're interested. It's called the Theology of Culture. Paul Tillich.
Speaker 2:He was a German who exited a Nazi regime from Germany and was settled in America and spoke a lot, a lot about this idea of the original philosophy being theology, and if that is true, then there has to be a theological reason for culture, and orthodoxy would really suggest that every single individual person as part of a community creates something cultically, as in within the context of how they create culture around them that is divine because they're made in the image of God. So this idea that we are creating constantly culture around us that is divine because they're made in the image of God, so this idea that we are creating constantly culture around us that is in some way divine is a real aspect of orthodox thinking, because then, instead of Christianity being combative and trying to kill the things that are wrong, it reorientates or Americans say, reorients the things that are wrong thinking into right thinking. So, for example, that's why the original Christianity, particularly within the context of the Roman Empire, but Orthodox Christianity would have been about taking pagan festivals, partnering in terms of the celebration, but twisting the meaning towards Christ. So that's reorientating the nature of the individual culture that is created through whatever the image of that people group was, the image of Christ that they held, the image of God that they held and then reorienting it back into the holiness of God himself. So it's just really fascinating to me. But on that basis, one of the things that we see a lot in our culture is that the church see a lot in our culture is that the church we see this a lot in mega churches, but the church in general is responding to western culture in the way that western culture has defined itself. So instead of a church being counter-cultural, in my experience the church capital city we are actually being molded by culture. So what I mean by that is that if we look at how the industrialisation process has begun since the mid-1700s or mid to late 1700s, through into the 1800s, through into the 1900s, what's happened is that we've seen this incredible shift away from local small communities, family-orientated community and family-orientated parish churches, which look after the needs of the people, to this mass migration from country and community into inner cities and the creation of basically huge, huge cities.
Speaker 2:And what happens is that you go to the city because you get paid more than the country. This is very crude, but I'm just giving you the basics. You get paid more than you would in the countryside because that is the promise of what it means if you sell your soul to a business. So, for example, you go into the steel mills sorry, the paper mills or you go into the mines in Wales or whatever. The community aspects of that pre-industrialisation although industrialisation took it over, there's much more community there.
Speaker 2:But what you have as you go into, like the printing presses and all of these things that happen in the cities, you have the commoditization of the individual being. I am a person and I have time and I have energy and capacity and I will sell my soul, sell my life to earn more money and get a better life on the basis of financial remuneration, although never in health, by the way. In cities the smogs killed most people over the course of their lives. So, ironically, you sold your soul for the financial benefit for your family but killed them in the process physically, and I mean that's a really, really powerful symbol of what goes on in Western culture. You sell your soul for the immediate gratification of what you think is better, but in the long term you actually minimize the foundational narrative of your family life. It's why God of Covenant is a God who wants sacrifice and does himself sacrifice in the moment, in the present, in order to preserve and protect and then promote the future, and on the future of humanity anyway.
Speaker 2:So then we have this really interesting narrative that industrial industrialization becomes, while the commodity is a human being. But it's worth it for you because you consume the thing that you produce. So the thing that you produce creates wealth, creates money, mainly for the top dude, but actually for you as well, because he'll pay you for your time, you know, in a way that is far greater than what you've ever received farming. But what's absolutely foundational, at least to me, is that then what happens is is that the individual, as they become a commodity, they actually sell their soul for the product that that industrialized business brings to them. And so then, if you look at the church, the modern day church, what we do is we follow that model. This is my view. I'm not saying, oh, I think you're right, this is not every church, I'm talking to you about my experience of church in general in the West.
Speaker 2:And so what happens is that we tend to follow that model. So we say to people come into us. We're not coming to you, we're going to create something, going to create a business model or a brand or whatever it is. Come into the church and give us your time and your money. Give us your time and your money and which, if which, effectively commoditizes the individual. Now, there's nothing meant to be there and no pastor's going. I'm commodifying. I'm commoditizing all of my people. That's not what they think, but what that's basically.
Speaker 2:It's following the same structure of the industrial revolution, and then what happens is is that you then continue to create a better and better and better product that validates these individuals giving all of their time and a lot of their money to it. Do you know? Am I making any sense? So we follow this really interesting dynamic of the industrial revolution where we invite people in to a city center, into the hub of what it is that the product is going to be, how we're going to produce. They're coming in as individual people who are willingly laying down their money and their time, which isn't necessarily a problem. I'm just highlighting some stuff.
Speaker 2:And then the product begins, the brand begins to get better and better and better, and the thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds are spent on technological equipment or paying the pastor or private jets or whatever it might be, and we end up having the CEO of businesses or the founders of those businesses, of those churches, becoming incredibly wealthy or at least incredibly well known and obviously, within that context, generous and philanthropic, of course. But there is also this sense in which we have the, the church becoming the model of a business and I wonder whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing really, because the commoditization of the individual foundationally represents the church taking on the structure of the society as opposed to being the counter cultural narrative to it. Anyway, I said quite a lot there. I don't know if you've got anything to say about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you ever seen the show the Righteous Gemstones? You ever heard about this show?
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 1:American, yeah. So I had a buddy of mine who knows kind of my background. He's like, have you ever seen the Righteous Gemstones? I'm like, no, I don't know what that is. And then I got on YouTube and watched a couple of clips of it. I'm like, yeah, probably not going to watch this show, but it's Danny McBride. He can be pretty funny, but it's Danny McBride, john Goodman's in it, there's several comedians in it, but it's basically making fun of megachurch, like televangelist kind of personalities.
Speaker 1:So you watch it. I mean, they just it's you kind of they're not doing it to intentionally, I think like make fun of like Jesus or like the Ecclesia or like anything like that, but they really are just thumbing their nose hard on these people who scam people out of their money. Like the one guy I'm sure you've seen a clip, I'm sure you've seen clips of it but he's just like people ask me how much money did you make from this water here? He's like, after I pay my scientists and these people and these people and these people not a dime and I do it all to make the world a better place. But he's like I don't know, just like the scammiest of the scammiest, for like these televangelists, like megachurch kind of pastors.
Speaker 1:But no, I think it's an interesting parallel to pull, like you were talking about people leaving, like why you're what, you're giving up to live like a life in the countryside, you're with your family, you're living intergenerationally, you're out in the sunshine, you got clean air, you have purpose. But like economically, like your gdp is going to look like this forever. But you're, you know, you, you?
Speaker 2:have rights for your children to become adults.
Speaker 1:All that stuff, that's all lost industrialization yeah, and so you trade that off to go to the city and, like you know, we're all, like people are really strong. I have to strongly question, like, do I like? Because the concept of the kingdom is, is is family ultimately. And what do people say when they start coming into money and they move to a city? Is like, can we afford to have another kid? Because you have taken like costs to get that kid to school or health care and food and like your expenses will will go up. And I did like the math once, like on diapers, like disposable diapers, depending on like the length of time that you have your kid. On average, I thought it was something between the math I did was five to eight thousand dollars on diapers, and that's why I was living in germany, where the prices might be a little bit cheaper than in the states. But yeah, you're looking at eight, five to eight k per kid, per diapers.
Speaker 1:Dude, ten, ten money, get the photo yeah, yeah, so so yeah, it's an interesting, interesting thought. I mean, like when did you see, like from your perspective I guess, like america and europe it's there's always going to be a little bit, a little bit different but like from your perspective, when do you see this model becoming like more popular and kind of taking traction in in in europe, of like kind of branded, uh like business structured, kind of church hierarchy, that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2:for me it's hillsong coming to the uk or coming to europe. That that's the first time I saw it, um, and and here. So what I want to be clear is that I'm not criticizing this, I'm quite. I'm just I'm criticising this, I'm just trying to ask some questions. So I think when I saw Hillsong come, and when I saw because we saw parts of it, like I don't know if you've heard Delirious or- the happy song and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2:We saw music really take this on. So we all the rest of them, but I mean we saw music really take this on right. So we saw the popularity of music particularly begin to really impact the church. So we saw, like, delirious get to the top 20 with this song called Deeper in, like I don't know, like 1990-something, something you know. So I think there was this really interesting dynamic and then the church really got on the back of this. Um, let's do music well, so vineyard did that powerfully. Um, vineyard in the uk is the highest grossing album, christian album of all time.
Speaker 2:Pretty sure was coming out of time to worship and and actually the guys that I go to church with, the guys that lead that church, they were the ones who found the girl who wrote some of those songs on the album. And so then it became about music and it became about product very, very quickly. Because what people realised was this is my observation, this is anecdotal, this isn't me saying I've done some massive research. This is what I've seen. I was born in 86. And I've sort of watched the trajectory and out of the house church movement, which was the 70s and 80s, the charismatic renewal house church movement. What happened was is that those churches freaking exploded, bro. They exploded, they were absolutely massive and they all started buying buildings or giving buildings because the wealthy people started enjoying them all that stuff. And then what happened was is that they had to figure out how do we do corporate worship? Well, so the electric guitar's not coming in, the drums start coming and all that sort of stuff, and then then the music and the way that we worship and how we worship communally and corporately become a really important aspect of it, as it always has been, but in a very modern way. And then hillsong came and hillsong united and maybe jesus culture just slightly afterwards and there was this rocket boom. It's like.
Speaker 2:So australia and america, both represented there, and your people before they're like gateway, were doing stuff, like they were doing all those different, different bits and pieces, and obviously bethel came off the back of that bethel music and they got the elevation worship Worship guys. You've got the Upper Room Worship guys. You've got like all of these people and if you have the right amount of technology, the right amount of money, the right amount of expertise and gift and all that sort of stuff, you can create a product that everybody wants, and music really was the beginning point of this, at least in my living memory, which was where we would invest our money, our time in a product that would, yes, bring people to god, draw people into encounter with him, normally emotionally. So what you'd find with with particularly music orientated or worship orientated churches, there's a high level of emotional engagement, um, which draws people in. It switches lots of people off so they'll never touch the basketball, particularly men actually like it draws people in. And then what happens is what you'll notice is that you'll notice that the pastors, when they minister or when they or they preach or whatever else it is, it's quite polemic and it's also quite emotionally driven, so they get people forward or they pray for people in the evening, or none of it's a bad thing. I'm just saying, like you have the heightened emotion of awareness of God in terms of the music, then you have the product of the music and then you have people drawn into an emotional encounter with God, more than more than anything else in my experience in these sorts of churches.
Speaker 2:So I think that's the trajectory that I saw or that I've seen, and I mean the Orthodox Church absolutely hate the charismatic expression of. They see it as propaganda. So so the orthodox church would look at the charismatic renewal churches in in like 2020s onwards or in 2010s or whatever, and they'd be like this is emotional propaganda. That's what they'd say. They'd be like you're stirring up something in an individual to draw them into an encounter or draw them into something which is an emotional stirring and actually isn't really real. Anyway, that aside, that's when, that's when the that's when you come and say, okay, I want, I, I feel so good in this church, I feel like so amazing here, not because of the community or because the local aspect of it or because there's families or whatever, but because the product that I receive.
Speaker 2:And then churches started taking their kids out. So churches start taking the kids out of the environment of the main service and creating a kids' church. And again, there's not a problem. I'm just saying this is the trajectory. And so what happens is that the families, the family-orientated church, kind of dies a death, unless you do a picnic once a year in the summer or whatever. But what happens is that the kids go out and do the kids church, which they love, by the way, this is what our church does. They love it.
Speaker 2:The adults don't have the kids screaming. And if the kid does scream, you know you better get out in 15 seconds, even if everyone says you know it's not, but you better get out because you're. Yeah, in the words of benny hit, take that baby out before the anointing leaves, you know. And so I think that there's this really interesting dynamic journey there, which is now we have people who are buying into a product, primarily worship music, which is great. I actually really enjoy that music. I mean, I buy into that product, I'm part of what I'm talking about. And then you have the fracture of family in the context of the church. You have the fracture of family in the context of the church, and then you have this very interesting dynamic where then you get spectators, you get people that come for them, and you also get people who are nominal christians who come to the church with the best music, and we see this really interesting dynamic happen and it's an exact representation of western culture.
Speaker 1:That's what it's a response to western culture yeah, so there's a few different things to impact there. I mean, like before we like jumped on, hit the recording, I mean just to like kind of frame this a little bit how we're gonna unpack what you just said is we talked a little bit about how, like, there's different structures of government that you could follow and we talked about you could have tyranny, you could have democracy, you could have an oligarchy, a democracy or aristocracy, and you could do the same thing in church. You kind of see these waves and movements of like what you're talking about, of like when you come out of very and europe has experienced this for a long period of time as well as America, like America, we've had like strong Protestant roots, like through. But so like kind of what you experience with like the good priest in the middle of the town is running the town in Europe. Europe is built in semi-circles around the spire and people want to look up because they're looking for God, and the good priest is there to be the oracle, to kind of lead us, and so it's almost the equivalency of what we've seen in the 70s and 80s in america and the shepherding movement, which it was a very like driven, driven to like how to say it emphasized like submission and accountability and discipleship basically is what it was like kind of emphasizing.
Speaker 1:But what I like made space for was and you could have like strong bonds there, but it's like just cult. Basically it's tyranny, like it's like the bottom of that like rung of what like we argued of aristotle or plato, whoever who's famous, but like um and then. So then that gave way to churches like what you're describing of. They try to make like what's called seeker friendly churches. There's people who have been kind of like burnt by that and so now they're trying to make it more attractive, which is more like democracy, kind of shaped by the appetite of people and not like necessarily a specific denomination. So we have a rise of non-denominational churches where you were saying before like we have to come in and kind of wrestle with troop and shape how we're going to interpret scriptures, and then it just came more about like we want church to kind of feel good there and that.
Speaker 2:We want church to be for the new person coming in specifically. To be a game in a way that is real for them, even if it's not deep or even true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're trading. So instead of going narrow and deep, you're going broad and shallow and within that shallownessess you're watering down things. To accommodate, I say, like on church people but people who have no background in faith, to like make them feel normal, you'll start watering down jesus himself. And so one of the results of that is you can get some cultural relevance, because now you're getting numbers, so now you can kind of shape culture in a town a little bit and people could make the argument like.
Speaker 1:I remember I had a haitian friend once and he just said this is back way back in the day, but he was talking about joel olstein. He's like every single message the guy gives an invitation for people to give their life to jesus. Jesus is responsible for these people. Like the guy, maybe he's uh, greedy, maybe he does it for whatever, but his perspective was kind of in line with that. Like numbers, like that's where like impact is being made of, like getting in front of as many people that that can hear, and that kind of created the yep. Okay, so that that saying all that to say like, so that's more of like a democracy thing of being led by the masses, letting the masses kind of drive it, and then that set the platform for what you're talking about, which is more of an oligarchy, where now people take note and now I can make a brand, now I can brand the type of church that we're going to be and market that that and create an economical engine out of that and then commoditize people to build this thing and you have to come under the brand and now you're giving your time, your energy, your resources and, in the same way that you traded off your time and energy and resources to leave mom and dad at the farm where they could watch your kids and you could live intergenerationally, you're trading that to give as much time as you can to build this thing that you really don't have any real stake in, like you do with your family, because if you die, your family's going to come. If you like I don't know like you're in the same way, you went into the factory.
Speaker 1:The branded institutional Christianity can be, in that way, a factory. So the impact there is again you're having more cultural influence, you're creating infrastructure and what I witnessed, or what I saw, was that people there are certain people who have like this concept of the seven mountains society, seven fears society, now the oligarchy of the mountain of religion, so to speak, and their own teaching was it's our job now to influence culture, to shape culture again for the brand, for the brand, the mini kingdom inside the kingdom. And so now, politically, or family, or education or economics or whatever, and so this kind of gave rise to like and I've seen people do this like they were a worship leader and now all of a sudden they're a social media influencer selling business courses online. So they've kind of leveraged the vehicle of a brand to go influence another sphere of society. So it's I'm not saying good or bad or whatever, because I don't know the motives of people, but again, like, in this model, we have abandoned completely that family actually is the core value, that when Jesus is being baptized and a voice comes from heaven, it didn't say this is my new CEO, this is God.
Speaker 1:Could have said anything I joke sometimes. He could have said this is Gilgamesh, this is Chewbacca, this is uh, whatever. But he said this is my son. So it's a declaration of, like the invisible God, the creator of the universe, the master of the universe, is saying that he can have a relationship with humans like that, that this is going to be my son and whom I'm well pleased, and so it was a revolution of like. Okay, jesus is coming to reveal the invisible, god, reveal that kingdom, that authority, that structure, that system. And that system starts off the basis of family.
Speaker 1:And when you lose the concept of family, then you're abandoning and sacrificing and prioritizing something else, and so when something else then starts competing with the priority, then I can get a little bit more pointed with my speech of like, what are you doing? And I can speak to like in America, to your point. Like Francis Chan said this like if you have people, like-minded people, good music, good speaker, and with money, you can build a big church. You don't need God to do that. And when I was in Europe for eight years, I saw people trying to copy and paste stuff. The issue is they don't have as much money. They can't do it. Americans.
Speaker 2:And also, like in Europe, we don't. We have a far higher level of cynicism when it comes to emotional engagement with things. Yeah, so one of the big things about the growth of the church in the UK is that it's fundamentally Pentecostal, politically black African Pentecostal growth. That's where the majority growth is right. It's not among white Europeans, it's not Some, of course. Do you know where most of the white Europeans are going growth? That's where the majority growth is right. It's not among white europeans, it's not some, of course. Do you know where most of the white europeans are going?
Speaker 2:Orthodoxy, because there's this really interesting narrative where people want to know the truth. They, particularly men men are men are desperate for truth. They're not really that bothered about putting their hands in the air jumping around. Some are. I love that. I mean I'm I love that. There's no issue. I like flopping around like a fish every now and again, but actually for most men they're like tell me the truth and I'll live by the truth.
Speaker 2:This is the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. On the flip side, it is the Andrew Tate phenomenon. Andrew Tate obviously is an awful character, but as a sociological phenomenon we have to understand his place in the cultural conversation, because he is basically saying this is what men are, and men are like oh great, I didn't realize I could be that I can be really strong and really masculine and really powerful and all that jazz. Anyway, I'm going to go off on a tirade about that, but actually there's.
Speaker 2:There's something about the family piece that's really important there, because if the great, if the greatest sexual revolution that ever happened was the first century ad, which was the early church, basically monogamizing sex, which is the only cultural phenomenon there where that has ever happened, where women are elevated to a place of societal standing where they do not have to be put up with put up with being sex slaves or whatever. That, by the way, that sexual revolution is reversed the 1960s and with the advent of reliable contraception, but also with this idea of free love and have sex like a man. That was the 60s and 70s, which men hadn't been having sex like men for at least a millennia. So there's this really interesting dynamic there, because what it meant was is that men stayed in families. So instead of the greatest phenomenon Tom Holland talks a lot about this, actually, but the greatest phenomenon in the Christian history is that women, the men, were convinced to stay in their family.
Speaker 2:They don't get pregnant. They have to carry a baby. They don't get birthed to a baby. They don't have to feed the baby. The mother is absolutely pivotal for that baby's generation and health. Right, men have nothing. They need to have nothing to do with a baby. Now we know that's negative. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but I'm saying there's no, it's pragmatic yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:There's no physical binding of me saying because I could walk out and go oh, suck it, I'm done, but jess couldn't do that, she's still breastfeeding. So actually like there's something really powerful there to acknowledge that men staying in the family home is a god-given design. So family man, woman, kids is a is a god design. And actually not only is it a good design, it is the greatest transformation of western culture that has ever happened in in history of any culture, I think that's happened in history and so when you lose the family orientation of church, we get a problem.
Speaker 1:Sorry, karen yeah, and I think that you, just like I, was holding on to that thread from way back, because we do this thing where we'll follow, then rabbit trail, then rabbit trail. So I was holding on to a thread, but that's what you said way back in the beginning about the individual, the hyper fixation on the individual and how on both sides. So it's like it's it's a total fall of like hey, we want to liberate you and like there's all these memes about it, like women, like don't stay home and make babies and be a slave to that guy, go and work for some guy who you don't have a real relationship with and he'll give you a salary, but you have to, like make enough money to pay to go to work. You know the whole deal.
Speaker 1:You have to put your kids into 24-hour junk child care where a 19 year old raises your daughter. Yeah, give me. Give me 1500 a month and I'll wipe your kid's nose, maybe, and send them home with the flu. You can only use me for half the month that is that is I'll take full pay, yeah, dude, but.
Speaker 1:But the hyper fixation on the individual and the end of like this is a very Western kind of like thing, of like their place in the family, and so when you start pulling those fabrics apart and like the roles they pulled apart, then you see a disintegration of every institution that they're a part of. And I have to like believe that it's just like you don't have to have a brain between your ears, like everybody knows this, that we're all being engineered, that we're all being influenced by something. So for some people it's the Illuminati, some people it's like snake people, some people it's aliens and some people it's like, hey, there are spiritual forces at work that are working in these different institutions for the good and the bad. And so we're aware that. Okay, you just make an observation Was this good or was this bad or was it a benefit? Was it a net benefit, a net positive, or what is this producing?
Speaker 1:And I think that feeding into the idea that freedom looks like, and then you kind of went into like even with church, of like it's feeding into like just what's feeling good for me in the moment, or what validates me in the moment, and you said this in the very beginning, like, yeah, I have the freedom to make my own thoughts and my own ideas and whatever it's. Like, yeah, but it's you're stupid, because every single idea that you've had, there's been somebody in the collective of the human history who's had that idea. They had the same problem that you had. And there's people who didn't figure it out, but there's people who have figured it out and so, and then there's people who thought, anyways, that there has to become some kind of acceptance or orientation to my life. Didn't start with me. Like you have to accept that. So it's my parents, okay, but who created them? Who created? So you follow the bouncing ball of karaoke all the way back to there's a creator of everything that exists, and so, therefore, everything is a gift. And if everything's a gift, then I'm just being given something that I'm going to be able to steward, but I can't take full, complete ownership over something that's gifted to me, because I wasn't able to manufacture it myself. And so, when we talk about people, just to finish the thought, yeah, there's no entitlement to my own life, to my own the status of my health, to the status of my finances and, by default, the children that I'm responsible for. So in the English language you'd say my wife, my children, my mom, my dad. That denotes ownership, depending on how you think about it. But I just have responsibility to those people and if, god forbid, something happens to whoever or myself, where I get a chronic disease or something happens, I could be pissed off and butthurt about it, and rightfully so, like I'm going to be upset because I don't have the same quality of life or access to somebody who I had before. But I was gifted that, so I can also say well, I'm thankful for the amount of time that I had here with, with, with this and so.
Speaker 1:But people feel there's this weird thing and this feeds into the consumerism thing that every, in every single year, everything should improve, that that everything in life should just be like this. Companies think like this I've worked in sales before and it's like well, tim, we know that you worked an 80 hour weekend, you've just shattered every company record that we've ever had before and now we just have this massive growth for next quarter. We expect you to double that. Here's a pizza for your troubles. It's like a weird thing and like people expect that the new iPhone has to have this and new that has this and they expect that for own life. And life doesn't look like that. Life is like twists and turns and sometimes you have to hold on for dear life, sometimes you have to let go for dear life and in a grain in this like branded christianity thing is somehow like hey, let me be your guru, let me be your self-help coach, let me take away your bad feelings and give you good feelings. Let me help you transcend yourself financially. Let's get rid of the sickness that's in you. And like. We've seen people get healed. We've seen miracles. But I've also seen people who have chronic diseases where they literally want to commit suicide every day sometimes and it's like it's an ongoing dialogue with God. But then they just accept this is my ministry to the Lord, is living in this. That is not attractive. That is not something that you can market and package to the masses.
Speaker 1:I had a podcast with the guy who mentored me and he was just on the phone all the time. This lady named Ginger. He's like I don't know what to say. This lady suffered with scoliosis and autoimmune diseases and she call him. She's like I had another argument with god jim. He's like. Who won ginger he did. He's good, but he was like in t. Every time he talks about he's totally about three times. It left such a mark on him that the just gratitude and thanksgiving this woman had in the midst of absolute suffering if you have chronic pain in your body, if anybody listened to this you would understand what I'm saying about and for her just to have have gratitude.
Speaker 1:And so I think that in the midst of the this like okay, commoditization of of church, and like elitism rises up and like the same thing with sales of, like productivity and numbers and all that stuff, what's left behind is family. What's also left behind is there is no space for God in the failure. There's no space for God in the lack of finances. There's no space for God in the pain. If it's, if it's not solved, if we can't like fix it, it's like there's some, there's a measure of people. There's just, it's just an inevitability. There's going to be people who are going to be broken and walk with a limp and restoration doesn't look like the limp being taken away. Restoration looks like what happens actually to the inner man, not the emotions, the inner man like the whole man.
Speaker 1:And so you look at somebody like Jacob, or you look at somebody like Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth just dropped down the stairs and he's just a cripple his whole life and he has a place at the king's table because of who his dad is, but he's still a cripple. Jacob wrestled with God. I'm going off on a tangent, but one of the greatest stories in the Bible is like everybody else has a divine experience. They see an angel, they see something like, something like oh my god, please don't kill me. The angel has to say don't be afraid. This dude says hold my beer, I'm gonna wrestle that thing and hold on until it gives me something. But he's crippled the rest of his life as a result of he walks.
Speaker 2:He walks differently there and I I think like that is the foundational narrative of the, of the sacrifice of the moment for the, for the, the future. Jacob wrestling with God is an exact symbolic representation of the idea that you sacrifice your immediate comfort in order to receive the blessing for your future family. So this is such a foundational narrative of the biblical text. It's like the nature of covenant is not a bargain. It's not when you say I'll give you this and you give me this, which is the prosperity gospel at its core. What covenant is is a familial covenant that says I am willing to sacrifice the immediate moment, my money, my time, the immediacy of my comfort, in order that I can provide for my family in the future. And so I think if you go back to family, and if we go back to the lady ginger you're talking about, you go back to god.
Speaker 2:You can't commoditize any of those people. So what you do is you love them and you pray for them, and that's absolutely amazing. But you can't commoditize family, because family is incredibly complex. You can't just say, hey, you guys serve on this team. You know like it doesn't work like that. You also can't commoditize god. You can't put him in a box, and so what often happens in western churches is. That is, that we say to God hey, god, you do whatever you want in the context of what we're doing, and in that context we're like it's really good, sometimes it's amazing, but what we're saying to God is we're saying, hey, you can do whatever you want, as long as it fits in the context of our branding, which is what we're going after, which is what you've told us to go, which is what you've told us to go after God. So, because you've told us to go after this, then we're going after this, so you can come and do what you've told us to do. But outside of that, actually, it would really help us if you weren't quite God in that moment, because we can do this pretty well and no matter how much we have these conversations about what's God saying, what's the Lord saying, whatever conversations about what's God saying, what's the Lord saying, whatever else it is, I know hardly any prophets in churches because we're not good at family.
Speaker 2:So, basically, in the larger churches that I've been involved in and also know about the person that hears from God. Now I want to say something. I don't think Bethel does this and I've got a lot of time for Bethel around how they run the five-fold ministry. But but a lot of the churches we be involved in, the person that hears from God is a senior pastor, but what that is is a ceo.
Speaker 2:So if, if the senior pastor speaks to God sorry, because the gospel seeks the senior pastor who is essentially running the organization there's no actual prophetic input apart from the thing that the senior pastor feels the thing is to go after. And so what happens is is that you have all these prophetic alliances that pop up all over the show outside of church, because senior pastors don't really want the family aspect of the fivefold ministry. They don't really want that because what they want to do is they want to do what they think god has called them to do. And what's really interesting is is that the senior pastor will create in my experience, will create the church around his call or her call, not around what god is saying about the church.
Speaker 1:And so the church becomes synonymous with the call of the pastor as opposed to synonymous with the five-fold gifting, which is actually the equivalent of family in the context of leadership yeah, well, it has to be like that in some ways because, like you have somebody in a possible position where, again, like you're talking about, we need you to be, have the organization, administrative skills of like a ceo. We need you to be a very charismatic speaker. We need you to be on the level of a professional, like counselor. We need you also to be an event organizer. We need you also to be and these things are being stacked on each other, not shifted stacked on top of each other and so, by default, if I'm more of a teacher, then that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna teach you. I'm gonna like truth more than people and I'm gonna hyper fixate on having the right theology, having the right doctrine. If I'm an evangelist, I'm going to use every single opportunity and event, everything that I'm going to preach the gospel. I'm going to activate people to go out and preach the gospel and like that's what I'm going to do. If I'm a pastor, then I'm going to be hyper fixated on how can I make Tim comfortable, how can I make sure families are whole, how can I make sure people are not divorces, but also I, I don't want to step on anybody's toes, so when you throw, like somebody who's prophetic, in there. It's like we're going to go this direction. Maybe it's that. Uh, it would not be like this thing of growth that you're talking about. It could be multiplication, but not growth of the entity. So the growth the multiplication might be, it might be chopping it up into pieces and then throwing it in other places, per se.
Speaker 2:And it could be the same thing that had the jesus where he said eat my body and drink my blood, and then everyone leaves apart from the 12. It's like god, jesus had this most amazing following and he's like screw that. Um, I don't, I'm gonna tell you what you actually have to do to inherit its own life. And everyone walks apart from the people who've got nothing else to go back to. And I'm like there is something, and so one of the one of the really interesting things for me about how we do church in the West, if we go back to the hyperfixation on the individual, what's interesting is that there is a desire, there is a desire in all of humanity to be part and belong to something right. We know that that's really obvious. But with the hyperfixation of the individualismism, particularly on the basis of right-wing politics, we see the left goes super hardcore towards groupthink and towards being grouped into a group identity, which actually is actually a response to the hyper individual in my view, the hyper individualized nature of what it is to be an individual with the context of the western culture. But if you take that into church, for example, what happens is is that the pastor of the church has in his mind what success is. And what happens is is that sometimes the success measures have to change depending on the season that you're in. But, for example, if your success measure is growth and numerical value, then what you'll prioritize will be what brings numerical value. Families never grow quickly because there's a nine-month gestation period of each child. Then you have to have at least two years before you have another one, because you're so screwed up in your brain from that kid keeping up at night and all the rest of it. And what happens is, if you prioritize family in church, growth goes so, so slowly and for a ceo type pastor and for the person that has growth and mega church in their mind, like the bigger the church is, the more successful it is, family cannot function as part of the leadership model and it cannot function as part of the core culture because it is too slow. And that is the exact representation of the industrialization model of the western world in the last 150, 200 years.
Speaker 2:Because what we're saying is we are saying above and beyond family and what success looks like in family, which, by the way, is the primary call of the church, primary call of the church. So what we're going to do is is that we are going to model our church on the basis of something that is anti-family and then it becomes something that looks far more like a business, producing something that people willingly give their time and money to, as opposed to want to join, because there's community involved and I think that that's a really interesting place to be in the Western society, western church that we have, and I don't think there's longevity in it, because I think that there are more and more and more people who are like man. This 20 years of me emotionally encountering God it didn't change my life, but what changed my life is that 75 year old gray hair man that for two years basically told me to sort my life out and I did and now I'm better and there's this really interesting narrative around that yeah, well it's.
Speaker 1:It's a fairly new like phenomenon, like like the kind of mega, mega church thing is like really like since the 60s, maybe 70s maybe, of like that kind of model, and sometimes you need a generation to figure out stupid ideas. I mean, when israel was like moving out, they had to, like they had to let an entire generation of people die in that adaptation phase of the desert before they could move on to more promises of god. So I think that maybe, maybe that's it. I see, like what I see people most desperate for now in our age bracket is community, like that's it. I see, like what I see people most desperate for now in our age bracket is community. Like that's the thing that they're most desperate for because and you know they're, maybe they're a lot of people have left where they're from. A lot of some people like still live in the same place, but a lot of people have uprooted to go for jobs or university. Then they up meeting somebody there and staying there, and so someone has compromised of like I've left my mother and father, I've left my mother and father, so now we're here in this other place, and so that's.
Speaker 1:That's partially what the church facilitates in a practical way and in a spiritual way is that in James. James, he's like take care of, like widows and orphans, and so it's like be. How do you take care of a widow or orphan? Will you be kids to her or you be, in essence, a? Will you be kids to her or you be, in essence, a husband to her, a spouse to her, in the sense of helping meet needs? You know, emotionally, physically or not physically, but you know what I mean, like food, food, food and water.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you're talking about Okay, Seriously talking about water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but.
Speaker 2:I'm not taking care of that Windows needs physically. I take care of that Windows needs physically so so getting big in that cause. We've we. This is one of the things that I, I, uh, you know I completely threw you my man, you're good, you're good.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go off on like a rabbit trail about this. I think I brought this up to you before, but my observation is in Europe, because of the second world war, people, people are very skeptical of other people outside their circle and if people act too friendly, or it's viewed as invasive, it's viewed as like you're trying to solicit me something or whatever. And so my observation is like being in the church, it's like we're going to meet at the church and this is where it starts and stops with us. We have our blood family, we're good.
Speaker 1:And in America I see people who are orphans, kind of yearning for family in a sense, and they're open to that. And people who have small kids are in our age group and kind of stage of life. But you have people who are our parents' age, who are like, hey, we're retired and we want to enjoy our retirement, we want to like, bounce around, we want to do, do whatever, um, and then people who are young adults, who don't have those responsibilities yet, are now like I don't know what the hell kids are doing now, like I mean, in the same year, this is, it's gonna I don't go off around, but last year, 2024 more middle-class people visited food banks in America historically than ever before, but more Americans took holidays to Europe than ever before in the same year. Those two statistics were happening together and so there is a disconnect of like.
Speaker 1:To your point of like, things are being commoditized and wealth is being distributed and things are being built, stuff is happening, but then there's people who are like falling below the get, and when they the food banks, what they reported was these are not people who are generationally impoverished. These are people who said we literally just can't like there's an extra 50 we need at the grocery store, so we're supplementing from the food bank. Like we're going by grocery still, but we're supplementing. So whose job is? Is that? Who are your people Like? Whatever? And so it's this weird thing, to your point, we've hyper fixated on what we can package in this institution, this brand. Well, I can create digital products, music, things like that, package them, sell them, but, like you know not to shoot ourselves in the foot, we're sitting here doing a podcast. Could I be like?
Speaker 1:going and visiting somebody in my church could I be? Could I be? Uh, we're part of the problem, tim um, but yeah, yeah, but it's like I guess, like in the same way there's a conversation that's being, that's happening now, what comes after free trade or capitalism? Like it's a serious conversation among economists, like what's next? I guess that would be like the real question. I know our Catholic and Orthodox brothers are going to say we already have the answer for you. You guys went astray, come back. But I mean realistically, like in terms of like you know, kind of free churches or Protestant churches, like we kind of walked through like some stages. What do you perceive is coming around the the bend?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think for me, for me, I think there'll be more than more. Francis chan did this, didn't? He had a massive church. That was like this is stupid, like what are we doing? Like let's split this down.
Speaker 1:He said it was stupid. They didn't, they were sad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were really sad. Yeah, because because they loved it, because they get emotional, physical what we're doing. Let's split this down. He said it was stupid. They didn't. They were sad Because they loved it, because they got emotional, physical, whatever needs better.
Speaker 2:One of the things about Church Grief is that it's generally among Generation Z, some Generation Alpha, but sorry, generation Z. Generation Z, like you said, what they want most is community. Now, now, what's really interesting with that for me is that they have a false sense of community from their digital footprint, from their avatar online and so so. So what we're gonna have to do is is the church we're gonna have to unplug, I think. I think we're gonna have to unplug from the digital world and begin to do analog relationships again. That's what I think we have to do.
Speaker 2:So so, instead of it being, come to my church, come to this central hub, big churches. We don't do anything out. Everyone comes to us. It turns into we actually end up going into homes and houses and having meals together, eating. Do you know how? I joined? So I had a friend and um, he said we, we, we go to big church. We don't have any community. We are going to do once a month um community where we're going to go through a john mark comer podcast and um. We're going to eat together and have all the kids in the same room at the same time and see if we can do family like that. So once a month we, jess and I and our three kids and like another eight kids and three other couples, meet together to do intentional community outside of church, because in church we can't find community outside of team. So what's really interesting in the church at the moment is that the way you find your community is on a team and the main teams production, media, worship, all of of that kid stuff, all that stuff. And what happens is is that the young tend to gravitate towards anything with a camera or digital device and because they have all the time in the world, they spend all their time together in the church. But for anybody with children, they don't have much community and it's very hard to build community in church because of the nature of how we run church.
Speaker 2:You walk in, your kids go somewhere else and you walk in you worship. If your kid needs a nappy change, you get buzzed and you go out of worship, or they cry you've got to go out of worship and then you hear a talk for 25 minutes that's very low level, not in-depth at all, because you want Not yours, michael, no, nor mine, nor mine. I'm saying we're like we have this, like we've got to make sure non-Christians understand it, and so you walk out as an experienced believer, absolutely pumped that people gave their life to Jesus, but absolutely undiscipled, right. And so then you're like, okay, so how do I get discipled? So you create your own thing, and that is where we're going.
Speaker 2:We're going to communities being built by individuals or family groups with other families, with other people in probably a similar life stage, and building those things within the context of larger churches. I think larger churches will stay. I don't think they're going to be all Francis Chans and go into like 50 people groups in various different aspects of the city, but I think that. So I think that large churches are going to stay, but I think there will be a fragmentation of where people find their community into smaller groups, because I don't think you can do it in a big church. It's absolutely impossible.
Speaker 2:Because the because, because the plan for big churches to do big family is to have more teams, to have more people commoditized, to come into the church centrally and to do things for more people at once. So, for example, instead of doing now for us, instead of doing marriage prep one-to-one, what we're doing is we're doing marriage prep for eight or nine different couples in the building at one time and I'm like okay, cool, but that's called big church mindset, that's what it's called right, and I'm like all right, but what if that's not a good thing? What if nine couples in a room doesn't work? And because they don't know each other, they won't be as open, they won't be as honest, they won't actually work through the things that they need to work through in order to have a healthy marriage. Like what, at what point does that big church mindset actually begin minimizing the individual person who's actually going to walk into a marriage and actually not have any idea about, like probably needs to not be, need to share a bank account or whatever, and I think like there's bits where people are going to turn around and go. Actually I don't think that's true or real, but so they'll end up going to church on a Sunday because they love the idea of salvation. They want to invest in that idea. They want to invest the idea that the church is for everybody and the church is growing and they love the product, they love the worship, they get an amazing sense of God's presence and community or whatever in the worship community with God in the worship.
Speaker 2:But community will lack unless you are under 25 and not married community. You will not have a community met in that context. Now, what's really interesting is is that the other option you have is going to a church with the most awful singing, the most, like cat squealing vocals and like the guy that played the piano literally can't play it and you sacrifice that part of it for the family, because those churches will have family, community orientation. They will do loads of stuff after the meeting. They will do loads of stuff during the week. They'll have one service on a sunday, not six, seven million, you know. And so what will happen is is that you end up sacrificing something.
Speaker 2:But for churches like ours, what I what will happen is that you end up sacrificing something. But for churches like ours, what I think will happen is that people will continue with the model of the church. They'll be above in a seat, they'll be the 10% in the offering, they'll keep the church going, but they won't find community there, because the only way you can find community if you're busy is if you do it intentionally. The only way that you can find community in the church big churches is by being busy in the church, and if the church big churches is by being busy in the church. And if you've got a family and a full-time job you can't do that. So actually you have to end up trying to make yourself a community, and I think that's where we're going to go yeah it.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because me and you, like the church that you're a part of, is more on on the. It's quite bigger church, like it's at 1200 people coming, and my church is a bit smaller, it's only about. I think maybe you have like 60, 70 ish people there on a sunday, maybe 120 total and while we don't have the cat scratching like vocals like you describe, but it is like more of a communal, communal focus. But I think, like the, the thing that I'm realizing as I get older, just how much I value like friends, because as I've gotten older, like just more and more and more people die in my life and you realize that mortality is a real thing, and so when you find a good friend, just the value level of it goes up way higher. Not that I didn't value people before, it's just my awareness of the worth of it. And then also, somehow I want my kids to experience people, not in the same way that I experienced them, but like being around the guy who mentored me and like letting my kid, like watching him and his wife, like interact with my kids and so on, but I think like the integration of each other's life to do it together. I can't overstate the value that I feel and see for that, and I feel like people make every excuse in the world not to pursue it, and it's like that's probably one of the most disheartening things for me, like it's really painful for me if I, like my wife, loves to host people. Hospitality is her, her gift, and she's so fantastic at it, and so we just try to think of the lowest lift way of like. Everybody has to eat dinner. Let's just have people over for dinner or lunch, and so you're just always doing this tightrope walk of like yeah, but my kid takes a nap at this time, and my kid and we were always like kind of loose with that of like, if our kids gonna take a nap, we just throw them in the stroller so that we can go wherever.
Speaker 1:But everyone has these really like crazy specific routines, and I was around this sw. They they were missionaries and they had four kids and the kids the age of the kids was quite spread out. I mean, they had a kid in his like mid twenties and they had like a kid that wasn't even 10, uh yet, and I was like how, how's this work with your kids, cause you guys have lived in like several different countries. He's like well, what we found is this whole illusion that kids have to have this very specific routine. That does create structure, it creates repetition. But you can create that structure by. The structure is we're a family and wherever we're going, we're doing stuff together.
Speaker 1:And so in the commoditization again, just keep banging on that drum. It's like factory. Everything is structured towards the commoditization, even education. Sit here for eight hours, be quiet, absorb information, regurgitate it back. That's not learning, that's memorization, it's not learning, it's not wisdom. And then so we see, like this, building towards that.
Speaker 1:In reality, relationships super inconvenient, they're sacrifice. Sometimes these people suck and you still have to make the choice of being around them. Sometimes they sing horribly. I have no offense to whoever hears this. I have a recording of my wedding and one of the guys in my revival group who was standing. He was by the camera and so all you hear is him singing the whole time and it's awful. It's awful. You can't even like the worship was awesome, but it was awful. But that's family. Not that you have to give that guy the mic, but it's just so happy. He's by camera, but but so that that's the one thing.
Speaker 1:Anybody takes anything away from this episode is is that man, like if people are inviting you into their home, if they're trying to make space for you and make time, you have to try to make that work. You have to sacrifice for that and do it and like be realistic. But it's like if I'm, if I have the option to like be around you and Jess and have my kids like like be exposed to you and and and like your wisdom and your love and your energy and your focus and your questions, like you're going to do things I would never do. You're going to say things I would never say, and so that just like slingshots their progression. It also like cements in, like core value.
Speaker 1:It's just so invaluable to have that and to prioritize that and then also just to enjoy each other. We're freaking going to live. We live forever. We're internal beings. We're what, you know, this thing is kind of about, and so we were gifted to each other. We're what this thing is kind of about, and so we were gifted to each other. Christ was gifted to us Like the Father gifts Christ to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit gifts Christ to the Father, and so on, and we're part of that and we're gifted to each other, we're supposed to be reconciled to each other, and we're so damn busy trying to make more money, trying to coach sports, trying to do that, that, which is not bad things.
Speaker 2:But it's just about prioritization and I feel like, because, because actually those things are created by human beings as a cultic expression of the divine. So so where, wherever human beings create culture, there is a divine spark there somewhere, wherever you are, whatever you do, there is a divine spark there. The issue is is it orientated towards the correct structure of prioritization or is it orientated towards selfishness? Is it orientated towards manhood? Is it orientated towards controlling your children, even in terms of they have to have the 15-minute nap at 1.23 and 42 and 42 seconds, like? Where is it orientated to?
Speaker 2:Because actually, if we can orientate individualism to the community, then what you have is you have family. So every family is made up of in an individual and every family is made up of an individual that thinks individually. But they sacrifice their ability or their freedom to speak their mind over and over again on the basis that they are part of a structure of a family where they prefer the other, and the example of that is obviously marriage. But one of the foundational things for me is that we say you and I. We would say you know what, like if, if one of us really needed each other, we'd probably get on a plane and come and see each other. Like we live. I don't know like how many hours away from each other, how many miles away from each other, but actually like there's, there's. If you said, hey, I need you, then I'd be like, hey, babe, I've got a go. Or is it just me?
Speaker 1:I thought you're were going to say hey, babe, I'll be there, Sorry, hey babe, hey, babe, I'll be there, I'll be there in a minute.
Speaker 2:But actually there's this, really there's just this really interesting dynamic of friendship, because actually true friendship is family, because true friendship is me saying to you hey, you know, like when you treat your kid like that, it really impacts my kid like that and because we spend so much time together, can you please not do that? Because and what family does? It grows health, because it grows communication. But if you don't have family, you never learn how to communicate, you never learn how to talk, you never learn how to adopt or absorb someone else's point of view and even if you disagree with that, disagree with it. Well, I mean, all of my lesson growing up was how not to be a twat. That was my family lesson, because basically it was like I, I just I annoy people. For 25 years of my life I really, really annoyed people and I was like, why don't, why am I so annoying to people? And then I realized that the common denominator is the fact that I just say what I think all the time and I mean, to an extent that's, that's a, that gift, but to an extent it's a major deterioration of relationship if I can't shut my mouth.
Speaker 2:And so actually, we have to be aware of that, and you don't ever learn that in a business or in a structure like a church that is structured on a business, because what you learn about that is that if you are higher up, you get to say what you want.
Speaker 2:In fact, if you're higher up in that business or organization, it's made for you and designed around you in order that you can actually speak about what you want. So, for example, um, you can say what you want and say you know, I was just having a bad day, it is what it is. Or you can say what, what you want in a business or business organization and you and you could be like well, you know, like, this is my business, I ran it like, like it or lump it, and that's actually true, but that's not the church. The church is slow, painful, iron sharpens, iron, relationships that grow, health, not numbers, necessarily, although hopefully at some point numbers will grow. And so I think, like for me, we, we need to address that as part of what our success measures are in the Western church.
Speaker 1:It's good, dude. It's a good place to stop. I have a meeting coming up, and so I think we'll pick up there, because we went deep in the weeds. We have a lot of stuff to unpack, but love you, buddy. Thanks so much for sharing. Sorry to stop the flow.
Speaker 2:I'll say hi to the phone. I'll say hi to the phone. I'll say hi to Mark.
Speaker 1:Love you, buddy well, that's all, folks. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Rebuilding community and taking responsibility of living a life rooted in truth. That doesn't happen by accident. It demands vigilance, it demands courage and it demands taking responsibility, living a life rooted in truth. That doesn't happen by accident. It demands vigilance, it demands courage and it demands that we all play our little part, no matter how small that might be.
Speaker 1:And if there's one thing we need to remember, it's this that life was not meant to be lived alone. Meaning is not found in self-indulgence, but in service to God and to others, to something beyond ourself. And if you look at the creation story, there's a series of benedictions where God creates light and he creates the heavens and the earth and the animals and he separates them and he said it was good, and he said it was good, and he said it was good. And then, after all these benedictions, comes a curse and he says and God created man and said it is not good for man to be alone. It is not good for man to be alone.
Speaker 1:So if this conversation challenged you and encouraged you or made you think more seriously about your own space in the world, share it. Share it with someone who you think might need to hear it and leave a review. Who you think might need to hear it and leave a review? For me, it's not about growing numbers, but, in a marketing background, I understand that the algorithm is getting fed information, and algorithms are what drive these platforms, and they need to be trained and so to show some meaningful content to people who actually need it and are actually going to engage with it. That is done through you liking and sharing it, so leave a review and share it. Put a rating on it. It helps plant seeds that will take root and get in front of other people. Thank you for listening with us today. Carry the weight and build something worthy of the gift you've been given. Until next time, toodaloo.
