Simple Faith with Rusty George

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Rusty George
Sometimes as leaders, we think there's no way someone could do the job as well as we can. It can be easy to feel like we have to have our hands and everything for our church to succeed. But as we all know, that couldn't be further from the truth. No one accomplishes anything great alone. Great leaders delegate. And if you're listening to this podcast, I know you want to be a great leader at your church.

00;00;18;25 - 00;00;40;11
Rusty George
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00;00;40;23 - 00;00;59;03
Rusty George
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00;00;59;13 - 00;01;20;20
Rusty George
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00;01;20;25 - 00;01;35;14
Rusty George
Great leaders delegate. Get the support you need to get out of the administrative weeds and back to growing your church with BELAY.

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Intro/Outro
Welcome to Leading Simple with a rusty George. Our goal is to make following Jesus and leading others a bit more simple. Here's your host, Rusty George.

00;01;46;12 - 00;02;05;18
Rusty George
Welcome to episode 246. Today we get to hear from a guy that gets to predict the future for us. He's a guy that studies all the data, looks at all the trends, is going to tell us where the church is headed and how we can keep up with the curve. His name is David Kinnaman and he purchased Barna Research years ago from George Barna.

00;02;05;25 - 00;02;22;05
Rusty George
And when you think about research, you think about Gallup, you think about Pew Research, you think about Barna. They survey so many people and ask so many questions and they get so much data on all kinds of things, but particularly things involving the church. So we're going to sit down. We're going to talk about some difficult days in his life.

00;02;22;06 - 00;02;41;05
Rusty George
We're going to talk about a transition in his life to across the country. We're also going to talk about the future of the church and where it is headed. I think you're going to love my conversation with David Kinnaman. I want to thank BELAY Solutions and their participation and support of the podcast, so grateful to them and for them helping make this episode possible.

00;02;41;09 - 00;02;51;09
Rusty George
Here's my conversation with David Kinnaman. David, thank you for joining the podcast today. For our listeners that don't know your story very much, would you kind of tell us who you are?

00;02;51;21 - 00;03;12;11
David Kinnaman
Absolutely. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you, Rusty, And it's been to too long since we've had a chance to, you know, be in person. But it's good to see you. And yeah, so I've run a company called Barna for for about 13 years. I worked for the founder of the company for a long time, coming straight out of college.

00;03;12;11 - 00;03;52;19
David Kinnaman
And I always figured I'd be a pastor. My dad has served in a pastoral function in the Phenix area. Gary Kinnaman for essentially his whole career. And so I always figured I'd be a pastor, and yet God sort of had a different sort of set of set of things. I felt like I still have a pastoral heart, kind of a public pastor through the research by the research company that I own and run is called Barna, and we do such research on the intersection of faith, religion and culture and try to help leaders understand what's happening and, you know, get a better map for people's hearts and minds through social research, through the things that

00;03;52;19 - 00;04;08;20
David Kinnaman
they tell us in in the studies that we conduct. And to report privilege, I feel like we've gotten some, you know, just really fun insights as we've gotten to interview literally millions of people across the United States and now increasingly around the world.

00;04;09;09 - 00;04;21;29
Rusty George
So I'm sure our listeners are curious. I mean, how does somebody like or a company like yours get their data? I mean, is it a lot of cold calls or is it just blanket emails? Is that you use a SurveyMonkey over there or how does that work?

00;04;22;12 - 00;04;52;15
David Kinnaman
Yeah, well, we just had we just asked my parents to fill out the survey, you know, a thousand times. And it gets a lot cheaper. It's a lot cheaper that way. Yeah. No, we use a variety of different methods. I mean, there's qualitative, there's quantitative, there's ethnographic research, all sorts of different things. Primarily we're quant oriented company, which means that we do data that can be, you know, calculated and tabulated and, you know, a certain random representative sample of people.

00;04;52;15 - 00;05;17;07
David Kinnaman
And we traditionally started out mostly as a telephone data collection company. But as that has changed and as people have gotten more and more cell phones and caller ID and different kinds of technology has entered, we've done more and more online. So we're mostly online now. We use, you know, high quality research panels. We write questions and collect the data through random representative samples.

00;05;18;04 - 00;05;40;26
David Kinnaman
We cross-reference that against them, publicly available demographic data that's available through the Census Bureau and other public sources to try to represent certain categories of people in the data. But it's a fun process and there's a real science to it and are as well. And I think there's as research has become even more ubiquitous, it's been it's not always easier.

00;05;40;26 - 00;06;01;24
David Kinnaman
There's, you know, reasons why I think certain kinds of voices are actually as much as we can get access to almost anyone. Why? Just having a lot of online polls can be a real limitation. And most people who who who can't read or who are online or might be in a certain socioeconomic status that they're just a little harder to reach or don't want to share their opinions.

00;06;01;24 - 00;06;37;18
David Kinnaman
They're they're skeptical about, you know, being polled on any topic. And so the golden age of telephone polling was was actually pretty good because almost all households had a landline back in the good old days of social polling. But even there, though, I think there's some things about the anonymity of online polls and other kinds of things that, you know, are allowing us to really dig inside, you know, people's hearts and minds and get a sense of like, okay, you know, in an anonymous, very respectful way, people always get to opt in to sharing what they want to share, when they want to share it.

00;06;37;18 - 00;06;52;17
David Kinnaman
But we're able to then translate that into, you know, what is this like, What might this mean for people who want to make a difference in terms of shaping, shaping a generation's perceptions of Christianity and how the church can actually speak the language of our culture very effectively?

00;06;52;29 - 00;07;18;16
Rusty George
You know, it's it's a tremendous honor to you and to your your predecessor that, you know, you guys get quoted a lot. You know, I see you guys up there with Pew Research, with Gallup, with, you know, Banas mentioned. And so you guys have this great reputation of being legitimate. But do you find that you have to spend a lot of time proving the people that you're a non-biased, just data kind of place?

00;07;18;16 - 00;07;26;20
Rusty George
Because, I mean, I could find a study to prove anything I want out there right now. How do you kind of let people know that you're legit?

00;07;27;03 - 00;07;48;27
David Kinnaman
Well, I think that's a there's a whole psychology of what people choose to believe in terms of data. You know, there's this coming from confirmation bias that we tend to believe the things that confirm our perspectives. So if we put out a piece of news about the church, if it's good news, bad news, those that are inclined to believe bad news about the church loved the bad news about the church.

00;07;49;12 - 00;08;14;27
David Kinnaman
So mainstream media, for example, we have found that they tend to really resonate with the times when we've put out an article or research data that is perhaps a little critical or a little like shines a light on tough realities within the Christian community. Mm hmm. And then and then there is others that might have a confirmation bias towards, you know, the positive stories of the church making a difference.

00;08;14;27 - 00;08;35;22
David Kinnaman
And you know, the truth is always somewhere out there, to quote The X-Files. But but the truth is always, you know, sort of somewhere between our confirmation bias and our, you know, the reality of what's happening on the ground. And and I think that's actually one of those fascinating things that God has given us that we're creating an image of God.

00;08;35;22 - 00;08;59;06
David Kinnaman
We're actually created with the powers of observation, were created with the sense that there is a truth, there is a certain reality to be discovered. And then there's also shades of meaning and understanding and nuance that both of those things can be true about the human condition and about social research. So, you know, we've tried our very best to be, you know, just as honest as we can be.

00;08;59;15 - 00;09;34;22
David Kinnaman
We're an independent. We are for profit company and, you know, we have a base in California for a long time this year, actually moved to Texas. But we have people across ten plus states who work for the company and and I think, you know, we do our very best to try to make it really applicable to leaders and the issues and challenges that they're facing or to parents and issues and challenges that they're facing or, you know, meeting the new generation of younger Christians, you know, helping older Christians understand the mindset that might be at work under the surface for younger Christians.

00;09;35;20 - 00;10;04;29
David Kinnaman
You know, we're always doing our very best to translate across these different divides, whether Christian, non-Christian, secular media, Christian media, Christian leaders, to kind of a widening gap with the culture that doesn't understand the church and doesn't really want to understand its story. So we we have that a real privilege to be bridge builders and to try to translate across some of those those gaps and research, while it has its limitations, is one of the very best ways for us to see someone else's perspective.

00;10;05;14 - 00;10;22;00
Rusty George
Okay. So let me ask you about research, because there are some of us that are just wired to just, man, we love numbers, we dig into graphs, we and we ask all the appropriate questions for it. It's not just a slide we look at and move on. It's something, you know, you spend. Okay, so what's that mean? What's it not saying?

00;10;22;00 - 00;10;48;20
Rusty George
What is it saying? I am not one of those people. I tend to see it and go, I know. What am I supposed to do with that? Right. So just tell me, are we supposed to do less songs or are we supposed to be online or offline? You know, so as a as somebody out there that looks at data, give me two or three questions we should all be asking when we see these charts and graphs about where the church is going or, you know, here's what we discovered in 2022.

00;10;48;21 - 00;10;52;27
Rusty George
What do I do with that? Yeah, that helped me make good decisions.

00;10;52;27 - 00;11;16;16
David Kinnaman
That's a great question. Well, first of all, broadly, I think about our work as trying to understand a reality for some someone, let's just say the the millennial or the Gen Z young person and their attitudes towards Christian. So what is the reality in their mind? And then we want to give people a context to place that in and then the direction to pursue is good.

00;11;16;18 - 00;11;41;08
David Kinnaman
And so maybe that could frame some of the questions that we might ask ourselves as leaders. As what about this context? What about this? What about this reality do I need to understand better? Where does this come from? Certain things that I might have understood or thought I knew about a generation Z a young person, whether they're Christian or not Christian, what's the context I need to place this in and then what's the direction I need to pursue?

00;11;41;08 - 00;12;24;17
David Kinnaman
So I made the argument that we are woefully unprepared for Generation Z, Christians and non-Christians. They are asking a whole different set of questions. The context that we might place set in, as I call it, digital Babylon, where screens disciple that that we have this profound moment. It's a it's a pedagogical revolution of how we learn. It's an epistemological reformation in terms of how we think we know what we know it is a channel and distribution reformation in terms of even just looking at COVID, the fact that people now are young millennials and Gen Z are are sort of sampling from a lot of different church experiences.

00;12;24;17 - 00;12;53;03
David Kinnaman
So they'll they'll go to your church in another church and listen to podcasts and like we actually want that of our young people. We want them to be to be consuming as much, you know, faith oriented content as they can get because they're so they're much more likely to be drowned out by all of that. What they're consuming and then the direction to pursue is how do we then as church leaders, you know, think about our roles as not not trying to constrain them, to say, hey, you're only a member in this one local church.

00;12;53;03 - 00;13;18;01
David Kinnaman
But we actually try to say, here's some podcasts here, some YouTube channels, here's some here's some documentaries, here's some things you should be watching. We want you to be wise and, you know, ready for the world that you're living in. And, you know, so I think I think just recognizing, you know, maybe the most important question that I could suggest that we ask ourselves is, is to start at that beginning space.

00;13;18;01 - 00;13;47;29
David Kinnaman
Like, what is my frame of reference and in what way is this research trying to help me open up to a different perspective, maybe about what someone else is experiencing and, you know, that's been the great privilege of my my career here is actually being basically a professional listener. So we've had, you know, the just the heartbreaking and sometimes inspiring journey of coming alongside people in a in a social research, whether qualitative, deep interviews or quantitative, you know, kind of.

00;13;48;05 - 00;14;17;06
David Kinnaman
Yes, no, agree, disagree statements about people's spiritual journeys. And I've been just absolutely blown away by, you know, people's spiritual back story. We we really underestimate, I think, you know, just all these steps that people take that God has people on these journeys and they come to our churches or they come into our communities and they've already got a lot of, you know, challenges and issues related to what they believe or how they think about the church or being hurt or misunderstood or other kinds of challenges.

00;14;17;06 - 00;14;35;29
David Kinnaman
And so I think I think slowing down and really letting the data tell us a story, a back story, and allowing that to confront some of our own assumptions, especially as leaders who've been sort of raised in the tradition of North American Christianity and have certain ideas of what that's going to mean for us to be successful and faithful.

00;14;36;21 - 00;14;56;27
David Kinnaman
I think I think we're in a cultural moment now where some of those things are starting to be really questioned and hopefully questioned. And, you know, we can talk more about what some of those things might be. But I think that idea of like, what's this data helping to teach me about someone else's perspective that I just I think I know, but I don't really understand as well as I probably should.

00;14;57;09 - 00;15;20;08
Rusty George
That's really helpful. You know, that would make a lot more sense of the things that I see and the data that I read and just kind of putting in that perspective. Okay. So let's deal with 2022. Okay, Here we are. Everybody said once we got out of 2020, everything would go back to normal. Nothing's normal. Everything is different and much has been written about that.

00;15;20;08 - 00;15;31;26
Rusty George
But, you know, the COVID years and maybe 2023 will feel more like we're beyond it. But you know, what are some surprising trends that you saw in 2022 in regards to the church?

00;15;32;15 - 00;15;59;00
David Kinnaman
Well, one of them was we alluded to it, but millennials and Gen Z are actually more likely than boomers to have kind of sprung back into churchgoing. Now, that doesn't look like it did in the past, because they're now conditioned at times to use online worship and other kind of hybrid forms. And so it may feel like, you know, our congregations aren't as full quite as they were for for many people, that will be true.

00;16;00;16 - 00;16;20;26
David Kinnaman
Both churches are still struggling to get back to that sort of place that they were, although there are areas where I think there's even more vitality. And some of that is, for example, in hybrid and digital worship. Like I think the pandemic helped us. I know there's a good and healthy debate about whether you have to be in the church and how, you know, like physical presence is different than an online presence.

00;16;20;26 - 00;16;47;23
David Kinnaman
But I do think that it enabled the church to be more digitally prepared and more more 24/7 than it was in the past. And I think that can be a good thing. So it's been a surprise to see millennials, and especially nonwhite millennials, black, brown, Asian, they'll be more likely to say they're, you know, kind of attending church as compared to prior to COVID.

00;16;47;23 - 00;17;09;03
David Kinnaman
And another surprise that sort of related to this, But we've actually see a real openness in terms of spirituality today, about 44% of Americans say that since the pandemic, they're more open to God than they were before. Wow. And younger generations are actually most likely to say that about six in ten Gen Z who say they're more open to God than before the pandemic.

00;17;09;03 - 00;17;27;13
David Kinnaman
Now they're open to anything. They're open to a lot of things. They're you know, they're kind of a blank slate kind of generation. But I think there are some real areas of openness that we should pay attention to. And again, that doesn't mean they're just like ready to sign up, you know, come back into all the same things that maybe we wouldn't have thought about trying to sign them up for in the past.

00;17;28;25 - 00;17;52;11
David Kinnaman
But but recognizing that they're they're open to noticing God in everyday life. You know, they're open to prayer. Prayer has been a huge part of the last two, three years for people. One of the primary spiritual expressions for people is prayer. They believe the power of prayer, Christian, non-Christian, even people that say they're atheist say they often will admit that they pray.

00;17;52;11 - 00;18;15;01
David Kinnaman
So some of the good sort of the good signs, I think we've seen a lot of entrenchment on the negative side. We've seen a lot of entrenchment in terms of race, race and racial reconciliation. There's been a lot of growth, I think, for a lot of people, especially leaders, during the racial, racial upheaval of 2020. But I think a lot of leaders are thinking differently and better about that.

00;18;15;01 - 00;18;40;11
David Kinnaman
But there's still so much work to do. And unfortunately, a lot of the people in the pews, a lot of Christians, have become even more entrenched that the problems of race really are about today. And that's been, I think, a pretty heartbreaking thing to see. It's not true of every Christian, but too many Christians have seen their their perspectives about that, almost like crystallized in a and maybe I got a lot of not a very healthy way.

00;18;40;11 - 00;19;04;06
David Kinnaman
And I think church leaders are right to have really struggled with. How do you talk through some of these issues of politics and race and the things that divide us? Because this gets to something we said a little earlier is that screens disciple and part of the challenge is how do you disciple people that have had a pretty steady diet of, you know, politics and social issues And we live in a you know, a contested culture.

00;19;04;06 - 00;19;20;28
David Kinnaman
So where is where does the Christian faith and discipleship show up in that? So I would say that the task of the church and trying to disciple people is as hard today as it's ever been, even as people's hearts are open to, you know, kind of thinking in some fresh ways about what it means to be, you know, open to God in their lives.

00;19;21;10 - 00;19;48;09
Rusty George
Wow. Yeah. That is that is frightening to some degree because you think about, boy, there's just so much energy and dollars and resources being put into disabling all of our minds, whether it's you're being disabled by Fox News or CNN or you're being disabled by social media, we're all being influenced to some degree. But there's also a tremendous possibility as well as what churches can do to leverage it.

00;19;48;09 - 00;20;02;03
Rusty George
I mean, what are right? I mean, you deal so much with descriptive, not so much on prescriptive, but what are some things that you see that churches are doing that you think? I think this might actually get to solving some of these problems we see in the data?

00;20;02;20 - 00;20;24;02
David Kinnaman
Well, it's interesting. You talk about the the description versus prescription and it's a it's a discipline to try to stay on the description side. And we've tried to do that, I would think, for for a lot of our our company's history. And I think we learned a lot about that from George Barnett. And even even he really leaned in on some prescription things that we should try this.

00;20;24;02 - 00;20;52;15
David Kinnaman
We should try this. And and we're we're doing more and more of that. And I just, you know, you sort of hear her to hear first, like we're going to be doing more and more prescriptive things here own because we believe that the problems and the possible solutions are so important for us to to lean into. So we've got like a program that we do for churches called CoLab, where we have a six week, usually six week guided journey through the data, like what do we do with millennials or what do we do with giving or what do we do with men's ministry or women's ministry or children's ministry.

00;20;52;15 - 00;21;15;04
David Kinnaman
And so we do these collabs because we we really believe that, you know, part of our mission in the coming years will be to help, you know, through research driven insights, help people make sense of the data. And, you know, we have this spotlights, scales and shovels, exercise. And this gets to another answer, something you asked earlier. I spotlighted something we should shine a light on and really understand the nature of the problem better.

00;21;16;09 - 00;21;47;04
David Kinnaman
A scale would be something we might evaluate over time. And, you know, we might say, you know, are we getting better or worse when it comes to people's love for the Bible in our in our communities, We've got a great free tool called the Church Pulse that you can take as a serve as a congregation to measure kind of the scales of how things are, how people are doing, and then a shovel, something we got to dig, dig into an excavator and really, like get beneath the numbers and actually even ask more questions and figure out like, why is why is it that people are talking about faith deconstruction more like, why are they what

00;21;47;04 - 00;22;09;14
David Kinnaman
is the evangelical, the angelica factor? How is that affecting our church? You know, and so I think we are we are trying to get you more as a as a company sophisticated in our efforts to describe and then prescribe or at least walk people through those areas of making change as a leader. And we're very excited about that.

00;22;09;14 - 00;22;34;29
David Kinnaman
We have some some fun things that I think will be in the next year or two or three years. Some really big goals that we're setting in terms of trying to help the church, you know, in some very specific ways. But I think, you know, the one thing I would ask leaders to consider in this in this time is that, you know, we're we have a real responsibility.

00;22;34;29 - 00;23;02;08
David Kinnaman
I believe, you know, Jesus says that it would be better for us to have, you know, a pretty heavy object tied around our neck and sort of cast into the sea as a teacher. If we misled someone, that's really not heresy. And so I don't want to sort of stretch that too far. But but I also think there's something about the ways we've we've oriented towards thinking about training and discipling people that, you know, we have some responsibility towards.

00;23;02;08 - 00;23;24;05
David Kinnaman
And I'm I'm a big believer this kind of gets to this one big prescription that we are going to lean into very hard in the next couple of years, which is I actually think that there is a new way of educating a new not new way of thinking about the educational muscles of the church and that sermons and the homily and the kind of rhetorical tools that are necessary for sermons are wonderful and important.

00;23;24;05 - 00;23;54;03
David Kinnaman
We experience Christ walking among us when we preach and we preach well. There's a sense of the Spirit moving in our midst and how beautiful that is when great preaching happens and it confront any person in any stage of life and any moment in their you know, in their experience. And then at the same time, what we're seeing is part of the underlying reality that I'm pointing to in the data is that we're not actually a very good disciple making community even at our best.

00;23;54;15 - 00;24;10;26
David Kinnaman
And I believe the reason for that is because we've we've kind of lost sight of the education muscle, the pedagogical skills of how do we take someone through a set of content they can't pick and choose, they can't opt out of certain weekends, They can't come, you know, every five weeks and hope to become the kind of Christian that we intend.

00;24;10;26 - 00;24;45;29
David Kinnaman
So we've got to redouble our efforts as a church to become an educating, catalyzing community and actually creating courses and and experiences and learning journeys that start with let's understand who you are, how you learn what your story is, what your back story is, why you've gotten stuck and hurt and broken. But what if the church actually kind of came to redeem that, and especially that with younger people who who God is, you know, wiring a very anxious and ambitious generation in front of us.

00;24;46;21 - 00;25;07;11
David Kinnaman
How can the church be a place to help, you know, sort of disarm the anxiety that this generation feels, but also propel them towards this great, ambitious goal? They have to make a difference in the world. And that comes back to this idea that we could become a learning community under the authority of scripture. And so I would encourage, you know, those are big ideas, thoughts.

00;25;07;21 - 00;25;38;17
David Kinnaman
I would encourage leaders to begin saying, like, how can we actually become a better educating, learning community? Sermons are part of the pinnacle of that, but they're not the only strategy. And becoming a pedagogical community, a persuasive community that actually compels people towards this way of Christ of life and Christ. And I heard an amazing lecture a couple of weeks ago from John Dixon, who's an Australian, who was saying that in the first two centuries of the church, the church viewed education as integral to its mission.

00;25;38;24 - 00;25;59;26
David Kinnaman
They would people would study 100, 150, 200 hours to be catalyzed. Even in the early church you had to go through this process because persecution was so intense in those early years of the church that you had to understand what it was you were signing up for. That was against the false gods of those those, you know, first and second, third century Christians.

00;25;59;26 - 00;26;33;22
David Kinnaman
And so that's part of my my belief now is we actually need churches that are inspired by the historic ways in which Christians have invented education, a higher education, sort of Catholic education catechism process. And we've got to become a persuasive community that helps to say, listen, this is this is the life of Christ. You're going to miss it if we don't take you to school and and I think we as communicators have an opportunity to do some really cool stuff.

00;26;33;22 - 00;27;03;05
David Kinnaman
Sermons are, again, a really important part of that. The muscle musculature of a persuasive community. But so is education. So our experience and so are other kinds of tools that I think is just right for the moment. And so that's, that's part of this. Like how do we we're going to be providing more and more prescription around some of that kind of a restoration of that the structure of what it means to learn as a Christian community together, because otherwise we're just being so deeply shaped by these cultural forces.

00;27;03;21 - 00;27;11;05
David Kinnaman
And there's no way out of that. There's no way out of it. So we've got to we've got to return to our roots. And I'm excited about being at least a small part of championing that cause.

00;27;12;05 - 00;27;32;00
Rusty George
I love that. I it's funny you say that. I've been watching what we do and what the church has been doing now for the last decade, and we got very excited about the Internet, as we should, and online and all those kind of things. And we were early adopters on the online thing and we've been doing it and we'll continue doing it.

00;27;32;16 - 00;27;53;26
Rusty George
But I've noticed our our answer to what it is that you're talking about has seems to always been okay, just more video content. Let's get more up on YouTube. And I'm not saying we don't need that, but it is interesting that the thing that people have craved and miss the most is that one on one or even one on, you know, the community kind of side of things, Right.

00;27;54;02 - 00;28;18;18
Rusty George
I almost wonder and if it happens, then I'll use this soundbite as look what I predicted. I almost wonder if if Sunday's school will make a return because people are a little bit more leery to go into somebody's house for small group. Not everybody wants to sit around somebody's living room. They don't know and, you know, read a book, but they're already at church.

00;28;19;03 - 00;28;33;05
Rusty George
Their kids are in children's ministry. Let's sit around a table with, you know, coffee and donuts and talk about what we just heard or apply it or it almost seems like there's an educational piece that can happen there, which is where our Sunday school began in the first place. So am I. Am I crazy?

00;28;33;20 - 00;28;39;14
David Kinnaman
No, I don't think you're crazy at all. And I think, you know, I should have done a big drumroll before you made your prediction.

00;28;40;11 - 00;28;42;03
Rusty George
But we'll have it in later.

00;28;42;12 - 00;29;09;03
David Kinnaman
Perfect. No, I think that's that that's exactly the kind of thinking that is needed. And it's it's it's that and so much more. I think there is we don't want to, you know, lay up on people more burdens than they can handle in an already busy world. But I do think that the kinds of religious systems, whether we're talking about Islam or Mormonism in particular, goes to come to mind.

00;29;09;05 - 00;29;38;07
David Kinnaman
But but those religions ask a lot of their people because you have to you have to be immersed in what that what that story means for you as a human being. And and, you know, you've got to come to grips with some things and I think we haven't done if we're being really honest, we haven't always done a good job of helping the people who are under our charge come to grips with with the far reaching reality of what it means to follow Christ.

00;29;38;07 - 00;29;58;23
David Kinnaman
We we have sometimes failed to go there ourselves as leaders, and we have to repent of that. We have sometimes bought into a notion of a building, you know, kind of a program driven church where we've got, you know, and I think it's COVID sort of stripped away some of our pretenses about that. It's like, oh, wow, these people really weren't that into us anyway, were they?

00;30;00;14 - 00;30;25;21
David Kinnaman
And, and and so I think we've got a lot to grapple with. But this is what's so powerful then, as we imagine what a persuasive community might look like. I'm on the board of a university and I'm sort of a broken record when it comes to, you know, we should be the most persuasive community to these mostly gen-z ers who are on campus and who are who are learning in our community because we actually believe that the Christian sexual ethic matters.

00;30;25;21 - 00;30;49;09
David Kinnaman
We actually believe that the authority of Scripture might matter to the way people live their lives. We actually think that suffering is part of the story, that we're we're to be, you know, receive a comfort from God. And those who have been comforted by God are comfort to those who are going through great loss that we believe that people aren't just little consumers of gospel content, but they're participants in a mission of sharing Jesus to the world.

00;30;49;21 - 00;31;12;25
David Kinnaman
And and that's what my friend John Dixon was really describing in this lecture was like the people couldn't actually be our mission with Jesus in the way that the early church needed them to be without that, I don't know if I got this quite right, but like he said, there's like 144 hours of catechism before you can be baptized in the early church and certain in certain parts of the early church.

00;31;12;25 - 00;31;47;08
David Kinnaman
And that was a really inspiring idea because, you know, what would it look like for us to say, Hey, we're not trying to make this? He even made the comment that the early church would have been more often misunderstood as a kind of philosophical school than what we take it to be as a congregation today. And in other words, there were these like, you know, you were in you were kind of like enrolling in a way of of thinking and being that was so counter-cultural at the time that you had to be immersed in the way of thinking about the Old Testament prophets and, you know, the life of Christ and these different components of

00;31;47;08 - 00;32;11;25
David Kinnaman
what it meant to be reconciled to God in Christ and and that was that. And every, every person, you know, every man, every woman kind of initiative. And so I think there's something really powerful about that. I mean, we should redesign, I believe our our children's and teen and young and all ministry, especially in youth ministry, around a much higher vision of what they're capable of learning.

00;32;11;25 - 00;32;32;26
David Kinnaman
You know, they're learning calculus. They're they're learning a sociology of, you know, life and religion. They're they're they're you know, my son's taking a class called the Social Construction of Realities and 18 year old. You know, it's like, you know, they're capable of way more than the way most of our our churches have organized the the catechism, the kind of things we expect you to learn and understand.

00;32;32;26 - 00;32;34;07
David Kinnaman
And I think that's one place to start.

00;32;34;12 - 00;32;57;05
Rusty George
Hey, let me interrupt for just a second. You know, Easter is coming fast and we have put together a daily resource 28 days to Easter that you can easily get at real life church dot org. You can check that out there. Also at my website Pastor Rusty George dot com and on our real life church app we'd love to have you follow with us as we have a reading every single day which gets us ready for Easter.

00;32;57;12 - 00;33;20;11
Rusty George
All right back to the show. Okay. So that's fascinating. It's interesting. And a little bit of back story here. I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day and he was telling me that, hey, did you see so and so they posted this thing and it wasn't like a social media post. It was a higher education thing, but it was somebody coming after Brendan Manning because he wasn't he wasn't really into sanctification very much.

00;33;20;24 - 00;33;37;24
Rusty George
He was more into just grace. And I thought was that interesting because I remember when Brendan Manning started writing, we were all like, Oh my goodness, somebody is finally talking about grace, you know? And then Philip Yancey, his book came out and on and on and on, and it seems like the pendulum just swings one way or the other, right?

00;33;37;24 - 00;33;58;12
Rusty George
I mean, you and I are old enough now that we've seen it kind of go back and forth and what, what the mega church and what speaker driven ministry did for us and putting things on the bottom shelf now based upon the persecution in which we're living in, we're going to kind of have to step it up a little bit because I think the thing that COVID taught most of us pastors is a lot of our people were not near as mature as we thought.

00;33;58;12 - 00;33;58;25
Rusty George
They were.

00;33;59;06 - 00;34;18;12
David Kinnaman
Right? Right. I think that's right. And I think we would do well to think about the church. And I think it's something of a biblical frame, which is that the power of a remnant of a very small committed the word indoctrinated has some negative connotations. But it's true. That just means like the doctrine is put inside you so that you can live it out.

00;34;18;24 - 00;34;41;18
David Kinnaman
And I think that's part of what we're really missing. And I mean, we could make some really persuasive arguments about that. And we just interviewed 2000 Americans and we asked them, they're so open to Jesus. They're so open to God. As I mentioned, seven out of ten Americans say, you know, they're they're open to God. Almost seven out of ten oh, 54% say they've made a come out of Jesus.

00;34;41;18 - 00;35;04;09
David Kinnaman
So important. Most believe that Jesus probably lived or are certain that he did. And there's so many openness, the place of openness in the society. We sometimes as Christian leaders, I think, you know, beat ourselves sort of self-flagellation about how post-Christian or non-Christian our our communities are. But but there's still a lot of muscle memory around the Christian story in our communities.

00;35;04;09 - 00;35;34;29
David Kinnaman
And yet there is it's like, by the way, this super interesting data points like half of Americans believe that Jesus is coming back and one in six believe he's coming back. Their lifetime real. So, you know, like the shadow of Jesus story looms large over the American society. And I think that's a great story because in most Western traditions, it's actually still pretty looms pretty large in the UK and Australia and places that bemoan their post-Christian reality.

00;35;34;29 - 00;36;01;00
David Kinnaman
Even Canada, you know, people say, Oh, it's very post-Christian, but it's not really post-Christian, it's just there is the emerging post-Christian segment of the society, but still, you know, hundreds of millions of Americans and tens of millions of Canadians, for example, have this sort of muscle memory of Jesus. But what I think is happening is that there is this such a a simplistic Jesus that has been embraced.

00;36;01;00 - 00;36;16;04
David Kinnaman
So we asked another question like, tell us any story. Do you have a favorite story about scripture? And it was about a third of all Americans who said they have a favorite story about Jesus life, which is in stark contrast to the fact that the vast majority of Americans say they believe in them. And then and then it's we ask them an open ended question.

00;36;16;04 - 00;36;39;02
David Kinnaman
Tell us and just list, you know, some of the things that you that you remember. And there just is there's just not much beneath the surface. There's just not that, you know, beneath the surface. There's there's so, so little real substance to what people remember about about Jesus. And that's all that's on us. I you know, I know people are distracted and there's a lot going on.

00;36;39;19 - 00;37;01;24
David Kinnaman
But, you know, we would do well to sort of like, how can we reorient our our churches and our ministries to, you know, again, preach Christ? He walks among us. He is the Incarnate Word and he changes lives. And he does so every day across the nation and in the ministries that, you know, that that are represented by churches and others that are listening to the podcast.

00;37;01;24 - 00;37;17;13
David Kinnaman
But at the same time, like we have a a great responsibility, I think, to use of Jesus stories and find ways of connecting that into people's hearts and minds and even even more creative indoctrinating in the best sense of that word ways.

00;37;18;01 - 00;37;38;28
Rusty George
Oh, wow. Okay, so I could talk about this forever, but we're not going to for the sake of your time and our listeners, but I'm going to give you a few different trends right now. And based upon the data you're seeing and just kind of assuming the trend that you think it's going in, I want you to predict kind of what this will look like over the course of the next few years.

00;37;39;09 - 00;38;10;04
Rusty George
Okay. So the first one is multisite sites. Okay. Now, I here's a theory and I think I'm wrong. My theory was that video only multi sites would fail post COVID because people are done watching screens if they're going to show up. They want to see live everything. But I have other people tell me, no, no, no. Now they're conditioned to watch the screen and they don't find it to be a value loss when they show up in the room, when they see a screen.

00;38;10;18 - 00;38;12;12
Rusty George
What do you see and what do you expect?

00;38;13;08 - 00;39;00;17
David Kinnaman
We don't have very good data on multi-site since COVID. We've done a study a few years ago called More than Multi-Site, which looked a little bit at some of the phenomenon. So I probably have to, you know, a good discipline researcher shouldn't sort of just guess on what the actual trends will be with multi-site. I think you should, but we can't say is that there are these different discrete segments of our population and and and again, people's back story, their set of expectations, their generation, their their history and how warm they experience a community to be emotionally and relationally, all those things will factor into it.

00;39;00;17 - 00;39;25;28
David Kinnaman
So I think for some people who've got, you know, enough kind of history with larger churches and with kind of that, you know, A-plus plus communicators league are going to be just as good with with with, you know, sort of multi-site screen based preaching. You know, to to your point, I think people are even more accustomed to that than they would have been prior to COVID.

00;39;26;22 - 00;39;45;29
David Kinnaman
But for others, that just isn't going to be their flavorsome. It's just not going to be a strategy to reach your community. You're kind of anybody that's doing what they say or doing it, and it's kind of their primary strategy is, I think, going to find that there just certain segments of churchgoers are just are not going to be as as interested in that.

00;39;45;29 - 00;40;05;23
David Kinnaman
It's just like theatergoing has taken a massive hit. People just you know like this huge shift towards like we see these films now being released is like, you know, available in theaters and also like if you want to watch it on the streaming service, we're happy to help you. So I just think there's different kind of segments now of people and what it comes down to spiritually.

00;40;05;29 - 00;40;36;08
David Kinnaman
You know, we're all very accustomed to content and digestion, but when it comes to church, there is a real sense for people, some people like a more liturgical or more, you know, high church experience or some sort of smaller church experience. I think I think some of those those perceptions are being more deeply formed. And one of the huge impacts of COVID is that a lot of boomers, they're just, you know, those that are born in 1948 to 1964, that was one of the surprises.

00;40;36;08 - 00;40;55;10
David Kinnaman
They're actually dropping out of church and they haven't really come back as much as as younger people have. And younger people are coming back just to physical church. So you've got this sort of double whammy where you've got an even less committed group of churchgoers or younger church goers, because they're they're not as faithful givers, they're not as faithful comers, but they're but they're showing up there.

00;40;55;10 - 00;41;16;25
David Kinnaman
They have a lot of spiritual interest. And yet they're also going to be a little bit jaded around kind of that we should just spend a minute talking about this idea of the deconstruction movement and like getting the chord progression right. And we're hearing more and more people, especially young people, who said I was emotionally, emotionally manipulated to become a Christian because the church was so good at creating environment to make me think I really needed Jesus.

00;41;17;06 - 00;41;45;21
David Kinnaman
And I'm not saying that's always right, because sometimes there are some things they just sort of really missed, but there's actually something very powerful because people have been conditioned to understand the marketing moment, the kind of like enrollment thing that happens. And so to whatever extent we as church leaders have gotten really good at creating those kinds of moments in our services or, you know, we've create the sort of experience set and we're some of the best in the world that that kind of live experience with people in a room towards leading them.

00;41;45;21 - 00;42;03;22
David Kinnaman
The chord progression goes to a certain thing and, you know, like come up and speak with just a little bit different tone and it's just like, you know, I grew up in it. My dad was a pastor of a large, large church. I, I saw there's like a business of ministry and we all can kind of understand that, and so do most of the people in these in these rooms.

00;42;03;22 - 00;42;22;12
David Kinnaman
So boomers or boomers are sort of like, hey, we're just going to wait till we, you know, move on to the sweet by and by. And they're not coming back as as much as we might have expected. And they're the more faithful giving units. And then you've got younger people who are like, hey, we're going to come. But we're also like, watch, you know, some proportion of the the sermons online.

00;42;22;12 - 00;42;45;23
David Kinnaman
And so it just it's a much more wild, Wild West experience now. And so I think if video content is your jam and you've kind of made some pretty big investments in that, I think that can still be redeemed and used. But I just think it's got to be really contemplated in like, okay, how is this how in two years, three years time do people who who come to Christ in these settings not look back and say, what did I sign up for?

00;42;45;23 - 00;43;03;08
David Kinnaman
Who is the the, you know, kind of the big face on the screen and what what what happened there? Like how can we really make sure again, I don't doubt that the Holy Spirit works through any and all those tools, but just making sure we really kind of count the cost as to, you know, what will people remember about this experience in two or three years from now or ten years from now?

00;43;03;08 - 00;43;24;19
David Kinnaman
How can we make sure that there is a process where there's a relational, spiritual thing that we're we're as committed to them in all of life, that that conversion isn't just soul, but it's heart, my body and strength. You know, I think those are some some things I feel like I get excited about. I just keep rambling on, but it's great.

00;43;24;19 - 00;43;25;10
Rusty George
It's great.

00;43;25;10 - 00;43;32;29
David Kinnaman
It's a deep it's a deeper answer, right? Than just like, do we do we do the screens or not? And I know that was not quite the question, but there's all these dimensions that have to be factored into it.

00;43;33;14 - 00;43;49;13
Rusty George
Okay. Speaking of screens, and you've alluded to this now a couple of times about the boomers, and I remember talking to friends at North Point that saw this, where they would have, you know, once they started online, this is pre-COVID, they'd have people show up, volunteer for and then go home and watch church online because they want to deal with the crowds.

00;43;49;14 - 00;44;10;20
Rusty George
It was just easier at home. They're having coffee. You know, it's it's a lot easier. So it seems like post-COVID, you said it and they really put it together. Oh, my goodness. You're exactly right. I have all these people that that I have these deep relationships with love the church, but I never see them on the weekend because they just watch at home on their own time.

00;44;11;05 - 00;44;30;06
Rusty George
And yet the people that are the most consistent are younger audience, but even then they're kind of hit and miss. So my question to get to my question is online. I mean, do we think that this is an obviously, it's here to stay. We're not putting the genie back in the bottle and the people that want to shut their online service down to get people back in the room, I think they're going to have difficulty.

00;44;30;11 - 00;44;41;29
Rusty George
Right. But where do you see this going? Do you see it being more of a hybrid approach? It is a wild West. But but I make a prediction here and we'll we'll hold you to it.

00;44;41;29 - 00;45;08;07
David Kinnaman
Well, I think the most innovative churches and I'm starting to hear others churches talk about this do this that they see content and teaching and training. You know, they're kind of working in the consulting space. It's sort of it's a called a theory of change. And, you know, there's a there's a way that we think about content and training coming into impacting a person's life.

00;45;08;07 - 00;45;46;21
David Kinnaman
And and so I think there's the best expression of what a church will do is when they've got a sort of a set curriculum essentially like and just to put it in kind of a straightforward thing that would communicate here, it's like kind of like a12121301401 kind of way of thinking like issues of human sexuality, for example, you simply cannot only preach about and expect people to get it because we are inundated in a world now, especially younger people in a world that just pummels you with the idea that you're on the wrong side of history.

00;45;46;21 - 00;46;13;25
David Kinnaman
If you have any kind of Christian belief around, you know, sex being really for, you know, for man or woman in the context of marriage. And that's across a whole range things. And like the idea of singleness, you the church has a terrible job to be honest at addressing unwanted singleness celibacy singles in the church. We are very marriage oriented culture.

00;46;14;10 - 00;46;35;22
David Kinnaman
And I've learned the hard way as a recent widower. It's like I'm like, Oh, wow. Like all the boards, the model, the groups I'm in, they're all like a bunch of married people. And there's a great divide. I think it's the building. But most of Christian ministries, especially with younger people, now, is among among unmarried people that have unwanted singleness or divorce or same sex attraction, people who decide to live in celibacy.

00;46;36;09 - 00;46;58;28
David Kinnaman
So you can't teach your way through human sexuality from just like a sermon because like, first of all, I mean that no one would ever rise to the challenge of doing like an eight week series on human sexuality and survive it, right? So you got to have that like a human sexuality. One, two, one, two, one, three, one four, one, because that's really best done in the context of really more a classroom.

00;46;58;28 - 00;47;18;13
David Kinnaman
The rhetorical tools there have, you know, we need to learn from some of the best thinking in the world about that, and we can pipe that in through videos. And then we got to discuss it and workshop it and think about it together. This generation wants to make sure that this human sexual ethic that we espouse as Christians can actually be livable for their friends like it has to.

00;47;18;27 - 00;47;51;27
David Kinnaman
They have to at least understand why we hold these convictions. So I think the best churches are going to have a really solid way of thinking about sermons and the tools of communicating in that way and even like creating even maybe I don't have a quite the word for it, but like, maybe even like a visual picture of like if you're going to do a six week sermon topic on, on or whatever number of weeks on a certain a certain issue or certain book or certain, you know, you're going to do a series on giving your into a series on an advocate series.

00;47;52;05 - 00;48;12;03
David Kinnaman
And it's almost like they're almost like, like a sticker book and just again, stick popping in my brain was like, is there an infographic that you have to kind of like? You know, you have to listen to all these pieces so that people could see the picture you're trying to paint over the course of of, you know, of a multi week series.

00;48;12;03 - 00;48;37;11
David Kinnaman
So we're realistic that you're not going to probably hear all these. But but we want you to kind of see the big picture and and here's the picture we're trying to show. And if you're going to miss sermons three and four, you can at least get a little piece of it by listening to this little three minute, you know, like when you watch a stream show, it's like, hey, on the last episode, here's where we left our characters, because, you know, most televisions like, hey, we're going to acknowledge that people might be catching up at different different periods.

00;48;37;11 - 00;48;59;02
David Kinnaman
So how can we make a kind of a episodic approach to our sermons so that people actually kind of want to go back and get some highlights and then on that? So there's like a whole theory of change that relates to sermons, and then there's a whole theory, theory of change that relates to how we educate people on the one two, one two, one three, four hour basis.

00;48;59;02 - 00;49;20;17
David Kinnaman
We actually say we have some things, you know, you know, sit back because we got some things we wanted. We want to show you. We want to teach you want to bring you a law. And I think that that notion that there like kind of a top layer of like the power of sermons or what it does in our lives and and then a power of like how we are educated for life in the world.

00;49;20;17 - 00;49;52;07
David Kinnaman
I think that's going to be the kind of, you know, kind of one two punch that's going to be so necessary for a church to do its its discipling work. And that's going to be a mix of screens in person, kind of a mentoring, lots of different kinds of styles of learning. But I think there's some really powerful ways that I think a church and we're some of the best in the world, are doing this and thinking about the persuasive spaces that we are we're inhabiting, you know, and I think I'm pretty I'm pretty bullish on the church coming out of COVID being being very innovative around some of those those methods and models.

00;49;53;01 - 00;49;57;07
Rusty George
I think you're right. I think our best days are ahead, and that's what I'm praying for.

00;49;57;09 - 00;49;57;28
David Kinnaman
Amen to that.

00;49;58;06 - 00;50;24;09
Rusty George
But I do want to ask you about the passing of your wife. And I know it's been two and a half years now, a lot of grieving, a lot of processing for you and your kids. But I think it would be helpful for our listeners to know, for somebody who, you know, has gone through the loss of a spouse and and she fought cancer for, I think, three years.

00;50;26;01 - 00;50;44;19
Rusty George
It was obviously a very, very difficult thing to to watch and to be a part of and all that for all of us who try to say the right thing in those moments. What are some of the things that you would you would educate us all in on, Hey, don't say this or I know you mean well, but this doesn't help.

00;50;44;28 - 00;50;52;00
Rusty George
But this does now we're getting really personal. It's not just data. This is your life. Yeah. So help us out here, David.

00;50;52;16 - 00;51;17;27
David Kinnaman
Well, thanks for asking. Joe was an astounding human being, and, you know, she is deeply missed and long remembered and in our lives will never be the same since her passing. And yet God has been so close in in the midst of that, you know, the reality of Scripture has taken on such a deep meaning. And, you know, when you look in 2 Corinthians 1 that, you know, the comfort we've received, we comfort others.

00;51;17;27 - 00;51;42;02
David Kinnaman
The God of all comfort has comfort us. We we despaired of life. We thought we might even die, but we stopped trusting ourselves and learn to trust God. So there's been some important things. And I think this idea of suffering is, you know, we're often prepared for success, but we're not prepared for suffering. And I think the church, because this gets to some of the things we've been talking about, we went the broader the audience, the bigger the room of people.

00;51;42;02 - 00;52;05;27
David Kinnaman
Sometimes they're the more simplistic, you know, like we're all for leading simple, but we're not for leading simplistically or all for preaching the simple, powerful message of Christ death, death or resurrection. But but not a simplistic version of that. And so I think that this power of suffering, people are more aware of that, I think, now than than ever.

00;52;05;27 - 00;52;34;09
David Kinnaman
And I think as as as true as it's not easy to preach that there's a real human way to acknowledge that. So I would certainly talk to, you know, listeners today to say just be really present to those in the room who are going through, you know, the worst that life has to throw you or who who know like one degree, two degrees of separation during during Jill's illness and then after her death.

00;52;34;09 - 00;52;54;26
David Kinnaman
You know, my kids, as we've gone to churches, have been very aware of those times when it was happy clappy, you know, kind of like everything's going to be fine. And then they were very aware when people would say, Hey you know, we can taste and see that the Lord is good enough for some of you. Like that's just not how you're experiencing God today because of what you know, because of what you're going through.

00;52;54;26 - 00;53;15;11
David Kinnaman
And so just being really, really aware, being emotionally sensitive to what people and again, most church leaders are just so good at that. But just every day asking what it is to humble us so that we can be prepared and as communicators and as pastors to towards that reality because people suffer a lot. And when they suffer, you know, it can be horrific.

00;53;15;11 - 00;53;32;15
David Kinnaman
And so that's one thing. And then one hour we were talking before we went on the air, just like, you know, I had to decide early on that I was going to start a website, pray for Jill dot com. And in the meantime, I've after her passing about a year ago, I took it down just because it was my story.

00;53;32;15 - 00;53;50;09
David Kinnaman
It was our family story. And it wasn't, you know, we felt like we needed to communicate to broad audience as she was going through the steps and, you know, her her life and her her cancer and and all that. But, you know, since then, it's sort of like, you know, I've decided to really like being private about some of that.

00;53;50;21 - 00;54;15;17
David Kinnaman
But we talked beforehand. Yes. If you could chat with me some have to talk about this as a a means of talking about some of these larger ideas. People have suffered a lot, too recoded the loss of people to cope with the loss of a sense of the world being a simple, peaceful place. You know, you it is as simple as hand sanitizers all over the over the place or just certain practices that just don't seem like the same.

00;54;17;10 - 00;54;38;26
David Kinnaman
And so, you know, Rick Warren has this great input is like, you know, the level of of suffering or grief or loss should equal the amount of it's an inverse relationship to the number of words we should use. So, you know, someone gets in a car wreck, you know, you can say more than if someone loses a wife to cancer.

00;54;38;26 - 00;54;59;12
David Kinnaman
And so sometimes you just you just as you get, you show up and you shut up, you know, and you let the person lead the way you through those things. And yeah, so I think I think that's been the most helpful advice that I've gotten then. And, you know, when I now encounter people that I have gone through a great loss, I'd say I'm just so sorry for your loss.

00;54;59;12 - 00;55;15;04
David Kinnaman
And, you know, I don't even say like if you want to talk about it, I'm here for because they know that people who go through grief like they they figure that out, that, you know, so it's just how can you show up and in tangible ways and again, people really mean well, but they often don't quite know what.

00;55;15;09 - 00;55;35;25
David Kinnaman
And I always take the people's intent when they say, Hey, how are you? How are the kids? What's going like? You know, you know, it always comes from a good place, but it's always like, yeah, it's been a couple of years. Like, I'm not thinking about that the minute I walk up to see you. But you say, you see my face, you think about the grief story that you encountered as as you heard my name.

00;55;35;25 - 00;55;53;12
David Kinnaman
And so now I'm like, Am I kind of the poster boy for people's, you know, like, gosh, how are you? And so there's there's actually this really funny show called The Unicorn about a guy who loses his wife. He's got two kids. It's just a sitcom that's called The Unicorn about a guy who lost his wife to cancer, of all things.

00;55;53;12 - 00;56;09;12
David Kinnaman
Her name is Jill in the sitcom, and that's my wife's late wife's name. And it's about one year in. And we pick up the story of this family and they get to the very bottom of the freezer with all the the frozen meals that people have prepared for them. And so they're having to learn how to, like, cook for themselves.

00;56;09;12 - 00;56;33;12
David Kinnaman
They're having to learn that really the central theme of the show is about him getting back into the dating world, which I have done in the last in the last year, which has been a lot of fun and, you know, complicated and, you know, learning for my kids about dating, it's kind of crazy. And that's not a place I thought I would be, but it's funny because people come up to me, they're like, Hey, Dave, you know, I kind of went from like, Hey, Dave, how's it going?

00;56;33;12 - 00;56;52;28
David Kinnaman
What's going on? You know, what's the what's what's the latest, you know, with you talking about your research to like, hey, Dave, you know, they had had Cox eyes get squinty, you know, their voice gets quiet. It's almost like we're in the hospital waiting room. Hey, Dave has asked me, how are your kids? What? How's your heart? I barely even know you, man.

00;56;54;07 - 00;56;54;18
Rusty George
All right?

00;56;54;25 - 00;57;15;15
David Kinnaman
And I know you come from a good place, but it's like it's okay. So, you know, it's just like recognizing that that, you know, we have to laugh about these things because, you know, what else? What else can we do? But acknowledge the brevity of all of our lives? And Joel's given me and and those who are closest to her.

00;57;15;15 - 00;57;34;26
David Kinnaman
You know, again, she was very courageous in life and cancer and then in her death, you know, she she loved Jesus so much. And, you know, I asked her towards the end of her life, you know, how she was feeling about a lot of it. And brain cancer sucks because you, as a person of all all dying sucks.

00;57;34;26 - 00;58;01;00
David Kinnaman
But brain cancer is particularly rough because you lose someone's ability to communicate. Their essence is there. But there's just like there's just like, you know, I was like, yeah, these these clouds that, that start to obscure, you know, conversation and connection. But she said she wasn't mad of God. She just wished she would she would love to know, you know, why she got dealt this particular hand in life.

00;58;01;16 - 00;58;24;28
David Kinnaman
And so she said, you know, should have some questions for the Lord about that. But she was so sweet and so courageous. And yeah, it's it is not a story that you want to go through, but, you know, it also it's given me even to add something. We talked about earlier, you know, it's like it's given me great compassion for those with unwanted singleness and those who have gone through great loss.

00;58;24;28 - 00;58;46;13
David Kinnaman
And, you know, we took this fellowship of the suffering. And, you know, it's like I think I think we as pastors especially, you know, kind of pastors of larger churches, it's like we always want to kind of compel people towards this like story of, you know, kind of self-evident success, like, you know, it's going to work out. It's kind of like, here we go.

00;58;46;13 - 00;59;12;05
David Kinnaman
Like it's going to get all grown ups to the right. But I actually think that the story of our of our witness today has got to be about faithfulness and suffering. And that's that's a critical part of the gospel narrative of what of what the early church was able to testify to. And that that that is the real essence of what a generation is looking for today is is not just faithfulness and success, but faithfulness and suffering.

00;59;12;10 - 00;59;30;19
David Kinnaman
And so I think we have a lot of lessons to learn from those who've suffered greatly and they should be given, you know, like we can just can't be melodramatic tours and the parade of horribles, but we can we can give some we can give some time to hearing from people who have been through the worst of what life life has to offer and where they find their hope.

00;59;30;19 - 01;00;04;25
David Kinnaman
And what greater testimony could that be and whether that's on a screen or in person. Big church or small, whether the chord progression and the lights were turned up just the right like that, that those kinds of stories are going to last. And I think we have a great opportunity to lean into other stories in our churches of what God's been up to and not just sort of focus on the success stories, but the faithful have been suffering stories now, I think is to go a long way towards reestablishing the credibility of this story with people that are that are you know, they're so skeptical of being marketed to.

01;00;05;03 - 01;00;14;02
Rusty George
MM Well, I really, really appreciate you sharing that. Thank you for that. When we play this back, we'll have the E minor chord progression underneath it.

01;00;15;24 - 01;00;16;26
David Kinnaman
Along with the drum roll.

01;00;17;12 - 01;00;37;18
Rusty George
That's right. The drum roll will be added as well. Well, but this has been so, so good to quote our good friend, Carey Nieuwhof. So Rich, I'm just really, really thankful for your time and for your transparency to not just the data, but just a little insight into your life as well. That will help a lot of us out.

01;00;37;29 - 01;00;48;14
Rusty George
Okay. So where can people find you? I know physically you've you've moved away from us out here in California, so you like the rest of our state, move to Texas. So yeah. Where can they find you online.

01;00;49;20 - 01;01;10;01
David Kinnaman
Well, barter dot com is the place to go. And we've got some great tools there. Lots of free stuff. And if you're interested in subscribing to our tool for church leaders, call barn access, we would love to have you be part of that. Mean we have almost 8000 churches, 8000 people subscribing now. So we're we're seeing a lot of people being equipped with access to the data.

01;01;10;01 - 01;01;32;24
David Kinnaman
Right, Right. As we do PowerPoint slides and sort of fax for sermons and just trying to equip you as leaders, understand the culture and how to administer effectively. So it's an access and I'm most often on Twitter, although in 2023, my intent is to do some more stuff on Instagram. So I've got some some fun things ahead, some projects that I'm really excited about getting back into, into writing mode.

01;01;32;24 - 01;01;49;19
David Kinnaman
And, you know, we actually have some intend to launch a new a new effort, a long sidebar about this sort of new new catechism for new time. So but that's that's a little bit down the road. We're we're just so honored. First of all, just great to just spend a little time with you and your listeners today and so honored to serve churches.

01;01;49;19 - 01;02;06;01
David Kinnaman
And, you know, in the midst of a lot of pretty challenging times. And we've all lost something in the last couple of years, some lost more than others. But all of us is kind of the kind of deep thing that has to take us to the bedrock of our faith. And out of that comfort we hopefully receive and where we can comfort others.

01;02;06;01 - 01;02;16;18
David Kinnaman
And it's been a great pleasure to try to find ways of serving. Church based church leaders know that to help you be more effective, there's there's so much good work to be done. And as you said, the church's best days are ahead of it.

01;02;16;24 - 01;02;18;24
Rusty George
I mean. Well, thank you. Very appreciate.

01;02;18;24 - 01;02;19;16
David Kinnaman
It. Of course.

01;02;20;21 - 01;02;39;07
Rusty George
Well, that was so I just love David and the stuff that he does for the church and just his good natured sense of humor and the fun that we had on this conversation. He's written some great books that are out there. He's got great research out there as well. So make sure that you check that out. Okay, friends, next week we get to have a conversation over a very controversial subject.

01;02;39;16 - 01;03;04;00
Rusty George
And there's going to be this interview that we get to do with a guy by the name of Sam Albany. Sam is an individual who is same sex attracted and years ago wrote a book entitled Why Does God Care Who We Sleep With? And he gets to this question in a very intriguing way. I think you're really going to be fascinated by what it is he has to say.

01;03;04;12 - 01;03;20;04
Rusty George
So you're going to want to be back next week for a controversial, exciting, interesting conversation with Sam Alder. Thank you so much for being with us today on the show. Thank you to BELAY Solutions for supporting it. And we will see you next week. As always, keep it simple.

01;03;20;13 - 01;03;37;10
Intro/Outro
Take a moment and subscribe to the podcast so you get it delivered every week and subscribe to the Rusty George YouTube channel for more devotionals messages and fun videos. Thank you for listening to Leading Simple Lessons.

01;03;37;10 - 01;04;12;14
Rusty George
We as we mentioned at the top of the podcast, our partner BELAY is offering their leadership toolkit free to listeners. In it you learn the steps to take as a leader to accomplish more and juggle less. BELAY Modern Church Staffing Solutions have been helping busy church leaders delegate important financial details over a decade. Their fractional US based contractors provide accounting and virtual assistant services to level up your church through the power of delegation.

01;04;12;14 - 01;04;21;07
Rusty George
Just text Rusty. That's RUSTY 255123 to claim this exclusive offer and get back to leading your church well with BELAY