June 18, 2025 • 54 mins
Paul Dickerson, Associate Pastor at Christ Memorial Church, shares his journey from attorney to ministry and explores how business principles can transform church leadership and growth.
While Paul values liturgical practices and their powerful connection to historical faith, he challenges listeners to consider when rituals become roadblocks rather than pathways to Jesus. Through compelling stories – from a young man shamed for wearing a hat in church to a karate instructor finding his place in worship – we glimpse both the pitfalls and possibilities of creating truly hospitable Christian communities.
• From practicing law to pursuing seminary, Paul's transition shows how God redirects careers toward ministry
• Churches are experiencing more adult baptisms as new people discover faith through relational connections
• The "Innovator's Dilemma" explains why good organizations fail by listening exclusively to existing customers
• Value networks in churches can create systems that unintentionally exclude newcomers
• Balancing 70% maintenance, 20% improvement, and 10% innovation helps churches stay healthy
• Traditions are valuable but become problematic when they're not hospitable to outsiders
• Pastoral ministry in 2050 will likely involve more distributed leadership beyond ordained roles
• Relationships remain central to sharing the gospel—each church member has connections with people far from Jesus
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Tim Allman Podcast.
It's a beautiful day to bealive.
Pray, the joy of Jesus is yourstrength.
I get the privilege today ofhanging out with a leader that
I've admired from afar, and I'mexcited to get to know better.
This is Pastor Paul Dickerson.
Let me tell you about him.
He serves as Associate Pastorat Christ Memorial Church in
partnership with my longtimegood friend, jeff Claytor, been
there really since the beginningof his ministry.
(00:25):
Jeff has been on our podcastbefore Paul and his wife Pamela.
They've been married 20 yearsthis summer.
Hey, bro, my wife and I are 20years as well.
They have two kids, jack andSarah.
How old are Jack and Sarah,paul?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Jack is a sophomore, so he just turned 16.
Sarah is 11.
She's in fifth grade, man, okay.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So I got a sophomore son too, and anyway, yeah, we're
in similar seasons of life.
Prior to attending seminary,though, in 2016, paul and his
family lived in Ann Arbor,michigan.
Are you an Ann Arbor grad, notConcordia University ofbor,
michigan, where Paul worked asan attorney and Pam, his wife,
(01:04):
ran a coffeehouse ministry intheir church?
Paul's current ministry focuseson discipleship and staff and
lay leader development, and Pamoversees a young leader
development program.
That's pretty cool, called theHarbor Leadership Collective.
So, yeah, let's get into yourministry story.
First, how you doing, paul.
You loving life, dude, life isgood.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, things are well , tim.
Thanks for having me on,Excited for this topic, excited
to talk to you.
I've been listening to thepodcast for a while and you've
had some heavy hitters on here,so I feel like a kid invited to
the grownups table, so this isgoing to be silly.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
You are silly.
You are more than welcome, dude.
You have so much to offer.
This is going to be great.
So how has your secular careershaped your work as a leader in
the local church?
I've had a number of kind ofbivocation or co-vocational
leaders.
Now you kind of left that andkind of came full time, but you
definitely were impacted by,close to, I think, a decade or
so of marketplace leadership,right.
So tell that story.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, it was really kind of a typical story starting
off.
I grew up Lutheran, grew up inthe church.
Towards the end of high schooland in my college years I'd say
my faith was dormant.
So if you would have asked meI'd say, yep, I'm a Christian,
I'm following Jesus, I read theBible, I go to church
occasionally.
But if you would have askedsome of the people around me,
some of my friends circles, theymight not have been able to
(02:18):
tell.
So that fruit wasn't there.
So kind of a dormant faith fora while.
There my wife Pam and Ireengaged in our early mid-20s
at University of Lutheran Chapelup there in Ann Arbor.
Our friend and colleague ScottGeiger was the pastor.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Scott was Okay, he wasinfluential.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Scott was the pastor, then Don't let him know, though
, that guy will get the big headShout out to Scott.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Love Geiger.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Aside from the Holy Spirit.
This guy either gets the blameor the credit for what's
happened to me since.
There you go, but got involvedin leadership there, slowly,
elder, eventually, congregationpresident of it was a three-site
, multi-site at the time.
And then kind of at the sametime, on a parallel track, I'm
off on my legal career.
So I worked in a countyprosecutor's office, did
criminal jury trials for sevenyears and those two things are
(03:02):
kind of run in parallel Married,house, kids, all the kind of
normal stuff in life in your 20sand early 30s.
And then, as I was doing that,started considering a career
change, looked at some of myexperiences in the church and
seeing a need for organizationaland missional alignment, where
the most important stuff wasn'talways getting the most
attention and the most resources.
(03:23):
And so Pam and I startedconsidering, okay, what would it
look like to go into privatepractice where I'm still
representing clients, stillworking as an attorney, but also
a portion of that practice isworking with churches, either in
legal representation or kind ofin that organizational
alignment, missional alignmentarea?
And as we kept exploring that,we've decided that no, god's
(03:44):
actually inviting us to go toseminary.
And so, 2016,.
We resigned our positions.
We packed up the house andmoved down to St Louis to start
four years of schooling, andthen here we are.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wow, well, that's extraordinary.
So I'm going to counterlovingly my own thinking
sometimes in the past that somemen won't pick up and leave.
You know, go take that seminaryjourney you did and praise, be
to God.
Not everybody's in the positionto do that, and for those that
are in a local context thatcan't for one reason or another,
(04:18):
but some can and those that canto shout out to both of our
seminaries should.
So yeah, thoughts there, paul,about that sacrifice of picking
up and going to St Louis.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, it was costly.
There's no doubt about that.
One of the big things Ipersonally had to wrestle with
in that was where does, wheredoes all the stuff come from,
right?
Does it come from my work?
Does it come from my skill?
Does it come from my positionin education and training?
Or does God provide that?
And if God provides it, he cansee us through this change and
this change in circumstances too.
(04:53):
I'd also say it was costly interms of relationships.
You know, as you get embeddedin a community, there's friends,
there's colleagues at work,there's a church community that
we left and we love those peopledearly, but the relationship
isn't the same and some of thoseopportunities where you think
about who could I be speaking toabout Jesus or talking to about
the gospel in the context I wasin before that don't exist
anymore because we're just notthere and also at that time,
you'll see, was in a pastoralvacancy.
(05:13):
So my age and the circumstancesthere, smp wasn't really an
option, alternate route wasn'treally an option and as Pam and
I talked about it, we saideither this has to happen now or
it's just not going to happen.
And so we decided to take thejump and God has been good.
He has taken care of us.
We've had all of our needs metand then some, and so it is
possible.
It's costly, but so isfollowing Jesus.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So it's a doable thing.
Pick up your cross and followafter me.
So your first call then was toChrist Memorial, right.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
To partner with Jeff right out of seminary.
Did you do like an extendedvicarage?
Tell that story, yeah, that'sright.
So I kind of followed thenormal route but did local
vicarage.
So Christ Memorial was actuallymy vicarage congregation.
So fourth year turned into kindof like extended vicarage.
It was kind of like field workplus in some ways, because there
was a sense that ChristMemorial was looking to add a
pastor and that I would be agood fit there, and so we just
kind of explored that throughoutfourth year and I don't know
who the powers that be were thatall made the decisions and
(06:09):
pulled the levers to make ithappen, but I'm grateful that
they did.
I graduated in 2020, wasordained in July of 2020, and
have been here ever since COVIDordination.
Covid ordination yeah, that wasa strange time to enter ministry
, but one of the things I'mgrateful for and one that I did
get assigned back to my Vicaragecongregation.
So I had relationships, knewsome of the people, knew some of
the systems in place already,so that was a huge advantage
(06:31):
over some of my classmates thatwere just sent out and it was
brand new and they had to enterinto a new community during that
time.
The other thing was you don'tknow what you don't know, and so
I didn't have any kind ofministry to compare it to, so it
just became normal.
This is just how we do things,and it forced adaptation, forced
quick thinking, start small,fail fast, learn, adapt and try
(06:53):
it again, and so that's kind ofbecome one of our values as a
congregation is to try things,try new things and learn from it
, all for the sake of reachingmore.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That's it.
So let's talk about the newpeople that are coming.
Right now we're seeing a growthwave.
We're going to get into valuenetwork and kind of the
innovators dilemma.
We got some really fun topicswe're going to be hitting here.
But let's just talk about lifeon the ground there in St Louis
and the new people coming.
It's kind of an eclectic groupthat the Lord's bringing, I
(07:21):
think, in both of ourcongregations right now.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Tell that story Paul group that the Lord's bringing,
I think in both of ourcongregations right now.
Tell that story, Paul.
Yeah, so I was talking with you, mentioned Jeff Claytor, my
friend and boss.
We're just kind of comparingnotes on this year.
I think we've had 12 to 15baptisms so far.
About a third of those havebeen infant baptism, so maybe
what most folks usually think ofwhen they think of baptism in a
Lutheran church or an LCMSchurch, but that means
two-thirds have been youngchildren all the way to adults
(07:45):
and grownups.
And this is something you see alot of times in new mission
fields or emerging missions,where the gospel kind of gets a
foothold in a new people groupor a new family or an area that
hasn't been yet in the localcontext.
And then you see one baptismand then two more and then three
more.
And we had a few weeks ago twoyoung men were baptized.
One is in middle school, theother one's in high school.
(08:08):
They've kind of been in andaround the church for a while
but family circumstances they'vejust never been baptized.
And then Jeff was telling me hehad a conversation with another
one of our members that herboys who have, or his
grandchildren who have not beenbaptized were asking well, could
I be baptized?
Because they saw these otherboys get baptized.
So it kind of has this flywheeleffect where you get one and
(08:29):
then you get more, and then youget more, and that's what we've
been seeing in our context here.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well, it's kind of the convergence between the
early church and Christendom,right.
We're like right in the middleof that, where the norm for many
years was, you know, familiesin the church, way more infant
baptisms.
But I think that's the trendwe're seeing to a lot more adult
(08:52):
baptisms, young adult baptisms.
We had we had a young man.
This is kind of wild.
On an average Lenten Wednesdaynight worship, a young man has
come now for a month and hebrought five of his buddies to a
Wednesday night worship service.
They sat down front.
You know there's like onehundred fifty 200 people in the
room, so like like white on rice, I mean they're just everybody
in the church, like these youngkids.
At the end of the service, likehow did you, you know the Holy
(09:13):
Spirit's at work?
It's pretty extraordinary.
But you've got some uniquefolks that are coming that you
said older, adult, former llamafarmers that are joining and all
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, In our current pathways class we've got high
schoolers, we've got a 20 yearold who was just baptized a
couple of weeks ago, all the wayup to kind of traditional
Lutherans who are justtransferring membership to a
couple of 90 year olds who areretired llama farmers from rural
Missouri and moved back to thecity now, and so it's probably
one of the more eclectic groupsthat we've seen.
And we've had the sameexperience, tim, of just kind of
(09:43):
from one to one to one.
So one of my great joys isgetting to watch and just kind
of be on the sidelines as theHoly Spirit works in one
person's life, and then thatperson tells somebody and
they're connected.
And then that person tellssomebody and they're connected,
and we're seeing it go throughfamilies, we're seeing it go
through from kids up tograndparents maybe the reverse
of what you'd normally think andwe're seeing it in friend
groups and just exploding thatway.
(10:03):
So it's fun to be a part of.
It's not anything we're doing.
Sometimes we like to joke thatwe need to try to manage the
Holy Spirit and he just refusesto do what we say, and so we
just kind of hold on tight astight as we can and go along for
the ride.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, I think what we can do more by the Spirit's
power is let our members knowthe power of the invite.
Right, this is right beforeEaster.
Right now we have an every weekpush Invite your friends,
invite your family, invite yourneighbors, come and hear the
best story of all time thatdeath has been defeated by the
crucified and risen Jesus.
I think more people are open toan invite right now.
Cool story.
(10:37):
Well, our SMP pastor I hateusing that language, but a
bivocational guy he's going tobe on this podcast here soon
Jeff Sutherland.
He'd been invited.
He's in real estate, beenrunning a real estate firm for
years and years and he'd beeninviting a partner in his
business to church for years,multiple years.
He'd been asking this guy tocome and then the one Sunday
Jeff was out.
This guy happens to show up,says I work with Jeff, I think
(11:01):
is he one of the pastors here orsomething, and anyway they've
been coming now straight lastfour weeks.
He grew up five years in aCatholic church and then his
wife has never experiencedanything connected to local
church.
And here they are the lastmonth listening to law and
gospel preaching here at ChristChristian.
I mean it's insane what theLord is doing the power of the
invite.
Do you guys have a heavy invitepush right?
(11:21):
Now, too, we do.
Do you guys have a heavy invitepush right?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
now too, we do Not as heavy as you guys and praise
God for that story.
But one of the things Iexplicitly talk about it with in
our new member class or even ifwe're having a Bible study, is
it's really very simple weinvite a friend out, You're
going to ask what's going on newin their life, like you do, and
they're going to tell you awhole bunch of new in your life
(11:43):
because they're a nice person,they're your friend, they want
to know.
And then you get to tell themhey, I started going to this new
church and here's one thingI've learned.
Or I'm doing this new Biblestudy, and here's one thing.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
So good.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And you see, you see if they bite right.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
It's like I don't know Jesus liked.
Okay, we'll try again later.
That's it.
Yeah, this, uh.
Another cool story.
One of our members, Cindy, met agal in the grocery store and
she's very outgoing, and theystarted talking, heard her story
.
She was new to the Valley andnever had gone to church.
She'd not found a church evenbefore she moved here and they
became friends.
She said after a fewconversations hey, I go on
Sundays to Christ Greenfield.
Do you want to come?
She came and now Betty is likein our leadership development
(12:31):
pathway.
She is so, so, gifted and onfire for the Lord.
I don't know how old, you don'task older, he's 65, 70 years
old or something like that, Imean but she's just met Jesus.
This is amazing.
Like there are way, there areway more people who are eager to
form friendship with healthy,hopefully healthy heart, body,
mind, spirit.
Christians who aren't weird,you know, they're just out in
the community, living out theirfaith in the name of Christ and
(12:55):
and just waiting for for thatinvitation.
I think that's, I think that'sso true back in the day in the
LCMS, if you remember this,because we're, we're close,
similar ages I remember in mydad's church there used to be
Friendship Sundays.
Do you remember this?
Friendship Sundays, it was kindof an LCMS wide push that on
this Sunday or it was maybe evena curriculum whatever makes the
most sense in your world.
(13:16):
We call them.
We Are Family Days here.
So a great day we're going togo.
We do hospitality big, but wego even bigger with hospitality
that day.
We know it's going to be agreat experience for you to
invite your friends.
Do you guys have any kind ofrhythm there at Christ Memorial?
For, like, we are family, orinvite Sundays in addition to
Christmas and Easter, because weknow Christmas, easter,
mother's Day, those are thethree best kind of invite
(13:37):
Sundays.
Do you have any experiencethere?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, we haven't really picked up on that in that
way.
A lot of it we do around ournew member class and pathways,
as this is the time, becausethere's something, there's a
specific thing to invite to,right For sure, or kind of in St
Louis we're kind of right inthe hub, there's 80 plus
Lutheran churches in this area.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
That's hard to wrap your mind around.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Which is, yeah, it's a huge blessing and lots of
opportunities for partnership init.
You know some strong Lutheranschools in the area and so
there's still kind of thatcultural Lutheranism or cultural
Christianity where we seeopportunities to invite people
when the kids are singing, whenwe celebrate our Lutheran
schools, when we're kind ofdoing these specific community
events, where that then becomesthe hook or the event to bring
(14:21):
someone in and then they get tohear the gospel and we let the
Holy Spirit take it from there.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Hey, I love it.
All right, let's shift and talk.
You're in leadershipdevelopment.
You have a leadershipdevelopment kind of hat staff
and lay leadership development.
Your wife is also caring foryoung leaders in their journey.
You mentioned the book.
You and I were talking aboutthe book the Innovator's Dilemma
by Clayton Christensen.
Tell me about that book and howit shapes kind of the culture
(14:47):
there of leadership developmentat Christ Memorial.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, so I got to give credit to a lay leader here
in the St Louis area, rob Boyle.
Rob is a prof in the businessschool at St Louis University
and this was years ago I think Iwas on my vicarage when he did
a presentation for a group ofpastors and lay leaders in the
St Louis area talking aboutleading in disruptive times, and
he references this book,innovator's Dilemma by Clayton
(15:09):
Christensen.
And so I did what we all do Iwrote down the book in the title
and I probably ignored it forthe next like three or four
years until I got to it on myreading list.
But when I finally read it,just all sorts of ideas and
connections started sparking.
It is kind of a wonky book.
It's got charts and graphs anddata and Clayton Christensen is
a prof, he's at the HarvardBusiness School and he kind of
set out to answer this questionof why do good companies fail?
(15:33):
Why do companies like Sears andIBM and Xerox and these ones
that at one point were the casestudy as a here's Kodak, here's
the best way to lead and manageand run a company in the US
today, and now you look at thatmarket share and other case
studies for how it all wentwrong.
So Christensen kind of sets outto answer this question what,
what happened?
And he looks at it through thelens of innovation and
(15:56):
technology.
Now, when he's talking abouttechnology, he's not talking
about phones and computers andthat kind of technology for his
purposes.
Technology is the process ofturning resources, human
resources, capital, informationany of that stuff into products
and services in the market.
So technology is that process oftaking something and bringing
it to the market for the sake ofthe customer.
(16:16):
And it makes us this thing, thisdistinction between sustaining
technology that looks to improveon what exists, into existing
markets, to appeal to masscustomer bases, and disruptive
technology that adds a differentvaluation into it, that looks
at well, maybe it can be donemore cheaply, maybe it can be
more reliable, maybe it doessomething a little bit different
(16:36):
.
And disruptive tech is never asgood at first, but quickly it
adapts and it changes and itstarts to take over the market
almost from the bottom up.
And so that's the innovation,is the change in the process.
The dilemma that Christensenfound is that the exact same
behaviors that good companiesand good managers use to become
good companies and become theSears and the Xerox and the
(16:59):
Kodak are the same ones thatcause their downfall in the face
of disruptive tech.
So it's actually goodmanagement that creates the
problem and the opportunity forthis disruptive technology or
this new process or an emergingmarket to come in and overtake
market share and then overtakethe firm itself.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So this is one of my favorite topics, paul, as a
systems guy, as one who seeks toagain, this is all this is kind
of.
I think this is the heart ofJesus is disappointing people at
a rate they could handle.
Like the disciples had an ideaof what the kingdom advancing
would look like.
And then Jesus elevates it.
(17:39):
No, it looks like a cross andan empty tomb.
Right, we're in Lent right now.
Never do you, lord, get behindme, satan.
Jesus says to Peter after he'sjust given the greatest
proclamation you are the Christ,you're the promised Messiah.
But you don't understand whatthat rain looks like.
It's a global, it's a cosmicrain.
It's not a micro rain, a smallrain for the restoration of
(18:02):
Israel.
I think we can get kind of flipit with that.
They had this kind of view.
No, no, no.
Jesus was very disruptive in hisministry.
Anything more to say about?
I mean, this is leadership,it's.
People have a certain vision,but our vision is always too
small, right, and this canhappen in a business, this can
happen in a church.
God's vision is global.
And then you think after hisascension you will be witnesses
(18:23):
Jerusalem, judea, samaria, tothe ends of the earth, like it's
a huge vision and they had tosay how in the world is this
going to take place?
Trust me, it's not going to beyou working, it's going to be me
speaking.
You know, when you're beforepeople who are going to take
your life, which inevitablyhappened for many of them right
and could happen for us.
You know, but don't worry it,I'm going to be with you.
(18:49):
You know, through thedisruption that human beings
love, safety and security andritual and the status quo, like,
we're hardwired toward that,and so leaders inspired by the
Holy Spirit have to disruptthings, but at a rate that
doesn't lead toward their demiseor or the demise of the
institution, right?
So let me final final point interms of like distribution of
disruption, right?
So let me final point in termsof like distribution of
disruption.
I've heard some research on thesustaining work to manage what
(19:10):
is going on.
That's roughly about 70 percentof an organization's effort
just keeping the system, so it'sstill a majority.
But then the other 20 percentis looking at and that's not 100
percent, I'm all aware.
20 percent is looking at whatwe're doing and offering
disruptive suggestions to do itbetter, right?
And then 10% in anyorganization is doing an
(19:33):
entirely new thing and Google.
There's a lot of data aroundthis, google and other
industries.
And then all of this innovationis given through initiatives
carried on by distributed teamsrather than bureaucratic
hierarchy who get in the way.
So bureaucratic hierarchy needsto lower themselves and give as
much freedom to those who aredoing the 70, 20, and 10 work in
(19:57):
an organization and in a localchurch.
So there is a lot of researcharound this topic.
It's very, very helpful, but itis very, very hard for a leader
to manage through.
This is a part of the crosstopic.
It's very, very helpful, but itis very, very hard for a leader
to manage through.
This is a part of the cross.
I think Jesus is saying as youcarry out this kingdom,
expanding work.
So yeah, I said a lot there,paul.
Any thoughts?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Lots, probably too many to share in the time we've
got.
But, yeah, thinking about Jesusas a leader, being wholly
secure in his identity as theson of God, allowed him to enter
into those conversations, rightTo be disruptive in a way that
both challenged and calledhigher.
And, of course, the disciplesstill don't get it, we still
don't get it, and so they allfell away.
(20:38):
At the end Mark talks aboutthat they all left him and fled.
And so thinking about, yeah,what is the disruption that we
can stoke, the kind of healthyagitation, a healthy conflict
that helps lead towards changeand growth.
Change and growth happensbecause of challenge, because
there's something to pushagainst.
(21:00):
We think about this with ourbodies.
Right, if you exercise or youwant to get stronger, you want
to get faster, you want to growin endurance, you got to kind of
push that line a little bit,because if you don't, if you
stay sedentary, actually allatrophies and it goes in the
reverse direction.
So giving the right amount ofchange, the right amount of
stress to produce growth is kindof the key.
(21:21):
And knowing all right, how do Iturn that up a little bit, how
do I turn that down Makes methink of Todd Bolsinger talked
about being like a pressurecooker, a crockpot or a
thermostat that is able to keepthe heat up.
It doesn't go away at all, butit regulates it at a temp, at a
level that people can handle andcontinue to grow and, god
willing, by the work of thespirit, flourish.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Have you documented on your team?
And we haven't per se, the70-20-10 split, and I think the
reason we haven't documented itis I want every person's week to
look like 70-20-10.
Like it's not just a team, likeit's a team that does 10%.
No, it's every ministry teamthat is looking 20% of the time
(22:05):
at what they're doing.
They got to get above or thisis adaptive leadership
conversation right, they got toget to the balcony.
They're on the dance floor.
70% is kind of in the weeds orin the whirlwind, and so this is
the four disciplines ofexecution.
We got to have some big goals,right that we're then working on
the business, not just in it,and the business for us, you
know, multiplying disciples,looking at leadership
development, and then you've gotabout 10% of your time to
(22:27):
wonder I wonder if, look at thisand maybe there's a new thing.
My problem I'm just beingcompletely transparent is I am
inappropriately distributed.
Full transparency.
I'm like 50% looking at what isprobably 20%, looking at what
could be done to change what is,and I'm like 30%.
(22:48):
That can be a problem, tim.
Don't do any new things or sayyes to any more initiatives.
I get my hands slapped fromtime to time and so I need to
get back in balance.
70-20-10 is a good distribution.
Have you thought about thatbefore, paul?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
We have and we're working towards it.
We're definitely not there yet,and part of it is we'll talk
about value networks here in aminute and part of it, I think,
is because of that.
But you and I share that sametendency I can be incredibly
disruptive.
We just did some stuff withWorking Genius, and one of mine
is Wonder, and so I'm alwaysasking questions why is it this
way?
How could it be better, howcould we improve it?
And sometimes that can go toofar, to the point where it's
(23:24):
actually harmful to people andit's harmful to the organization
.
One of the one of the checksthat I often remember and I hit
my team and our team here haspermission to call me on this is
that efficiency and love areoften incompatible.
It was not efficient.
It didn't make any sense forthe father to send his son for a
bunch of sinners dead in theirsins, right, but thank God that
(23:45):
he did that.
He loved us enough to do that.
And so efficiency and lovegetting everything to you know,
the system being perfectlyaligned and everything just
humming that's not always themost loving thing, and so I need
to be called on that sometimesand have that check in place
where too much disruption is nothelpful.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
That makes you a good leader.
You know your your blind spotsI'm working on.
I'm working on mine too, solet's get into it.
You brought, you brought upvalue network.
How does a value network, howdoes it hurt businesses when
they respond to customer needs?
Let's talk about that.
And when we say customer, arewe talking the member in the
church?
Are we talking people that areyet to come into the church?
(24:21):
To put it into a church context, paul.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah.
So in a church context, I thinkof the customer as the existing
customer, the one who's amember, the one who's already in
, and a part and people can talkabout.
You know what level ofengagement does that represent?
Whatever someone thinks of whenthey think of this person is in
.
That's the customer.
And so what Christensen says inthe book is a value network is
the context in which a firm or acompany makes decisions,
(24:44):
allocates resources, enactspolicies, responds to threats
from competitors, listens to itscustomers, to all deliver a
product or service in a way.
And a value network can be areally good thing because it
develops into this symbioticrelationship between the
customer and the company or, inthe church context, between the
member and the church, where wesay, well, what is it that you
(25:05):
need, what is it that you want?
The customer tells the company,the company says we can deliver
that and off we go, and it kindof becomes this symbiotic
relationship.
The problem comes up when, inthat relationship, certain
capabilities get developed bythe company.
That's a good thing, but thatalso defines the company's
disabilities and the thingsyou're not good at, because
nobody can be good at everything, nobody can serve all people,
(25:27):
and so it starts to forecloseopportunities in different
markets that a company couldenter, so that when disruptive
tech comes in, the company'sactually unable to pivot and
respond to the changing market,precisely because it listened to
its customers again and againand again.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Well, yeah, so would you apply this to serve me,
pastor, you do your thing, keepme comfortable, don't forget,
don't forget, and all your newideas, don't forget about us.
So the discipline betweendiscipleship and outreach and
kingdom expanding work, thatkind of interconnection between
the disciple and disciple,making and multiplying, is that
(26:08):
the dance I think that we do inthe local church, paul?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, I think it is.
And so, you know, for thepastors listening or anybody who
works in the church, you cankind of think of all sorts of
different ways, that littledecisions that you have to make,
that navigates this sort ofthing right, where you look at
hospital visits or a funeral, orattending the Women's Guild
luncheon, or am I going andknocking on doors with the
evangelism team, or how muchtime do I give to the school?
(26:32):
You know, in our context, youknow we do confirmation in a few
different modules throughoutthe year, kind of like these six
to eight week sprints, and it'severy week for those six to
eight weeks, and our seventh andeighth graders are coming, and
a lot of times we ask a parentto come.
That's kind of the format thatwe followed for a while.
Well, now we've got studentswho are in single parent
(26:53):
households, or we've got onestudent in particular, who I'm
thinking of, who has fourhouseholds that they're a part
of.
So there's mom and there's dad,and there's maternal
grandparents and there'spaternal grandparents, and so
they're divided between all ofthese different places and not
all of those people are part ofour church or connected to our
church at all.
And so how, what kind ofprocesses, what kind of systems
(27:14):
do we have in place so thatperson can be a part of part of
the church?
Because they don't fit neatlyinto the you know, mom, dad, two
and a half kids, white picket,fence, family system that we
might think of as the ideal, andso how do we leave room for
that?
You know, part of what reallygot me thinking on this and kind
of I shot the email off to youon it was a conversation you had
(27:34):
with our friend and colleague,scott Seidler, and we heard him
present at a conference where hewas talking about how there's
someone on his team and I forgether name and I forget what she
did before, but she's retired,did not work in ministry, but it
is her responsibility to makesure that Scott and the pastors
on his team are calling thefirst time visitors Because, in
Scott's own admission, if thiswoman does not make sure that he
(27:56):
does it, it won't happenbecause it's not urgent.
It's incredibly important butit's not urgent.
All of the other stuff isurgent.
Right, that says you know,pastor, pay attention to this
pastor, no-transcript.
(28:34):
And maybe we are inadvertentlycreating a culture within a
church or a way of doing thingswithin a church.
That's not bad.
It's not against scriptures,it's not against the confessions
, but maybe it's creatingbarriers to those who aren't
here yet because they're notwithin that value network and we
don't have a ear to hear whatthose people would be for.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, that's so good.
So how do we change it?
I'll share how I kind ofconceptualize about it and get
your take.
If Jesus led you here, youbelong here.
And then it's stories like thestory I told about Cindy
(29:21):
inviting Betty, like those startto be a part of the grounding,
or you could say even met astory about who we are as a
community.
We're a hospitable place thatwe're not perfect, but we seek
to create a space that everyonefeels welcome to hear.
Word and sacrament.
No, no matter how much you knowabout Jesus, jesus welcomes you
with arms open wide and we gotto tell the stories about that
(29:42):
taking place.
We're, for the least, the lost,the lonely, the hurting.
La Mesa and different ministriesin our community kind of prove
it.
And then what are thestructures?
Right and structures fordiscipleship, for depth and wit,
at the same time Pouring intosmall group leaders, pouring in
(30:03):
to the vicars and those that arelaunching into ministry.
There's a boomerang effect ofJesus.
It's ascending out of the 12,ascending out of the 70, and
then we gather consistently fortraining.
But then there is veryevidently a pathway for you to
continue to grow here and for usit looks like our servant
leadership development pathway,serve, lead, coach, direct.
There's always a next and inphilosophy or even internal
(30:23):
motivation, there's a hill toclimb.
And then, once you get to thathill, oh, there's another here,
there's another.
So it's always talking aboutnext steps for the person
knowing and following andgrowing as a Jesus follower.
So it's language, sharedlanguage, shared story, shared
structure.
Any comments on that Paul?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, that's really good, and the fact that there's
a structure around it, I think,is maybe one of the keys to
unlocking kind of this trap ofthe value network, because that
gravitational pull is incrediblystrong.
It's also incredibly subtle tothe urgent, to the need right in
front of me, to the personwho's here that I see, and to
kind of not think about or notconsider the person who's not
(31:03):
here yet.
You know you talk aboutstructures.
You know I give Scott a lot ofcredit, seidler, for the wisdom
of saying I need someone to holdme accountable to make sure
this happens.
A lot of times on our team we'lltalk about what's the language
that we're using.
Are we using insider language?
Are we explaining the termsthat, either in preaching or in
our worship service or in ourliturgy, are we saying what this
(31:24):
stuff means and not making thatassumption that well, we've all
been here for 30, 40, 50 yearsand so we all know what this is,
of course.
But the problem is there's, youknow, 20 people sitting in the
back that have no idea what'sgoing on.
You sitting in the back thathave no idea what's going on.
You know how are we thinkingabout them and then having an
eye forward towards kind ofwho's next you know I know Jeff
(31:45):
talked about this, someone hehas on with you but kind of
who's the next leader, what'sthe next people group, what's
the next generation and how arewe bringing them in?
So that kind of, as you talkedabout, that 70-20-10,.
Are we intentionallystructuring our time and our
resources and our policies tosay that 20% and that 10% we're
going to lose on this?
This is not going to be like anet gain in terms of the
resources and the people, hoursand everything else we have to
(32:06):
invest in it, but it is soimportant for those who aren't
here yet and for that who's nextquestion that we have to spend
it.
It's a good investment, eventhough it's going to lose in the
short term.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yes, Well, human beings, we have a preference for
short-term pleasure at theexpense of long-term pain.
Right, that's the way it goes.
And then we idolize our rituals, right, and Jesus was so, so
against this.
Like this is a pharisaicaltendency.
Your hearts are far from me.
You're trying to define yourself-righteousness on the way we
(32:38):
do our Jewish thing.
Right, and for us today in thechurch, the way we do church the
way we do, and this is why Ithink in the wider conversation,
there's a overreaction torituals around the liturgy today
.
Jesus never talked about thatLike, if he did, he talked about
how you have these traditionsthat you put.
And that's getting in the wayof me.
One of the sermons we justpreached yesterday.
(33:03):
Actually, rituals are forrelationship and we were
preaching on Mark, chapter seven, and the washing of hands, and
they developed this wholetheology around washing of not
just their hands but these other.
I find it funny dining couches,you know, was it a sprinkling
or was it an immersion of thedining couches?
Because baptism is the samewords there.
And so Jesus brings right wasIsaiah when he prophesied
against you.
You hypocrites you have.
(33:24):
You're defining yourself basedon what is outside.
I define what's on the inside.
Jesus is concerned about theheart Right, and so we can turn
these rituals, these behaviors,these things that have grounded
us into an idol, and it hurts.
Why was Jesus concerned aboutthis?
Because it hurts the mission.
Jews, you think this is justabout you?
(33:44):
You guys have forgotten.
It was always about the nations.
It was always about being alight to the nations, and so
this is, this is the spirit ofthe risen Jesus that lives in us
, that has to like, lovingly,challenge.
I got to tell you a story andthen let you respond.
We have I'm looking out mycourtyard, out my window right
now, into our courtyard we havea bell that has been here since
the order of Melchizedek.
(34:04):
Right, we don't know, the bellpredates me.
It will be here long after me.
But I'm looking to my right andthere's a bell tower here.
The grounding narrative has beenthat bell won't fit in that
bell tower.
So it's right in the middle ofthe courtyard and it has kind of
a neat effect.
We ring it seven times, etcetera.
But if I were to say we'removing the bell, Paul, like
(34:26):
there will be a visceralreaction because it's like the
centerpiece in our courtyard.
But anybody that is reasonableis like no, there should be like
a welcome spot right in themiddle of your courtyard, but
there's this huge bell.
So this is awesome.
Our campus director said I justwas talking about the bell
yesterday in worship and it wasfascinating sociologically to
discuss with such varied views.
Our campus director, Dan, saidyou know what?
(34:48):
We did some work on thestructure of the bell tower.
It will hold that bell, so likewe're going to move in time.
It's going to go up there.
It's just a matter of time, butlike the reaction in the
community is going to befascinating to watch Every month
you move it like a month footand just slowly migrate.
That's so good, Paul.
Any response about how we turnrituals and even things in our
(35:12):
world into idols that coulddecrease Because people that
come from the outside, theycould care less about that,
right?
I mean, oh, there's a bell.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Well, they don't know the story behind it and they
don't know why it's there.
Right, we've talked about ourhearts being idol making
factories, and so I think of thedistinction between tradition,
which can be good and helpful,versus traditionalism, which
holds to the tradition as themain thing.
That's a little bit of you knowkind of why I got into ministry
(35:43):
is this seeing those types ofthings, and not even just around
traditions, it could be currentpractices where the practice
becomes the thing and themission gets put in the
background a little bit.
And so, yeah, it's, traditionsare good, I think, as George
McDonald talked about, you know,before you go knocking down
fences, you should at leastpause and ask why they were put
up in the first place.
For sure, but those things canbe really helpful.
(36:04):
You know, I visit with some ofour senior members, you know,
who have memory loss or dementiaor things like that, the
tradition of saying the liturgyfor week after week after week,
for decades.
They still know it.
They might not know anythingelse, but they still know bits
and pieces of that, and that's abeautiful thing.
At the same time, when we holdon to that tradition to the
point it becomes traditionalism,where our faith isn't doing the
thing because we did it right.
Well then, that's displaced God.
Maybe subtly, maybe not sosubtly, but that has displaced
(36:26):
Jesus as the foundation that westand on.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, rituals should be held hospitably is, I think,
what Jesus is saying.
These things are not bad, theyjust could get in the way of my
work.
Go ahead and they need to be inservice of the mission and in
service of the work of Christ,the work of the Holy Spirit,
they're a means toward theobject of our worship right,
(36:51):
which is the elevation of thecrucified and risen Jesus.
You know, there's a storythat's in our world it's
probably happened in otherchurches where a young man late
teens walked in and he's wearinga ball cap.
Jack's told this story beforewearing a ball cap and one of
our this is over a decade agoone of our ushers came up and
kind of rudely, in my estimation, said hey, son, move that ball
cap, we don't wear ball capshere.
(37:13):
He did and kind of in shame,sat through the rest of service,
never came back, and so ifwe're not holding our rituals
with an open hand and explainingthe why behind the what that we
do, I think it's way morenecessary Now, at the end of the
message.
Actually, yesterday I walkedthrough the divine service and I
love that.
God is the primary actor, right, that's the heart of it, not
(37:34):
just page five and 15 from thered hymnal back in the day.
No, the reason we call it thedivine service is because God is
serving us, and all of thesesteps, these rituals, this
liturgy, is a means toward thatend, and so even telling the
story through the liturgy,giving a new frame and there's a
lot of new Lutherans in ourcommunity and they're like oh, I
could see literally in time thelight bulb going off and you
(37:56):
got to do that more consistently, I think now, with way more
outsiders coming into ourLutheran liturgical context.
Any comments there?
Paul?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Absolutely so.
It makes me think of a newerguy around our church.
He is a karate instructor, sohe runs a dojo, and he actually
got connected to us because heemailed info at cmstlorg Like
that email actually goessomewhere.
Someone actually responded.
We had a cup of coffee and wewere off to the races.
But after a couple of times ofattending worship he asked me
(38:25):
he's like okay, I don't knowwhat I'm supposed to do, I don't
know when I'm supposed to standup, I don't know what I'm
supposed to, but how is thissupposed to work?
And it was a really beautifulexample because we got to talk
about how, when a new studentcomes into his dojo, it's not
just downloading the informationor like handing them the packet
and saying here's how we dothings around here, but it's
through example and you pair amore experienced student with
(38:48):
the new student and to help themgo through the motions, maybe
even a little bit more slowly,maybe have that individualized
instruction, but someone tomodel after.
And that's when kind of thelight bulb went off for me and I
knew this already, althougheven if I didn't always follow
it or adopt it in my practice isthat following Jesus, being a
disciple is a lot less of aknowledge transfer, as it is
(39:08):
modeling in a way of life.
It's a lot less like two plustwo equals four and we can do
the times tables and we canlearn all the rules and we can
say it in the right way.
It's a lot more like learningkarate or learning how to swing
a golf club or to shoot abasketball.
You can only talk about it solong, you can only watch it for
so long, but at some point youjust got to get out there and
start doing it.
And once you start doing it,that's when it makes sense.
And so that's where I look atsome of the traditions and some
(39:30):
of the rituals and practices.
Like, once you start doing it,it makes a lot of sense.
It can actually point us toJesus and point us to the cross
and help us grow in our faith.
But when they become the solething, you know it works because
I did it that's when it canbecome a barrier.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Well, you hear this with Jesus, and I think it's the
rich young man, right?
What must I do to be saved?
Yeah, what does the law say?
Jesus says right?
Well, I do that.
He's lying.
There's no way he keeps all thelaw.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
But he says I'm doing , do the law, yeah, fine.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Do the law and good luck.
Good luck there, I've done that.
Ok, you want to elevate itaround?
Go, sell all your stuff andcome and follow me.
And he doesn't want to do thatbecause he has the way of the
greatest adventure of all time.
Jesus is more about a way, right, it is about the heart, way of
viewing the world and ourcharacter, becoming more and
(40:23):
more like Christ.
This is the fruit of the spiritlove, joy, peace, patience.
So what is the summary of thelaw?
Love God, love others.
Okay, what does that exactlylook like?
Well, it's going to look likeyour context, your community, in
your home, and this is why thepower of vocation, right, luther
hits on this.
It's going to look likebecoming more like Christ, less
anxious, more peaceful, etcetera.
Right, it's not rules, do this,do this, do this.
(40:43):
You know it's an invitationtoward a way of being that the
Spirit is constantly.
This is the role of dailyrepentance, right, it's
constantly dying to my way ofbeing, which is sinful, selfish,
small, to God's way of being,which is love, huge adventure.
Right, there's a big timejuxtaposition, and I think the
(41:05):
more we talk around discipleshipin that direction, rather than
do this, do that, and that'sreally anti-Lutheran for us to
establish all these laws,because then it's going to be
about I'm going to complete itand then I'm going to have some
self-righteousness, or I'm notgoing to complete it and I'm
going to live in insecurity andshame.
Neither of those responses arehelpful.
Anything more to say there,paul.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah, it's well, it's the process of sanctification,
right, it's the work that theHoly Spirit does on us which is
his work.
It's not our work, it's notself-improvement, it's the Holy
Spirit growing in us.
And I think there's I forgetwhere it is in the confession.
But I think there's this lineof like in this life we make but
a little progress.
And you think of the people whoare writing that, or you know
the greats, Augustine or Bernard, or some of these folks who
(41:45):
wrote that.
It's like, wow, they're sayingthey made just a little bit of
progress.
And I actually hear that as acomfort, that like it's going to
be okay, the stakes aren't ashigh because, well, Jesus paid
for all of it already.
It's done, it's won and we getto live in the joy of that and
the growth that God gives issomething to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Hey, so good, maybe last question or two here Get
back into your.
I think there's a lot to learnin the marketplace.
What marketplace principles?
I guess the first article, howthe creator works in his
creation from From your businesslife, our most applicable to
your work today as a pastor,paul.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, I'd say the first one, the most one that
comes to mind is it's aboutpeople.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, it's all about people.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
So working with in the prosecutor's office.
It was always working withpeople and a lot of times it was
seeing people on their worstday.
They either had somethinghappen to them their victim or
they did something, whether forwhatever reason, that this is
probably the worst time of theirlife.
And sometimes, as a pastor, youwalk into that room and this is
the worst day of someone's life.
But at the same time, peopleare just people and so it helps
(42:49):
to say all right, how do Irelate to this person where
they're at right now, withwhatever is going on, and most
of the time, thankfully, it'snot the worst day, and so it
gives a little bit ofperspective that you don't get
too high, you don't get too low.
As we were just talking about,jesus did it all.
It's going to be okay.
It might be painful, it mighthurt now, it might have some
consequences for the immediateor even far future, but
ultimately it's going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, I kind of laugh because you say you might have
said no, you will have sufferingand trial in this life.
Right, it's going to be.
I love that we like in the West, we like to soften the blow.
No, it's going to be.
It's going to be hard.
Paul Right, this is a.
This is a cross.
It includes suffering and death, but Jesus swallowed it all up
for us through his suffering andhis death, giving us the
(43:32):
perspective, the hope for newlife now and into eternity.
Put on your spec, go ahead,paul.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I was going to say, in a strange way, there's joy in
that right.
So I'm getting ready to preachon Zacchaeus, and it's kind of
funny.
Zacchaeus' life got objectivelyworse when Jesus showed up.
He talked about I'm going togive away half my money and I'm
going to repay back four times,like this guy's broke now, but
he's joyful.
Okay, how does that go together?
It does.
That's what Jesus can do,that's the work of the Holy
(43:59):
Spirit, and so that's it.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Hey, last question Put on your speculative prophet
hat, if you will.
What do you think pastoralministry will generally look
like in 25 years?
Let's look at like 2050.
What will be different?
You and I will potentially, ifthe Lord gives us health still
kind of be in this to somedegree.
Praise, be to God.
What will be different?
Do you think at the rate ofchange today you just think of
how much change has taken place.
(44:22):
It would have been hard 25years ago for people to
understand everybody's going tobe on.
What does that even look like?
Preaching online video venues,for, I mean, what are we even
doing?
What will be different?
Do you think what will be thesame?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, working in speculation.
Prophecy is always dangerous.
We're working in speculation.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
But it's all right, we're working in speculation,
yeah, imagination.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
What will be the same ?
The word's going to be the same, the sacraments are going to be
the same, jesus is going to bethe same.
That doesn't change.
And that's, I think, are goingto be the same in our context.
They've been around for 500years.
Depending on which documentyou're looking at, I imagine
they're going to stick aroundfor another 25 years.
So that can kind of be ananchor point for us.
(45:05):
People by and large, are goingto be the same.
I think there's going to besome changes in how they look
and how they respond.
Culture is always changing.
You talk about thatacceleration, that speed of
change, but at the end of theday, people are just people.
God's word kind of gives usthis, this accurate, low
(45:25):
anthropology of who people areand what they need.
And so, you know, it's almostlike we got the playbook.
We understand that maybe better, probably better than anyone
else, because God understands itbetter than anyone else, and so
we can relate to people withthe thing that's most needful
the word of God, the gospel ofJesus, and by the work of the
Holy Spirit they'll come aroundto that.
But what will be different?
I think the way our churcheslook will be different.
In seminary one of my profs, wewere talking about global
(45:48):
Lutheranism, so not just LCMSLutherans, but anybody who kind
of wears that badge around theworld.
And so if you line up all theLutherans in the world, the
median person is female in her30s and a black person of color.
That is not what my churchlooked like growing up and in a
lot of ways that's not whatChrist Memorial looks like now.
(46:09):
Or you think the LCMS, thetraditional LCMS church, that's
not the picture of the averageLutheran you think of.
And yet I think we're moving inthat direction as the culture
around us becomes moremulticultural, of different
people, groups and things likethat.
I think we're moving in thatdirection.
But what else will be different?
I think culture, the culture atlarge and the church, those who
(46:30):
are actively following Jesus,will continue to.
The gap between the two willcontinue to widen.
Dr Justin Marchegiani, if at anytime we lived in Christendom in
the last hundred years, if thatwas ever true, I don't think it
is today and I think it's goingto start looking a lot more
like the book of Acts than itdid in the 1950s or the 1850s or
you know, pick whatever era,and every era has its own
(46:52):
challenges and its own problems.
I don't think we're unique inthat sense, but with that will
come loss, with that will comechallenge, with that will come
crosses, but also tremendousopportunities, and so it's
exciting to think about wherethe Holy Spirit might be leading
in the next 25 years.
And then the last one.
I've been pondering a littlebit and I'm still kind of trying
this on, so I'm not certainabout this one, but thinking
(47:13):
about the difference between,when we're talking specifically
pastoral ministry, that wordpastor as a noun versus pastor
as a verb, and so I'm thinkingpastor as a noun is the office,
the person, it's a career, right, and so you go and just talking
to people and you say, well,what do you do?
You say, well, I'm a pastor.
They have a particular idea ofwhat that is, and I don't think
that's going away.
(47:34):
We need pastors, we need wordand sacrament ministry, we need
these things to happen publiclyin churches so people can know
where.
Here there is the gospel, herethere is the good news.
That's not going away and infact we need to, we need to
double down on it and grow thatpart of it.
But I'm thinking too of pastoras a verb or like the act of
pastoring.
What are those things that, yes, pastors do but also others do?
(47:56):
That kind of falls under thatumbrella of pastoring.
So, like your colleague Jackhas talked about, you know that
role of deacon in Act 6, thatwas like it's part of pastoring
people.
Well, you know all of theauxiliary offices that we have
in the LCMS.
It's part of pastoring peoplewell.
You know, I think of the elderor the council at a congregation
(48:17):
that's been in vacancy forthree or four years.
Someone is pastoring thatchurch, someone is tending to
that flock in some way and I'mnot talking about public
preaching or administration ofsacraments, not in that sense,
and that needs to stay but who'sdoing kind of those other acts
of pastoring, as it were?
And I see that growing when youthink about trends in pastoral
ministry and retirements comingup, bivocational ministry, all
(48:39):
these things.
I think we will need more andmore people, active, devoted,
dedicated followers of Jesus,pastoring in whatever context
they're in, whether that's intheir small group, in their
workplace, with others, families, moms and dads in the home.
Luther talked about how thedad's a bishop, the mom's a
bishop.
That kind of context is.
I think we'll see more and morepastoring happen by those who
(49:00):
don't necessarily hold the titlein an appropriate context in
that way, hey, prophet Paul,those are some really good words
, man.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Thank you for spending some time thinking
deeply about that, and I agreeon those trends To your last
point.
In terms of pastoring, it's somuch fun, so much fun to be in a
place where I am one pastoramong many pastors now, right,
and we have three that areordained and rostered right in
the LCMS, and then we havehundreds you know, at least over
(49:33):
a hundred who are in ourservant leadership kind of
pathway, like they're a leaderor they're a coach or they're a
director.
There's over a hundred peoplein our ministry who are in one
of those categories.
And what are they all doing?
They're a leader or they're acoach or they're a director.
There's over 100 people in ourministry who are in one of those
categories.
And what are they all doing?
They're pastoring Paul, they'reloving people, they're the
hands and feet of Jesus To makea link between another and this
is already present today AI andkind of content generation.
(49:56):
It was.
Content has been dispersed,decentralized right now, and I
think for those of us in theLCMS, we think it's about place
and content with a person.
No, why aren't a lot of our onpodcasts and stuff?
Is there a channel for us to?
He's actually got his ownchannel on YouTube, to be quite
honest but is there a way for usto get dispersed, centralized
(50:27):
content for every level ofleadership development?
That could be something theSynod could work on together and
to partner with churches likeours toward that end.
Anything about?
And so then, it's not as muchabout and this is this is Jesus,
is the word right.
It wasn't as much about thecontent, though.
They needed to get the truth ofthe content of the gospel right
(50:48):
.
It was about, then, thecharacter of the leader who had
the heart of Christ.
That's what we need to beevaluating more.
Do they?
Is the fruit of the spirit seenin their life?
Is humility, holding whateverthey know open for others rather
than pridefully positioningthemselves?
You know, as the Bible guy herein this community, that's not
going to work, and I think it isvery evident for me in my, in
(51:09):
my context.
My greatest influence as apastor is my relational
connection and the character ofChrist in equipping and
releasing and empoweringEphesians for the people of God,
for love and good deeds intheir various vocations.
Rather than being the Bibleanswer man, the Bible, the word
of Jesus, has been decentralized, spread, and that feels
wonderful.
Any comment there?
(51:30):
Paul?
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, it makes me think of.
We talk about how the gospelruns along relational lines.
It's life, on life, on life.
And so I don't know, there mayhave been a time in America
where our culture was much morehomogenous and so you could just
kind of, you know, graduatefrom seminary.
Here's your playbook, doesn'treally matter where you land and
off you go, and it's going towork pretty well.
(51:52):
That value network was aliveand active and good.
I think much more relationshipsmatter, context matters.
I know you guys have talkedabout the dawn ratio.
There's another one I think of.
You know Robin Dunbar,sociologist, has done some
research on the greatest numberof relationships any one person
can maintain at a time issomewhere between 200 and 400.
Yeah, that's right.
And so what that tells me is weneed more people intentionally
(52:15):
building relationships with thegoal of sharing the gospel,
sharing Jesus and God's word inthat way, because I can't know
that many people, you can't knowthat many people.
We work hard in the contextthat we've got, but we need more
, because there's a whole lot ofpeople who don't know yet,
haven't heard yet, and they needto know.
And so I think about thoserelational networks and I see
(52:37):
the people who are in ourchurches as a huge asset to that
, because all of them knowsomebody who is far from Jesus.
Whether they've never heard yetor they've walked away for
whatever reason, they all knowsomebody in that context.
And so how can we equip andencourage and empower and send
them out with this word of thegospel so that the Holy Spirit
can then work?
I mean, because that's how hesaid he wants to do it.
(52:59):
He wants to do it throughhearing, he wants to do it
through proclamation.
So let's get going.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Well, this has been so much fun, dude, so grateful
to be in your network, a friendof yours, friend of Christ
Memorial, to tell really greatstories of what the Lord is
doing.
If you don't have the book theInnovator's Dilemma, check it
out.
And I'm having a husband no,not a husband, a father and son
author team who wrote the bookleading through in this paradigm
(53:23):
rather than leading over.
There's a lot of the innovatorsdilemma that's also present in
that book, leading through theClark.
It's the Clark family.
They're a Harvard businessfolks too.
Yeah, so much first articlewisdom to be gleaned, which you
can just look at the message ofJesus and the humility of Jesus
and the humility of Christ andsee a distributed, decentralized
(53:45):
leadership development inChrist.
Paul.
You're a gift to me, man, ifpeople want to connect to you,
how can they do so?
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Appreciate you too, tim, and your team and all the
work you put into this.
It's wonderful to connect withme.
Probably the easiest way isjust my email, pauldickerson at
cmstlorg.
So, like Christ Memorial, stLouis, cmstlorg.
Or if you want to see some ofthe stuff that we're doing with
who's Next and kind of thatgenerational stuff lovedcentorg,
l-o-v-e-d-s-e-n-torg and somestuff that we've got coming up
(54:14):
in terms of new generations, newleaders, new people, groups.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Let's go.
Leaders, new people, groups,let's go.
This is the Tim Allman podcast.
Please like subscribe.
We have so many amazing gueststhat have been on this podcast
and are lined up, so please keeplistening.
Every single Wednesday, a freshepisode of this podcast comes
out, and I know I am bettertoday in getting to know you and
talking about Jesus with you,paul, and I know our listeners
feel the exact same way.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Thanks so much, paul, thanksTim.
Welcome to the Tim Allman Podcast.
It's a beautiful day to bealive.
Pray, the joy of Jesus is yourstrength.
I get the privilege today ofhanging out with a leader that
I've admired from afar, and I'mexcited to get to know better.
This is Pastor Paul Dickerson.
Let me tell you about him.
He serves as Associate Pastorat Christ Memorial Church in
partnership with my longtimegood friend, jeff Claytor, been
there really since the beginningof his ministry.
(00:25):
Jeff has been on our podcastbefore Paul and his wife Pamela.
They've been married 20 yearsthis summer.
Hey, bro, my wife and I are 20years as well.
They have two kids, jack andSarah.
How old are Jack and Sarah,paul?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Jack is a sophomore, so he just turned 16.
Sarah is 11.
She's in fifth grade, man, okay.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So I got a sophomore son too, and anyway, yeah, we're
in similar seasons of life.
Prior to attending seminary,though, in 2016, paul and his
family lived in Ann Arbor,michigan.
Are you an Ann Arbor grad, notConcordia University ofbor,
michigan, where Paul worked asan attorney and Pam, his wife,
(01:04):
ran a coffeehouse ministry intheir church?
Paul's current ministry focuseson discipleship and staff and
lay leader development, and Pamoversees a young leader
development program.
That's pretty cool, called theHarbor Leadership Collective.
So, yeah, let's get into yourministry story.
First, how you doing, paul.
You loving life, dude, life isgood.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, things are well , tim.
Thanks for having me on,Excited for this topic, excited
to talk to you.
I've been listening to thepodcast for a while and you've
had some heavy hitters on here,so I feel like a kid invited to
the grownups table, so this isgoing to be silly.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
You are silly.
You are more than welcome, dude.
You have so much to offer.
This is going to be great.
So how has your secular careershaped your work as a leader in
the local church?
I've had a number of kind ofbivocation or co-vocational
leaders.
Now you kind of left that andkind of came full time, but you
definitely were impacted by,close to, I think, a decade or
so of marketplace leadership,right.
So tell that story.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, it was really kind of a typical story starting
off.
I grew up Lutheran, grew up inthe church.
Towards the end of high schooland in my college years I'd say
my faith was dormant.
So if you would have asked meI'd say, yep, I'm a Christian,
I'm following Jesus, I read theBible, I go to church
occasionally.
But if you would have askedsome of the people around me,
some of my friends circles, theymight not have been able to
(02:18):
tell.
So that fruit wasn't there.
So kind of a dormant faith fora while.
There my wife Pam and Ireengaged in our early mid-20s
at University of Lutheran Chapelup there in Ann Arbor.
Our friend and colleague ScottGeiger was the pastor.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Scott was Okay, he wasinfluential.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Scott was the pastor, then Don't let him know, though
, that guy will get the big headShout out to Scott.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Love Geiger.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Aside from the Holy Spirit.
This guy either gets the blameor the credit for what's
happened to me since.
There you go, but got involvedin leadership there, slowly,
elder, eventually, congregationpresident of it was a three-site
, multi-site at the time.
And then kind of at the sametime, on a parallel track, I'm
off on my legal career.
So I worked in a countyprosecutor's office, did
criminal jury trials for sevenyears and those two things are
(03:02):
kind of run in parallel Married,house, kids, all the kind of
normal stuff in life in your 20sand early 30s.
And then, as I was doing that,started considering a career
change, looked at some of myexperiences in the church and
seeing a need for organizationaland missional alignment, where
the most important stuff wasn'talways getting the most
attention and the most resources.
(03:23):
And so Pam and I startedconsidering, okay, what would it
look like to go into privatepractice where I'm still
representing clients, stillworking as an attorney, but also
a portion of that practice isworking with churches, either in
legal representation or kind ofin that organizational
alignment, missional alignmentarea?
And as we kept exploring that,we've decided that no, god's
(03:44):
actually inviting us to go toseminary.
And so, 2016,.
We resigned our positions.
We packed up the house andmoved down to St Louis to start
four years of schooling, andthen here we are.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Wow, well, that's extraordinary.
So I'm going to counterlovingly my own thinking
sometimes in the past that somemen won't pick up and leave.
You know, go take that seminaryjourney you did and praise, be
to God.
Not everybody's in the positionto do that, and for those that
are in a local context thatcan't for one reason or another,
(04:18):
but some can and those that canto shout out to both of our
seminaries should.
So yeah, thoughts there, paul,about that sacrifice of picking
up and going to St Louis.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, it was costly.
There's no doubt about that.
One of the big things Ipersonally had to wrestle with
in that was where does, wheredoes all the stuff come from,
right?
Does it come from my work?
Does it come from my skill?
Does it come from my positionin education and training?
Or does God provide that?
And if God provides it, he cansee us through this change and
this change in circumstances too.
(04:53):
I'd also say it was costly interms of relationships.
You know, as you get embeddedin a community, there's friends,
there's colleagues at work,there's a church community that
we left and we love those peopledearly, but the relationship
isn't the same and some of thoseopportunities where you think
about who could I be speaking toabout Jesus or talking to about
the gospel in the context I wasin before that don't exist
anymore because we're just notthere and also at that time,
you'll see, was in a pastoralvacancy.
(05:13):
So my age and the circumstancesthere, smp wasn't really an
option, alternate route wasn'treally an option and as Pam and
I talked about it, we saideither this has to happen now or
it's just not going to happen.
And so we decided to take thejump and God has been good.
He has taken care of us.
We've had all of our needs metand then some, and so it is
possible.
It's costly, but so isfollowing Jesus.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So it's a doable thing.
Pick up your cross and followafter me.
So your first call then was toChrist Memorial, right.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
To partner with Jeff right out of seminary.
Did you do like an extendedvicarage?
Tell that story, yeah, that'sright.
So I kind of followed thenormal route but did local
vicarage.
So Christ Memorial was actuallymy vicarage congregation.
So fourth year turned into kindof like extended vicarage.
It was kind of like field workplus in some ways, because there
was a sense that ChristMemorial was looking to add a
pastor and that I would be agood fit there, and so we just
kind of explored that throughoutfourth year and I don't know
who the powers that be were thatall made the decisions and
(06:09):
pulled the levers to make ithappen, but I'm grateful that
they did.
I graduated in 2020, wasordained in July of 2020, and
have been here ever since COVIDordination.
Covid ordination yeah, that wasa strange time to enter ministry
, but one of the things I'mgrateful for and one that I did
get assigned back to my Vicaragecongregation.
So I had relationships, knewsome of the people, knew some of
the systems in place already,so that was a huge advantage
(06:31):
over some of my classmates thatwere just sent out and it was
brand new and they had to enterinto a new community during that
time.
The other thing was you don'tknow what you don't know, and so
I didn't have any kind ofministry to compare it to, so it
just became normal.
This is just how we do things,and it forced adaptation, forced
quick thinking, start small,fail fast, learn, adapt and try
(06:53):
it again, and so that's kind ofbecome one of our values as a
congregation is to try things,try new things and learn from it
, all for the sake of reachingmore.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That's it.
So let's talk about the newpeople that are coming.
Right now we're seeing a growthwave.
We're going to get into valuenetwork and kind of the
innovators dilemma.
We got some really fun topicswe're going to be hitting here.
But let's just talk about lifeon the ground there in St Louis
and the new people coming.
It's kind of an eclectic groupthat the Lord's bringing, I
(07:21):
think, in both of ourcongregations right now.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Tell that story Paul group that the Lord's bringing,
I think in both of ourcongregations right now.
Tell that story, Paul.
Yeah, so I was talking with you, mentioned Jeff Claytor, my
friend and boss.
We're just kind of comparingnotes on this year.
I think we've had 12 to 15baptisms so far.
About a third of those havebeen infant baptism, so maybe
what most folks usually think ofwhen they think of baptism in a
Lutheran church or an LCMSchurch, but that means
two-thirds have been youngchildren all the way to adults
(07:45):
and grownups.
And this is something you see alot of times in new mission
fields or emerging missions,where the gospel kind of gets a
foothold in a new people groupor a new family or an area that
hasn't been yet in the localcontext.
And then you see one baptismand then two more and then three
more.
And we had a few weeks ago twoyoung men were baptized.
One is in middle school, theother one's in high school.
(08:08):
They've kind of been in andaround the church for a while
but family circumstances they'vejust never been baptized.
And then Jeff was telling me hehad a conversation with another
one of our members that herboys who have, or his
grandchildren who have not beenbaptized were asking well, could
I be baptized?
Because they saw these otherboys get baptized.
So it kind of has this flywheeleffect where you get one and
(08:29):
then you get more, and then youget more, and that's what we've
been seeing in our context here.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well, it's kind of the convergence between the
early church and Christendom,right.
We're like right in the middleof that, where the norm for many
years was, you know, familiesin the church, way more infant
baptisms.
But I think that's the trendwe're seeing to a lot more adult
(08:52):
baptisms, young adult baptisms.
We had we had a young man.
This is kind of wild.
On an average Lenten Wednesdaynight worship, a young man has
come now for a month and hebrought five of his buddies to a
Wednesday night worship service.
They sat down front.
You know there's like onehundred fifty 200 people in the
room, so like like white on rice, I mean they're just everybody
in the church, like these youngkids.
At the end of the service, likehow did you, you know the Holy
(09:13):
Spirit's at work?
It's pretty extraordinary.
But you've got some uniquefolks that are coming that you
said older, adult, former llamafarmers that are joining and all
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, In our current pathways class we've got high
schoolers, we've got a 20 yearold who was just baptized a
couple of weeks ago, all the wayup to kind of traditional
Lutherans who are justtransferring membership to a
couple of 90 year olds who areretired llama farmers from rural
Missouri and moved back to thecity now, and so it's probably
one of the more eclectic groupsthat we've seen.
And we've had the sameexperience, tim, of just kind of
(09:43):
from one to one to one.
So one of my great joys isgetting to watch and just kind
of be on the sidelines as theHoly Spirit works in one
person's life, and then thatperson tells somebody and
they're connected.
And then that person tellssomebody and they're connected,
and we're seeing it go throughfamilies, we're seeing it go
through from kids up tograndparents maybe the reverse
of what you'd normally think andwe're seeing it in friend
groups and just exploding thatway.
(10:03):
So it's fun to be a part of.
It's not anything we're doing.
Sometimes we like to joke thatwe need to try to manage the
Holy Spirit and he just refusesto do what we say, and so we
just kind of hold on tight astight as we can and go along for
the ride.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, I think what we can do more by the Spirit's
power is let our members knowthe power of the invite.
Right, this is right beforeEaster.
Right now we have an every weekpush Invite your friends,
invite your family, invite yourneighbors, come and hear the
best story of all time thatdeath has been defeated by the
crucified and risen Jesus.
I think more people are open toan invite right now.
Cool story.
(10:37):
Well, our SMP pastor I hateusing that language, but a
bivocational guy he's going tobe on this podcast here soon
Jeff Sutherland.
He'd been invited.
He's in real estate, beenrunning a real estate firm for
years and years and he'd beeninviting a partner in his
business to church for years,multiple years.
He'd been asking this guy tocome and then the one Sunday
Jeff was out.
This guy happens to show up,says I work with Jeff, I think
(11:01):
is he one of the pastors here orsomething, and anyway they've
been coming now straight lastfour weeks.
He grew up five years in aCatholic church and then his
wife has never experiencedanything connected to local
church.
And here they are the lastmonth listening to law and
gospel preaching here at ChristChristian.
I mean it's insane what theLord is doing the power of the
invite.
Do you guys have a heavy invitepush right?
(11:21):
Now, too, we do.
Do you guys have a heavy invitepush right?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
now too, we do Not as heavy as you guys and praise
God for that story.
But one of the things Iexplicitly talk about it with in
our new member class or even ifwe're having a Bible study, is
it's really very simple weinvite a friend out, You're
going to ask what's going on newin their life, like you do, and
they're going to tell you awhole bunch of new in your life
(11:43):
because they're a nice person,they're your friend, they want
to know.
And then you get to tell themhey, I started going to this new
church and here's one thingI've learned.
Or I'm doing this new Biblestudy, and here's one thing.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
So good.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And you see, you see if they bite right.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
It's like I don't know Jesus liked.
Okay, we'll try again later.
That's it.
Yeah, this, uh.
Another cool story.
One of our members, Cindy, met agal in the grocery store and
she's very outgoing, and theystarted talking, heard her story
.
She was new to the Valley andnever had gone to church.
She'd not found a church evenbefore she moved here and they
became friends.
She said after a fewconversations hey, I go on
Sundays to Christ Greenfield.
Do you want to come?
She came and now Betty is likein our leadership development
(12:31):
pathway.
She is so, so, gifted and onfire for the Lord.
I don't know how old, you don'task older, he's 65, 70 years
old or something like that, Imean but she's just met Jesus.
This is amazing.
Like there are way, there areway more people who are eager to
form friendship with healthy,hopefully healthy heart, body,
mind, spirit.
Christians who aren't weird,you know, they're just out in
the community, living out theirfaith in the name of Christ and
(12:55):
and just waiting for for thatinvitation.
I think that's, I think that'sso true back in the day in the
LCMS, if you remember this,because we're, we're close,
similar ages I remember in mydad's church there used to be
Friendship Sundays.
Do you remember this?
Friendship Sundays, it was kindof an LCMS wide push that on
this Sunday or it was maybe evena curriculum whatever makes the
most sense in your world.
(13:16):
We call them.
We Are Family Days here.
So a great day we're going togo.
We do hospitality big, but wego even bigger with hospitality
that day.
We know it's going to be agreat experience for you to
invite your friends.
Do you guys have any kind ofrhythm there at Christ Memorial?
For, like, we are family, orinvite Sundays in addition to
Christmas and Easter, because weknow Christmas, easter,
mother's Day, those are thethree best kind of invite
(13:37):
Sundays.
Do you have any experiencethere?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, we haven't really picked up on that in that
way.
A lot of it we do around ournew member class and pathways,
as this is the time, becausethere's something, there's a
specific thing to invite to,right For sure, or kind of in St
Louis we're kind of right inthe hub, there's 80 plus
Lutheran churches in this area.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
That's hard to wrap your mind around.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Which is, yeah, it's a huge blessing and lots of
opportunities for partnership init.
You know some strong Lutheranschools in the area and so
there's still kind of thatcultural Lutheranism or cultural
Christianity where we seeopportunities to invite people
when the kids are singing, whenwe celebrate our Lutheran
schools, when we're kind ofdoing these specific community
events, where that then becomesthe hook or the event to bring
(14:21):
someone in and then they get tohear the gospel and we let the
Holy Spirit take it from there.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Hey, I love it.
All right, let's shift and talk.
You're in leadershipdevelopment.
You have a leadershipdevelopment kind of hat staff
and lay leadership development.
Your wife is also caring foryoung leaders in their journey.
You mentioned the book.
You and I were talking aboutthe book the Innovator's Dilemma
by Clayton Christensen.
Tell me about that book and howit shapes kind of the culture
(14:47):
there of leadership developmentat Christ Memorial.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, so I got to give credit to a lay leader here
in the St Louis area, rob Boyle.
Rob is a prof in the businessschool at St Louis University
and this was years ago I think Iwas on my vicarage when he did
a presentation for a group ofpastors and lay leaders in the
St Louis area talking aboutleading in disruptive times, and
he references this book,innovator's Dilemma by Clayton
(15:09):
Christensen.
And so I did what we all do Iwrote down the book in the title
and I probably ignored it forthe next like three or four
years until I got to it on myreading list.
But when I finally read it,just all sorts of ideas and
connections started sparking.
It is kind of a wonky book.
It's got charts and graphs anddata and Clayton Christensen is
a prof, he's at the HarvardBusiness School and he kind of
set out to answer this questionof why do good companies fail?
(15:33):
Why do companies like Sears andIBM and Xerox and these ones
that at one point were the casestudy as a here's Kodak, here's
the best way to lead and manageand run a company in the US
today, and now you look at thatmarket share and other case
studies for how it all wentwrong.
So Christensen kind of sets outto answer this question what,
what happened?
And he looks at it through thelens of innovation and
(15:56):
technology.
Now, when he's talking abouttechnology, he's not talking
about phones and computers andthat kind of technology for his
purposes.
Technology is the process ofturning resources, human
resources, capital, informationany of that stuff into products
and services in the market.
So technology is that process oftaking something and bringing
it to the market for the sake ofthe customer.
(16:16):
And it makes us this thing, thisdistinction between sustaining
technology that looks to improveon what exists, into existing
markets, to appeal to masscustomer bases, and disruptive
technology that adds a differentvaluation into it, that looks
at well, maybe it can be donemore cheaply, maybe it can be
more reliable, maybe it doessomething a little bit different
(16:36):
.
And disruptive tech is never asgood at first, but quickly it
adapts and it changes and itstarts to take over the market
almost from the bottom up.
And so that's the innovation,is the change in the process.
The dilemma that Christensenfound is that the exact same
behaviors that good companiesand good managers use to become
good companies and become theSears and the Xerox and the
(16:59):
Kodak are the same ones thatcause their downfall in the face
of disruptive tech.
So it's actually goodmanagement that creates the
problem and the opportunity forthis disruptive technology or
this new process or an emergingmarket to come in and overtake
market share and then overtakethe firm itself.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So this is one of my favorite topics, paul, as a
systems guy, as one who seeks toagain, this is all this is kind
of.
I think this is the heart ofJesus is disappointing people at
a rate they could handle.
Like the disciples had an ideaof what the kingdom advancing
would look like.
And then Jesus elevates it.
(17:39):
No, it looks like a cross andan empty tomb.
Right, we're in Lent right now.
Never do you, lord, get behindme, satan.
Jesus says to Peter after he'sjust given the greatest
proclamation you are the Christ,you're the promised Messiah.
But you don't understand whatthat rain looks like.
It's a global, it's a cosmicrain.
It's not a micro rain, a smallrain for the restoration of
(18:02):
Israel.
I think we can get kind of flipit with that.
They had this kind of view.
No, no, no.
Jesus was very disruptive in hisministry.
Anything more to say about?
I mean, this is leadership,it's.
People have a certain vision,but our vision is always too
small, right, and this canhappen in a business, this can
happen in a church.
God's vision is global.
And then you think after hisascension you will be witnesses
(18:23):
Jerusalem, judea, samaria, tothe ends of the earth, like it's
a huge vision and they had tosay how in the world is this
going to take place?
Trust me, it's not going to beyou working, it's going to be me
speaking.
You know, when you're beforepeople who are going to take
your life, which inevitablyhappened for many of them right
and could happen for us.
You know, but don't worry it,I'm going to be with you.
(18:49):
You know, through thedisruption that human beings
love, safety and security andritual and the status quo, like,
we're hardwired toward that,and so leaders inspired by the
Holy Spirit have to disruptthings, but at a rate that
doesn't lead toward their demiseor or the demise of the
institution, right?
So let me final final point interms of like distribution of
disruption, right?
So let me final point in termsof like distribution of
disruption.
I've heard some research on thesustaining work to manage what
(19:10):
is going on.
That's roughly about 70 percentof an organization's effort
just keeping the system, so it'sstill a majority.
But then the other 20 percentis looking at and that's not 100
percent, I'm all aware.
20 percent is looking at whatwe're doing and offering
disruptive suggestions to do itbetter, right?
And then 10% in anyorganization is doing an
(19:33):
entirely new thing and Google.
There's a lot of data aroundthis, google and other
industries.
And then all of this innovationis given through initiatives
carried on by distributed teamsrather than bureaucratic
hierarchy who get in the way.
So bureaucratic hierarchy needsto lower themselves and give as
much freedom to those who aredoing the 70, 20, and 10 work in
(19:57):
an organization and in a localchurch.
So there is a lot of researcharound this topic.
It's very, very helpful, but itis very, very hard for a leader
to manage through.
This is a part of the crosstopic.
It's very, very helpful, but itis very, very hard for a leader
to manage through.
This is a part of the cross.
I think Jesus is saying as youcarry out this kingdom,
expanding work.
So yeah, I said a lot there,paul.
Any thoughts?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Lots, probably too many to share in the time we've
got.
But, yeah, thinking about Jesusas a leader, being wholly
secure in his identity as theson of God, allowed him to enter
into those conversations, rightTo be disruptive in a way that
both challenged and calledhigher.
And, of course, the disciplesstill don't get it, we still
don't get it, and so they allfell away.
(20:38):
At the end Mark talks aboutthat they all left him and fled.
And so thinking about, yeah,what is the disruption that we
can stoke, the kind of healthyagitation, a healthy conflict
that helps lead towards changeand growth.
Change and growth happensbecause of challenge, because
there's something to pushagainst.
(21:00):
We think about this with ourbodies.
Right, if you exercise or youwant to get stronger, you want
to get faster, you want to growin endurance, you got to kind of
push that line a little bit,because if you don't, if you
stay sedentary, actually allatrophies and it goes in the
reverse direction.
So giving the right amount ofchange, the right amount of
stress to produce growth is kindof the key.
(21:21):
And knowing all right, how do Iturn that up a little bit, how
do I turn that down Makes methink of Todd Bolsinger talked
about being like a pressurecooker, a crockpot or a
thermostat that is able to keepthe heat up.
It doesn't go away at all, butit regulates it at a temp, at a
level that people can handle andcontinue to grow and, god
willing, by the work of thespirit, flourish.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Have you documented on your team?
And we haven't per se, the70-20-10 split, and I think the
reason we haven't documented itis I want every person's week to
look like 70-20-10.
Like it's not just a team, likeit's a team that does 10%.
No, it's every ministry teamthat is looking 20% of the time
(22:05):
at what they're doing.
They got to get above or thisis adaptive leadership
conversation right, they got toget to the balcony.
They're on the dance floor.
70% is kind of in the weeds orin the whirlwind, and so this is
the four disciplines ofexecution.
We got to have some big goals,right that we're then working on
the business, not just in it,and the business for us, you
know, multiplying disciples,looking at leadership
development, and then you've gotabout 10% of your time to
(22:27):
wonder I wonder if, look at thisand maybe there's a new thing.
My problem I'm just beingcompletely transparent is I am
inappropriately distributed.
Full transparency.
I'm like 50% looking at what isprobably 20%, looking at what
could be done to change what is,and I'm like 30%.
(22:48):
That can be a problem, tim.
Don't do any new things or sayyes to any more initiatives.
I get my hands slapped fromtime to time and so I need to
get back in balance.
70-20-10 is a good distribution.
Have you thought about thatbefore, paul?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
We have and we're working towards it.
We're definitely not there yet,and part of it is we'll talk
about value networks here in aminute and part of it, I think,
is because of that.
But you and I share that sametendency I can be incredibly
disruptive.
We just did some stuff withWorking Genius, and one of mine
is Wonder, and so I'm alwaysasking questions why is it this
way?
How could it be better, howcould we improve it?
And sometimes that can go toofar, to the point where it's
(23:24):
actually harmful to people andit's harmful to the organization
.
One of the one of the checksthat I often remember and I hit
my team and our team here haspermission to call me on this is
that efficiency and love areoften incompatible.
It was not efficient.
It didn't make any sense forthe father to send his son for a
bunch of sinners dead in theirsins, right, but thank God that
(23:45):
he did that.
He loved us enough to do that.
And so efficiency and lovegetting everything to you know,
the system being perfectlyaligned and everything just
humming that's not always themost loving thing, and so I need
to be called on that sometimesand have that check in place
where too much disruption is nothelpful.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
That makes you a good leader.
You know your your blind spotsI'm working on.
I'm working on mine too, solet's get into it.
You brought, you brought upvalue network.
How does a value network, howdoes it hurt businesses when
they respond to customer needs?
Let's talk about that.
And when we say customer, arewe talking the member in the
church?
Are we talking people that areyet to come into the church?
(24:21):
To put it into a church context, paul.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah.
So in a church context, I thinkof the customer as the existing
customer, the one who's amember, the one who's already in
, and a part and people can talkabout.
You know what level ofengagement does that represent?
Whatever someone thinks of whenthey think of this person is in
.
That's the customer.
And so what Christensen says inthe book is a value network is
the context in which a firm or acompany makes decisions,
(24:44):
allocates resources, enactspolicies, responds to threats
from competitors, listens to itscustomers, to all deliver a
product or service in a way.
And a value network can be areally good thing because it
develops into this symbioticrelationship between the
customer and the company or, inthe church context, between the
member and the church, where wesay, well, what is it that you
(25:05):
need, what is it that you want?
The customer tells the company,the company says we can deliver
that and off we go, and it kindof becomes this symbiotic
relationship.
The problem comes up when, inthat relationship, certain
capabilities get developed bythe company.
That's a good thing, but thatalso defines the company's
disabilities and the thingsyou're not good at, because
nobody can be good at everything, nobody can serve all people,
(25:27):
and so it starts to forecloseopportunities in different
markets that a company couldenter, so that when disruptive
tech comes in, the company'sactually unable to pivot and
respond to the changing market,precisely because it listened to
its customers again and againand again.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Well, yeah, so would you apply this to serve me,
pastor, you do your thing, keepme comfortable, don't forget,
don't forget, and all your newideas, don't forget about us.
So the discipline betweendiscipleship and outreach and
kingdom expanding work, thatkind of interconnection between
the disciple and disciple,making and multiplying, is that
(26:08):
the dance I think that we do inthe local church, paul?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, I think it is.
And so, you know, for thepastors listening or anybody who
works in the church, you cankind of think of all sorts of
different ways, that littledecisions that you have to make,
that navigates this sort ofthing right, where you look at
hospital visits or a funeral, orattending the Women's Guild
luncheon, or am I going andknocking on doors with the
evangelism team, or how muchtime do I give to the school?
(26:32):
You know, in our context, youknow we do confirmation in a few
different modules throughoutthe year, kind of like these six
to eight week sprints, and it'severy week for those six to
eight weeks, and our seventh andeighth graders are coming, and
a lot of times we ask a parentto come.
That's kind of the format thatwe followed for a while.
Well, now we've got studentswho are in single parent
(26:53):
households, or we've got onestudent in particular, who I'm
thinking of, who has fourhouseholds that they're a part
of.
So there's mom and there's dad,and there's maternal
grandparents and there'spaternal grandparents, and so
they're divided between all ofthese different places and not
all of those people are part ofour church or connected to our
church at all.
And so how, what kind ofprocesses, what kind of systems
(27:14):
do we have in place so thatperson can be a part of part of
the church?
Because they don't fit neatlyinto the you know, mom, dad, two
and a half kids, white picket,fence, family system that we
might think of as the ideal, andso how do we leave room for
that?
You know, part of what reallygot me thinking on this and kind
of I shot the email off to youon it was a conversation you had
(27:34):
with our friend and colleague,scott Seidler, and we heard him
present at a conference where hewas talking about how there's
someone on his team and I forgether name and I forget what she
did before, but she's retired,did not work in ministry, but it
is her responsibility to makesure that Scott and the pastors
on his team are calling thefirst time visitors Because, in
Scott's own admission, if thiswoman does not make sure that he
(27:56):
does it, it won't happenbecause it's not urgent.
It's incredibly important butit's not urgent.
All of the other stuff isurgent.
Right, that says you know,pastor, pay attention to this
pastor, no-transcript.
(28:34):
And maybe we are inadvertentlycreating a culture within a
church or a way of doing thingswithin a church.
That's not bad.
It's not against scriptures,it's not against the confessions
, but maybe it's creatingbarriers to those who aren't
here yet because they're notwithin that value network and we
don't have a ear to hear whatthose people would be for.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, that's so good.
So how do we change it?
I'll share how I kind ofconceptualize about it and get
your take.
If Jesus led you here, youbelong here.
And then it's stories like thestory I told about Cindy
(29:21):
inviting Betty, like those startto be a part of the grounding,
or you could say even met astory about who we are as a
community.
We're a hospitable place thatwe're not perfect, but we seek
to create a space that everyonefeels welcome to hear.
Word and sacrament.
No, no matter how much you knowabout Jesus, jesus welcomes you
with arms open wide and we gotto tell the stories about that
(29:42):
taking place.
We're, for the least, the lost,the lonely, the hurting.
La Mesa and different ministriesin our community kind of prove
it.
And then what are thestructures?
Right and structures fordiscipleship, for depth and wit,
at the same time Pouring intosmall group leaders, pouring in
(30:03):
to the vicars and those that arelaunching into ministry.
There's a boomerang effect ofJesus.
It's ascending out of the 12,ascending out of the 70, and
then we gather consistently fortraining.
But then there is veryevidently a pathway for you to
continue to grow here and for usit looks like our servant
leadership development pathway,serve, lead, coach, direct.
There's always a next and inphilosophy or even internal
(30:23):
motivation, there's a hill toclimb.
And then, once you get to thathill, oh, there's another here,
there's another.
So it's always talking aboutnext steps for the person
knowing and following andgrowing as a Jesus follower.
So it's language, sharedlanguage, shared story, shared
structure.
Any comments on that Paul?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, that's really good, and the fact that there's
a structure around it, I think,is maybe one of the keys to
unlocking kind of this trap ofthe value network, because that
gravitational pull is incrediblystrong.
It's also incredibly subtle tothe urgent, to the need right in
front of me, to the personwho's here that I see, and to
kind of not think about or notconsider the person who's not
(31:03):
here yet.
You know you talk aboutstructures.
You know I give Scott a lot ofcredit, seidler, for the wisdom
of saying I need someone to holdme accountable to make sure
this happens.
A lot of times on our team we'lltalk about what's the language
that we're using.
Are we using insider language?
Are we explaining the termsthat, either in preaching or in
our worship service or in ourliturgy, are we saying what this
(31:24):
stuff means and not making thatassumption that well, we've all
been here for 30, 40, 50 yearsand so we all know what this is,
of course.
But the problem is there's, youknow, 20 people sitting in the
back that have no idea what'sgoing on.
You sitting in the back thathave no idea what's going on.
You know how are we thinkingabout them and then having an
eye forward towards kind ofwho's next you know I know Jeff
(31:45):
talked about this, someone hehas on with you but kind of
who's the next leader, what'sthe next people group, what's
the next generation and how arewe bringing them in?
So that kind of, as you talkedabout, that 70-20-10,.
Are we intentionallystructuring our time and our
resources and our policies tosay that 20% and that 10% we're
going to lose on this?
This is not going to be like anet gain in terms of the
resources and the people, hoursand everything else we have to
(32:06):
invest in it, but it is soimportant for those who aren't
here yet and for that who's nextquestion that we have to spend
it.
It's a good investment, eventhough it's going to lose in the
short term.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yes, Well, human beings, we have a preference for
short-term pleasure at theexpense of long-term pain.
Right, that's the way it goes.
And then we idolize our rituals, right, and Jesus was so, so
against this.
Like this is a pharisaicaltendency.
Your hearts are far from me.
You're trying to define yourself-righteousness on the way we
(32:38):
do our Jewish thing.
Right, and for us today in thechurch, the way we do church the
way we do, and this is why Ithink in the wider conversation,
there's a overreaction torituals around the liturgy today
.
Jesus never talked about thatLike, if he did, he talked about
how you have these traditionsthat you put.
And that's getting in the wayof me.
One of the sermons we justpreached yesterday.
(33:03):
Actually, rituals are forrelationship and we were
preaching on Mark, chapter seven, and the washing of hands, and
they developed this wholetheology around washing of not
just their hands but these other.
I find it funny dining couches,you know, was it a sprinkling
or was it an immersion of thedining couches?
Because baptism is the samewords there.
And so Jesus brings right wasIsaiah when he prophesied
against you.
You hypocrites you have.
(33:24):
You're defining yourself basedon what is outside.
I define what's on the inside.
Jesus is concerned about theheart Right, and so we can turn
these rituals, these behaviors,these things that have grounded
us into an idol, and it hurts.
Why was Jesus concerned aboutthis?
Because it hurts the mission.
Jews, you think this is justabout you?
(33:44):
You guys have forgotten.
It was always about the nations.
It was always about being alight to the nations, and so
this is, this is the spirit ofthe risen Jesus that lives in us
, that has to like, lovingly,challenge.
I got to tell you a story andthen let you respond.
We have I'm looking out mycourtyard, out my window right
now, into our courtyard we havea bell that has been here since
the order of Melchizedek.
(34:04):
Right, we don't know, the bellpredates me.
It will be here long after me.
But I'm looking to my right andthere's a bell tower here.
The grounding narrative has beenthat bell won't fit in that
bell tower.
So it's right in the middle ofthe courtyard and it has kind of
a neat effect.
We ring it seven times, etcetera.
But if I were to say we'removing the bell, Paul, like
(34:26):
there will be a visceralreaction because it's like the
centerpiece in our courtyard.
But anybody that is reasonableis like no, there should be like
a welcome spot right in themiddle of your courtyard, but
there's this huge bell.
So this is awesome.
Our campus director said I justwas talking about the bell
yesterday in worship and it wasfascinating sociologically to
discuss with such varied views.
Our campus director, Dan, saidyou know what?
(34:48):
We did some work on thestructure of the bell tower.
It will hold that bell, so likewe're going to move in time.
It's going to go up there.
It's just a matter of time, butlike the reaction in the
community is going to befascinating to watch Every month
you move it like a month footand just slowly migrate.
That's so good, Paul.
Any response about how we turnrituals and even things in our
(35:12):
world into idols that coulddecrease Because people that
come from the outside, theycould care less about that,
right?
I mean, oh, there's a bell.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Well, they don't know the story behind it and they
don't know why it's there.
Right, we've talked about ourhearts being idol making
factories, and so I think of thedistinction between tradition,
which can be good and helpful,versus traditionalism, which
holds to the tradition as themain thing.
That's a little bit of you knowkind of why I got into ministry
(35:43):
is this seeing those types ofthings, and not even just around
traditions, it could be currentpractices where the practice
becomes the thing and themission gets put in the
background a little bit.
And so, yeah, it's, traditionsare good, I think, as George
McDonald talked about, you know,before you go knocking down
fences, you should at leastpause and ask why they were put
up in the first place.
For sure, but those things canbe really helpful.
(36:04):
You know, I visit with some ofour senior members, you know,
who have memory loss or dementiaor things like that, the
tradition of saying the liturgyfor week after week after week,
for decades.
They still know it.
They might not know anythingelse, but they still know bits
and pieces of that, and that's abeautiful thing.
At the same time, when we holdon to that tradition to the
point it becomes traditionalism,where our faith isn't doing the
thing because we did it right.
Well then, that's displaced God.
Maybe subtly, maybe not sosubtly, but that has displaced
(36:26):
Jesus as the foundation that westand on.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, rituals should be held hospitably is, I think,
what Jesus is saying.
These things are not bad, theyjust could get in the way of my
work.
Go ahead and they need to be inservice of the mission and in
service of the work of Christ,the work of the Holy Spirit,
they're a means toward theobject of our worship right,
(36:51):
which is the elevation of thecrucified and risen Jesus.
You know, there's a storythat's in our world it's
probably happened in otherchurches where a young man late
teens walked in and he's wearinga ball cap.
Jack's told this story beforewearing a ball cap and one of
our this is over a decade agoone of our ushers came up and
kind of rudely, in my estimation, said hey, son, move that ball
cap, we don't wear ball capshere.
(37:13):
He did and kind of in shame,sat through the rest of service,
never came back, and so ifwe're not holding our rituals
with an open hand and explainingthe why behind the what that we
do, I think it's way morenecessary Now, at the end of the
message.
Actually, yesterday I walkedthrough the divine service and I
love that.
God is the primary actor, right, that's the heart of it, not
(37:34):
just page five and 15 from thered hymnal back in the day.
No, the reason we call it thedivine service is because God is
serving us, and all of thesesteps, these rituals, this
liturgy, is a means toward thatend, and so even telling the
story through the liturgy,giving a new frame and there's a
lot of new Lutherans in ourcommunity and they're like oh, I
could see literally in time thelight bulb going off and you
(37:56):
got to do that more consistently, I think now, with way more
outsiders coming into ourLutheran liturgical context.
Any comments there?
Paul?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Absolutely so.
It makes me think of a newerguy around our church.
He is a karate instructor, sohe runs a dojo, and he actually
got connected to us because heemailed info at cmstlorg Like
that email actually goessomewhere.
Someone actually responded.
We had a cup of coffee and wewere off to the races.
But after a couple of times ofattending worship he asked me
(38:25):
he's like okay, I don't knowwhat I'm supposed to do, I don't
know when I'm supposed to standup, I don't know what I'm
supposed to, but how is thissupposed to work?
And it was a really beautifulexample because we got to talk
about how, when a new studentcomes into his dojo, it's not
just downloading the informationor like handing them the packet
and saying here's how we dothings around here, but it's
through example and you pair amore experienced student with
(38:48):
the new student and to help themgo through the motions, maybe
even a little bit more slowly,maybe have that individualized
instruction, but someone tomodel after.
And that's when kind of thelight bulb went off for me and I
knew this already, althougheven if I didn't always follow
it or adopt it in my practice isthat following Jesus, being a
disciple is a lot less of aknowledge transfer, as it is
(39:08):
modeling in a way of life.
It's a lot less like two plustwo equals four and we can do
the times tables and we canlearn all the rules and we can
say it in the right way.
It's a lot more like learningkarate or learning how to swing
a golf club or to shoot abasketball.
You can only talk about it solong, you can only watch it for
so long, but at some point youjust got to get out there and
start doing it.
And once you start doing it,that's when it makes sense.
And so that's where I look atsome of the traditions and some
(39:30):
of the rituals and practices.
Like, once you start doing it,it makes a lot of sense.
It can actually point us toJesus and point us to the cross
and help us grow in our faith.
But when they become the solething, you know it works because
I did it that's when it canbecome a barrier.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Well, you hear this with Jesus, and I think it's the
rich young man, right?
What must I do to be saved?
Yeah, what does the law say?
Jesus says right?
Well, I do that.
He's lying.
There's no way he keeps all thelaw.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
But he says I'm doing , do the law, yeah, fine.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Do the law and good luck.
Good luck there, I've done that.
Ok, you want to elevate itaround?
Go, sell all your stuff andcome and follow me.
And he doesn't want to do thatbecause he has the way of the
greatest adventure of all time.
Jesus is more about a way, right, it is about the heart, way of
viewing the world and ourcharacter, becoming more and
(40:23):
more like Christ.
This is the fruit of the spiritlove, joy, peace, patience.
So what is the summary of thelaw?
Love God, love others.
Okay, what does that exactlylook like?
Well, it's going to look likeyour context, your community, in
your home, and this is why thepower of vocation, right, luther
hits on this.
It's going to look likebecoming more like Christ, less
anxious, more peaceful, etcetera.
Right, it's not rules, do this,do this, do this.
(40:43):
You know it's an invitationtoward a way of being that the
Spirit is constantly.
This is the role of dailyrepentance, right, it's
constantly dying to my way ofbeing, which is sinful, selfish,
small, to God's way of being,which is love, huge adventure.
Right, there's a big timejuxtaposition, and I think the
(41:05):
more we talk around discipleshipin that direction, rather than
do this, do that, and that'sreally anti-Lutheran for us to
establish all these laws,because then it's going to be
about I'm going to complete itand then I'm going to have some
self-righteousness, or I'm notgoing to complete it and I'm
going to live in insecurity andshame.
Neither of those responses arehelpful.
Anything more to say there,paul.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah, it's well, it's the process of sanctification,
right, it's the work that theHoly Spirit does on us which is
his work.
It's not our work, it's notself-improvement, it's the Holy
Spirit growing in us.
And I think there's I forgetwhere it is in the confession.
But I think there's this lineof like in this life we make but
a little progress.
And you think of the people whoare writing that, or you know
the greats, Augustine or Bernard, or some of these folks who
(41:45):
wrote that.
It's like, wow, they're sayingthey made just a little bit of
progress.
And I actually hear that as acomfort, that like it's going to
be okay, the stakes aren't ashigh because, well, Jesus paid
for all of it already.
It's done, it's won and we getto live in the joy of that and
the growth that God gives issomething to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Hey, so good, maybe last question or two here Get
back into your.
I think there's a lot to learnin the marketplace.
What marketplace principles?
I guess the first article, howthe creator works in his
creation from From your businesslife, our most applicable to
your work today as a pastor,paul.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, I'd say the first one, the most one that
comes to mind is it's aboutpeople.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, it's all about people.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
So working with in the prosecutor's office.
It was always working withpeople and a lot of times it was
seeing people on their worstday.
They either had somethinghappen to them their victim or
they did something, whether forwhatever reason, that this is
probably the worst time of theirlife.
And sometimes, as a pastor, youwalk into that room and this is
the worst day of someone's life.
But at the same time, peopleare just people and so it helps
(42:49):
to say all right, how do Irelate to this person where
they're at right now, withwhatever is going on, and most
of the time, thankfully, it'snot the worst day, and so it
gives a little bit ofperspective that you don't get
too high, you don't get too low.
As we were just talking about,jesus did it all.
It's going to be okay.
It might be painful, it mighthurt now, it might have some
consequences for the immediateor even far future, but
ultimately it's going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, I kind of laugh because you say you might have
said no, you will have sufferingand trial in this life.
Right, it's going to be.
I love that we like in the West, we like to soften the blow.
No, it's going to be.
It's going to be hard.
Paul Right, this is a.
This is a cross.
It includes suffering and death, but Jesus swallowed it all up
for us through his suffering andhis death, giving us the
(43:32):
perspective, the hope for newlife now and into eternity.
Put on your spec, go ahead,paul.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I was going to say, in a strange way, there's joy in
that right.
So I'm getting ready to preachon Zacchaeus, and it's kind of
funny.
Zacchaeus' life got objectivelyworse when Jesus showed up.
He talked about I'm going togive away half my money and I'm
going to repay back four times,like this guy's broke now, but
he's joyful.
Okay, how does that go together?
It does.
That's what Jesus can do,that's the work of the Holy
(43:59):
Spirit, and so that's it.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Hey, last question Put on your speculative prophet
hat, if you will.
What do you think pastoralministry will generally look
like in 25 years?
Let's look at like 2050.
What will be different?
You and I will potentially, ifthe Lord gives us health still
kind of be in this to somedegree.
Praise, be to God.
What will be different?
Do you think at the rate ofchange today you just think of
how much change has taken place.
(44:22):
It would have been hard 25years ago for people to
understand everybody's going tobe on.
What does that even look like?
Preaching online video venues,for, I mean, what are we even
doing?
What will be different?
Do you think what will be thesame?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, working in speculation.
Prophecy is always dangerous.
We're working in speculation.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
But it's all right, we're working in speculation,
yeah, imagination.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
What will be the same ?
The word's going to be the same, the sacraments are going to be
the same, jesus is going to bethe same.
That doesn't change.
And that's, I think, are goingto be the same in our context.
They've been around for 500years.
Depending on which documentyou're looking at, I imagine
they're going to stick aroundfor another 25 years.
So that can kind of be ananchor point for us.
(45:05):
People by and large, are goingto be the same.
I think there's going to besome changes in how they look
and how they respond.
Culture is always changing.
You talk about thatacceleration, that speed of
change, but at the end of theday, people are just people.
God's word kind of gives usthis, this accurate, low
(45:25):
anthropology of who people areand what they need.
And so, you know, it's almostlike we got the playbook.
We understand that maybe better, probably better than anyone
else, because God understands itbetter than anyone else, and so
we can relate to people withthe thing that's most needful
the word of God, the gospel ofJesus, and by the work of the
Holy Spirit they'll come aroundto that.
But what will be different?
I think the way our churcheslook will be different.
In seminary one of my profs, wewere talking about global
(45:48):
Lutheranism, so not just LCMSLutherans, but anybody who kind
of wears that badge around theworld.
And so if you line up all theLutherans in the world, the
median person is female in her30s and a black person of color.
That is not what my churchlooked like growing up and in a
lot of ways that's not whatChrist Memorial looks like now.
(46:09):
Or you think the LCMS, thetraditional LCMS church, that's
not the picture of the averageLutheran you think of.
And yet I think we're moving inthat direction as the culture
around us becomes moremulticultural, of different
people, groups and things likethat.
I think we're moving in thatdirection.
But what else will be different?
I think culture, the culture atlarge and the church, those who
(46:30):
are actively following Jesus,will continue to.
The gap between the two willcontinue to widen.
Dr Justin Marchegiani, if at anytime we lived in Christendom in
the last hundred years, if thatwas ever true, I don't think it
is today and I think it's goingto start looking a lot more
like the book of Acts than itdid in the 1950s or the 1850s or
you know, pick whatever era,and every era has its own
(46:52):
challenges and its own problems.
I don't think we're unique inthat sense, but with that will
come loss, with that will comechallenge, with that will come
crosses, but also tremendousopportunities, and so it's
exciting to think about wherethe Holy Spirit might be leading
in the next 25 years.
And then the last one.
I've been pondering a littlebit and I'm still kind of trying
this on, so I'm not certainabout this one, but thinking
(47:13):
about the difference between,when we're talking specifically
pastoral ministry, that wordpastor as a noun versus pastor
as a verb, and so I'm thinkingpastor as a noun is the office,
the person, it's a career, right, and so you go and just talking
to people and you say, well,what do you do?
You say, well, I'm a pastor.
They have a particular idea ofwhat that is, and I don't think
that's going away.
(47:34):
We need pastors, we need wordand sacrament ministry, we need
these things to happen publiclyin churches so people can know
where.
Here there is the gospel, herethere is the good news.
That's not going away and infact we need to, we need to
double down on it and grow thatpart of it.
But I'm thinking too of pastoras a verb or like the act of
pastoring.
What are those things that, yes, pastors do but also others do?
(47:56):
That kind of falls under thatumbrella of pastoring.
So, like your colleague Jackhas talked about, you know that
role of deacon in Act 6, thatwas like it's part of pastoring
people.
Well, you know all of theauxiliary offices that we have
in the LCMS.
It's part of pastoring peoplewell.
You know, I think of the elderor the council at a congregation
(48:17):
that's been in vacancy forthree or four years.
Someone is pastoring thatchurch, someone is tending to
that flock in some way and I'mnot talking about public
preaching or administration ofsacraments, not in that sense,
and that needs to stay but who'sdoing kind of those other acts
of pastoring, as it were?
And I see that growing when youthink about trends in pastoral
ministry and retirements comingup, bivocational ministry, all
(48:39):
these things.
I think we will need more andmore people, active, devoted,
dedicated followers of Jesus,pastoring in whatever context
they're in, whether that's intheir small group, in their
workplace, with others, families, moms and dads in the home.
Luther talked about how thedad's a bishop, the mom's a
bishop.
That kind of context is.
I think we'll see more and morepastoring happen by those who
(49:00):
don't necessarily hold the titlein an appropriate context in
that way, hey, prophet Paul,those are some really good words
, man.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Thank you for spending some time thinking
deeply about that, and I agreeon those trends To your last
point.
In terms of pastoring, it's somuch fun, so much fun to be in a
place where I am one pastoramong many pastors now, right,
and we have three that areordained and rostered right in
the LCMS, and then we havehundreds you know, at least over
(49:33):
a hundred who are in ourservant leadership kind of
pathway, like they're a leaderor they're a coach or they're a
director.
There's over a hundred peoplein our ministry who are in one
of those categories.
And what are they all doing?
They're a leader or they're acoach or they're a director.
There's over 100 people in ourministry who are in one of those
categories.
And what are they all doing?
They're pastoring Paul, they'reloving people, they're the
hands and feet of Jesus To makea link between another and this
is already present today AI andkind of content generation.
(49:56):
It was.
Content has been dispersed,decentralized right now, and I
think for those of us in theLCMS, we think it's about place
and content with a person.
No, why aren't a lot of our onpodcasts and stuff?
Is there a channel for us to?
He's actually got his ownchannel on YouTube, to be quite
honest but is there a way for usto get dispersed, centralized
(50:27):
content for every level ofleadership development?
That could be something theSynod could work on together and
to partner with churches likeours toward that end.
Anything about?
And so then, it's not as muchabout and this is this is Jesus,
is the word right.
It wasn't as much about thecontent, though.
They needed to get the truth ofthe content of the gospel right
(50:48):
.
It was about, then, thecharacter of the leader who had
the heart of Christ.
That's what we need to beevaluating more.
Do they?
Is the fruit of the spirit seenin their life?
Is humility, holding whateverthey know open for others rather
than pridefully positioningthemselves?
You know, as the Bible guy herein this community, that's not
going to work, and I think it isvery evident for me in my, in
(51:09):
my context.
My greatest influence as apastor is my relational
connection and the character ofChrist in equipping and
releasing and empoweringEphesians for the people of God,
for love and good deeds intheir various vocations.
Rather than being the Bibleanswer man, the Bible, the word
of Jesus, has been decentralized, spread, and that feels
wonderful.
Any comment there?
(51:30):
Paul?
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, it makes me think of.
We talk about how the gospelruns along relational lines.
It's life, on life, on life.
And so I don't know, there mayhave been a time in America
where our culture was much morehomogenous and so you could just
kind of, you know, graduatefrom seminary.
Here's your playbook, doesn'treally matter where you land and
off you go, and it's going towork pretty well.
(51:52):
That value network was aliveand active and good.
I think much more relationshipsmatter, context matters.
I know you guys have talkedabout the dawn ratio.
There's another one I think of.
You know Robin Dunbar,sociologist, has done some
research on the greatest numberof relationships any one person
can maintain at a time issomewhere between 200 and 400.
Yeah, that's right.
And so what that tells me is weneed more people intentionally
(52:15):
building relationships with thegoal of sharing the gospel,
sharing Jesus and God's word inthat way, because I can't know
that many people, you can't knowthat many people.
We work hard in the contextthat we've got, but we need more
, because there's a whole lot ofpeople who don't know yet,
haven't heard yet, and they needto know.
And so I think about thoserelational networks and I see
(52:37):
the people who are in ourchurches as a huge asset to that
, because all of them knowsomebody who is far from Jesus.
Whether they've never heard yetor they've walked away for
whatever reason, they all knowsomebody in that context.
And so how can we equip andencourage and empower and send
them out with this word of thegospel so that the Holy Spirit
can then work?
I mean, because that's how hesaid he wants to do it.
(52:59):
He wants to do it throughhearing, he wants to do it
through proclamation.
So let's get going.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Well, this has been so much fun, dude, so grateful
to be in your network, a friendof yours, friend of Christ
Memorial, to tell really greatstories of what the Lord is
doing.
If you don't have the book theInnovator's Dilemma, check it
out.
And I'm having a husband no,not a husband, a father and son
author team who wrote the bookleading through in this paradigm
(53:23):
rather than leading over.
There's a lot of the innovatorsdilemma that's also present in
that book, leading through theClark.
It's the Clark family.
They're a Harvard businessfolks too.
Yeah, so much first articlewisdom to be gleaned, which you
can just look at the message ofJesus and the humility of Jesus
and the humility of Christ andsee a distributed, decentralized
(53:45):
leadership development inChrist.
Paul.
You're a gift to me, man, ifpeople want to connect to you,
how can they do so?
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Appreciate you too, tim, and your team and all the
work you put into this.
It's wonderful to connect withme.
Probably the easiest way isjust my email, pauldickerson at
cmstlorg.
So, like Christ Memorial, stLouis, cmstlorg.
Or if you want to see some ofthe stuff that we're doing with
who's Next and kind of thatgenerational stuff lovedcentorg,
l-o-v-e-d-s-e-n-torg and somestuff that we've got coming up
(54:14):
in terms of new generations, newleaders, new people, groups.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Let's go.
Leaders, new people, groups,let's go.
This is the Tim Allman podcast.
Please like subscribe.
We have so many amazing gueststhat have been on this podcast
and are lined up, so please keeplistening.
Every single Wednesday, a freshepisode of this podcast comes
out, and I know I am bettertoday in getting to know you and
talking about Jesus with you,paul, and I know our listeners
feel the exact same way.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Thanks so much, paul, thanksTim.
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