Ep. 55 Michael Frost - ReJesus

In this episode, Michael Frost shares about how the church can look more like Jesus, shuttling the sheep out of the pen, and the importance of knowing and applying contextual clues.

Michael Frost is an internationally recognised Australian missiologist and one of the leading voices in the missional church movement. His books are required reading in colleges and seminaries around the world and he is much sought after as an international conference speaker.

Since 1999, Dr Frost has been the founding director of the Tinsley Institute, a mission study centre located at Morling College in Sydney, Australia. He has also been an adjunct lecturer at various seminaries in the United States.

He is the author or editor of nineteen theological books, the best known of which are the popular and award-winning, The Shaping of Things to Come (2003), Exiles (2006), The Road to Missional (2011) and Surprise the World! (2016). Frost’s work has been translated into German, Korean, Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish.

For twelve years, he was the weekly religion columnist for the Manly Daily, and has had articles published in the Washington Post, The Tennessean, the Charlotte Observer, Le Monde, and other publications.

He was one of the founders of the Forge Mission Training Network and the founder of the missional Christian community, smallboatbigsea, based in Manly in Sydney’s north. He is also well known for his protests against Australia’s treatment of refugees, some of which have resulted in his arrest by the NSW police, as well as his advocacy for racial reconciliation, foreign aid, and gender equality.

Mike's Website:
mikefrost.net

This episode was sponsored by:
All Nations Kansas City
The mX Platform

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.us

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Transcript

Joshua Johnson: 0:57

Hello, and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create, and the impact we can make. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Go to shifting culture podcast.com To interact or donate. If you're enjoying the show, it really helps us out if you left a rating, and review on Apple podcasts or share the show with your friends or network. Previous guests on the show have included Alan Hirsch, Rob Wagner, and Pam Arland. You can go back and listen to those episodes, and more. But today's guest is Michael frost. Michael is an internationally recognized Australian missiologist and one of the leading voices in the missional church movement. He is the author or editor of 19 books, the founder of the Tinsley Institute, the missional Christian community, small boat, big sea, and one of the founders of Forge mission training network, we have a wonderful conversation on what it means to be missional and Christ centered at the same time. This is a good one, I know you're going to enjoy it. I certainly did. This episode is brought to you by all nations, Kansas City. At all nations, we make disciples and train leaders to ignite church planting movements among neglected people. And we want you to join us, are you tired of compromising for the status quo? If so, come join us on the leading edge. All nations is not just a great missions, training and sending organization is an organization that I've been a part of for many years. So join me at all nations Kansas City, go to all nations.us for more information. This podcast is done in association with the MX platform and 100 m publishing. Do you want to be resourced and equipped to release movement in your context, connect with movement leaders and practitioners for coaching resources and training at the MX platform.com. And our guest today Michael Frost has a couple of books on 100. M publishing. One is read Jesus that he co wrote with Alan Hirsch revised and updated edition, the yellow edition you gotta get that one. It is amazing. And then he wrote a little afterward in Red Skies, which is another amazing book that you should get. So check those out at 100. M. Publishing. Mike, welcome to the podcasts. I'm really excited to have you. So thanks for coming.

Michael Frost: 3:26

Hey, Josh, it's great to be here,

Joshua Johnson: 3:27

as you've been, you know, very missional, calling the church into missions activity to get people out on the edges. And as you've been around the edges of the kingdom and trying to pull the church in that direction. How do you stay centered? On Jesus through it all?

Michael Frost: 3:53

Oh, that's a very good question. And it's cuts are a multi layered question. Because I guess in some respects, I would certainly I do want the church to kind of move out from within being a kind of a insular and twisted kind of community to engage in society, culture and, and to move out to be a missional presence, but not just so that it's more relevant or the kind of engages more people or grows more, what have you, it would be my primary motivation for it would be, because that's how we mirror the kind of heart and character of God that God is a missional God that even an extent that sentence ism, bear the ground gravity of what I'm wanting to say. But yeah, I mean, at the core of Christian theology, that is thinking about God, is the idea that God extends himself beyond himself, in the creation of the universe, in his relationship with humankind. You know, the expression that's used the Latin phrase, missio dei, there's this mission of God, God is constantly I mean, it's another definition for the word, love to extend oneself beyond yourself, for the benefit of others. And that's God. That's how God operates all the way through his engagement with the first covenant people in the Old Testament. And then, of course, we see that a Jesus that you know, he's the sentence sending God that God sends I say, sentence me because God sends His Son but his son is God's who's sending himself an even our most complex doctrinal view, the kind that the Trinity is, like soaked in this whole idea of mission be because lots of people kind of speculate about what the relationships between the three persons of the Trinity might be like, but one thing we can be certain from Scripture is that they send each other God the Father says, other God, the Son sin, God, the Holy Spirit, I mean, at the very core of the interpersonal relationships between the three persons of the Trinity is centeredness, if you so. So this idea of, you know, contract, we should be the st ones, we should be extending yourself beyond this as outward into society into culture into the lives of a herding of the poor, the needy or the loss. It's not just because it's a good strategy, or because they need it, both of those things might be true. But I would say because this is what God looks like. And if we're wanting to mirror a God in this world, you want to be Mises, one of the things you could say that Jesus without question is, he's a sent one thing, he says it like 20 times I think in in John's gospel, but you know, the Sandy River, I've been sent to do this, this fulfillment of his idea of what he was sent to do. So if we want to be like Christ, and being sent to people is I think at the very core of that there are other things you can say. But yeah, at the outset, you know, it's about mirroring that character of God. And it's about emulating the life and work of Jesus. So to your question, how do you stay centered on Jesus? It's like, you know, how else would we know what it looks like for us to be engaged in mission if we don't continue to get back to Jesus as our kind of touchdown? And if you don't, Joshua, I think you end up you know, thinking, Well, if you think the mission of the church is to grow the church, and to get out there and engage in strategies to connect to people, and you don't have Jesus, as I said, that touchstone that that frame, that that shapes the way you do that, well, then you end up justifying all sorts of things. And we've seen that though, in terms of our marketing of manipulation, and control, and, and colonization and all sorts of things. We ended up doing it because we think the end is to be out there and reaching people. But actually, the end is to to mirror the work of God in the world and to alert him to his way. And secondarily, ideally. So people feel people invite people into faith. But yeah, you end up you can end up in some very tricky space. If you don't continue to come back to Jesus.

Joshua Johnson: 8:23

Yeah. So how do you think that we as as people, can be the ones that have our desire, and our attachment to God, more than our strategies and all the other stuff to build the the the number, so we look good? How can we stay grounded and rooted in that so that we keep him at the center as we move forward?

Michael Frost: 8:51

Well, I mean, I think we need to maintain our evangelical kind of fervor, I know that that words a bit contested, but that kind of gospel drive, which is sort of characteristic of a certain section of Protestant community. But I also think we need to maintain some traditions that Catholic and Orthodox and mainline Protestants are committed to as well, which is about, you know, strong commitment to the tradition to reading scripture to the lectionary to to grounding ourselves in the world. It's so interesting that the people that often about how we're the gospel people were the word people are often the ones that seem to know it the least. And so I'm not suggesting let's all you know, be Catholic, or let's all switch over to to kind of more mainline or liberal denominations or, or church movements, but maintaining our angelical in the best sense of the word kind of energy and fervor and commitment to mission. It is actually about being people of the word and in particular people the gospel so I know that that just sounds so trite, but it's never ceases to amaze me how many people I can encounter who are very committed Christian people and maybe even in ministry or mission who can't know a whole lot about the Gospels. I mean, they don't do either their sins and I know some stories of parables. I'm not suggesting that I know anything, but in a sense, it's kind of like I got it. Jesus died for my sins. Right Good God. Now move on. But now actually, there's much more that you don't know if you don't really immerse yourself in the in the texts. Yeah. I was gonna say I teach a unit at the college where I teach on it's called Jesus and the Gospels. It's really an introduction to the mainly the Synoptic Gospels, but we To touch a bit on John, and these are committed Christian people who are in over a bachelor of theology program, and they're intending many of them to head toward a kind of clergy track. Other kind of local ministry or overseas mission, and no offense to them, God love them. I mean, they kind of wide eyed and full of curiosity and more learn. But I ended up teaching them stuff, I think, do you not know that this like, what what was going on in church? I mean, in a sense, I feel like, Joshua, because lots of lots of our leaders were raised in Christian families. They were raised in the church, they're not new converts to Christianity, because many of them were, they've kind of adopted the gospel by osmosis, you know, their family, culture, their church culture, there's just things you know, without really knowing them. And the thing that gets you the thing that really impacts you, is usually the message about Christ's atoning sacrifice and your scene and your brokenness. And often the conversion moment happens for them where it's like, Yes, I'm a sinner, Christ died for me. And you pixelate into his arms of grace, and you say, that's when I became a Christian. And that's the thing that's like, super important to you, and I get that. But all the other stuff is just as important about God about the character of Jesus about his whole upside down kingdom, all that kind of stuff. But that's kind of way back in the back of your mind, as it were. What's at the forefront is Jesus died for my sins. I gotta go tell other people about that as well. Yeah. And I guess what I'm suggesting is just become more self conscious about what you've assumed about the Gospels, but not actually truly investigated. And, and brought to the forefront to know. And the thing about those classes, is, when we teach them that sort of stuff, you just see them come along of like, Oh, is that why he said that at all? And so that's that Baker, that makes sense of why later, he does. Say the pieces together?

Joshua Johnson: 13:03

Yeah, there's so many things that, you know, even for us leaving a missions agencies were training missionaries to go out, and, you know, do a lot of work, you know, we're, we're talking about, Hey, how can we go in and look at what, what first century, you know, Palestinian area look like? And who was actually talking to you? What was the cultural setting there? And, you know, we read things so much through a Western perspective, that we miss a lot of what Jesus was actually saying, in those stories, that he's sharing the parables, the stories of him going into the, you know, the Pharisee house, and what does that look like? So what's the importance of actually knowing the context of what Jesus was and and then is, and how can we apply that to our lives?

Michael Frost: 13:57

Yeah, no, absolutely. I totally agree with you. Yeah. I mean, the thing about that, is that then lots of preachers, I mean, you look at the stories, parables or stories of Jesus miraculous powers, or his interactions with his disciples, Oh, of course, is his death and resurrection, His birth narrative, you, you look at them in these through these Western eyes. And then those people become ministers or missionaries. And then they they preach them through Western eyes. And so then people adopt a kind of a photocopy of a photocopy of a Western eyed view of this. And so in the end, it just gets boring. I mean, I'll guarantee you the story of Christmas or the story of Easter, no one's going to admit it like, yeah, no guest ceremony and the arrest of humiliation he died on the cross, right? Yeah, a million times. And partly because I don't think it is often presented, not just Easter or Christmas toys, but all of it, as you say, with the kind of cultural richness, that texture, that he would have said this, for these reasons that his first here is would have heard it that way. I mean, not only not only Jesus, of course, even the rest of the New Testament, you know, Paul's and Peter's epistles and the like, you know, it's like, this is what his churches would have heard when he said that or this is why he alludes to this or that. Some preachers do that a little bit more on the epistles, it seems like there's more interest in those but I feel like there needs to be just as much if not more interest on the whole person and work of, of Jesus. I mean, one of the guys who really helped me with this was Kenneth by me, you know, who was a missionary in various places in the Middle East for 40 years or something like that. just an incredibly gracious kind goblin. And I had a great privilege of meeting with him speaking at a conference with him toward the end of his life and just the most humble gracious guy who had done the most remarkable things and didn't big note himself about it at all, but, you know, he his work, in particular Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes as fat. But

Joshua Johnson: 16:10

we have our missionaries read through that, you know, we have them every every week for a year, learn a new Jesus story and then read Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes of that that story, and that's really helpful. It's wonderful, highly recommended.

Michael Frost: 16:26

Yeah, he told me a great story. Can

Joshua Johnson: 16:28

I tell you this? Love it?

Michael Frost: 16:30

He was in Beirut, when driven when all the Americans are getting kidnapped, you know, during the civil war there and, and the British envoy Terry White was kidnapped. And I mean, it was like pretty, it was pretty on Westerners or Well, Americans and British people in Lebanon at that time, and the Bailey's were there as missionaries, and he said, after a particular there was when Ben Weir was was kidnapped. The Marines kind of came into Beirut and just sort of said, were airlifting every American out of out of Beirut, like grab the stuff and get in this truck or helicopter or whatever. It was, like military operations, just sucked all the Americans out. And but the Bailey said, Thank you, but no, thank you, we're caught. So we'll stay. And he tells the story about how the next day he went, his wife walked down to the store to buy bread and coffee, which he did every day. So there's nothing unusual thing to do, walk down the street and join the queue to a line to buy bread. And he said, as we were walking, we noticed that all these blinds and curtains were fluttering as people were like looking out their windows at us. And he said, as we stood in a line, people were coming up to shake our hand or to hug us or to pet our shoulder. And we didn't say anything, we didn't do anything. It's just and he says, he said, That's what I learned. He said that presence can have as much power as anything that we saw. And just this beautiful image of this silent couple not preaching, not handing out tracts, but just saying we didn't leave wearing solidaire you that were neighbors It was a beautiful story of, of risky missional presents.

Joshua Johnson: 18:29

Yeah, that's so good. I love that story. And I love that, you know, just being present with people, you know, as we were thinking through some some context, you know, my wife and I lived in the Middle East for for some years and worked primarily with Syrian refugees. And you know, one of the first believers that we found a Muslim background believer, she came to Jesus, one of the pivotal points was the Christmas story. But when the angel came to the shepherd and said, I bring you good news, I'm glad tidings for all people. She stopped us in the middle of that. And she said, Is Jesus really for all people? And we said, Yes, Jesus is for all people. And she said, I thought he was just for you Christians. I didn't know he was for us Muslims, too. And so because he was for all people, and I think, you know, that story, you know, they're angels going to the shepherds, I think spoke to her as well, right, because she as a refugee coming across the border, and living and going while look at this, and look at the the announcement coming into the the shepherd which was, you know, she was very rural type, shepherding people that she came from. And she said, oh, Jesus is actually for me, too. And it's just beautiful. To see that.

Michael Frost: 19:52

Yeah, you think about the way we often tell in the West that story and it's it sort of feels almost kind of Pixar or Disney like you know, it's like it's an it's an A an A frame to gabled what he called stable and there's a there's a star perched right on top and everyone's positioned according to height, and you know, there's a kind of a glossing over of the dirtiness and the richness of it. So, you know, schepens, which is what this woman really responded to, but, you know, so much so many people who have lived and worked in the Middle East would say, that couple weren't alone in some shared or stable at the back. Home. There was extended family of Joseph Farah who would have attended to To marry, she was clearly in the area where animals were kind of kept in packs. There was no room anywhere. I mean, you know, but there are ways in which at least some people would respond to a woman in labor. I mean, it wouldn't just be like, upper back. You know, when people retell it like, it feels real. And it feels, yeah, it. Also, it's not kind of diminishing the kind of the richness of Middle Eastern hospitality and all those kinds of things that, that Middle Eastern people would assume, when they read the story that we in the West to have our individual homes. And if all our rooms were full, we would say, Well, why don't you try the garage? You know, but, but, but could you imagine if you've if you've lived and worked there, like could you imagine that ever happening in a Middle Eastern context to never extended, you know, just relative and his, his betrothed? She's going into labor, like, I mean, but when you hear in those sent in those terms, is such richness and beauty and this and then the whole notion of like, the persecution of infants and the need to escape and be refugees themselves, and, you know, there's there's, it's, it's a knife edge story. It's a kind of a brutal story. It's a story of a very vulnerable, tiny little family, with geopolitics swirling around, and then you bring in the cosmic notions of, you know, angels and stars and weird guys from the east coming over. And it's, yeah, there's something very, but the Christmas card version of it doesn't do the tree. Yeah,

Joshua Johnson: 22:25

that's true. You know, you just re released read Jesus, or you revised and updated it with Alan Hirsch. Why did you guys decide this is the time to do that with read Jesus?

Michael Frost: 22:40

Yeah, well, it came out in 2008. Eight, I think, and I'm not that under this kind of stuff, as Alan is. But Alan said, Well, you know, he had a nother book come out that year? I think I do. And he said, I think that book kind of got a bit lost with spring activity books. Which probably true, I don't know. But the other thing too, is that we've just felt that since 2008, and in particular, what's felt like a real acceleration of the breaking confidence that Americans in particular have with evangelical Christianity? Yeah, that that would I mean, I mentioned that word earlier and said, you know, this, because that that's a trigger term. These days, evangelicals are not regarded and followers of Jesus, particularly the loud ones, are not respected. Just have to own their reserve to acknowledge that you can. You might want to disagree with me, maybe you might not, but others might want to disagree with me as to why that's happened. But rather than getting into that, just acknowledging that the reputation of the evangelical Protestant churches has just gone down and down and down. And yet whether whether the loudest ones about being the Jesus people, and so Alan and I just felt we felt this way through that night when we wrote it. It's like, we've got to read Jesus as we're gonna be known as the Jesus people. And in that book, we start by telling the story of how, you know, the Ku Klux Klan before they would go out, you know, the tale of a particular night, when before they went out and kidnapped a group of white civil rights workers who had come down from the north to, to be in Alabama, Mississippi. So working with the civil rights movement, right before they went out and kidnapped these guys and then murdered them. One of the chaplains of the Ku Klux Klan praised his very beautiful prayer of that little blessing us and being with us, and then you could pray that prayer in just about any church to be quite frank, but that prayer is prayed to kind of bless them on their way as they go out and their kind of murderous rampage. Now, you know, think of examples of Nazis doing that. And, of course, x doing that, and, you know, you can think of, of even even with sort of the response to the election of Donald Trump and the storming of the Capitol and all those sorts of things you can do people holding placards about Jesus, in our situation, it's not as brutal as going after murderers, civil rights workers, but you're terrorizing politicians and staff in the in the Capitol building. They had no clue what was going to happen. This was terrible. I mean, no one can justify it. So how do you slap Jesus name More than say that, you know, as you probably know, Joshua, like the people praying in the Capitol building, like protesters praying in the Capitol building as if God was with this violent rampage. And so yeah, we just felt like, Oh, come on, like, has anything changed? Maybe we can get through? What would it look like if we refreshed this book, you know, particularly for our current age, and not just, it's not just an attack on, it's not an attack on Trump supporters or anything like that we avoid cut on their politics or any of that stuff. We just say, there's a real problem here, around the way evangelicals are known for their politics or for their conservative values, or those sorts of things. Not known are they're the people. They're the ones who try to be like Jesus. And that disconnect is deeply, deeply concern for us.

Joshua Johnson: 26:42

Yeah, and it seems, it seems to me, you know, that we, as the church have had some mission drift, and it doesn't take a miss a very large misalignment of the very beginning to eventually come and have a huge misalignment, you know, 30 years down the road, because you're just veering off so far, right or left? So how can we start to, to read Jesus? And how how to what's a process that we can do as the church to get back into alignment with Christ as the center as we're moving forward? And not stay veered off way too far? Right?

Michael Frost: 27:32

Well, I think that there has to first be a significant process of, of repentance. And then not everyone listening to this was storming the Capitol, I'm not talking about like, repent of those things, not my own view, none of you driving cars into black lives matter. You know, marches are like, these are extreme examples. But we're all part of a system, which has become so polarized politically and so oriented around concerns for for our own religious freedom, or for our places that the church in society are demanding that our particular values be followed by everyone in society. So I'm not commenting on those values, per se, but our arrogance and and needs to be right and listened to. And it has just led to a diminishing of our reputation. And I think, divesting ourselves of this, I mean, we have to come to a point collectively where we can say, I take certain views on certain ethical concerns in society. But primarily, I'm concerned about mirroring or presenting Jesus in the midst of this and so left and right, black and white, Asian and Latino, Latina, are coming together on their knees and repenting and saying, we put it all down like we, you know, we've got to move to a place where, where we can acknowledge our own brokenness and the fact that so much of what we've put our hand to has not opened people's eyes to Jesus. I posted something on social media the day about, it was a kind of a meme where it says like, the Christians are crying out for revival. And what God does is He exposes all the corruption and abuses in a church and then the Christians say, ah, Satan, you know, Satan's attacking us by exposing all these things. And you think, what would it be if we didn't wake up and we think to ourselves, all of these high profile leaders, all of these gigantic churches, big movements, x 29, maschio, heels, you know, there's their crumble, and some of them disappear. They, their reputations are crumbling, individual celebrity pastors, reputations now become magnets, it's like accelerating at a pious before all of that, of course, the same thing was happening in the Catholic Church with the exposing of like rings or nests, of pedophile priests in certain cities across my country, yours Ireland and places like that. It feels like a great unveiling, like, like God is like, peeling back like this is the taking the lid off this kind of this? fettered, you know, out of date. foodstuff things like steel. Actually, that's part of the process, isn't it? It's just like, we've been in spouts like, yeah. And it's worse. This is what we come to. And I know that people listening to this will say, I'm not a pedophile and and I'm not a high profile leader who's committed some sexual sin. And I'm not a pedophile priest, and I'm not a, you know, a Capitol building. invader. No, we're not. You're not not but acknowledging that we are all seen as Jesus followers as part of this kind of world. I think repentance is the first step of now, Alan Hirsch is writing a book at the moment on repentance, saying this is the first like, we've just got to get get to our knees and lay it all down. And as as one church, not as the left as the right. I mean, they're both as bad other in so many respects, in different ways, but just drop into our knees and come into Christ empty handed, and remake us, like reshape us afresh. And then, of course, back into the text back to Jesus, as we were saying, about, who is this that we're talking about? Is this Republican Jesus? You know, is this black lives with Jesus? Is this kind of left wing liberal Jesus? No, it's just Jesus just go back to the person of Jesus, which, you know, as we've said before, isn't necessarily easy to understand in our own context. But I'm pretty sure if we encountered him today, he would piss us all off in some way or him.

Joshua Johnson: 32:26

Yeah, and I think, you know, how do we get Christianity to be less of a religious institution, and more of an embodiment of Christ? What does that look like? We have that repentance, but what are those next things that we could get to get rid of that religious institution of Christianity and just embody Christ and just move forward into the world that way?

Michael Frost: 32:51

Yeah, and I mean, I think that that's, that's the undoing of so much of that kind of leadership classes about their reliance on institutional devices or paraphernalia like nondisclosure agreements or the sale of critics or, this is just what Jesus reacted against. You know, I mean, always think of when Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. In John chapter 10. It seems lovely. Like that's like, oh, the Good Shepherd, that sounds good. But he's that conversation. What he's saying, John, chapter 10, there comes out of his engagement with with the religious elite at the end of John chapter nine, but they are brutalized and humiliated and tried to silence a poor blind man who's been healed by I mean, it's crime as he got healed by Jesus and religious elites treatment of him and his aged parents. It's just disgusting. I mean, it's just, yeah. But Jesus says, I have a good shepherd, that's awfully spare time saying you are a Bad Shepherds like, you are leaving, but you're crushing people, you are destroying people, then the announcement is, but they'll hear my voice and they'll fire me because I'm the good ship, we just jumped to the Good Shepherd bar, we don't want to hear the story about how Jesus responds to religious elitism, which, by its very nature often ends up very toxic kind of places.

Joshua Johnson: 34:24

You know, we we often miss that, that Jesus is prophet, and calling us into into new spaces and calling out the things that are not aligned. You know, he's calling us to live into the kingdom and what does it look like? What does this kingdom of God look like? You know, I always go back to the very beginning of him announcing his ministry, and, you know, rolling out the scroll of Isaiah 61. You know, claiming good news to the poor, setting the captives free, and all the Jews were obviously excited that this may be the year of Lords favor, like this is all for us. And then Jesus saying no, just remember, you know, with Elijah. You know, there were a lot of lepers, but only naming the Syrian was was healed. Elijah went to the widow of Sarah Fath, and not other, any other widows of Israel. And they were like, Okay, I'm gonna throw you off a cliff. And we often forget that Jesus is is this one that goes and provokes in such a way that calls people out to the margins to all people and to the people that are not part of that community and are on the outside and it really provokes the ones that are in The institution and wanting to see actually

Michael Frost: 35:49

I've entered in the job 10 story, after berating them as being bad, bad shepherds, and that's it himself as the Good Shepherd. He then to your point, he then says, and I have I have shaped from other other pigs that I will call a moment joined together with those who follow. And it's at that point that the Pharisees say, This man is insane. Like they literally, He's crazy. He's just like, there's no point in arguing about this, this man is literally insane. That's the thing that tips them over the edge. The idea that, yeah, I'm going to call Israel to follow me, but I'm calling other tribes, who will come and join us. For them that was just like, of course, that was so shaped by their fear of having been brutalized by invasion, of course, the exile, you know, generations before, but also the invasion of the Greeks, and now the Romans, and so they were terrified of the outsider. And in their terror, they then terrorized, the people of Israel themselves. The Jesus comes with this message of, I've come to bring you freedom, like, Yeah, well, I want you to be free. Indeed, no sheep wants to be kept in the pen, like, I had a shepherd tell me once that if you put sheep in the pen, for too long, they will, they'll break their own necks, trying to all over each other to get out, like, you put them in there at night just to keep them safe, you release them, as soon as the sun comes up, they start bleeding and jumping around trying to get out and release them his way as a sheep meant to be out on the hillsides like farming and grazing. And so this image of Jesus presents as a beautiful mosaic you had pinned them in with all your toxic walls and your fear and your canal, I throwing open the gate, and I believe it's a beautiful image. And their response to that is you crazy.

Joshua Johnson: 37:55

That's very true. It's crazy, but it actually reveals a lot about what the church is looking like at the moment of a, you know, trapped in sheep. And that are not sent out into the, into the wild to be able to follow Jesus, because there's a lot of you know, whatever it is trust issues or, you know, control issues. But it just reveals a lot that we need to press out to the margins and to go where Jesus would go. How do we actually open up the gates and get get the sheep out? So that we start to the world says, Wow, you actually looked like Jesus now?

Michael Frost: 38:43

Yeah, well, the thing is, Joshua, that's happening anyway. I mean, as much as church leaders might try to keep the gates shut and keep the system tight. You're finding it in positive ways people are slipping out. And they're finding their way into mission agencies and parachurch organizations, and they're saying, Oh, wow, I'm serving here at Campus, ministry, all nations or wherever. And this is what church was meant to be all along, it's alive, it's collaborative, it's intuitive, it's, it's deeply reliant on the presence of God. And, ah, this is this is freedom, or they're finding their way, in less positive ways through really treacherous journeys of deconstruction. And the church just writes them and condemns them for this. But actually, what they're doing is they're trying to find their way to the beautiful green hillsides, you know, but they tried to divest that which is stuck to them because of this kind of toxic form of religion. And that's not an easy thing to do. So of course, a lot of people going through that process, do throw out some good stuff, as well as the bad stuff. And there's no, there's no rule. There's no roadmap for this. And then all you do then is get berated by the people back in the sheep pen or the Bad Shepherds. And it just exacerbates your whole sense of you'll give up. I mean, you kick them when they're down. But what they're doing is they're trying to find Jesus to freedom so so I think partly it might be that we need to open the gates a little bit more we need to actually help develop processes of deconstruction and then reconstructed faith. But do you think I'm confident about that happening in a kind of institutional sense? Mmm hmm. I'm sorry to tell you I have my doubts about

Joshua Johnson: 40:41

Yeah, and it's it's gonna I mean, it is a mess. See processes were following Jesus and trying to figure these things out. You know, and once we tried to

Michael Frost: 40:50

totally discoveries that like everyone out there isn't as unhappy as our church told us they were in. Marriage isn't as bad as they told us they were they aren't. Or alcoholics are getting abortions, every chance they have, like what we discovered was like, not as good American people, like, you know, there's best Syrian people, and there's, there's good, there's good Muslim people, and there's good Buddhist people. You know, we're discovering that there's life everywhere that God is present everywhere. And it's like, Well, what did I need that thing back there for it? So it's, you know? Do you remember that movie, Finding Nemo when Nemo gets fished out of the Great Barrier Reef and put into a indoor aquarium at the dentist, just surgery. And the first thing that happens, all the fish in the aquarium all is all going to the edge of the aquarium I keep away from him. Because he's dirty, like, here, the prone has to come out and like, you know, clean him so that they can engage with them. And I think, since so much like conversion isn't playing about by making him look like one of us. And then the kind of the conceit of that picture is that you could get flushed down the toilet, and they'll actually take you back out into the ocean. And you can swim back to the Great Barrier Reef. But here's the thing, like if you put your pet goldfish, or your pet tropical fish in the river system or drop them in the ocean, you know, they die like immediately because they've become so close to they become so used to this perfectly designed ecosystem. Yeah, they don't have the capacity to live in the wild. And I suspect that's what a lot of what our churches do. I think that's a lot of what youth ministries do and young adult ministry. They're about keeping you away from the wild blue ocean, or switch from rolling green hills to walk blue ocean with a metaphor. It's like don't go out there. It's disgusting and filthy and tough. So much of our youth ministry is about how do we keep you out of how we get you to find a good Christian boyfriend or girlfriend? How do we stop you taking drugs, reading these books, watching those movies doing this doing that? It's like we appear the frauds we're just cleaning people over and over and over and over. And then when they go off to university off to college somewhere or they get a job somewhere and they just completely die? Yeah. Then we ask ourselves, what was wrong with their faith, no matter what was wrong with the way we've discipled them most of the way we will equip them to live in the world as a Jesus follower with confidence and vitality and life experience in God's presence, trusting in Jesus, finding other Christians to find fellowship with a partnership with but also engaging in the world. What was wrong with the way we raised young people as Christians?

Joshua Johnson: 43:52

Wow. I love that analogy. And it reminds me of you know, the story of the woman with issue of blood that come in and touching Jesus's robe. And, you know, everybody said, you are going to be defiled if, you know, she touches you like, and, you know, their power went out of him. She was healed. He said, Who touched me and she was quivering in fear, because she knew that, you know, she was defiled and she was defiling. This beautiful man, Jesus. But he wasn't defiled. He was the one, as he was touched, he was actually actually able to make things clean, and whole. And it's as we go out, we're actually not going to be defiled. But there actually can be a transformation that happens in the places and the people that we start to encounter

Michael Frost: 44:52

is a kind of fear about the fragility of the gospel that can easily be broken or shattered. There's a fear about the fragility of the Holy Spirit at work, you know us but we can easily as you say, default and by by contact with someone who doesn't share the same faith as us. I don't know where that originally comes from, but that anxiety that really, it's a very fragile thing, if you carry it outside, you could drop it, you could break it. It's unhealthy. Yeah. The other thing I love about that story is that you know, with Jesus borates The Pharisees were having a long tassels on their robes, you know, and when I first read that, I thought, why does he care about the taser? Like that's, that's a that's a kind of conceit or that's like your your You know, paid to kind of frivolous or something. But actually, it comes from the idea that people saw that if you could touch the tassels of a garment of a reach of a, of a religious leader, there was power. There was healing in that, in that, which is rubbish. And even the Pharisees would say, No, no, that's not true. But they would still stitch long tassels on their clothes to kind of tempt people to like, check out our holy, like, you know, maybe if you touched me, you might get here, right? But then if someone said, Oh, if I touch that, no, no, no, there's no power in my clothing. But they still would wear these tassels. And then Jesus is like, look at you. What do you think? In that context, this woman believes the lie. If you touch the gift, the garment of a holy man, you'll be healed. So she's mistaken. She's wrong. There's no power and his clothing. She touches him under this misapprehension that she could be healed. And as you said, what she is here like she steals this miracle from Jesus. And I just think there's something so beautiful about that, even in your ignorance. Even in your kind of limited perspective, God still can reach out and talk to you. And then as you really well, beautifully put it, it's like she's quivering because she thinks she's now in trouble for stealing this book. But actually, Jesus brings into the assembly of men, and says, it was your faith. Elevator as a heroic woman of faith, like, just, Oh, I get that I get shivers where I retell.

Joshua Johnson: 47:26

That's beautiful. It's beautiful. I have a couple questions, the ends one is if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Michael Frost: 47:41

I would probably tell myself to slow down and you don't, there's not? Well, now that I know, I'm 60 years old. So I know you got another 40 years, at least left in you, Michael, I will say, you don't have to pass the exam all in one year, like learn these things, sit with them, soak into them. You don't have to write that book now or preach that sermon now or when that that fight now, whatever it might be, I would say immerse yourself much more in your faith journey more slowly to God will take you where he wants you to go. And, yeah, I think I would also say quick question, which I always say slow down, immerse myself more in what I'm doing, I think, probably be kinder to people that are on the same journey as you the same point of the journey as you use it. I wasn't 21. I was older than that. But our version, I wrote a book called the shaping of things to come, which was pretty obnoxious kind of book to be quite honest. I mean, I pretty much began with, Hey, you're doing everything wrong. But here is how you should be doing it. And we did do a lot of people. And we ended up doing another edition of that too, which we could have nearly aerated some of that kind of pretty, pretty aggressive kind of language. But But yeah, I just discovered this whole kind of visual way of thinking and it was just like, Hey, everyone, you're doing everything completely wrong. Everything is wrong. He's the why. And I think I'd say to a younger version of me, just present the goals just if he's gonna present what is that you've discovered? Invite people in kinda way to kind of journey. Yeah, I said this once to someone else. And they said, Yeah, but maybe not as many people would have taken as much notice of it if they weren't as as annoyed by it as they were. Yeah, I did have a guy come up to me. He wasn't he gave me a copy of his book to sign it was bad. It looked like a card. When I read it. He said, I read like 10 pages, I'd throw it against the wall and people read it. So for some reason, they couldn't read it. But I think I had some slower immersi some more ficando

Joshua Johnson: 50:16

Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend?

Michael Frost: 50:24

Well, I'm writing a book on the history of Christian mission. So I've been reading a lot of stuff about history. So yeah, I think we had mentioned this earlier in our conversation, but not only do we look through Western eyes, not Middle Eastern eyes to understand the script To us, we also think about mission through very limited historical eyes. You know, we think about mission in America over the last 3040 years, like, that's the way it's always been right? Or we jump way back to the early church like so we think of Jerusalem church. You know, Calvinists love Geneva. And then there's a bit of Jonathan Edwards, and some great awakening stuff, Billy Graham, and now this. I mean, everyone I just mentioned that was male for a start by having all these extraordinary women doing remarkable mission around the world. But also, I'm working my working title with this book is mission is the shape of water. And the idea that water doesn't lose its inherent qualities, it's h2o, but is shaped differently depending on what container has placed. And another is a movie called the shape of water, which was about it's about love and sexuality in the light. But I think you can also say this about mission, it's like, mission will always be mission, it's about allowing people to be universal right of God through Christ. But when you pour it into the container of engaging with Syrian refugees, it's going to be shaped differently. When you were to engage in with, you know, business people in Southern California, it's going to be shaped differently when you're trying to do mission on the border between Poland and Ukraine and dealing with refugees from traumatized refugees from our war zone, it's going to look different, it's gonna look different in Africa, and it's gonna look different throughout different periods of history. So that's a lot of what I've been reading. lately. It's like, just broaden our horizons so that we can actually say, God has been using people in all of these ways, not just the few that we haven't had one.

Joshua Johnson: 52:41

Are there any particular missionaries that in the in the past that have just fascinated you?

Michael Frost: 52:48

Oh, gosh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, Nicholas, Nicolas von Zinzendorf, who was the Canada, not the founder, but the kind of the patron, I suppose, of the, of the

Joshua Johnson: 53:02

Moravian movement,

Michael Frost: 53:03

probably probably the beginning of the modern nations movement, like that just like to give credit to William Carey, but the Moravians were, like, you know, a step ahead of the rest of us and did remarkable things. But, you know, I think Francis Xavier, I mean, you know, processing or any of that from us as Xavier, but I mean, that guy, like, you know, he planted churches or Christian missions in India, Indonesia, China, Japan, me that was like us saying, Will Joshua, historic mission work in Jupiter, Mars? You know, this is unbelievable. Back in the 1500s, as this guy was doing this, you know, he was a Jesuit. And I know, Jesuits did some pretty bad stuff in mission, you know, subsequently, but I found him to be a fascinating character, Mary Slessor. His work among Nigerians was remarkable. I think. I've also come across some indigenous church, apostles, I suppose in southern Africa, people who've just almost without any contact with missionaries, came to faith and came to a set of beliefs that mirrored basic Christian theology, and let whole movements of people around places, let's say, the Southern African on the shows of people just finished writing a section of the story about these two Baptist missionaries in the Congo. He was given a camera like way back in the early early 1900s. When cameras were like, no ordinary people had them. And they said, I'll take some photos, who knows people might find it interesting to see what life is like and we could imagine a missionary now without a camera, but at that time, there was a genocide going on in the in the jungles of the coca by the Belgian colonizers. So she ended up photographing and recording these these horrific murders, now published in the UK that set off a scandal which eventually led to the the Belgians having to leave the Congo. I mean, just stories like that, that should be should we work with a camera, a real story about a missionary go carried out a full printing press through the jungle to get to Uganda, so you could print Bibles. You know, everyone's heard about, about Livingston and Carrie Hudson Taylor. They're great stories too. But there are so many remarkable stories of ordinary people. or just willing to let mission be shaped by the context in which they found themselves.

Joshua Johnson: 55:50

That's great. I'm really excited to read that once. When are you going to finish that?

Michael Frost: 55:55

Do you think I'm going to finish it soon, but who knows when it's gonna come out?

Joshua Johnson: 56:00

That'd be good. Well, yeah, Mike, it was such a pleasure to talk to you today. And I really, really enjoyed it and walking through what does it actually look like to start to become more like Jesus and more like Jesus in the church and to go out? I really enjoy. Open the pen. Exactly. The sheep in the wilds, and so yeah, so thank you so much. Thanks, Josh.