Ep. 175 Lucas Pulley - Activating the Priesthood of All Believers: Microchurches and Decentralized Church Networks

In this episode, Lucas Pulley and I have a great conversation around microchurches and decentralized church networks. Lucas shares his story of how he got involved in microchurches and how they operate. We talk about having an "ecclesial minimum" of worship, community and mission, microchurches can be mission-specific around a calling or distributive with people following various callings, the importance of connecting microchurches through area collectives and larger events, the need to move through the spaces of belonging, and insights into preventing heresy and abuse through governance structures while still allowing for messiness and the priesthood of all believers. Join us as we discover what God is doing through microchurches.

Lucas Pulley is Executive Director of Underground Network, an experimental community made up of over 160 microchurches in Tampa Bay and serving dozens of similar decentralized and empowering movements around the world. Lucas has 14 years of experience planting microchurches and leading decentralized networks of grassroots churches, and still leads a neighborhood house church in the projects of inner city Tampa to this day with his wife and three kids. He is driven to see cities transformed by the priesthood of all believers activated in the mission of God.

Lucas' Recommendation:
The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.us

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Transcript

Lucas Pulley: 0:00

Even the idea of like church vision, what does that even mean? If you're trying to activate the priesthood of all believers vision is, vision is like one leader, like the lead mega global pastor Hina hook hearing, they're the ones that get to hear from LISTEN to Jesus about their sense of calling, or they get to go up the mountain and hear from the Lord. And then they they codify that sense of calling into a vision statement. And then they're just trying to align 1000s of people to that one vision, so nobody else gets to hear from Jesus. And if they do, and they hear a sense of calling that diverges, somehow from this one sense of calling, well, you got to go find somewhere else. You know, so even our sense of like, who gets to have a vision, how that vision integrates, or doesn't integrate with the sort of scope of the community and our our aspirations around alignment. That all gets that all gets messy and it has to be completely rethought. You know, it has to be it has to be, you got to count the cost and really negotiate like, what are we? How chaotic Are we willing to get? And what are the things we're willing to let go of?

Joshua Johnson: 1:16

Hello, and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create, and the impact we can make. We longed to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Go to shifting culture podcast.com to interact and donate. And don't forget to hit the Follow button on your favorite podcast app to be notified when new episodes come out each week, and go leave a rating and review. It's easy, it only takes a second and it helps us find new listeners to the show. Just go to the Show page on the app that you're using right now and hit five stars. Thank you so much. You know what else would help us out? share this podcast with your friends, your family, your network? Tell them how much you enjoy it. Let them know that they should be listening as well. If you're new here, welcome. If you want to dig deeper find us on social media at shifting culture podcast where I post video clips and quotes and interact with all of you. Previous guests on the show have included Alan Hirsch, Rob Wagner and Bree mills. You can go back listen to those amazing episodes and more. But today's guest is Lucas Polly Lucas is executive director of underground network and experimental community made up of over 160 Micro churches in Tampa Bay, and serving dozens of similar decentralized and empowering movements around the world. Lucas has 14 years of experience planting micro churches and leading decentralized networks of grassroots churches. And he still leads a neighborhood house starts in the projects of inner city Tampa to this day with his wife and three kids. He is driven to see cities transformed by the priesthood of all believers activated in the mission of God. Lucas and I have a great conversation around micro churches and decentralized church networks. Lucas shares his story of how he got involved in micro churches and how they operate. We talked about having an ecclesial minimum of worship community and mission. We talked about micro churches that can be mission specific around a calling or distributed. With people following various Collins talks about the importance of connecting micro churches through area collectives and larger events, the need to move through the spaces of belonging and insights into preventing heresy and abuse through governance structures, while still allowing for messiness and the priesthood of all believers. So join us as we discover what God is doing through micro churches. Here is my conversation with Lucas poli, Lucas, welcome to shifting culture really excited to have you on I've been meaning to do this for at least a couple of years. So thanks for joining me. Of

Lucas Pulley: 3:57

course, it's great to be on I have my coffee. I'm ready to record a six hour podcast interview. That's that's the typical mode here.

Joshua Johnson: 4:05

It's difficult. Yeah, six hours. Go on. That's good. I just recommended a podcast to do with the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And yeah, there's some episodes of it of just the history of it, like six hours long, and they're like six hours what's going on? There? Like yes, this is what I do lead my History podcast. But hopefully this isn't gonna be a six hour long conversation. Well, Lucas, I'd love to get into your story of how you started to get involved in and micro church and why micro churches for you?

Lucas Pulley: 4:43

Yes, so, I started this would have been maybe 2000 You know, 2006 2007. I started following Jesus right before I went to college, like the month before I went to college, and I was born and raised in Illinois, Central Illinois area and I've had a great family, I've got parents that are believers, and they had me around the church, you know, for most of my life. But I was never really committed to the church, I wasn't really a committed follower of Jesus, I wasn't thinking about what the church was or how it operated. I was just sort of around it, here and there. But I started following Jesus really seriously right before I went to college, and then in college, got connected to a campus ministry, and was discipled really well by an older guy in the faith. And from the very early days of my, like, spiritual life, was being trained as a missionary. You know, you know, I was like, two months a believer, and it was like, it was like, yeah, what God has done for you. And I had, you know, I came out of a pretty rough life and situation. So it was sort of like, yeah, like the healing and restoration that you've experienced, you can like, extend that to other people. So this, even in the campus world was thinking, how incarnational Lee and how to plant Bible studies and door and in dorm buildings, and how to make disciples and how to share your faith and all that stuff. And at the same time, you know, was the that that campus ministry was encouraging us, you know, as a good pair of church, you know, they were like, we're not really your church body, you should be trying to plug into a church, local church body. And so we would go to Sunday morning churches, and I was sort of having a hard time. It felt like my campus ministry life experience, felt more true, like felt more true to the New Testament than what we were doing on Sunday mornings, which felt sort of dissonant, or, you know, felt a little bit distant from the pages of the New Testament. And so we were I was just sort of like wrestling with that. And in college, and you know, and then the, we're not when we were seniors, and we were lead, we'd been leading the campus ministry for a couple years and trying to reach the campus, all that kind of stuff. We started doing city ministry, like around the campus, we started doing ministry in the community around the campus. And by the end of this group of seniors in college that had been in this leadership team together, by the end of that year, we had, we were running a daily dinner kitchen for the poorest in our city. We're doing a discovery Bible study in that daily dinner kitchen, different people take turns sort of leading it, we started just in community with the poor. And then we on Wednesday nights, we were doing like a prison ministry. And then there was all these single moms that we had gotten connected to that had their own set of needs. And that sort of became this own autonomous sort of ministry thing. And then we were doing Street Church Bible studies in front yards. And there was sort of this mess of ministry. Now we didn't have the language of micro church, we didn't have the language of decentralized network, but you know, it and it wasn't called anything, it was just like this mess of, of it was barely networked at all. And but we all sort of felt collectively like I, you know, we sort of had this this couple months of prayer together as a team, like, what are we supposed to do when we graduate because we were just sort of like, I'm not sure if we're just supposed to like graduate and go get jobs and like abandon what we've experienced here in this town. And so that whole leadership team decided we just felt led by the Lord, like we're supposed to stay in this town and get whatever jobs we can, but we're supposed to not choose our occupations, we're supposed to choose each other. And this place that we've been doing fruitful ministry, and, and so so we stayed in, and then we bought houses, and then we're doing house church stuff. And we're doing intentional community and asset based community development in certain neighborhoods of the city. And it just kept getting like more and more, sort of chaotic and that of that thing eventually became a sister movement in the underground network. You know, we got three or four years into the story of that thing, like around 2012. I just felt like we were making a lot of preventable mistakes. But we and we needed leadership we needed we needed somebody to learn from, but they're there. We didn't have a lot of local we had a great relationship with local churches, but those local churches knew that we couldn't learn from them, they couldn't really teach us based on what we're trying to do. And so that's how we got connected through through a myriad of events to Tampa underground. And and I've came and stayed with Tampa underground for like a month and did like an immersive and then they sent some leaders up to live in Illinois with our community for some time to see what we're doing. And that started our friendship and we eventually became one of the sister movements in the underground network. But that was just like a software update. For us. We were like, oh, minimal ecclesiology and micro churches and decentralized network and call Lean being the catalyst for micro church growth and you don't really start micro churches, you plant mission, you plant the gospel through incarnational missionaries, you see if the church may emerge in God's plan and timing and that was all stuff that we were intuitively doing. But we weren't sure if we were heretics or not, you know, like we, and we'd have language for it, we didn't have a lot of training around it, it was just all intuitive. So hugely helpful for us. So the long story short is like I just sort of stumbled into micro church life as really my first and primary experience of church. You know, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have a lot to disentangle from, I didn't have to shift something. I mean, my, my, the first guy that I was, like, a believer for a handful of months, and this guy was discipling. Me and I was just asking him like, hey, if I just wanted to read some stuff, like if I just got into reading, what are some books you'd recommend? And he put forgotten ways by Alan Hirsch in my hands, like I was, I was like, three months a believer

Joshua Johnson: 11:00

that, uh, here you go, this is what we're doing how we go. That's awesome. Really, what's the the tension between intuition and actually doing what the Spirit is leading you to do? And then knowledge and understanding language for what you have and structure to get that done? How can we you keep both of those and hold those intention? And what's the importance of both?

Lucas Pulley: 11:30

Yeah, I mean, that that was, we were definitely in the in the early days, and we even still see this now, you know, leading a network of micro churches, but everybody being in their own place in their journey, so that we run into a lot of leaders that are just doing things intuitively, they don't yet have a level of language, a theological framework for it. But essentially, what that that intuition was always for, at least in our story, that intuition was always actually just grounded in and an encounter with the Lord in the scriptures, right. It wasn't like, I don't know, pragmatic intuition, or strategic intuition. It was like, we're just soaking in the scriptures together as a community, and we're really trying to be attuned to the spirit, you know, both in in our soaking in the scriptures, but also just in life, like walk walking in prayer without ceasing. And in some kind of like listening, like listening to the what trying to pay attention to what God is doing in the city and join in like, we don't actually go do anything, we just try to look for what God is doing. And we join in, we look for who he's who he's stirring and awakening, we look for what what evils or social issues in the city are our sort of emerging as, like, the kingdom is sort of invading those things and sending workers to those things. So the intuition was always actually like emerging from an attunement with the spirit of soaking in the scriptures. But yeah, I mean, eventually that that the problem there the debt, the downside there is when it stays intuition, maybe another word for intuition would be unconscious competence. You know, like you're, you're doing a thing, but you can't actually describe to another what that thing is, because you're sort of doing it unconsciously. And unconscious competence is gray. But anything that you're unconsciously competent in, you actually cannot pass on to another, so it dies with your generation. And so the helpful thing about language frameworks, like getting some organization or whatever, a lot of that stuff, basically clarifying the intuition. In in language, and in theological frameworks that are true to it. A lot of that work is essentially moving from unconsciously competent to consciously competent, like we can actually describe with words and frameworks and tools, what is what's happening here. So then you can actually pass it on from generation to generation, you know, like, you can actually train toward that coach toward that share it diffuse DNA, you know, through through a community that can live on. But of course, like you said, That's attention because if you overcorrect and then you close your fist around the the tools and the frameworks and all that kind of stuff. And people are actually actually no longer listen to the spirit and soak in the strip scriptures. they memorize tools and frameworks, well, then you then the movement of the spirits gonna die anyway, you're you're you actually you'll actually go on the track toward becoming unconsciously incompetent at certain things. You think you're doing it well, and you're really not.

Joshua Johnson: 14:42

So is that something that you can start to train for as to be attuned to the spirit to see what God is doing in an area and to see what are the problems in our place? And then how do you structure then a micro church around those sorts of things to actually do accomplish something that God is doing or join him and what he's doing. Yeah,

Lucas Pulley: 15:06

I mean, we definitely we do our best to try to attempt to train people toward. I'm not even sure if training is the right word. But But yeah, yeah help equip people toward a concern for listening to Jesus for their sense of calling. And, and missionary destiny to Whom have you been sent? And I think that is it's both like, a sense of people have different words for that right of sense of passion, a sense of destiny, a sense of calling a sense of purpose, or whatever. But there's one thing to have a theology of calling now that that people do need to learn, like what is that? Theologically biblically? Like? What it what what is that? What do we know about it from the scriptures? It but it is sort of a little bit of like a skill set or a competency to listen for that or wonder or or discern that, to discern what that is? Hear from the Lord in that way? And that question is the obsession of our community which you know, like, because we would essentially say we don't, we don't multiply a tool, we don't multiply a model, we don't multiply a method. Or, you know, we don't we don't sit and try to execute our city and map out like, what what Pete, the people of God should? Or shouldn't do? We just want the priesthood of all believers to listen to Jesus and have this vertical encounter about to whom they are sent, like, what is, what is he asking them to do? At this time in this place in in our moment in our context, and yeah, and to end to land it, land it tro as and have a Macedonia dream, right to to like hear from the Lord, like this is where I should go. So we and we have some attempts at training toward that, right, so we have this thing called calling lab. And, and that calling lab we will do two or three times a year, we usually do it on a Saturday. And that's where we take both sort of emerging missionary leaders that have not yet have had a sense of narrowed clarity about to whom they're sent. Try to be really specific with people. It's not like you don't have a calling and then you come to the calling lab and you find one for the first time. It's like you that you know, I think her says like your baptism is your ordination. And your conversion is your commission. So like the moment you surrender to Jesus, you have a calling whether whether you know it or not, you're you're called to the revealed will of God and your time and place you're called to the Great Commission, wherever you live, work and play. All the calling lab does is doesn't give you a calling for the first time. It just takes that general calling. And it's like a contemplative listening prayer retreat with the Lord to be like, Lord, do you want to narrow that general calling to a spirit to land on a specific people, for me right now. And that that whole calling Lab Day is built around Ephesians 210. You know, like, you're God's artwork, you're his masterpiece. And you are created in Christ Jesus for a for a good work in the season, which he has prepared for you in advance. So it's like, what's the work that you prepare? You've prepared in advance for me? And part of how I can sort of discern what the answer to that question is, is wondering, how has he made me how as an artwork as a masterpiece, and so we basically just take people for a morning and say, let's do some spiritual gift tests, let's do some some AP tests, like learning about how you're wired and what your what some of your involuntary or biases are, let's do some passion assessment, emotional inventory, like what gets you fired up what gets you know, that matters and, and then some narrative analysis? Like what are experiences that God has brought you through in the past that actually might uniquely qualify you to be an effective witness to people who are in that same experience now? What are groups of people that you have access to that not everybody has access to that matters. So it's like taking all those fresh insight data points from the morning and then basically just having hours in the afternoon to just have a prayer retreat? And just lay all those lay all that fresh insight before the Lord and say, I see in new ways right now how you've made me and I think it was your sovereign and some of this might have been with intention. So God speak to me about to whom I am sent in this time in this moment. And so we when we typically tell leader even if even if a leader has been through the calling lab before we usually tell them like it's sort of like a nice like a like a prescription to do that every couple years like it's not like a one and done like I figured it out and move on. And we've got friends there in KC that liked Calling labs not the only tool out there, right? There's like our friends over there. And Casey they have like a GPS assessment or something like that. And there's there's other ones that have your, your, your purpose DNA evaluation. So there's a few of those out there, but and they all are sort of moving toward the same thing like you have as a priest in the priesthood of all believers, God has an intention for your life. And here's a way to try to discern discern what that is. But we've also had people that have had a very clear calling, and a very end, which has been verified by fruit that didn't have anything to do with some of the insights that it didn't make any sense with the insights that they emerged. So the voice of the Lord doesn't have to like submit to like our our cool personality tests, right? It's like, he kick me he can send anybody anywhere. Anytime you get this

Joshua Johnson: 20:54

specific calling this more specific than your general calling the you're moving out? How do you start to start or implement a micro church around it? What is a micro church? And what are you actually galvanizing? Around? What Yes, is the central tenant of church? So

Lucas Pulley: 21:12

we would, you know, so we have an ecclesial met what's called the ecclesia minimum, which is a theological belief around the what are the what are the minimum things that needs to be in place that collide with each other, and that thing is suddenly called church, you know, and we've wanted to be able to clarify that not as a not as a strategic asset or a pragmatic belief, but as like a really a theological belief like what is what is the church and how do we keep it in its in its simplest form, so that it can multiply in its simplest form. And then they can get more complex as they go. But we have to have an imagination for it in its simplest form. So our ecclesial minimum here locally that we've had for you know, 1520 years now is worship community mission, and what we mean by those things, by worship, we mean, Romans 12 worship we mean my life is a fully surrendered living sacrifice as my spiritual act of worship. So we don't mean banging on a guitar, although that's totally good and wonderful and fine, there's a lot of micro churches that do that. But what we mean is like surrender, like a community that is in full surrender to Jesus and and and costly and sacrificial surrender. And by community, we mean intentional, extended spiritual family, you know, so not not see each other once a week, and then have like a group chat, but like a an interdependent spiritual family life on life. And by mission, we mean that every micro church has to intentionally proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom of God to the last and the poor in some way. And so now, how that how that works out is there's two general types of micro church. There are mission specific micro churches, which means the community is gathering around a common people group calls or place that they feel called to. So you know, a handful of examples of that would be like, just one called Timothy initiative that works with men that are coming out of addiction detox facilities, and they do like whole life discipleship, sort of monastic community, whole life discipleship with this community of guys. And they work on a construction company together during the days and do vocational rehabilitation. And, and there's there's one called Urban Youth Justice, which is planting micro churches inside a juvenile detention facilities across five county radius, there's one called everlasting, which is a micro church that's reaching Ultimate Frisbee leagues in Pinellas County. There's one called Urban fellowship that's working with you gang youth up in a certain area of town north in North Tampa, close to the university. There's obviously some micro churches that are reaching college students, there's micro churches that are adopting schools to do mentor programs, you know, so those are like, it would be hard to join that micro church if you did not feel a sense of calling to lay your life down to reach those people, or that place or that cause and and it's really clear how the like the that the those like start, as a sense of calling from a leader, they're actually going to try to get proximity, presence, powerlessness among those people. They're trying to find a people person of peace, they're trying to see if disciples start to get made and, and eventually a witnessing community emerges. Then there's distributive micro churches. That's the second kind. Sometimes we call them incubators. So those are people that aren't gathering around a specific people group or place like a common sense of calling. They're gathering around. Accountability and encouragement and commitment to shared values and mission are life itself wherever they live, work and play. You know, so they're, they're not all reaching the same people. But everybody it has a is either too trying to pursue or knows their sense of calling and the people that they're trying to reach. And essentially, all those faithful missionaries have not yet seen a church emerge among those people. And you can't just live isolated for a year, two years, three years. So it's good. It's healthy for them to be in a district basically at distributive house church that's made up of people that are trying to be faithful to different pockets. And so I lead a house church right now in in my neighborhood. And that one's a distributive, you know, so my wife and I feel very called to our neighborhood. It's called Belmont heights estates. It's the largest saturation of government subsidized housing in Tampa Bay. So we live in the projects and and we have a few other sort of believer families that live on our block with us within walking, like we just like go to each other's houses. For a long time, we were a neighborhood house church. So it was mission specific. It's like you can really only join this house church, if you want to reach the neighborhood. And, or if you want to live it, you got to sort of move into the neighborhood, I guess the only way you Jr. has. But then we you know, after about three or four years, we pivoted to be distributive, because there were so many people in the neighborhood that became part of our house church, but they actually had a sense of calling to somewhere not the neighborhood, and we didn't want to, like, we didn't want to say no to that we felt like is important to, like, support that and breathe on that and make room for that. So So yeah, now, you know, I, my wife does some homeschool Co Op stuff in the neighborhood just as a mechanism to do incarnational ministry and I run a repair home home repair service as a way to do incarnational ministry in the neighborhood. And then there's a couple on our block that does CrossFit ministry. So they they run a discovery Bible study in their CrossFit gym on Thursday nights and they've been in that gym for a long time. And they're basically just seen as like the pastor's of the gym at this point. Like every once in a while they'll be doing a competition and let's let them pray. Let's let those the ones over there. They could be the ones that pray to start the competition, you know, and and there's a couple that does board gamer ministry because they're in this like niche board gaming community that plays board games I've never heard of in my life. And and so they do the twice a month they do a board gamer night where everybody comes over. And then they have these conversation cards that they're sort of like polling throughout the night that has them basically having spiritual conversations around value and worth and life and worldview. And then there's a couple that does college student ministry, there's a couple that does work, workplace ministry in the towers downtown. So the life of our community is a little weird, like we we have open table discovery Bible study on Monday nights, and you just never know who's going to be in there. And And then Wednesday nights, we have like discipled core of our community like a dinner. And then we have some some out we support each other's outreaches if we need help, you know, come alongside each other. So that so you've got the ecclesial minimum. It's it's rigid enough that we don't we don't say everything's a micro church. Like it's pretty specific. Like there's some things that are nitrogen, there's some things that not that aren't we've, we've had plenty of people come to us and say I'm leading this micro church, can I be part of the network, and we're like, that's not a micro church like because it has some definition to it. But it doesn't, but it has a just enough definition that it allows for what we would call expansive, ecclesial or adaptive missiology, expansive ecclesiology, right. It's like, there's a little over 160 Micro churches right now, just in Tampa Bay. And they look all every single one of them looks very different. They're using different tools, they have different language, they count different things. Because each of those micro church leaders has the has quite a bit of freedom to contextualize for the group of people that they're trying to reach, you know. So what they have in common is the ecclesia minimum, a sense of calling that they're doing that the reason that micro churches exist is not because a leader told them they should do it, but because Jesus asked them to do it. And they have just enough values alignment to make sense. That's the underground manifesto. They have just enough theological alignment to make sense. That's the Creed's creedal orthodoxy. But then other than that, they're all very, very different.

Joshua Johnson: 29:16

So if they're distributed, and they're different, you know, you have mission specific, you'd have distributive micro churches. How do you connect one to another? I know when I was in the Middle East, we started a bunch of simple churches with Muslim background people. And because of our situation, we actually couldn't really connect smaller house churches together like they couldn't really know much about each other. So we were the ones telling stories about other churches to say, Hey, you're not alone in this. It's not just you. But it does sometimes feel when you're in a small community, which you know, are, I'll just give you in Kansas City. What we do I go to church called Nava church. Casey We have, we have home churches three times a month, and once a month, we gather all together as all the home churches in the city, we come together. And it really says, Hey, we actually are a part of a bigger thing. It's not just our community, how do you connect to each other? What does that look like? And how do you get people to know that they belong to something bigger than themselves? And what's the importance of larger connection?

Lucas Pulley: 30:29

The way that the way that it works for us is that you know, the the underground is simultaneously two things. That's why sometimes it's hard to explain. It's a we call it a maybe a dual operating system. On the one side, the underground is a decentralized network of micro churches. And those micro churches have access to an ordination process where they can join the College of elders. And then of that college of elders. There's a handful of governing elders, you know, so the all the governance and church discipline and restoration processes and oversight and all that kind stuff that exists in the decentralized network of micro churches. That network of micro churches is a non entity. It's not an LLC, it's not a nonprofit. It's not a it's not a church. It is just a relational coalition. On the other side, the underground, what I work for, I don't work for that nobody works for that. The decentralized network of micro churches. I'm not the executive director of that I'm part of it. You know, I happen to be a house church leader, I happen to be a sitting governing elder for a season. But what I work for what I'm the executive director of is a is the other side of the underground, it is a nonprofit platform of services, which exists, its exempt purpose to which every dollar employee squarefoot contract has to be submitted is to serve that decentralized network of micro churches, not power over or control or predict or anything like that. It's like we react to what the priesthood of all believers needs. So that's what he told me Wilkerson and Stacey Gaskins and I were a part of like a leadership team that overt helps oversee that. And that's it, they have a bunch of services in their financial services, media services, coaching, training facilities and events, all those services are are shared, leveraged by the network of churches, whatever they need, it's like a buffet come and get it. One of those services that the platform offers is convening environments for the network. So because the if the decentralized network just sits back, and they exactly like you said they need to gather they need to connect, they need to convene. But it's, it can be a little bit distracting for those micro churches, like who decides? Who does it? And who? And then how do they take time out of their micro church to pull it off? And how do they secure space? And how do they secure like, you know, it's a, it's a big, it's a huge load to carry. So basically, the missions agency side, basically says will help, like set the table of convening environments for the sake of the decentralized network. So the missions agency is who secures space, and a coordination, project management and then sort of plans, all that kind of stuff, larger convening environments for the movement. The way that works right now is that the movement is broke down into five area collectives, geographic area collectives, each of those area collectives has their own rhythm of convening. So central Tampa, that's where I'm at. That's where I'm a part of the central Tampa area meets weekly on Sunday morning. So nobody has their micro churches on Sunday morning. And that's a time when the then we have a moment where the micro churches can all convene with each other or just the leaders can come they get to decide, each micro church decides if the leader comes or the whole micro church comes, it's up to them. But we have a Sunday morning moment, which is basically just like a convening of the movement. It's not meant to be this Open Meeting that anybody can come to it's sort of like a family meeting. And it's, it's for the sake of coaching and training. And like you said, helping people get a sense that they're a part of a bigger thing. Being able to hear what God is doing in other places, and learn from that grant hear catch testimonies from each other be inspired by that learn from each other, like little secrets, tactics, all that sort of Think Tank style, all that's critically important. And so they they convene in Area Network, area collectives, and then the whole all those area collectives get together about six eight times a year for larger events like a conference or a you know, a store like a big testimony or storytelling banquet. We'll do that once or twice a year micro church showcase. These those are all so we do have like a little bit of a commute a movement, wide rhythm of life, you know, where it's like, you're with your micro church most often. But then you have some environments with your Eric collective and then occasionally you have Have these environments with the whole movement. And those are for the sake of like you said, inspiration, encouragement, you're part of a bigger thing. You're relationally connected to other leaders, you're learning from what what they're doing, you're seeing what God is doing in a broader way. So we would say that's critically important, because in the New Testament, the church isn't, the church isn't just house churches. It's also city churches. And, and so so we want we're trying to be the church at every level, though, the way that the new that Paul and the Jerusalem Council sort of the way that they had an imagination for the church, not just being bigger, just being small, but they had an imagination for church that made room for it to express itself at every level, in homes, in cities, and capital, see universal church and unity. And so we're trying to create to birth a movement where people are walking in the fullness of the church at every level, where they they have home church, simple church, small church, but they also have moments to see the manifest City Church, and where they are, they even feel connected to global church, and care about global church.

Joshua Johnson: 36:20

So can you talk a little bit about the the spaces of belonging, in that if you're looking at, at what church can do in these different spaces? What are these spaces? And why are they important for us to be involved in and all of them,

Lucas Pulley: 36:37

you know, in a in a quick way, you could say they're, they're important to be in all of them. Because we we see that biblically, the church is expressed in all those, you know, small, medium, to large ways, and it's important to live it. But it's really interesting i I'm sure you're familiar with this, but the hall and Myers is what's in my my mind, they there was a guy that came out with a force basis of belongings in early 2000s, I think his book was called the search to belong. And his he was a Christian that was applying some theories that was written by a guy back in the 60s, on the theory of social belonging, and they came across this, this under this way of understand sociological way of understanding belonging that people actually need to belong in for these four different spaces. And if they only are belonging in one or two of these spaces, they'll start to feel alone or isolated, or like they don't quite fully belong. And those spaces where I think intimate space is the smallest one, two to four, you know, two to four people where you can actually be totally vulnerable, totally yourself wide open, fully known and fully know others. And then they have this the one slightly bigger than that is personal space, which can be like five to 12 people. Where you can be a part of a broader family, you can share values, you can find the people with whom you can have vulnerable space, you typically don't find vulnerable space until you until you're a part of personal space. The one slightly bigger than that social space is, you know, around 20 To 4020 to 40 people. And, and then the broadest spaces, public space, 75 plus space and 75 plus spaces, like you can't, you can't know anybody and you can't be known but you you have a roomful of strangers that you feel like you have something in common with because there's like a, like a stadium of chiefs fans, I'll do a Kansas City reference, because you're in Kansas City, you know, it's like you can you can feel a sense of belonging when you're in a stadium full of 1000s and 1000s of people and you don't know any of them, you know, that would be like public space belonging. And they essentially did gobs of research on helping realize that you can be a part of public space and social space. But if you don't have any personal space environments, or intimate space environments, you you'll struggle to feel like you belong. And you'll actually have other sort of social anxieties or social dysfunctions from not being a part of environments like that, in the same way, you could be a part of intimate space and personal space. But if you don't have those other spaces of belonging, for instance, a house church that is not connected meaningfully to a broader, city wide community that can have certain effects on people's sense of belonging. I just think it's hilarious when sociologists give their whole lives studying something. And they just discover what's like plainly stirred true in the scriptures.

Joshua Johnson: 39:41

Like Jesus said, This is what Jesus did, right? It's

Lucas Pulley: 39:44

like he had he had this inner three, and then he had the 12. And then he like preached and then he had the 72. And he preached to the crowds or whatever. And it's like, you can see that in the life of Jesus. And then you can see it in the New Testament church, you know, that they had house churches and City Church. And so I think the, you know, obviously like the prevailing model of the church and the like legacy models of the church that have sort of helped to solidify an existing imagination of the church as bigger is better, large, mega attraction, all that kind of stuff. Essentially, those are like ready ways to create public spaces of belonging for people. And then typically, maybe in those environments, there can be like a little bit of vision casting for, like, we have a small group network, you know, whatever. So then there's like, some personal space belonging, but I, you know, a lot, I think, I think these are generalized strokes, right. But a lot of times in those environments, you'll have a hard time finding vulnerable space or social space, and that has certain downsides. But in the same way, like you said, earlier, there can be a lot of house church networks that are that are flush with intimate space and personal space, but you don't have any social or public. And there's downsides to that, too. And so I think we're, we're, we're trying to capture a, a, a rhythm of imagination that helps us live into all the not just the, you know, sociological, social spaces. But the way that those things actually point to us, the biblical foundations of the manifest church and all of its forms at every fractal.

Joshua Johnson: 41:21

That's teaching other other week, and I was talking to a bunch of, of legacy pastors, and you know, they were talking, we're talking movement. And I think I basically said, If you don't really believe in the priesthood of all believers, it's not going to work. And if you do believe in the priesthood of all believers, it's gonna be messy. And either you, you want control, and you could have a little bit of control and you're not going to actually see any movement. Or you're going to want some messiness and believe in the priesthood of all believers and go, How can we enter into that space and believe in the priesthood of all believers? Yeah, be okay with some mess? Because, well, it's gonna be messy no matter what, even if we try to control it, it's going to be messy. So yeah, why don't we just give it to somebody who just go for it?

Lucas Pulley: 42:08

You know, sometimes we get we use the word que order, okay, chaotic, sometimes chaos and order. So you know, we're always trying to pursue like a, a chaotic environment that when you when you when you believe in the priesthood of all believers, and, and the the other side of that coin, when you believe in the priesthood of all believers is that you also believe that Jesus is the proper head of the church, not us, right, that's the other side of the priesthood of all believers. And so we're actually restoring whenever we're trying to pursue the activation of the priesthood of all believers, we're also trying to pursue the restoration of Jesus as the proper head of the church and us in our right rightful places, you know, under shepherds, or a clippers or activators. And that's how, you know, they were just totally losing grip of any version of like control or alignment strategies, or, you know, like guard rails and that kind of stuff. And it starts to feel a whole lot like chaos. But there are ways to have just enough order that behind the chaos, that does keep it healthy. Chaos doesn't equal healthy order doesn't equal healthy. What we want is healthy. So we don't, we don't want chaos. We don't want order what we want is healthy, and healthy, looks chaotic. You know, it's this, it's sitting in the middle of that tension. It's merging that tension. But man, I agree, there's so many things that and I've, you know, we've got a high level of collaboration and partnership with a lot of local churches here in Tampa, you know, so we're friends with with a, we're a part of a broader city wide collaboration of churches, both, you know, prevailing mega historic micro, you know, so we roll with a lot of these guys and so I empathize with a lot of them the situation that they're in and, and, and how much needs to shift or change and the and the difficulty of that it's so difficult, even for the most well meaning leader and team, but man, it's worth it's worth trying. It's worth running after it. You know, we I mean, we have several friends that are sort of like, yeah, I want to do something that it's essentially like you're saying, I don't think anybody disagrees with the priesthood of all believers. But I think so many of them are like, casting vision from the pulpit for the act of like the emergence of the priesthood of all believers and let's take the church outside the four walls and like let's all find our Blitz, I'll join with God and what he's doing in the city. Everybody's like saying it from the pulpit or saying it from classrooms or whatever. But the culture and structure of the church itself actually competes with the words you know, and the, you know, culture each tribe As you for breakfast, you know, you have all these terms that are like, you can, you can say with your words and try to do technical solutions to, to the barriers that you're facing. But but you've got to start to address both the structures that are in place that get in the way of that there's some of that's around money where it goes where it spent. Some of its around decision making and power, who gets to decide some of its around like even even even the idea of like church vision, what does that even mean? If you're trying to activate the priesthood of all believers vision is, vision is like one leader, like the lead mega global pastor Hina hook hearing, they're the ones that get to hear from LISTEN to Jesus, about their sense of calling, they get to go up the mountain and hear from the Lord. And then they codify that sense of calling into a vision statement. And then they're just trying to align 1000s of people to that one vision, so nobody else gets to hear from Jesus. And if they do, and they hear a sense of calling that diverges, somehow, from this one sense of calling, well, you gotta go find somewhere else, you know, so even our sense of like, who gets to have a vision, how that vision integrates, or doesn't integrate with the sort of scope of the community and to our, our aspirations around alignment. That all gets, that all gets messy, and it has to be completely rethought. You know, it has to be it has to be, you got to count the cost and really negotiate like, what are we? How chaotic are we We're willing to get? And what are the things we're willing to let go of,

Joshua Johnson: 46:30

you know, as I've been training, and been involved in decentralized networks for for many years, there's a couple of things that I, I get that the number one question is how do you prevent heresy? All right, that's good. Yes. Right, you know, the priesthood of all believers, so I'll let you answer that just yet. But the other one, I think, is a newer question, because we're dealing with it in the churches, how do you? How do you prevent abuse and smaller settings, especially when, you know, it's a family oriented place where you have young children and families and people? So how do you prevent or help in those situations, when you have small groups around the city?

Lucas Pulley: 47:12

Deal with the first one, you know, the, the heresy question, you know, a big part of a non practical part of that answer is essentially, like, the bit is letting go of our sense of control a little bit, because we have to trust that Jesus can actually, you know, lead the church, and, you know, and that, and that Jesus is able to convict and the Holy Spirit is able to teach and, and that Jesus can actually protect his church from heresy better than we ever could. And now that doesn't, it's an abdication of responsibility on our part to be like our just like laissez faire, and we don't care about it, but it's essentially us we are on our end, obviously, we have a college of elders and within we have a governing elder body and that governing elder body, it is an active body that that is called into action when there are matters in leader in in the leadership of any micro church that are a breach of the Covenant commitments that they've made to the relational network. So that's like moral failures, or marriage breakdown, or accusations of abuse or theological straying, those would all constitute breach of covenant commitments. And those would all be situations where the governor governing elders can jump in and get involved and have healthy church discipline practices and restoration processes. So we have strong governance and we take it really seriously. But at the same time, we're not running around every week and checking in on every micro church, we're sort of trusting that like God is going to bring things to the attention of the governing elders, through coaching or through training or through the or through the relational network when they have gotten to a place where they need responded to, and plenty of examples of that over the last 10 or 15 years of theological strain that required some dialogue and that kind of thing. Now, the of the I think the abuse question is a great question, too, you know, and, and as a side point on both of these on the heresy and the abuse question, it they're easier conversation to have when it's almost like you can acknowledge on the front end that like the prevailing or traditional model of church isn't like a non heresy, non abuse setting. And now like, we're allowing it over here, it's like, no, there's plenty over here that we have never been able to figure out how to prevent or something like that. So, so it's almost like yeah, we're there. It's it exists in both places, and it looks different ways. But so yeah, we in the same way we this is another reason why it's important for house churches, simple churches, micro churches, to not remain in isolation. They they abuse can be prevalent when something is advocate aidid as a simple church or house church, and it's not in submission to anything outside of itself, there's that didn't you have no, you have no recourse if something happens inside that house church, and there's no checking or oversight or governance, anything that is not in submission to something else is already unhealthy. Even Even if internally, there isn't something that's like clearly unhealthy yet, if it is in isolation, and not in submission in any way to something outside of itself, it is unhealthy. And so that's why we've tried it, the even the idea of decentralized network is important that these things are actually a part of something bigger. And part of the front door of being part of that something dif that something bigger is making very clear covenant commitments to the relational network around character and conduct and how you will lead. And so we have that we have a leaders covenant that every single micro church sees and discerns and reads and agrees to and if they can't agree to it, they can't be a part of our network. And in that, there's a section in there around like your personal spiritual life, like I'm going to I'm going to remain, I'm going to maintain a vibrant prayer life I am going to be pursuing, you know, I'm going to exemplify the characters of the of an elder, as laid out in Timothy and Titus. But there's a section around how you will lead it's like, I am not going to exploit my people at any time for personal gain. I am I going to lead in radical generosity I am if I'm ever in conflict with another person or another leader, I am going to be in submission to the Matthew 18 processes and a commitment to reconciliation and restoration and mediation if necessary. So we lay all that out and, and have people and have people agree to it. And there's a line in that in those documents that say, If I am ever found to be in breach of these commitments, I will submit to the leadership of the governing elders in my life, you know, so if they if they ever do have an accusation against them, and then the governing elders come and show up at their door and say, Hey, we're here to talk about that. And they're like, When did I ever invite you to be a part of this? We can say, remember, when you did we also do I mean, we live in the year 2024. Right? So we also obviously do background checks for every single micro church leader we do. We have child protection policies that are on file, and we you know, those are things that are like important for any organization right now in the world we live in.

Joshua Johnson: 52:38

Yep. Now, that's really good. I think, you know, we're, I think everybody that is in this decentralized space are so are starting to realize if they haven't yet, oh, we really have to figure this thing out. Yes. And so that's really good. You know, Lucas, I wish we had at least another hour or so I could just go deep into what does it look like? How do we multiply things? I'd love to get into the multiplication. So maybe we'll we'll have to do that. Another time. Part two. But so the couple of questions I usually ask the ends, yeah, yeah. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Lucas Pulley: 53:15

Who 21 year old self? What advice would I give? Yeah, I think I would tell my 21 year old self, to make more to take very seriously and make more room for the contemplative disciplines. Sabbath. Solitude, you know, I went, I went too long, in my younger years, I think, you know, thinking those things were either optional, or if or if I did pursue them, pursued them sort of in a legalistic or, like rote way, you know, you know, if I did take a Sabbath, it was sort of like, just lay on the couch and watch Netflix in which isn't a Sabbath, you know, it's like just this like, row definition of like, don't work. But I think trying to trying to figure out early in my earlier in my life, what is rest for me, what is restful for me, and trying to discern that with the Lord and then have that invade Sabbath rhythms for me. And then, you know, modeling my solitude and contemplation, my practices of spiritual formation a little bit more around some of my self discovery around Enneagram. And some of that stuff, like, my spiritual disciplines don't have to look the same as everybody else's in the world, but I sort of need to pay attention to the growth edge of my spiritual formation, and to really press into spirit to disciplines that, that intersect the structuring of my soul right now. You know, I wish I would have paid more attention to that in my 20s. Yeah,

Joshua Johnson: 54:51

that's really good. That's good. What have you been reading or watching anything you'd recommend? I

Lucas Pulley: 54:58

don't I just read I have a book called Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer I think is her name secular book not Christian a content warning there is like some stuff in there that's like not not super Christian. You know, I found it very fascinating like the you know, just as an Enneagram three personally that like wants to like go out and accomplish and be interdependent, you know, rural Midwestern family like dupe, pull it pull yourself up by your bootstraps, do everything on your own, you know, I found there was no totally I found that book but I have a really hard time leaning on people asking for help I have a really hard time to depending on a team working through a team and so I just found a lot of the insights in that book really breathtaking just around the the the art of asking for help and it is actually one of the building blocks of relationship and community when you do when you when you don't ask for help and you're self dependent in Egypt things are like self evident but but the way she told that that book was laid out in the in story was really winsome for me. So that was great. And watching I pretty much just watch the office and parks and recreation and Ted last Oh, on repeat that's I don't really watch much else. But But, but I do think Ted lasso you know, the other two are just sort of like guilty pleasures. But Ted lasso is a great show that demonstrates the systems theory. If you if you ever look into if you listen to managing leadership anxiety, or read the book or see any SD of Casa stuff on how anxiety doesn't just affect people, it affects communities and it hijacks communities. And then what does it mean for a well differentiated leader to bring health to an unhealthy system? Ted lasso is just a brilliant example of, I think differentiated leadership in our time.

Joshua Johnson: 57:00

I agree, as greats. Well, Lucas, thank you so much for this conversation. I love getting into to micro churches, a little bit of your story. How do we believe in the priesthood of all believers? How do we not have things chaotic but and not have things controlling that we could actually lead into something that where there's a tension that could actually birth the Spirit of God within our networks and movements? And, you know, I loved the going from general calling to specific callings for people and to say, Hey, these are the people that God has called me to, I'm going to galvanize around that. And we're going to have a group of people say, let's go and bring a community of followers of Jesus into the space and see what God does because he's moving. And your thing of saying, where's God moving, and let's join him in what he is doing. I think it's absolutely critical and crucial. We don't follow a method but we actually follow God and the Spirit as he moves. So Lucas, thank you for this. It was fantastic.

Lucas Pulley: 58:08

Thank you, brother.