Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 289 Tony Miltenberger - Intentional, Relational, and Reproducible Disciple Making
In today's episode, we're diving deep with Tony Miltenberger - a bi-vocational pastor, executive coach, and passionate disciple maker who's on a mission to transform how we understand disciple making in the modern world. Tony isn't just talking about faith from a pulpit; he's living it out in the marketplace, challenging the traditional church model and showing how discipleship isn't confined to Sunday mornings, but can revolutionize every aspect of our lives. We'll explore what true disciple-making looks like beyond programs and buildings - it's about intentional, relational, and reproducible connections that can literally change the world. Tony brings a unique perspective from his military background, coaching experience, and pastoral work, offering practical insights on how we can move from passive church attendance to active, transformative faith. If you've ever felt stuck in a consumer-driven spiritual experience, wondered how to genuinely follow Jesus in your workplace, or want to understand how discipleship can be a powerful tool for personal and collective growth, this episode is for you. So join us.
Tony Miltenberger is the founder of Follow2Lead Coaching. He is a veteran, podcast host, executive coach, author, and the associate pastor of disciple making at Centerville Grace Church. Throughout the years, Tony has traveled the globe taking deployments in Kuwait, El Salvador, and numerous marriage retreats throughout the US. He has consulted with churches in the deep south and multi-million dollar organizations in the Midwest.
He has done hundreds of hours of pastoral counseling and executive coaching. Each conversation helps people uncover their true potential by taking a deep look at their past as well as their hopes for the future. He is genuinely curious and passionate about pursuing the mission of making disciples who make disciples.
His proudest accomplishment is being the father to three amazing kids and being married to his high school sweetheart (Karen) for over 20 years.
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I love a good neighborhood night out or trunk or treat just like the next person, but I don't love it at the cost of teaching the saints how to make disciples, if you only have time to do one, teach them how to make disciples and watch multiplication work versus addition, you Joshua,
Joshua Johnson: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 long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, in today's episode, we're diving deep with Tony miltenberger, a bi vocational pastor, executive coach and passionate disciple maker, who's on a mission to transform how we understand disciple making in the modern world. Tony isn't just talking about faith from a pulpit. He's living it out in the marketplace, challenging the traditional church model and showing how discipleship isn't confined to Sunday mornings, but can revolutionize every aspect of our lives. We'll explore what true disciple making looks like beyond programs and buildings, it's about intentional, relational and reproducible connections that can literally change the world. Tony brings a unique perspective from his military background, coaching experience and pastoral work offering practical insights on how we can move from passive church attendance to active, transformative faith. If you've ever felt stuck in a consumer driven spiritual experience, wondered how to genuinely follow Jesus in your workplace, or want to understand how discipleship can be a powerful tool for personal and collective growth. This episode is for you. So join us. Here is my conversation with Tony miltenberger. Tony, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. I'm
Tony Miltenberger:so excited to be here, man, I'm just thankful for the opportunity. That's for sure. Well, I'm
Joshua Johnson:excited to have you on I'd love just to get a glimpse of who you are through little bit of a Jesus lens. So who is Jesus to you, and what has he done for you and your life, and where did you start to encounter him? Yeah, yeah. Man, that's
Tony Miltenberger:great question. Jesus is, for sure, my rabbi. He's the person that I follow the most. He is my Lord and Savior, and he has transformed everything about my life. And so probably the best way to describe it is that I grew up in a wonderful home that was full of broken relationships, and so it was. I was about 17 years old. I was a young man full of strong feelings, a lot of emotion, as most 17 year olds are, and I'll remember, never forget the day that I was in a youth group at my local church, and this young lady was bouncing a ball off of the wall. She was bouncing it off the wall, and all of a sudden she thought she was going to be cute, and she bounced it off of my head. And I didn't take that very well. I was in a very good emotional place, and so I had an emotional reaction, and I backhanded her, yeah, it wasn't like my proudest moment ever, but what it did do is it catapulted me into counseling, specifically with our spiritual leader for that community, and he walked alongside of me to help me understand that even though it felt like a lot of the relationships in my life were unstable, my relationship with Jesus could always be stable, and so ever since then, I've been trying to follow Jesus so that I can learn how to be a healthy version of me.
Joshua Johnson:I think that's a beautiful thing. I think one thing in there is that somebody walked alongside of you, and it probably propelled you to the space of wanting to do that for other people, that there is a difference people can make in someone's life when they they walk with another. So what was that for you, when you go into some counseling, somebody's walking with you? How was that different than just hearing about the good things that Jesus can do, what was the difference between, like, just receiving knowledge and then somebody walking with you in what you're going through? I'm a verbal processor,
Tony Miltenberger:and so I have been like, leaning in on listening to Jesus for a very long time, and now, basically, kind of what I've been doing is like when I had a counselor, I was able to really lean into the idea that I can verbally process who Jesus is to me and talk through it like that. I love a good sermon, and I'm a bi vocational pastor now, so I have a coaching business, and I'm all. So the pastor of disciple making. But one of the things I realized is, is that the monolog format of the local church does not serve a verbal processor like me very well. And so that that that's been the I've held a counselor now for 10 years even obviously, I'm not 17 anymore, as you can tell by all the gray I'm 45 and for the last 1011, years, I've been meeting with the same counselor, and part of that is just to having someone to walk alongside me and hold the heavy stuff that's confidential that comes with pastoring. I mean, you know that world, right? It's, it's full of heavy stuff all the time. And so having somebody to help hold that just it fits perfectly with my belief that we're all called to be disciple makers.
Joshua Johnson:Where did you then figure out, like, hey, I want to jump into the military. Where does the military come into your life? Well,
Tony Miltenberger:when I was growing up, there were two things in my life that I really appreciated. One was Civil Air Patrol, which is like a JROTC, kind of nerdy military outfit, thing that I was really good at, and I loved it was absolutely the joy of my high school experience. The second thing that was the joy was this idea of being in the youth group, that same youth group I mentioned. So it was those two things together that said, man, maybe I could do this in the military. And so I met this incredible recruiter. I'll never forget his name, Sergeant First Class, Don Hammonds. And he said, Tony, what do you want to be? I said, I want to be a chaplains assistant, like I want to serve God and serve my country, and there's nothing else in the world that I want to do. And he was like, okay, when you go up to this place called Mets, which is the Military Entrance Processing Station. He goes, I want you to tell them that, because they're going to try to put you in another job. And so I went up there. I sat in front of this retention career counselor, and I said, I want to be a chaplain's assistant. And they said, why? And I said, because I feel called by God. And they were like, well, no one's ever said that before. And I was like, Well, then let's do it. Let's make it happen, captain, and so I went into the reserves in 1998 and God opened up all of these doors for me to to travel around the world, to meet incredible leaders and to really just be impacted by Godly men and women who care deeply for the gospel and serving our troops.
Joshua Johnson:How do you reconcile a place where you're in the midst of military and conflict zones, sometimes where there are a lot of broken relationships, and then you are assistant chaplain, you're serving with a place where you want to see restored relationships. You want to see broken relationships made whole, but you're in the middle of a place where there's lots of broken relationships. That's what war does. It brings broken relationships. How did you reconcile those things? Walking through it? I think
Tony Miltenberger:in the midst of it, you don't really reconcile it as much as you just deal with it, right? Like it's this understanding that I'm just living in the tension. And the thing about tension is, you may have heard this before, but it's like pulling really tight on a rubber band. The only way to relieve tension on that rubber band is to either let go completely or to walk towards the other person. And so when we were deployed, whether that be in Kuwait or Iraq or in Germany or in El Salvador, whenever I was deployed, the key is, is to walk towards the tension and just understand that you don't have to solve it, but you really do just have to sit there and be in it with them. And I think Jesus modeled that for us right when he's walking alongside the disciples. He said, Come, you know, Matthew 419 Come follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. He didn't say, Come follow me, and I'm going to give you this peaceful life, right? I think most of the disciples would have said hard pass if they had known how the story was going to end, you know, pre resurrection, right? Like, we just spent three years with you, and you you peaced out on us, right? Like, and, you know, not fully clear of how it was all going to come together again, but I think that that's probably true in the way that most of us do ministry in really hard situations,
Joshua Johnson:when you came back and you started to do your discipleship, pastor is one of the things that you're doing. How do you see the American model of faith? Try to avoid the tension? Where have you seen that which is opposite of what you said, of like moving towards tension. Where have you seen it? Trying to avoid it,
Unknown:uh, can I step on some toes here, please? Okay, I'd love it if you step on toes. All right. So listen,
Tony Miltenberger:American church has really come down to consumerism, and so what we've done here is we've done a really good job for the last two decades of teaching people how to come to church, but not how to follow Jesus. And so when we made church a building, instead of an individual relationship with Christ, the rabbi, right? Instead of that disciple making relationship where we're actively following the personhood of Jesus, right, then what we end up doing. Is there is no tension with a consumer. Consumers just get what they want. They take it and they leave. And we saw it. We this is exactly what we saw in COVID Right when there was nothing to consume the way that we wanted to consume it. 30% of the church left, and it's because we weren't teaching people how to follow Jesus. We were teaching people how to come to church, and so there are a lot of things that have been put on the staff of the church that are really more identity traits of the Christian. For example, evangelism. We don't need an evangelism committee. We don't need an evangelism program. What we need are Christians to evangelize because they believe that Jesus has transformed their life. We don't need a disciple making committee. We don't need the pastor to do that more. What we need are Christians to make disciples, because that's what the Great Commission compels us to do. And so I get fired up about this idea that we've relegated so many of these tasks to the church staff instead of the identity of the Christian, like, come on, feed the poor, clothe the naked. You got it. You know, this is not that complicated, but we have to own it.
Joshua Johnson:If we blow up the prevailing model of church in America, the consumeristic model. One of the things I've found is it is harder to find resources. It is harder to find money. There are less people that want to come to this attractive thing for some reason. But the people that are in it like they're they're in it for Jesus, they're not in it for what they get. They're not in it for all those things. How do you how do you walk with people where they know that they're going away from the prevailing model, and they may not actually have enough resources to do it. How do you start to say it's still worth it? It's okay, because this is what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of a very difficult and trying time. And you may not have it, you may not have the resources, but it's still worth
Tony Miltenberger:it. So when you say resources, are you really just talking about money? Some of it's
Joshua Johnson:money, yeah, okay, some of it's other, other resources. Yeah,
Tony Miltenberger:so, but I money is a big one. I think that we've done a really poor job of equipping the saints to be disciple makers and to be people who carry out the mission of Jesus. And so part of that is because we've done programs where what we really need are tools. So one of the things that I'm a huge proponent of is is what my friend Justin gravid calls tool based disciple making. And he's with the navigators church ministries, and he really informed a lot of what I believe about, about about disciple making. And so the idea of tool based disciple making is, I'm going to give you a set of tools so that you could build Jesus followers. And if we're truly Jesus followers, then we have to believe that the resources, financial resources, will follow that but, but guess what? Most of this is free, like we don't need a lot of money to do this. You could be bi vocational, you could be missionary supported. You could be there are a lot of people who will do exactly what we see in the New Testament with Paul. They'll support you financially if you're out there, equipping the saints to be disciple makers, equipping the saints to to lead where we get in trouble. Is with the buildings. It's it's with the programs. It's with all of the things that are are not bad. They're not bad things, right? I'm not, I'm not like saying that they're the worst in the world. I'm just saying that sometimes they distract us from the primary mission of teaching people how to follow Jesus. And so I love a good neighborhood night out or trunk or treat, just like the next person. But I don't love it at the cost of teaching the saints how to make disciples, if you only have time to do one, teach them how to make disciples and watch multiplication work versus addition 100% we want
Joshua Johnson:to see multiplication happen. But a lot of people think they they don't. Don't know what A disciple is. I don't know how to make a disciple. So let's just get to a basic Yeah, what is a disciple?
Tony Miltenberger:So A disciple is someone who said yes to following Jesus, right? That's the person who's made that profession of faith. That's the person who's saved, if you if you like that word. So that's the disciple. Now discipleship is teaching someone about Jesus Sunday morning from the pulpit. That's what we do. That's discipleship. I'm teaching you about Jesus. I'm teaching you who Jesus is. I'm teaching you the Ark of Scripture. I'm teaching you the Old and New Testament. Disciple making is walking alongside someone in their journey of faith, rooting them in Scripture and teaching them to do the same. So when I'm making a disciple, I'm actively giving the person tools to follow Jesus and to teach someone else how to follow Jesus. So that's the difference, right? Disciple said, Yes, discipleship is about teaching. Who disciple making is teaching. One how to teach someone to follow Jesus. And this is, like, very common in the traits this idea of an apprentice, John Mark comer talks about this and following the way, pretty good book and disciple making. It's not my favorite, but it's pretty good. Like there's some things there. John Mark doesn't get fully to reproduction. But I think one of the things that we have to do as Christians, as we have to give people the vision, the same vision that God gave Abram in the Old Testament. You know, Joshua, your spiritual descendants can outnumber the stars. It's like grains of sand. I believe that promise is true for us. It's true for you as it's true for me, and someday we'll get into heaven, and if we're making disciples, we'll see the entire landscape of the world change. I it's what I love to do the most. Is what I think we can do in work. It's what we can do in play. It's what we can do in school. You know, we talk about all the problems of the world. I think 99% of them can be solved with disciple making, I just really believe in it that much. I'm
Joshua Johnson:glad you believe in it, because it's important we see disciple making solves a lot of problems. Let's think of Abram for a second. He got a promise from God, and then he's like, I'm gonna hold on to it for a moment, and then I'm gonna try and and make it happen on my own. And so when we're walking with people and we're making disciples, when we've set about a promise, this is what it looks like, and people decide, hey, I don't know if I could trust Jesus. In this moment, I'm going to try to do this on my own. What does that look like as we're walking with people that have a rocky and a journey that goes back and forth, that it's not just a straight road from point A to point B, it's relationally
Tony Miltenberger:driven. And so this goes kind of back to my initial thought about who Jesus is in my life. And this is part of the reason why disciple making works, because disciple making works so well because it's intentional, it's relational and it's reproducible. So the thing about a program, when most churches Institute the idea of disciple making, they give you a program, but programs end relationships never do. I love the way Paul talks about Timothy. He says, My spiritual son in the faith I'm gonna send you, I want you to treat him like you treat me. Right? He goes, he kind of waxes eloquently about Timothy. And then in Timothy one and two, we see this love letter from the spiritual father to a spiritual son. And so one of my favorite question to ask, especially type a driven leaders, the guys that I coach, is, who are your spiritual sons? Who are your spiritual daughters? Like, who are you? Who are you lifting up to the people who are out there in the world and saying, You need to listen to this guy. I know that he knows what he's talking about. He's my spiritual son in the faith, and I'm lucky that I've been so blessed with the opportunity to have several of them along the way, and I love to see what God is doing there. Some of them are already better disciple makers than I am. It's amazing. For a long time,
Joshua Johnson:I think we've gotten past this. But a long time, there's, you know, this, this sacred and secular divide where you have ministry and disciple making discipleship is relegated towards, like ministry the church and maybe your small group that you have, and then there's, you know, work the marketplace that's secular, and they're by bifurcated, and they don't actually mesh well together. How have you taken some of your disciple making, disciple making model, and brought it into the marketplace as you're coaching executives, leaders, people in business.
Tony Miltenberger:Yeah, I think that that's a great point. Is that for a long time, we've really relegated the face stuff over here and the work stuff over here. But the reality is, is that if you're going to identify fully as a Christian, then both of who you are has to come to work, right? And so you have to bring your work self, and you have to bring your Christian self to work. And so there are some tools that we can use out there in the world that are really simple. One of them, for example, is the idea of being a values based leader. Like, what are your values? What are you basing them in? What does that look like? And so one of the things that I always challenge my the coaching clients on is, what are your core four values, right? So I would say mine are faithful, grateful, generous in movement. But then the next step is to say, what are you basing those values on? Because if left to our own devices, we'll talk ourselves out of good accountability, amen, right? Like it's just how it works. And so what are your values? What are you basing them in? And then how do you bring that into the workplace? And so oftentimes it's an invitation. It's not a mandate. Hey, if I was working with. Someone who's a non faith based leader, I would say, what are your values and what are you basing them in? You don't have to base them in Scripture, minor based in scripture. But what are you basing them in, if not scripture? Like, what is the the backbone of your life that you know you won't talk yourself out of because we're going to use those values as a way to create disciplines. One of the things I say all the time on on my podcast is that if you aren't dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions. And so not having those disciplines gives us permission to kind of talk ourselves out of a really good value proposition, like, what it means to be faithful.
Joshua Johnson:What does that look like? Then, what is a discipline for you? Like, how do, how do I know what a discipline is? Yeah,
Tony Miltenberger:so the discipline are the forced functions in your life that you're going to do even on the bad days. So, for example, quiet time in the morning for me is one of those disciplines. I'm a I'm an early riser. I'm a 5am er, so I get up at five. I'm in the word from five to 550 at 550 I go to the gym. I'm at the gym from six to seven. I usually work out with some guys as a way to kind of help build community. And then I come back I pray over my wife every night. That's another discipline that I put underneath the faithful value. We try to walk anytime it's above 20 degrees here, which is, yeah, sometimes we negotiate on that discipline a little bit, but those are the things that I'm like when I'm when I'm in a good place. These disciplines work really well for me. My life is good. And so every year I evaluate my disciplines. Eventually, all the disciplines put together are what John Mark comer or Pete scazzero Call a Rule of Life. And so this is my rule of life, and I can evaluate how I'm living and how I'm following Jesus from my rule of life based off of my values. When you're looking at disciple making, one of the things is that you're you're coaching. You're a disciple maker as a coach, basically, and you've moved that into also the marketplace. You're coaching business leaders. So coaching is really, really key, and that's part of the apprenticeship process, right? Yep, absolutely. Give us some some tools in the coaching realm to help us be better disciple makers. What does it look like to be a disciple maker as coach? Disciple maker as coach. One of the things that I think is paramount is to ask more questions than you give answers. A lot of times we have this tendency. I do, for sure, to preach when I should ask questions. But Jesus was this incredible question asker, and it's not even so much about the answer to the question as it is about the idea that someone needs to wrestle with it, you know. And we see that Jesus gives us a great example. Who do you say I am? Who do they say I am, you know? And he just kind of lets it sit out there, and it's like this 1000 pound gorilla. He just lets sit. And so that's the first thing I would say, that good disciple makers, good coaches, ask great questions, and that's a skill that we could all get better at. You know, from podcasting, you're a great question. Asker already, it's reps, reps, reps. If you go back and listen to episode one versus now you you know that there's a vast difference in the questions, What are you talking about? It was perfect. You can't go to the podcast. Boom, perfect. The second thing I would say is that good coaches aren't afraid of silence, and so oftentimes we want to fill silence because it feels awkward. But good coaches use that silence as a way to to be a catalyst for what the Holy Spirit might be doing inside of someone. Sometimes, I think we just over talk the Holy Spirit, you know when, when the Lord's trying to give us something, and we're just like, I'm just gonna fill this with words, because I like words. You know what I mean it I'm guilty, guilty as charged. But the best coaching sessions are one where there's a little bit of silence, and you let that silence do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to letting the Holy Spirit in to convict and challenge. And then I would say the third thing is, is that good disciple makers and good coaches both play offense and defense at the same time. Let me elaborate on that a little bit. One of the things I've realized is that I can't show up to a disciple making meeting or coaching session without a plan. I need a plan. I gotta have one. It's the intentional part of intentional, relational and reproducible. But I also know that if I'm discipling you and you've had a major life event, mom died, dad had a stroke, marriage feels Rocky. You just admitted to me that maybe you're suffering with some sort of addiction or sin, well then I have. To throw my plan out, and I have to pick up another tool to give you in the moment, and so I can't be so bent on what I'm going to do in that session that I can neglect the relationship. And so offense, I'm ready to go. I got a plan. We can attack something today if we're ready to attack it. Defense, where are you hurting? What sin issues are in your life? What can I do to walk alongside you? What feels like it's falling apart so that we can surrender it at the foot of the cross together? Is there a different posture that you take, whether you're playing offense or defense, not, not particularly I think I probably play both of them fairly aggressively either way. But I will say, I will say, this is that one of the hardest things that is, if, when I'm playing defense, I you, when I was younger, I used to want to solve the problem for the person, and that's where, that's where I could really use better questions. And the Lord has really given me some development in that area as, like, I know that you need to stop sinning that way. But unless you know it, it doesn't really matter, right? Like, it's no so it's defensively, sometimes slow, playing the aha moment, instead of trying just telling the person, like, hey, you know, maybe you should just put down your cell phone or, you know, whatever the case is, be more attentive to your spouse, go on dates, whatever the case is, then, you know, that's that's been something that's been a new kind of revelation in how I disciple and how I Coach
Joshua Johnson:so you're you're intentional, you're relational, you're reproducible. I think the apprenticeship is really important, right? So you're coaching somebody when you're making a disciple. I believe that experience is really important for people to go out and experience. I think this is what you do as a coach, right? You give people an action probably, there's an action plan at the end of a coaching Absolutely, yep, they're going to go out, they're going to do something, you're going to debrief it when they come back the next time, where is in the disciple making process or the coaching process? How does experience play into things in our growth towards Jesus?
Tony Miltenberger:I would say this right information by itself does not lead to transformation, because if that was the case, I would have six pack abs. I've read everything there is to know about exercise, but that's not that's not true, right? Information by itself doesn't do anything, but information plus spirit led application leads to transformation, right? So information plus spirit led application leads to transformation. So at the end of almost all my coaching sessions, there's some to do's, right? Here are your to do's, and we list them out. When I'm discipling someone, it's very similar, except we use the Smart format a little bit more intentionally, right? Specific, Measurable, attitude, challenging, realistic, time sensitive. And so we lean into that smart idea, those smart goals. What are those things? What's it look like? How do we get it in there? And so both of them come with what I call a forced function idea. Hey, we're going to meet again, and you're going to have to show up and do what you say. Now, when I with a coaching client, oftentimes they have a financial investment involved in that. And so what I've learned is, the more people invest, the more the harder they work, which is an idea that is hard for the church to get over, right, because we give everything away for free. My best disciples, the guys that I'm discipling that do the most work are always the guys that are paying me lots of money, right? It's just a when I give it away for free, it's terrible, right? Now, I will say this when I'm discipling someone, I'm looking for someone who's fat, faithful, available and teachable. And if you and I are in a disciple making relationship, and we set a SMART goal, and then you completely ignore that SMART goal. Then I'm going to give you grace once, maybe twice, but the third time, I'm going to move you from a disciple making relationship to just a friendship, which is okay. There are seasons in life where it's not good to be discipled, and that's okay. I will tell you that I have picked the wrong guy on more than one occasion, and it's just, I've just got a big heart for people, and because of that, I wanna walk alongside everyone. But not everyone is ready to be following Jesus fully, right? Sometimes they just need to be in his presence for a little bit longer. They need to mature, they need to marinate. And that's, that's perfectly normal and and Because oftentimes, in the North American church model, we're trying to microwave this thing. It's just, it's just not that fast. It's a very slow process. And it's, it's a life on life, you know, Jesus spent. Three years of his life every day with these people. If I'm spending 90 minutes twice a month, that's nothing in comparison. And so we just have to be able to know that the scalability of this isn't on our time frame. It's on God's
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, when we talk about some of the commands of Jesus, one of them, we say, Go and make disciples, and we caveat that by saying it takes time. Because it takes a lot of time to make a disciple, one of the things you're really key in, one of your values, is reproducibility. You want to see a disciple make other disciples. How does that shift the way that you disciple, if you're actually trying to see the person that you're with make other disciples. How is that different than the the traditional deception model we see? Yeah,
Tony Miltenberger:so the the model that I use involves casting vision, similar to what we talked about earlier around Abram, but when I meet with somebody, the very first meeting, this is what I'll say. I'll say, I'll meet with you for as long as we both want, as long as we both think is. Makes a lot of sense under one condition, that when we both think that you're ready, you'll go out and you'll do the same. That's the commitment I want from you out front. I don't need any more friends, you know? I just don't I'm good in the friend department, I don't need any more pastoral counseling sessions. What I need are people who are willing to lean in and make disciples. Now I'm willing to do pastoral counseling, I'm willing to be friendly, but if I'm going to give you 90 minutes of my life every other week, I'm not going to do that without the expectation that you're going to do the same thing. And what I'm really trying to do here is I'm trying to plant the heart of disciple making in someone else's worldview. Because most times, most Christians, I know, they don't have that worldview of disciple making. I went to seminary, and there's a lot of pastors I know who don't have that. I was in seminary for three years, and, you know, I only had one class on disciple making, and it was an elective. The Great Commission was an elective in seminary. That should blow our minds, right? We should be troubled by this. I, you know, I get fired up, but at the end of the day, like the truth is, is, if I'm gonna meet with you over any length of time, then my expectation is you're going to go and do the same with someone
Joshua Johnson:else. I think that's really helpful for us to know that it is reproducible. We can multiply things. People can be discipled, and they could go make disciples like it's possible. We often forget that as possible in America, but we could do it. This is the commission that is not just for the first disciples, but is for us as well. We need to go and make some disciples. When we're making disciples, and you're continually doing this over and over and over again, you're very intentional. But because you're very intentional, sometimes people think that, hey, if I just follow this model, things are going to happen. If I do this work, things are going to happen. There's something that Jesus, like he had some self giving love, a part of his discipleship. And oftentimes when we think about like multiplication, we think of the obedience part, but we've missed the love part. When you're discipling, how do those things go hand in hand? How do they work together? I
Tony Miltenberger:think it goes back to a little bit about what I was mentioning earlier, about offense and defense, right? Is that it's not just about pushing my agenda, but it's also acknowledging that your agenda matters too. There's a phrase that we use in disciple making that we call like with him time or with her time. With him time is just hangout time. And so maybe it's tickets to the Reds game, you know, because we live in Ohio, or maybe it's hanging out and sitting by the fire, or maybe it's just being together, but I really do mean it, that when we enter into this disciple making relationship, We're family now, like, you're my spirit I care about you. You're my spiritual son, right? Like I want you to be wildly successful more so than I am, I've got two amazing sons and an amazing daughter, and my prayer for them is the same prayer that I pray for the guys that I'm discipling, which is, I hope they see God in a more complete way than I ever have. I hope they they get everything that God has for them, right? I want that like free them for joyful obedience and that's the love part. Is that when I can hope for them more than I hope for me, then I know I'm in a really good place. And there's a couple guys right now in my life who are absolutely killing it, like, I'm so proud of those jokers. Like, one of them's getting ready to have a second baby. He's an engineer. Like. Like he's nothing like me at all, like but he's just, he understands who God is. There was a guy that I discipled. I met him during COVID. I had originally met him years before, when I did his wedding, and when I met him, when he did his wedding, he was an atheist, and so this is crazy. He walked into my office. His grandfather had just died. We're on the tail end of COVID. He walks in and he goes, Pastor, Tony, my my grandpa just died. I didn't know where else to turn, and I said, Well, his name's Zach. I said, Zach, what do you believe about death? What do you believe about life? And we started having this conversation. I'm in my office at the church, and what is arguably one of the most difficult times in church history, at least for this pastor, and all of a sudden he comes to Christ in my office, and I've been discipling him ever since. So we've been in this relationship together now for five years. He's now on the board of the church where he goes. I'm at a different church, and now he's making disciples in a completely different church than when he started, than where I started. It's so good. I'm so proud of him. He's killing it.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, that's so good. That's awesome. I mean, you're you get really excited because you're walking with with people, and you're seeing their lives transform. You also step back and you have interviews, you have a podcast, follow its lead, and you do others. You talk about just how Mike Aiden and Fauci lead. You talk a lot about business and and and all of that. How do you see your role as as a podcaster, as someone asking questions, as far as the transformation space that you actually gives you life, that brings life out of you. How does podcasting actually bring life out of you? What are you trying to do? What's your hope?
Tony Miltenberger:Oh, my hope is to break out. Revival is to be a small part of that puzzle that God's doing. I think the next revival in the church is actually going to happen in the workplace. I think it's going to happen when Christians show up at work and they start being who God unashamedly made them to be with grace and truth and love and space. And I get to be a part of that, right? Because the people that I talk to the feature of an executive, the feature of an entrepreneur, they want to be whole. Everybody wants to be whole. We talk about it all the time on the podcast. Is like living a life of integrity, not integrity in the sense of honesty, although that applies, but it's integrity in the sense of fully integrated. Imagine what, what life? How much easier life would be like if we could go to work and be the same person that we were on Sunday on Monday. That's when we fully taken our identity on as Christians. That's when we fully taken our identity on as Mothers and Fathers of the Church, of spiritual leaders, of you know, worldly leaders. The lie that we can't talk about work, our faith and work is, I think it's a misinterpretation. The truth is, is that we can't beat people over the head with it, right? But everybody wants to know who you are. Everybody does because they want you to know who they are, too. And so if you ask good questions, if you give people space, if you let the silence sit, then all of a sudden, what will happen is you'll be talking about how Jesus changed your life in the middle of your cubicle. And then eventually, you'll lead those people to something greater than they could have ever imagined at work. It fires me up. I
Joshua Johnson:can see that I'm glad that you're in it, and you're in the space and you're doing something where you feel like you're called. You have a purpose. It brings you life. You find identity. You find Jesus in the midst of it, I think all of that is true. And I think the faith driven entrepreneur is is someone who make a huge difference. It is a it's really difficult in a space of American Consumerism where we take and take and take from other people to gather wealth for ourselves. How have you seen the people that you've been interviewing navigate a space where we're in a place of where America wants us to take from others, to build for ourselves? Jesus wants us to to help others, yeah, and to be with others and to give generously. How have you seen some people navigate that in their workplace?
Tony Miltenberger:Yeah. So I just had an interview the other day with Adam Roach, who is a coach and he's a podcaster. He's a real estate kind of mogul, and one of the things that I really appreciated about Adam's story as something that I strive for in my own life. It's this idea that it's not really my money, it's stewardship of of the Lord's resources. And so I am not rich, you know, I have the Lord's resources that I get to steward, and because of that, I get to a really great. Life, and I'm so thankful for that. And so there's kind of this approach that with humility comes the opportunity to steward more and more of what God has given us. And so you can be faithful and generous, and you can do all of the things that you want to do at whatever level God has you at, as long as you're willing to admit that none of this stuff comes from you. It's all gifts from God, and your job here is to steward it. And it's like, I think about this with the podcast all the time. People always like, man, what's the goal of the podcast? And I was like, I have no idea. Like, I would like for it to be wildly successful. I won't lie about that. I would, but whatever God has in store for it, that's all I got, right? I'm going to be faithful, I'm going to show up, I'm going to do the work, I'm going to do my best to honor God, to keep me my own self out of the way. And that's the way I try to approach coaching. That's the way I try to approach all of it like I never in a million years would I thought that I could charge business people to do the stuff that I used to do in the church for free, like it's it's just nuts. But here's the thing, the value matters, and so I'm just using the money as a resource, and that money then helps pay my bills, which then helps me resource more people, like it's just whatever God wants with it. And sometimes there's more and sometimes there's less. And I'm not going to try to stop being obedient no matter what.
Joshua Johnson:I think a steward leader is really important. Like you're going to steward what you have, your resources, your talents, the people that you have, instead of being transactional, instead of using, instead of trying to garner that wealth. I think stewardship is, is absolutely key. I think sometimes we have a misunderstanding. We think it's about money, it's actually about all the resources that God has entrusted us. And we're not owners, like we're not owning people, we're not owning people the business, like we're stewards of it. And I think that's that's key, as really helpful. I I'll just recommend, I think you should have Scott Rodin on your podcast talk about being a steward leader. My dad's doing a lot of work with him and steward leadership stuff. That's the introduction. That's so hook a brother up. He would, he would be fantastic to talk about it. And that's great. Yeah, it's really, really good. So I have a couple quick questions. Love it at the end. Tony one, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Tony Miltenberger:I would say, be bolder. Sooner. Be bolder. Sooner. History favors the bold, right. And I was so afraid of what people thought of me that I often wasn't as bold as I felt like God was giving me the opportunity to be so, be bolder sooner and be humbly bold, because it's okay if I'm wrong.
Joshua Johnson:Fantastic. Anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend, oh,
Tony Miltenberger:I'm almost done with the AI driven leader, and it's a phenomenal book. Somebody recommended it to me called the AI driven leader. I can't remember the name of the author, but it's got a white cover. It's all about how to use AI as a strategic partner, not just a tool to accomplish tasks. And it's a really thought. It's a really kind of like mind building, melding, kind of thought process around it. Ai driven leader. Interesting. Sounds fascinating. Sounds great. That's good. How can people go out and connect with you? Find your podcasts, find your your coach. Ability of someone who wants to reach out sure for you to be you know, to coach them. How could they connect with you? The best place to go is to follow the number two lead coaching.com Everything about me is on there. Follow the number two lead coaching.com, that's also the name of the podcast, the follow the number two lead podcast. Follow the lead podcast. Also, I'm really excited. I'm just now launching a brand new community for faith driven entrepreneurs and executives. It's called the bold ones, and it's the name of my tribe. We call people who listen to the podcast, people who are kind of in my world, the bold ones. So you know, if anybody here wants to come be bold with us, come on over. We'd love to have you. All right. You
Joshua Johnson:don't have to be bold sooner. You could be bold right now and go join the bold ones. Tony, thank you for this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you going deep in disciple making, and what it looks like to actually be relational with people, to walk a lot alongside them, to help them make disciples as well. No matter what, if you're in it in a ministry space, or if you're in the business space, we could be making disciples, and we could be values driven people, we need to have more tools in our tool belt, and so you help provide that. So thank you for this conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Tony Miltenberger:Hey, man, The pleasure was mine. Thank you. You.
