Ep. 374 Kate Murphy - The Way of Jesus is Often Found in the Lost, Hidden, and Small

In this episode, pastor and author Kate Murphy shares the surprising story behind Lost, Hidden, Small, a season when ministry fell apart, illusions shattered, and the only way forward was surrender. Kate reflects on discovering that God often does His deepest work in places that look like failure, weakness, and smallness, and how her congregation learned to see again, love their neighbors without transaction, and trust God for resurrection they could not manufacture. This conversation offers a hopeful reminder that faithfulness, not success, is the true metric of the kingdom, and that the quiet and hidden work of God in ordinary communities still creates life beyond anything we can imagine.

Kate Murphy serves as the pastor of The Grove Presbyterian Church, a multi-ethnic congregation in Charlotte NC. Originally from Louisville, KY, she studied biology and music at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. She received her Masters of Divinity and Masters of Sacred Theology from Boston University and accepted her first call to be an Associate Pastor at Fourth Presbyterian, a multicultural, inner-city church in South Boston. She's just published her first book, Lost Hidden Small. In her free time, Kate enjoys running, reading, writing, drinking coffee, and watching pointless reality television. She and her husband Colin have three daughters.

Kate's Book:

Lost, Hidden, Small

Kate's Recommendations:

Looking Inward, Living Outward

Field Notes for the Wilderness

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Transcript

Kate Murphy: 0:31

God was being tremendously faithful to me and to my community by exposing all of our idols, by smashing all of our illusions, so that we could begin to live in the truth that looked like death, but but really was life you

Joshua Johnson: 0:58

John, 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, what if the most powerful work God is doing right now isn't in the big, shiny, impressive places, but in the lost, the hidden and the small. In this episode, Pastor Kate Murphy invites us into the story of her own unraveling and rebuilding, a moment when everything she expected from Ministry collapsed and the only thing left was surrender. From there, God began opening her eyes, peeling back illusion, exposing idols and revealing a way of being the church that looks far more like the upside down Kingdom Jesus describes than the metrics we often Chase. Kate shares how her own congregation moved from decline and discouragement into a living, breathing outpost of hope, one where weakness became a doorway, neighbors became kin, and faithfulness replaced success as the defining metric. Together, we talk about learning to see again, embracing smallness, letting go of outcomes, and trusting that resurrection always begins in places that feel like death. If you've ever wondered whether the quiet, ordinary, hidden work you're doing matters if you've felt the weight of leading, serving or simply trying to be faithful when things aren't working. This conversation is a breadcrumb of hope, because the Kingdom is still breaking in often, but we least expect it. Here is my conversation with Kate Murphy, Kate, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on thank you for joining me.

Kate Murphy: 2:37

Thank you so much for having me. It's going to be so fun.

Joshua Johnson: 2:41

Yeah, well, we're going to talk about your book, lost, hidden, small, which is a fantastic read. It's a great book. It's makes me want to follow Jesus even more, and that's, I think, a great testament to what you've done, what you've put in here you start in your preface about a moment when you felt like you wanted to give up. You're done, but it was a moment that shifted and changed, and you said it was the beginning of something. Take me into that moment for us to get us started, and what was about to change.

Kate Murphy: 3:17

I start the book kind of at the trough of my own journey. So I was about, I think, about 10 years in as a pastor at that point, and three years into, the first time that I had ever been given the opportunity to lead a congregation, and the congregation that I was leading had really been in decline for the past. If you measure decline by the ways that we normally do, you know, budgets and buildings and bottoms and seats, then we had been in decline for, like, 30 years, and so I had come in with just a lot of joy and excitement to step into this next phase of my calling, and I had a lot of relevant experience. And so I really believed I was coming in humbly, and believed that the Lord had called me and prepared me, you know, to be a catalyst for renewal in the congregation. And the book kind of begins three years in. And really having just run as fast and as hard as I could have run for three years, and used all of my gifting and sort of left it all on the field, and really discovering that I was not a catalyst to anything, and that the church was was not experiencing revitalization and spiritual growth in the way that we were all longing for and and just recognizing that like I didn't Want to give up, but I knew I was no longer operating under the illusion that there was anything I could do that would bring really resurrection into the community. And so I just felt like such a failure. And I was so confused, because I had so clearly experienced a call from God to become a pastor. And so then to kind of get into the moment where it mattered most, and recognized I didn't have what this community was longing for, and I did know that God is still in the business of making churches that make disciples, and we just weren't. And so I really just was so. Despairing at the depth of my failure, and then it was in that moment of just being like there's nothing else I can do. And it was only in that moment that I was sort of backed into the kind of surrender where I could become aware of what God was doing and follow follow the Lord, instead of trying to lead people for God, a

Joshua Johnson: 5:55

lot of people, I wouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people get into that position where we come in humbly. We think we're we're humble, full of joy that we're going to let the Lord lead and guide in this area, but we put it on our shoulders. And what is that for i for you specifically, and for pastors as they if they put it all on their shoulders, how does that feel? What's the weight of that to shepherd a congregation through revitalization and wanting to see growth and change and making it all about what you do and how you perform

Kate Murphy: 6:36

well, I think, in that time again, as a function of my despair, which I look back now and see was really holy and really a gift. And I I had sought out a spiritual director in that time, and I remember I used to come see her every Friday and just, you know, felt like I was drowning. Not to be melodramatic, but I'll say this just in case someone else is listening and feeling the same way. This sounds so extreme, but it's real. I remember used to I would be driving around the city doing whatever, and just kind of wondering, like, is it possible that I'm already dead, and I don't know it like I just really was working so hard to tread water, and I would go in every Friday and just feel, you know, so overwhelmed and confused. And I remember one day, I was sitting with my spiritual director, and she looked at me and she said, God, misses you. And she said, your whole identity and your whole relationship with God is your ministry and what's happening in this church, and that is not the life that God has for you. And it was sort of in that moment that I remembered like I had a life with God before I got a call to become a pastor, and I experienced that, not at all as an accusation, but as kind of like a lifeline, like I had so joyfully thought like, Yes, I'm satisfied with my ministry being my whole identity and my whole relationship with God, and I wouldn't have thought that I could that there was anything more, until that just was so not enough, and so so recognizing that there was just something deeply wrong, and that there was something more for me than feeling like I was as good with God as the last good thing that had happened in The church, you know that's just no way to live. You can't, you can't live that way. You certainly can experience abundant life, especially if you're present with people who really are struggling. You have there has to be a part of you that can remain just steady and present and anchored in something other than your circumstances. And I was totally angered. In my circumstances,

Joshua Johnson: 8:53

a lot of that sometimes is a feeling of blindness, not being able to see what God is doing. What is the next step? Where should we go? What's going on? You write in your book about Luke, chapter four, as Jesus announced his ministry, rolls out the scroll of Isaiah, and he's he's talking about giving sight to the blind as part of the good news and is fulfilled in your hearing. What is it about this Good News of giving sight to the blind? How can the blind see again, not just physically in healing, but in discernment and seeing? What is happening?

Kate Murphy: 10:17

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's what looking back. You know, that was what the whole experience was for me, that this whole time that I felt like just I was dying and being crushed by everything. What was really being crushed were my illusions, my illusions about what the church would look like, my illusions about what faithfulness would look like and feel like, and my illusions about what my role was in the process, and so I really believed that a pastor should be sort of like a spiritual version of the most successful CEO, you know. So if a banker is going to work 80 hours a week and sacrifice their family in order to fulfill the mission of their institution, then pastors should be willing to work even harder and drive themselves even further and sacrifice even more and just hold on and push even further, because our mission matters so much more than the mission of making money and. So I really, you know, I was doing things for God, and I knew a lot because I'd had the blessing of, you know, just being nurtured in several churches and a seminary education. But I just couldn't see how the things I knew on paper and the things that I preached about on Sundays could actually be walked out in my approach and orientation towards pastoring. And, you know, because I think I was an American Christian in a church full of mostly American Christians, and we sort of all had the same blind spot, which was, Oh, God wants us bigger. God wants us, you know, more important, more impressive to the world with more resources. And so when we found ourselves in this community that just was in no way impressive to an outside American culture, and we found ourselves called into this mission that we had no reasonable expectation that we would be successful at, it was just a huge disorientation. And it was only when you get that desperate to go maybe my worldview is fundamentally wrong. And I think about it in John I mean, I think about it in Luke four, but I also think about it sort of in John nine, that it's the people who don't know they're sick and the people who don't know they're blind that can't recognize what God is doing in their midst. And I think you know, God was being tremendously faithful to me and to my community, by exposing all of our idols, by smashing all of our illusions, so that we could begin to live in the truth that looked like death, but but really was life. You know, when things are working for you, you don't question your worldview.

Joshua Johnson: 12:55

How is it that you found life in things that look like death. What? What shifted? What did you how did you find life in death?

Kate Murphy: 13:05

We were walking through and the church I was serving, we were very intentionally trying to be open to a transformation of the Holy Spirit. So we knew that we had three months of money left. We knew we had a theology that said, Hey, we're not making new disciples, that we are in a diverse community, and when we gather on Sunday mornings, we're almost entirely white. Like we knew that things were not right. What we didn't know was why, and we were sort of showing up every week, doing the things that we had always done, because what else are you going to do, right? And so when you get to a point where you really realize, like, when I was in that moment, I felt like one of the things that was our biggest liability was this huge pressure of not having any money. And I just thought, like, how can we do this hard work of reimagining what it means to be faithful when we just have that constant pressure of, like, change or die, change or die, change or die. But looking back, that pressure was actually the greatest gift, because we just couldn't delude ourselves into believing that we had more time. You know, like you you had to jump off the high dive. And so, you know, we were willing to listen to voices that we normally wouldn't have been willing to listen to. We were ready willing to try doing things like one of the very specific things that we did that we were a Presbyterian Church, and we still are, but we worshiped in a very typical Presbyterian way. So three hymns from the hymnal, an organ, a choir, and those were very, you know, sacred and meaningful ways for us to encounter God. But we knew in that moment that we were surrounded by neighbors, many of whom English was not their first language. We knew that people who might start seeking God by listening to Christian radio needed to come into our congregation and literally understand the words that we were saying like if we were singing about here I stand my Ebenezer and a mighty fortress and a bulwark. I mean, those are not that's not language that people use and and we knew that, hey, Jesus talked to people in ways that they didn't need to pass a vocabulary test first and then understand. So it just meant that as much as our sacred ways were really working for us, we couldn't pretend that they would work for our neighbors, and we really had to ask the question, well, when we're worshiping here, what? What is it about? Is it about what we want and what we prefer, or is it about what God wants and God prefers, and we did have the sense of clarity that God would want us to make the message accessible to our neighbors, even if that wasn't our preference. And we talked a lot about, honestly, about pronouns in that season, in terms of we would talk about my church, and really needed to go, okay, but it's not our church. It's God's Church. And so when we're thinking about what we should do, our question shouldn't be, are we going to like it? Do we enjoy it? Are we going to be good at it? Our question should be, well, what do we think God would want? What do we think would please the Lord? Do we think that God on. Honestly cares if we sing a song on Sunday morning that we don't like, if it means that our neighbors can come and join in. And we were really vulnerable before God, that we were trying to be open to our neighbors, but we knew our neighbors were going to come if the Holy Spirit led them into that place, which is not something that you would reasonably expect, because there was nothing shiny, impressive or potentially successful about the church. And so when people started coming up coming, we knew that they were following the Holy Spirit into that place, and so we were really ready to receive them as the answer to prayer, instead of kind of at arm's length or with suspicion,

Joshua Johnson: 17:05

that paradigm to shift into looking at neighbors neighborhood and actually saying, This is God's church. What does he want to do here in this neighborhood? Is such a different shift than a lot of pastors think about when it comes to revitalization. How do I get this company of this church to, you know, be smooth and operate smoothly, so that it can can run smoothly. We like that in America. Yeah.

Kate Murphy: 17:35

One other thing I knew walking in before I had my own sort of spiritual transformation, but I knew how beautiful the neighborhood was surrounding the church that we were in a part of Charlotte where I live that is very under resourced, and it also has most of the diversity in neighborhoods in the whole city, like we were in a part of the city where people lived in neighborhoods where they were black and white, and, you know, Hispanic and immigrants from all over the world living in the same neighborhood. And I knew walking in the door that man, that's the kingdom of heaven, right? And then I had come from another church in inner city, Boston, that had this amazing neighborhood outreach, and it was this tiny, like, physically tiny church that just did outrageous things in the neighborhood, like run a summer camp for 100 plus kids, and they were in this tiny building that, I mean, I always say it was held together by spit and duct tape. We did lunches all through the summer, breakfast and lunches for the kids and the whole building. And this is a program that has, you know, more than 100 kids, so you factor in staff, that's a lot of people that building had two toilets, not two bathrooms, two toilets, and it didn't have a garbage disposal, and we would have to, like, pour the leftover ceiling cereal down the toilets and flush them in order to, you know, I mean, like, we, I just had been part of this community that had so been so beautifully, making it work in an urban setting. And then I was at this, now, this church that was planted by, you know, upper middle class, white Christians, and then the neighborhood around it had changed, and there was just much more economic diversity and racial diversity. And I knew walking in the door that God was going to have a beautiful, vibrant outpost of the kingdom of God at the corner of Sharon Amity and Harris Boulevard. The question was, the congregation who had called me, were they going to be the congregation that built the building for that church, or were they going to be that church? And I walked in the door with kind of a lot of swagger about like, Oh, I know how to do this, and then having so many years of just seeing a lot of neighborhood outreach honestly, but not seeing the transformation in the worshiping community on Sunday mornings, and that's when I realized, like, no, there's something there's something deeper that we need to figure out why we're not connecting like heart to heart, To be able to worship God together and not have one group of Christians who served and another group of Christians who maybe were served but then worshiped down the street, somewhere else or nowhere at all.

Joshua Johnson: 21:09

Was there a shift in in thinking and posture towards neighbors to make it look more like kinship and more like the kingdom of heaven, more like, you know, every tribe, tongue and nation together, usually what happens is, it's, we're coming here to serve. There's some paternalism that's going on. It's really and what is, what did mutuality start to look like? And shifting towards that,

Kate Murphy: 21:36

honestly, that started happening once the congregation began to really grapple with if we're going to be this church, this like revelation, kind of church of people from every nation and tongue, that means the culture, our internal culture as a church, is going to have to change. And there were a lot of people in the church who who knew that was faithful. There was a smaller subset of that group who felt like, I'm called to be a part of that. So honestly, I think for me as a pastor, and I think probably a lot of pastors feel this way, you feel like job number one is to keep the community together, like keep the community you have, and then grow it. And so, you know. When, when there comes a point when people say, if you go after this mission, I'm not even saying it's wrong, but I'm saying it's not for me, and I'm going somewhere else. And that felt like such a, I mean, a, I loved those people, and so I did not want them to leave. And then B, I felt like such a failure as a pastor that I hadn't been able to cast a vision in a way that would make people say, Yeah, I want to be a part of this. And honestly, there were some other Christians from other communities who who came alongside me and sort of said, Hey, I need you to have eyes to see that God might be pruning here, which felt like terribly callous to me, I had my spiritual director said, Hey, Kate, just because you are called to this mission doesn't mean that everyone is and just because people are leaving the church, that does not mean they are unfaithful. They can be called to something else, and that's not bad or wrong, right? She was sort of saying like they're not getting thrown off a cliff, they're going to another congregation, and it really helped me understand that, you know, our job, ultimately, is not to be loyal to one another, but to be as faithful as we can be to Jesus. And sometimes, you know, like Paul and Barnabas, they split apart for a time, right? That if you're called to something, that doesn't mean that your neighbor is also called to it. So once the community really experienced this big disruption and loss. An already small church got even smaller. You know, from that place of weakness, then when your neighbors walk in the door, you're ready to receive them in a different way. You and they are coming into a space not like, Oh, I'm I'm in the minority, but like I'm coming into the space knowing that my value is is recognized here, and people have been preparing for me in this space. But, I mean, we have experienced resurrection at the Grove, which was, you know, a movement of God's power, not anybody else's. But you don't get resurrection until you go through death. And there was a lot of dying first in that you know, people who loved and walked together after Christ for a long time, like the paths diverged, and that was really, really painful.

Joshua Johnson: 24:33

There's a lot of people who are like, Hey, I just want to go from glory to glory. I don't want to see that death to actually bring about some resurrection and new life. So how did like this weakness and being in a weak spot start to help you see Jesus's teachings, his parables, what he's talking about in a new light?

Kate Murphy: 24:56

Well, I think all along the way, you know, as as next steps on the path became clear, I kept thinking, this is so painful and this is so hard, like, surely God wouldn't ask this of me. But then, you know, I was living my life, you know, prepping sermons and prepping Bible studies. So I just kept encountering, like, the actual scriptures and realizing, like, actually, you know, the people of faith actually walked through a lot of loss and a lot of hardship, and Jesus was very clear about sacrifice. And sometimes, you know, we get this idea, I think, by pastors who are marketing things to us, that if we can only be faithful, everything's going to go our way, and so to be able to recover the sense of like God is good and God is giving us a gift of abundant life. But sometimes we really are called to postures of faith and actions of faith that are sacrificial, that are hard. We were just preaching on Jacob, wrestling with the angel this past Sunday, and just saying, hey, sometimes God shows up to wrestle with you, and that is exhausting, and it's not fun. And you know, if we expect that God always shows up like a cup of tea, and, you know, a hero saving the day and giving us exactly what we want. We're going to miss it when God actually shows up to wrestle with us and say, Hey, you are determined to go this way, and I am determined that you will go that way, and just to say, yeah, sometimes we're called to do things that do not, you know, suit our preferences, and that can be faithful also. And so that really helped, like, just having this familiarity with the biblical texts and being like, you know, this thing that we're doing doesn't look impressive to the denominational structure, but Jesus didn't look impressive to the denominational structure. Or, you know, we're called into relationship with this person, and it doesn't look like they're going to have a promising outcome. But Jesus showed up and was in relationship with people who, you know, being in relationship with them cost him respect in the eyes of, you know, the people who were honored in their days. And there was this one older woman in the congregation, and you know, she lost way more than I did because she lost friends. I. She'd raised her children with and buried her parents with, and they were leaving, and she was staying, and she was not really personally in favor of any of the changes that we were making. But she said, as she was talking to people, she just kept saying, I keep looking at this and thinking, what about this? Displeases the Lord. Let me find one thing that we are trying to do that displeases Jesus, and I can't. And I find a lot of things. Her name is Kay, she said, I find a lot of things that displease Kay, but I can't find one thing that displeases Jesus. So I have to keep walking in this way. And it was that sort of eyes being opened, like being given to sight that everything that looks good isn't, and everything that seems like it's going to lead to life doesn't, and sometimes the things that you think for sure are going to kill you are actually the things that become a pathway to a life that is just more beautiful and rich than you ever had the capacity to imagine

Joshua Johnson: 28:19

you use the motif lost, hidden and small in your book. What do each of those mean for you? And why do you think Jesus kept on using these things over and over again?

Kate Murphy: 28:32

We often think that the kingdom of God is going to look like whatever is big and powerful and shiny and celebrated in our culture, we think like, wow, that looks excellent to us. So God must be in it. And when Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God, those are not any of the adjectives that he used. And so in my own journey, you know, again, starting with the, you know, sort of spiritual collapse at the very beginning of the book, I recognized that even though I had been prepared and trained according to the denomination, and I had a lot of the practical skills and competencies that pastors needed and that were valuable, that there were things I did not know and and things I did not see things that had been lost, and that, you know, unlike the the framing that I grew up with, which is like the lost, are those people over there who don't know Jesus, let's go save them. When Jesus teaches parables about the lost, these are all valuable things that belong, that have been separated from their rightful place, right? So the sheep, the lost sheep, belongs in the flock, and the lost coin is part of the treasure, and the lost son is part of the family. And so recognizing that the person who had lost something was me, was us, and we needed to go seeking the parts of the Jesus revelation that we had allowed, you know, the culture to blind us to and steal us hidden. You know, the Bible is very clear that God is both. There's this paradox at the heart of the revelation that God is, you know, incarnate, and that God comes to us and there's the Bible is full of Revelation. And also, the Bible is very clear that God is also hidden, that there are times that people ask for God's name and God says, no, like, can I see you? And God says, No. People do see God, and they go, woe is me, I'm gonna die. So there's just this tension that the Bible, the Bible, never tries to resolve, that there is part of God that is a mystery. And if you insist on having a faith that every little detail makes sense to you, what you really have is idol worshiping and that it's, you know, seeking. You know, Jesus says seek, right? And like, how many of us who think of ourselves as Christians really are seeking the Lord. We're not because we think we already found him. So really understanding that there were parts of God that were still to be discovered and and seeking God, you know, in the places where I assure that God wasn't like in my failures, in weakness, in a practice of repentance. And then, as the pastor of a small church, existing in a culture where anything that's good is big, to sort of have to say, Okay, wait a minute, where does my disgust for smallness come from? It doesn't come from Jesus. And when I can only see God in what is big, then I am literally missing the revelation of who Jesus is, who came, you know, from this small family, who was born in this small town, who never amassed a consistent, large following. You know that, and you know, we know that the the kingdom of God, defies the cultures of the world. And what is more, in contrast to the dominant cultures of the world, than an expectation that there is something sacred and holy and things that are small

Joshua Johnson: 32:13

so many people in revitalization are something they want the formula and you're calling. At idolatry, if we're following the formula to find God. Also, we like to measure success. So we measure, usually, we measure it by, you know, how many people are attending a service, how much money you have in the bank account, whatever the measurement is, as you've gone through this transformation and seeing Jesus in the in the lost, in the hidden, in the small what does success look like in the kingdom? What does success look like for a congregation that is trying to faithfully follow Jesus?

Kate Murphy: 32:53

I would say three things. One thing that's helped me so much is substituting the word success for faithfulness, because I think, you know, it's just natural, especially if you're a North American Christian, that you just want to be successful, and you think, Well, God's going to make me successful. And I think that that word will lead you into dangerous places. But if you replace the word success for faithful, then you're just open to a lot more. Because we know that sometimes faithfulness looks like, Hey, you win the battle. You know, the oil runs over and over and over and fills all the jars and and sometimes faithfulness looks like, you know, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being like, I know God can save us, but even if he doesn't, you know we're not bowing down to you. So just kind of knowing that all options are on the table. And sometimes, you know, the center of our faith is across. And so sometimes failure and loss are very much the results of faithfulness. And I think when we pursue success, then it's really easy, you know, with with all the genuineness in our hearts in the world, to just go, Well, I God could only be calling me to the options that look like they are going to lead to success. And so we rule certain things out because we know that's going to lead to danger and loss and risk. So faithfulness, really, that that has helped a lot. And then the other thing I would say is we have experienced a lot of growth at the Grove, and we have experienced growth and probably in numbers. In our budget, we're not building anything, but we are rehabbing our building for the first time in a long time. So I want to be like, I want to say two things at the same time that can seem like they can't both be true, which is like, I think it is faithful to want to see growth in the kingdom of God, to say, I want people to know Jesus. I want us to be able to serve even more of our neighbors. Like growth in and of itself, it is a kingdom value. And then Jesus says, like, I'm the vine and you are the branches. And apart from me, you can do nothing, but with me, you'll bear much fruit. So we have seen growth, but it came when we were willing to do things that looked like they would lead to death, and it came when we were willing to do things that like didn't suit our personal preferences. And so, you know, I think that's the challenge, is to understand that, like when God makes growth happen, God does it in such a way that the people involved know for sure that they're not the ones who made it happen, right? So Gideon has this mighty army, and then God sends two thirds of it home, because he doesn't want the people to feel proud that they got it done for him. They want. He wants the people to know that, you know, this tiny, little ragtag bunch will prevail because they're filled with the power of God. And so I think it's about understanding. Or for me, what I've discovered is knowing, a lot of times the thing that saves you is not the thing that you expect will save you one quick little story, and it's not in the book, but we had a neighbor who has since died, but lived within walking distance of the church, and he had lived a hard life, and he was a hard guy to love, and he was just teetering on the edge of Homelessness and in active addiction, and was just not like, it was not fun to spend time with him, and he used to call me and just complain about everything like, and he had my cell phone number, and I want to be available to people, and he was part of the church, but just like, nothing was good enough. And, you know, he was very hard. And I really felt, I mean, I I just felt compelled that I had to listen to him with love. But I just resented so much that this guy was just always piling on at a time when everything was hard and and one thing he would always say is like, Well, when I die, I'm going to leave the church a lot of money. And I just thought, like, that's just, and I would just always say, like, that's not, you know, we don't want your money. Like, we just want to be in community with you. We want to love you and be loved by you. Like, it's not about that. And, you know, and I, I really knew i. Like that was absolutely not going to happen, but that it was faithful to be loving to him and to include him honestly, when his presence in the community could have been a deterrent for other people, right? Because he was not he was not well, and he was not kind, but he was desperate for belonging, and then he just kind of disappeared. And then a couple years ago, we were contacted by a lawyer. Apparently, this guy really did have a lot of money, and really did write a write a will that left a ton of money to the Grove, because even in all of his brokenness, even in his process, he was so grateful that people at the grove tried to love him, and he remembered it. And I just think, like, it's such an example of like you do something because you just can't shake loose, that this is what Jesus would demand of you. And you know, it's faithful, even though you don't understand why. I mean, it wasn't because he left us money that that was the right thing to do. But I do think it's important to recognize that like when God calls us to live in a certain way, it has benefits and blessings that we never could have anticipated, because it's not the way of the world, it's the way of the kingdom and the kingdom. Think God works differently than this place?

Joshua Johnson: 38:36

Yeah, it does. So what does the growth look like? What's the community like now? How are people being disciples of Jesus together? What's this community look like?

Kate Murphy: 38:50

We have experienced miraculous growth now. We are still a small church, but we you know, when I came, we were maybe 45 on a Sunday morning, it was in an almost entirely white congregation. We had one woman who was from the Congo who worshiped with us regularly. The congregation's average age was 65 now on a Sunday morning, the church is broadly speaking, half Caucasian, half African American, some other folks sprinkled in as well. This past Sunday, we called the children up. And, I mean, it's just a random Sunday in October, it's not always like this, but we had had a lock in at the church the night before and and there were like 40 kids up front, and we were, again, like a small church. So, you know, because the church has pivoted so hard to non transactionally serving the neighborhood. We have a free after school program and summer camp. And you know, you serve people for a long time, and then they start wondering about, like, why do you do this? And maybe sometimes people will be part of the after school program for three or four years before they will accept an invitation to come up on a Sunday morning. Like it takes a long time to build trust with people for good reasons, but I think you know what it looks like is seeing that God is able to build the kingdom of God all by himself, as you know, as the saying goes, and that it's our job to be faithful and to let faithfulness to God be its own reward, and let go of outcomes. And then, you know, I just think God delights in showing himself to be faithful. And we find a lot of people who you know, are looking for a community that is more than it appears. That, you know, they'll see peeling paint, and they won't be turned off by that. They'll see like, wow, here's a church that cares more about running two Vacation Bible schools a year than about making sure that the inside of their building looks pristine. And, you know, I think the gospel is beautiful, and when you live by gospel values, it is attractive to people. And one of the things you know, community at the grove is different than in other churches, because there's so much cultural difference that there isn't a lot of superficial connection, it takes time to build trust and build friendships. Really, the only thing we have in common is Jesus, but that means when those relationships are built, they're deep and they're rich and they're faithful, and it's worth it, and we talk a lot about like, if you love church, then the grove might be a place that disappoints you because it doesn't have things that maybe you had in other places. It doesn't worship in the way that you have worshiped before. It doesn't, you know, function in some of the same ways that churches function. But if you are seeking Jesus, then the Grove is a real jesusy place, because there's just nothing else that holds us together, and that is both really costly and such a source of life and grace, and we sort of live every day. I mean, we're still an institutionally weak church, not as much as we were, but we are like, if God doesn't provide for us, that. We will not be here much longer, but if God is going to continue to provide then when there are, you know, mountains and Giants in front of us, you just can sort of have that piece of past, this understanding of saying like God still does impossible things, nothing is impossible with God. And we're going to find that out here, day by day, and that just brings an abundance that I don't think you find in the churches that typically seem like, you know, with with all the money and all the people and all the, you know, because that can become a burden, whereas, like, we're really free.

Joshua Johnson: 43:00

It reminds me of like yeast in the dough. The kingdom of God is like yeast in the dough, and that is like a miracle. You're like, how is this little thing going to rise and get bigger and grow into this beautiful loaf of bread? So what is, then, the role of the kingdom of God, with the congregation, with the church and the neighborhood. What does it look like to be yeast in

Kate Murphy: 43:28

the neighborhood? I mean, I think there are a lot of practical things that we do. We really have a culture that we want to interact with our neighborhood in completely non transactional ways. So like, instead of a yard give a yard sale, we have a yard give. Like, we just gather our stuff and then invite people in and say, Take whatever you want. And, you know, there's no donation box anywhere. We have a community meal once a month where anybody can come in and eat. And again, there's no donation box, and there's no program, there's no preaching. There's it's just like, come and have a meal with us. So we do not, we don't rent our space at all. We have partnerships with other ministries where we say, like, we want to give you, you know, we want to give you space here so that we can labor in this vineyard together. And so I think that really, it really changes the nature of our relationships, that they're not in any way characterized by an exchange of money. And I think in the neighborhood, to be able to say, Look, your kids can come to our spring break Vacation Bible School. You don't have to be a member of this church. You don't have to make a donation like you're welcome here, and you might come in and and people do, like they go to the mega church up the street, but they come to Vacation Bible School with us twice a year, and that's faithful for us, you know. And I think also just recognizing that, like, if we are who we think God is calling us to be. It makes sense that it'll take a while for people to see it right and and that not everyone will want it in that we need to be not sort of having some sort of sense of spiritual superiority, but just this great sense of deliverance that, like God has, like led us, sometimes kicking and screaming, to this life of freedom and abundance, and we're so happy to share it with anybody. And also, you know, we're not nobody owes us anything like everything we're doing, we're doing for Jesus. And so however people response responded, that's just an overflow. And you know, we talk a lot in the community among ourselves about the way we do things matter. So like, if we have a community meal, but if some teenager comes up and asks for seconds before everyone has first and somebody behind the line makes that young person feel stupid or rejected, then then we've just, like, really, we've really lost, because the way we do things matters more than what we do. And I think a lot of times, I think we get that out of a place of real sincerity, because we're so determined to do things perfectly and excellently for Jesus, and we just have so much tension that it spills over into our relationships with other people, and just being able to say, you know, this is a community where you are allowed to fail, like we are allowed to try something, and if it doesn't work, like that is called being human, right? And so it just creates so much more space for people to have ease and relax and feeling like God really is alive and at work in the world, and we can trust God. And one time a couple years ago, we do online giving and and somebody forgot to, like, set it so that we deposit in our bank account. And so it was, like, a month before the end of the school year, the the calendar year, and the treasurer called me in a panic, and he was like, Pastor, Kate, we're $50,000 short. And I was like, Well, okay, like, I mean, that doesn't surprise me. Of course we can be $50,000 short, like, like, we're gonna pray, we're gonna ask the Lord for help. Like, if we're $50,000 short, then we'll just have to, like, cut our budget. Like, you know what? Like, we're. I don't have $50,000 so like, either God's gonna help us or, you know, God's gonna be faithful to us in reduced circumstances, but either way, I think none of us really feel like snails with the church on our backs, right, like we're partnering with God in something. And so whatever happens, God can still be good to us, and God will still be good to us. And so we can really learn to walk trusting in God, even when our understanding would reasonably lead us to panic.

Joshua Johnson: 47:50

So good. What is sustaining you right now, in your in your spiritual life, what's sustaining you?

Kate Murphy: 47:56

I am working really deliberately on a regular daily office of pausing to pray three times a day. I want to be very clear that I'm very bad at it, because I have a monkey brain and it's really hard to sort of stop doing things for God, to be with God. But I know that my life comes from that. I know that sustaining me, even though it's hard, and I certainly, you know, rarely experience like the angels singing when I do it, it's just a matter of, you know, like Eugene Peterson, a long obedience in the same direction, and just sort of knowing that just because something doesn't feel like a dopamine hit, that doesn't mean it isn't good for me and good to me. So that is sustaining me. My friendships are sustaining me. Like, I think that a healthy body of Christ as like a friendship factory. And so I just because of my life in the grove, I just have so many friends in my life right now. And so just people who I enjoy being with, that I enjoy being church with, people that I feel like I don't have to hide and pretend, that I don't have to pretend that I work 90 hours a week for the grove and never have a moment you know, like the people who see me as you know, a real person with with gifts and also with weaknesses and Love me anyway, and that is saving my life, that I don't know what will happen, and I can't control the future, but I don't think I will have to walk it alone. I know that God will be with me, but I am so grateful as God with flesh, like also having these people who are with me that I'm not alone. So that's and then I really experienced probably my most intimate connections with God through the study of Scripture. And so I'm so thankful and grateful to have a job that just continually sends me to the word, and I'm preparing, you know, sermon or a Bible study or something, that I'm just have the gift of being enriched in God's word for my actual J, O, B, and that's such, such a blessing, and that's really sustaining me, because it's this counterweight to everything that I see on the news, and just the sense of like, okay, this can happen. This has happened before. God has shown us how to be faithful, and we can take heart, because Jesus has overcome the world.

Joshua Johnson: 50:41

A couple quick questions I have at the end here. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Kate Murphy: 50:48

I don't know if it would be advice. I think I would tell my 21 year old self that I was really okay, that my worthiness truly was not at stake, and that God really was going to be good to me regardless of how faithful I was. Like, just like, relax, the future is not at stake. God really is a good shepherd.

Joshua Johnson: 51:20

So good anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.

Kate Murphy: 51:24

There's a another pastor I know of, Daniel walpart, I think is how you say his name, and he has written a book called Living inward, looking outward. Inward, outward is in the title, but it's all about the connection between contemplative prayer and neighbor, love and social action. You know, so often we feel like you're you're either one kind of Christian or the other, and so just this sense of how being deeply, deeply immersed in the kingdom of God through contemplative practices won't pull you away from engaging with the world, but will show you how to engage even more deeply with the world. Some reading that, and then Sarah bessie's field notes. I really appreciate Sarah Bessie, and appreciate that particular book.

Joshua Johnson: 52:14

It was my book of the year last year. It was, it Okay, yeah. It's a fantastic. Book. I love it. So, yeah, it was really, really good. Kate, this has been fantastic. Lost, hidden small is out available anywhere books are sold. Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to to get the book? Or how could they connect with you and what you're doing?

Kate Murphy: 52:34

I would love for people to get the book anywhere they can get it. I'm it's such a dream for me that people would have this book. It is what I I like God was so faithful to me through my process, but it would have been so faithful to me to have a witness like this, that that even though it felt like everything was dying and going wrong, there was still hope. So I just really hope that people will get it. And I really would love to, would love to interact with people about the book. The our church website has my email address on it, Pastor Kate at the Grove, charlotte.org and I would love to interact about it. I am ridiculously in love with local church, like real community, where people can walk in and know and be known. And I I just, I agree with Bill Hybels, I think the local church is the hope of the world. And I really want this book to be like a breadcrumb of hope to people who are trying to figure out how to continue to sustain an outpost of the kingdom of God in their neighborhood, that that what you're doing matters, that that goodness lies ahead of you and that you already have what you need to be faithful in this season.

Joshua Johnson: 53:57

Well, that was a beautiful summation, and you said it better than I could. So Kate, thank you for this conversation. I really, really enjoyed it, and I just pray people would find find hope, and those little breadcrumbs of hope in this conversation, in the book and in the words of Jesus. And as Jesus can sustain you. He could sustain the people listening, and we could see a beautiful, beautiful outpost of the kingdom where you are. So thank you. It was fantastic.

Kate Murphy: 54:29

Amen. Thank you. Thank you. You. You.