What are we missing when no one really knows us? /// FOLLOW with Luke Peach

Episode 012: What are we missing when no one really knows us?

In this episode of the FOLLOW podcast, we explore why following Jesus was never meant to be a solo project.

In a culture shaped by hurry, curated identities, and digital connection, it is possible to be constantly seen without ever being truly known. We can stay busy, stay connected, and still keep the deepest parts of ourselves hidden.

But spiritual formation requires more than private belief. It takes time, honesty, risk, and relationships strong enough to hold both the beauty and the mess of who we are. Community is where we are encouraged, challenged, supported, and slowly formed into the people God intended us to become.

Being known comes with risk. But avoiding relationship carries a cost too. Following Jesus means learning to step toward community, make room for others, and allow ourselves to be fully seen.

Meet your hosts, Eric Parks and Steve Carter

Eric Parks

Eric is an Executive Pastor at Plum Creek Church in Castle Rock, Colorado, who cares deeply about helping people rehearse the way of Jesus in everyday life—and holds firm as a Denver Broncos fan, no matter how often Steve brings up the Bears.

Steve Carter

Steve is the Lead Pastor at Christ Church in Oak Brook, Illinois, offering a thoughtful and honest voice to the deeper work of formation and calling—and remains a devoted Chicago Bears fan, even with Eric representing Broncos country.

Explore all of FOLLOW

We’re all following something—habits, expectations, ambition—but Jesus offers a different way. A way marked by love, presence, trust, and a life that actually leads somewhere good. Not perfectly, but increasingly, we begin to shape our lives around his.

We believe that if Jesus is right—about God, about life, about the soul—then is only makes sense to rearrange your life around what he says is true.

Follow isn’t a program to complete or a path to master, but a way of life centered on Jesus. A way of living that takes shape over time through a steady rearrangement of our lives—our priorities, our rhythms, and the things we trust most.

Links

Follow: https://www.followtheway.church/

Plum...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

We're supposed to do faith in community, not in our individual quiet time only. Like we should be living life together and encouraging each other and talking about our lives together, like truly being known together. And I do believe that if you leave that out of the Christian journey, if you leave it out, then you won't be fully formed. Like you'll be missing something. This isn't just in the US, it's in the UK. Fourfold increase in Bible sales. Um we've seen uh church attendance among 18 and 24-year-olds in the UK jump from 4% to 16%. The Gen Z church scores average of 1.9 weekends a month double. So attending more regularly. So I mean it's real. Welcome to the follow podcast, which is built around one core conviction. If Jesus was right about God, about life, about the human soul, then it makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he said is true. And that's what we're exploring together. What Jesus said, why it's true, and how to actually rearrange our lives around it. Spring of 2025, decided that I was gonna take a trip with a good buddy. He had gone through some stuff and I did my research. I'm a big research guy, loved researching. By the way, this guy's you. Um and I I thought, you know what? Let's do something cool. Let's go, let's go from one coast of Italy to the other. Now, most people when they hear that, they're like, what a bougie trip. But truthfully, it cost 1300 bucks. I mean, it costs very little. We got Vespas, and I didn't really know why we were doing it, other than I just came up with this phrase, but we are all dying. And so I have this sense of like, hey, we should probably go into the phrase you just came up with. It is, I just came up with it.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Um, I didn't. What did I say? No, you said it so much more stylistically. Well no, it was great. It was I've always been dying. I've been dying my whole life. I've been dying my whole life. That's it. I've been I've been you gotta say I've been. I've been dying my whole life.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So I decide me and two other buddies, one of the buddies, Luke, he's our producer, we were gonna go across Italy, and we didn't know in retrospect, Vesping across Italy was not a very good idea. The scooters only went about 50 miles an hour. Um we were on highways. We I never looked at the route. That's the truth. I look back and I go, we never once checked the route, we never once went.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I wonder where this is going. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because I had so much confidence that you had already. No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

No, I in my head I was just like, I don't know. We're we're gonna get on these Vespas and go from one side to the other. Which we did. And um I was thinking about the trip. And here's the thing there, I was thinking, okay, what were five things that stood out to me on this trip? Because three of us were together, all we did is eat food. Um, like it we were together the whole time. That's it. We're just hanging out. That was it. There was no like going to ruins or seeing things, you know, touristy. We're just together. Here's the thing that struck me. Remember when we were sitting first day we get to Castle Abate. This is a small little village up in the mountains, right? You have Madjine that's like a castle town almost. So, you know, listener imagine, you know, cobblestones, we uh up and down a hill. I mean, it the verts high. I mean, the vertical up and down in that one little city is at the time. It's like straight fortress. Straight fortress. And I remember the first morning and the first evening, and I remember what caught my attention was here we are in this village, and the first morning there was a group of Italian women who were out at a table chopping it up, talking. Like they were out there these and the men, and the men too, and the men too. I was thinking about the men in the evening, but they would be out at the table from all over that little village. My guess is I don't know because I don't speak Italian, but my guess is that they lived in this village their whole life. They were they had to be what in their 60s and they were there every morning, and we were we were only there for a few days, but subsequently been back and seen the exact same people. They know each other, they know each other by name, they were out there every morning having coffee, talking, and then in the evenings, the fellas would go out every night. And I don't know what card game they're playing, they're playing some card game, but they would play cards before dinner every night. Yeah, they just all take off. They play like a couple rounds or whatever. And they go. And they just and here's what it here's here's what I thought about. This place is a known blue zone, and for our our listeners, a blue zone is Is it actually it is a known blue zone, known blue zone for sure. Well, I'll double check it. It's a okay, but these people live a very long time, right? And uh part of it is the activity that they're doing every single day, right? You're walking up and down, you know, it's a serious deal. Like you're walking up and down and you walk everywhere. In fact, I saw an old woman, she had to be in her 90s walking across that cobblestone, and I'm thinking part of why they live so long is certainly because of the activity that's happening here. But here's the other thing. I think part of the reason why they live so long is because of that social dynamic. There is a fabric in that community you see. You we were there for 48 hours, you could feel it and see it. They know each other, they're in each other's lives, they come down every morning, they have coffee. They probably know everything about each other's families, their kids, where they've been. They do life all the time together. It's like one of the to me, it was when I think back and I'm like, I we should move to Italy. I think because look at that life. There is something about living connected that you see, and it is appealing, but in our culture is really hard.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

When it's mund, I think it's I think there's a level of mundanity. Is that a word? Uh, to you see the same people all the time. You everybody knows your business, you're together every day, every day you're playing a card game at 5 p.m. before you go back to your family. Every morning you're hanging out with the same gals, same people, sipping espresso, which actually doesn't sound bad. But there is there is a level of I think boredom, uh mundaneness. I think that's one of the fears of people living in community these days, is everybody not everybody, but a lot of people like to put on a show. I mean, we live, we live in the age of social media, we live in the age of branding, and everybody has their brand, and it's all about your brand, and it's it's all about what people like see you as. But then everybody knows that when you go home, there's a side of you that comes out, or there's things that happen in your mind that you're like, these like a lot of people don't know me, know this side of me. And I'm reading things, I'm seeing it a lot pop up a lot more that like community is a factor of longevity and mental health. Um, because just think about it. Think about the stress you have when you're living a life that people don't know, or there's a piece of you that you feel like you can't let out, and the stress that comes with that, and the loneliness that comes with that, and the the the weight that puts on your heart and mind.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Well, I do think that is the whole point, right? That when you live in deep community with someone, with someone's like a community like that, you will be fully known. It is true, they're probably up in each other's business. That's part of being known. Like, this is like the stuff that I carry, this is the reality of who I am. That I suspect, I don't know this, I don't even think this would really be a conversation to be fully known. You just are fully known because you live in that village, you sit down at these tables, you they know you, they know what you know each other, you know each other's lives. And when we think about modernity, particularly in this Western world, now that's part of the West, it's in Italy, but I think about how much we have left out community as part of formation. Um, I mean deep community. I'm not talking about hanging out with somebody every now and again, or even like small groups, and I'm not suggesting small groups are a bad thing. I'm talking about living life with somebody where you know all their stuff and they know your stuff. And you fight and you laugh and you cry and you do life together. I do think uh what is missing in modern Christianity in our faith is a byproduct of your own personal Jesus for real. And and I think, yeah, you know, there's certainly an element of that that's true, and we should understand that uh spirit indwells us and lives within us, but I also think we should understand that this is meant to be done in community. It's it's so clear to me, like when you read the Bible, we're supposed to do faith in community, not in our individual quiet time only. Like we should be living life together and encouraging each other and talking about our lives together, like truly being known together. And I do believe that if you leave that out of the Christian journey, if you leave it out, then you won't be fully formed. Like you'll be missing something. You'll you cannot be fully discipled if you're like, Yeah, I don't think I want to walk into that. We laugh sometimes because you're one of the first people that I just like stop by their house in my whole life. I don't normally do that. Um for lots of reasons. I've been a pastor for a long time, and nobody wants their pastor showing up at their house. It's like, what did I do wrong?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

You're not my pastor.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

I know, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Uh but like technically you are, but you know, you're on paper.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

You're my friend first. On paper. But I mean, I think there's something like you have to be willing to stop by somebody's house and invite them on trips and go to places together, and then you have to be willing to share like this is like what's really going down. Um this is spiritual life. This is like this is how we were made to live, and we've disconnected so much from it that I fear for so many people, especially with the you know, the rectangle glowy box in our pocket, my phone, it will make us believe because we can see stuff. It's almost like I I got so frustrated. I saw a commercial, and it's a commercial for a program who said, So we're that's we're gonna be having a conversation about it. And I'm like, who's gonna be having a conversation about it? You're not gonna be having a conversation with me about it because you can't have a conversation with me about it because you're on the other side of a screen, right? That's how we feel. These are faux relationships, phones are faux. Like you can see certain things, but you don't really get to interact with someone.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

You you don't really have a you don't get the repercussions of your initial words against your reaction to someone's text message. You don't get the face-to-face response. Um same and social comments, like people don't get repercussions for the words that they say.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah, for that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, or and and and uh like on the other side of the coin, they don't experience the joy of if you say something encouraging and kind and you're supportive on social. You also don't get, yeah, that might fulfill you, like if you give someone a nice comment or a nice message on on social, but you also don't get to experience like what that does to someone when you're hold like when you're holding them or like they've experienced hardship and giving them a hug and like encouraging them.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Well, most people aren't going to say the things they're willing to say online to someone to their face, right? Thank God. Right. But I think that's part of it, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:06

What what do you feel like is actually keeping us from good, true, healthy community with longevity, love, knowledge of each other, uh, or in in what you were saying, like a true um spiritual as God intended it, community?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Well, I mean, I'm not a social scientist, so I'm I'm just gonna give you my thoughts on what I'm seeing as a pastor. Part of it is being known. You know, that's hard. Um but see to be fully known, then there's sort of uh something assumed, but you have to call it out. That takes time. And a lot of a lot of us are busy living our lives, doing our things, building careers. Um and we should do all those things, those aren't bad things. So the hurry, the hurry. And spending time. One of the one of my favorite things that happens over at your house when it happens is Sunday Fun Day. Like legitimately is no agenda. It's sitting on your porch, and we're really who knows how long that's gonna last. I mean, I don't know. I mean, there's days when we showed up at two and left at 11 at night. Um so time, you know, we don't I don't we're really busy.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

I think that's massive. I I think the thing that's getting lost right now in culture is people understanding that you need time um and that everybody has their own timing for things. Like uh this is a bad example, probably, but someone wants to run a marathon. It might it one person might require a year to train for that because their body's gotta get used to it. The ligaments and joints and bones have to get used to the impact and the changing of training if they maybe they were just doing strength training or maybe even nothing before, and then another person might be just ready to run it like in a couple weeks. And so a similar thing with with timing in life for a lot of things, with especially relationship, like just this time that it that it requires people to sit and be in real community get together and know each other. Um people are uncomfortable with it. They want to rush on to the next relationship, they wanna they want to rush on to the next thing when things things take time, especially relationship and just true, true long-term good, loving relationship.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Well, I think is that related to the Christian community too. Um really the things I would want the listener to understand. Um it does take time. It does take time. It does mean you'll have to reveal parts of yourself that are scary, and you could get hurt. What's the other reason besides you know, curated uh visions of ourself and time? Well, for some people, relationships are too painful, truthfully. That's not everybody, but there are plenty of people who are like, I've been really hurt, and whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, we're like, I just don't want to be hurt anymore. I don't want to get hurt. And so, like, and and that's a very natural instinct, right? Like, when you break your arm, if you hit and it's still healing and you hit it, your nerve endings will send you a signal that says, Don't let that arm get hit again. It happens to us, uh, you know, to our psyche as well. And all of us, you will not get through this life unscathed. You're gonna be hurt. You're gonna be hurt by some people who you know shouldn't hurt you, uh, family, friends. I mean, it's just gonna happen. And I say to people often, if you want to get through life unscathed and not having any sort of emotional pain, then you don't have a friend. Don't, yeah, that's a safe bet. You just have it, you'll just carry a different kind of pain. You'll be trading one pain for another. And the upside, so here's the other thing: what pain are you trading for? The pain of loneliness, the sting of never being known, no one ever folding you and holding the reality of who you are. You'll never know that. And loneliness and the avoidance of pain has very little upside. The only upside is the avoidance of pain. But a relationship has a ton of upside. Think about all the things that you've experienced with someone else and what you hold in that, like your the marriage relationship, so much pain, but so much upside, right? So much joy, so much connection. Like it is it worth it, yeah. 100% yes. Will you get hurt? Probably 100% yes. But I remind our listeners that this isn't just about relationship, it just is about uh Christian spiritual formation. I reiterate the first point your spiritual life is not a solo project, it just isn't, it was never meant to be. You find it throughout scripture. In fact, resiliency is learned and held in relationship. Ecclesiastes 4, I think, says two are better than one. Like something happens, but dude, here's the other piece of being fully known. I don't think character development can happen outside true character development outside a relationship. You you have to have somebody that looks uh that sits across from you that you trust and they call you on your stuff. You trust them to tell you the truth. They they encourage you, that they just help you see things you don't see about yourself, both good and bad. But if you really want to become the person that God intended when he thought you up, it will be done in community. Like this is this is it, this is part of the process, and this is why for me I come back to this is why local churches matter, right? They are not perfect, they fail because they're made of people, they hurt people, they violate relationships, and sometimes sometimes it's not always great. But that local church context, Christian community of people who are striving to understand Jesus, striving uh to build a life of faith, getting together and sharing the sacraments, these ordinances, sharing um scripture, learning together. Um, it does do something. It binds us together, it pulls us together. And I just don't think that we can become what God intended outside of real relationship. I'm not gonna get into deep theology, but that is God. He is in constant community all the time. That's what the Trinity is. It is a communal, our faith is communal, right? It is. When you think about the Holy Spirit, it's indwelling, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, alive in us. It is that is our faith. I think the big challenge is um learning and having the courage to join a table somewhere. And if you don't know where a table is, make one. Make one. Um, I remember when I first started coming around Castle Rock and I didn't know anybody. And we have been through some relational stuff and some relational trauma. Chrissy and I and um at the time the idea of being someone that people knew like really knew sounded a little terrifying. Like yeah, I don't know if I want that. And um but I remember, dude, I remember this. I was sitting at Lost Coffee and um which is a coffee shop here in town, and I had the thought, I just think I just think knowing people is worth it. And I think what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna I'm just gonna work really hard to know some people. And I think for the last three years, that has been my journey is yeah, I'm gonna get hurt. It's inevitable. Um, but I started with zero friends. Zero. And I think now I can look at some deep, deep relationships because I just decided. I just decided. I think it's a cop out to go, well, I don't know how and I don't know where. And and I'm I am an extrovert, it is true. But in the same note, there's a level of intentionality that starts with a desire to say, I just I just want to be in relationships like these. I think it mattered to my faith, matters to my life, and so I'm just gonna pursue them. I'm gonna ask people out for coffee, I'm gonna go to people's house, we're gonna ask them at the dinner, I'm gonna find my people. And um anybody can do it, and everybody should do it. I'm not a big should guy, but everybody should do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

I saw a Rick Rubin uh interview on a podcast, I don't know what podcast it was. Um, you know Rick Rubin? Oh yeah, creative guy, yeah, producer. Yeah. Uh he was talking about the massive influx of young people going back to church. Reflecting back on what you're saying about community in a spiritual formation sense. Why, why is that happening with this new with the younger generation? What what of is it something that they've been missing? Um where how does that come into play with millennials and deconstruction, reconstruction? Is it just the natural flow of life in the world and people do the opposite of what the previous generation did? Why do you why do you think that that this is happening with the younger generation?

SPEAKER_00 24:49

That's a good question. Um you hit a bunch of reasons. Um let me think for a second on why I think that is. There is a movement toward the church in a younger generation that we haven't seen in a while. I think that's true. We see it documented. Um this isn't in just in the US, it's in the UK. Um, fourfold increase in Bible sales. Um we've seen uh church attendance among 18 and 24-year-olds in the UK jump from 4% to 16%. Um we've seen the uh rate uh the Gen Z church scores average of 1.9 weekends a month double. So attending more regularly. So I mean it's real, it's not anecdotal. There's probably uh lots of reasons. There's a meaning crisis in our culture. I was reading a book, Ego is the enemy. This was written over 10 years ago. It's fantastic, but but he makes the point that passion versus purpose, and that we've often talked about people pursuing their passion, and he makes the case that's the wrong approach. That purpose and meaning is actually what sustains a career in a life, not passion. Um, and makes a case as he writes that sometimes passion actually is your is not just your not a good friend, it's an enemy. Purpose and meaning. So I do think there's a purpose and meaning vacuum right now. So I think that's part of it, where there's a generation going, I want to know why I'm here, why was I put on this planet? And what's the meaning of my life? I think there's a hunger for something real and not digital, and you find that in church context. It's real human beings and real a Bible that's existed for thousands of years, right? It's not uh the latest app, it's not digital, it's real. People think there's a desire to touch something. Something that stood the test of time as well. But I think, but I do think that this whole concept of Christian community is part of it too. There's a loneliness that exists in our culture, a documented loneliness that's spreading like an epidemic. And um when you walk into a church, most churches that I walk into, the people are genuinely glad you came in. You have people who shake your hand at the door, and um the church that we attend, I mean, I hear it every single weekend. New people who come up to me and say, This was really awesome because I just met so many people, and so many people said hi. And that's not like going to a movie. Nobody's shaking your hand when you go to a movie, right? Um, and uh even when you go to a sporting event, you can go to a Broncos game and be uh uh really lonely in a sea of 75,000 people because nobody's trying to shake your hand. They came with who they came with, and so I think there is a communal aspect where there's a generation of people who are looking for connection, they want to be connected to something bigger than themselves and to other people who are trying to live they're looking for a way of life. Do not underestimate that at the end of the day, this is about giving some method for living to people. When you look at Jesus' words, certainly there's so much to this, I could talk about it for a long time. But Jesus is laying out a way of life. That is why in the beginning we were known as followers of the way. If you go back to Acts chapter 19, when Paul gets in Arruckus in Ephesians in Ephesus, right, with with when he writes to the Church of Ephesians, he he wrote that letter six years after being in Ephesus. Um, they said there a disturbance arose of following the way. That's what we were known as, followers of the way, the way of life, the way we live. And I think that's part of it too. Like a generation longing for a way to live. Give me a philosophy of life. Tell me how I'm supposed to exist on this planet, and all these things combine to make what we're seeing happen.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Um it's crazy to me that the movement toward towards church is happening in an era when there's never been more content, more data on ways that you could live your life, displayed by influencers, by YouTube channels, by all these things like you want to be a runner, here's how you do it. You want to lift, here's how you do it, you want to fish, here's how you do it, you want to sail, here's how you do it, you want to be a musician, here's how you do it. Here's the lifestyle you live, here's how you you just immerse yourself into this. And never has there been more of an option to just be yourself and make money doing it. Yet still there is a a hole.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

There's a well, that's just it, right? Because I actually think part of what's happening is we have so much content, and now we have so many opinions, and the opinions come in the form of influencers who just say things, whatever it is that they want to say. Jesus is a proven way, it's proven. There are people who have died for this way, this way. As I have often said, um, if he's right, if Jesus is right about God, about life and the soul, then it would make sense that we would rearrange our lives around these things he said is true. This is his way. Now, I think people need to try it. They need to try in Jesus' way. Uh, but I I think at the at the end of the day, we all are looking for a way to live, a way to exist. Help me get through this life. And Jesus offers, faith offers, this faith offers a way that has been proven over a long stretch of time. Um to work. So that's why I'm like, well, try it. Uh, I think that's why people are trying church, they're stepping into these buildings, they're trying to understand what Jesus' words were, what he meant, what he was up to. And so I I think it's an exciting time. Um, and again, I want to draw us back to it's like, what a beautiful thing that you don't step into it alone. The way was always a way of people. There was a group of people from the very beginning in Acts chapter 2. The church didn't start uh with a single person. Pentecost happened when a group of people got together in an upper room. The Holy Spirit came and the church was born. And uh that's pretty beautiful. Uh that's that's the beginning, that's the beginning of our faith.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

So thanks for letting me be a part of this one.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Well, that's gonna do it for today. If something landed for you in this conversation, don't just let it sit. Take it with you, carry it into your week, talk about it with someone, let it do something in you. And if you want to go deeper, click on the link in the show notes. We'll be back soon with more. But until then, keep following.