The Church vs The Machine: Why We Must Return to Simplicity, Rest, and Jesus’ Design

What is the church supposed to be in the middle of a complex, fast-moving world?

In this season wrap-up conversation, we step back and look at the bigger picture: the global pressures facing the church today and the growing need to return to simplicity, discipleship, and the original design of Jesus.

Drawing from Scripture, cultural commentary, and the life and teachings of Jesus, we explore what it means to build communities that are not shaped by systems or “the machine,” but by the presence, authority, and mission of Christ Himself.

We talk about:
Why modern solutions often fail to bring true transformation
The tension between culture, systems, and the Kingdom of God
What it looks like to build simple, sustainable, Jesus-centered community
Why consecration, rest, and clarity of purpose matter more than complexity
The call back to discipleship, hospitality, and Spirit-led community life

This is a sobering but hopeful reminder: the church was never meant to be complicated. It was meant to be alive, present, and centered on Jesus.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.” — Isaiah 30:15 

If you’re feeling the tension between culture and calling, this conversation invites you back to what matters most.

The 2 or More Podcast is a conversation for lost balls and sleeping giants—followers of Jesus who are hungry for authenticity and to grow in their gifts and calling. Mike Bishop and Joel Henson explore what it looks like to plant sustainable microchurches, build spiritual family, and live out the kingdom of God in your whole life.

Instagram: 2ormore_podcast

Who is Everyday Mission? We are a people seeking transformation in our everyday lives and in the church. We are a people drawn into the harvest field by love. We are using our unique gifts, talents, and resources to influence the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to help equip Everyday Missionaries.

Website: https://www.everydaymission.com/
Instagram & TikTok: @EverydayMissionFlorida

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Wrapping up here at the end of season one, first set. Uh, we're gonna definitely just continue straight on with season two. But uh there were a couple of uh points that we wanted to talk about that we didn't get to. Yeah. And so just a little bonus bit of content. Let's talk about some of the problems that are facing the church as a whole, whether you're in a microchurch, whether you're in a mega church or anything in between. Uh there are some things happening globally and I think uh culturally that the church is gonna be up against.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I'm gonna try to try to do my best, Mark Sayer's impersonation here, and and sound really nerdy because I've been reading some books and try to be a cultural commentator, but I actually am really terrible at it. But I think it's an important question, and uh there there is a reason why we're we're talking about what we're talking about. Um there is a reason why I think the the concept of going back to the simplicity of what does it mean to be church, what does it mean to be disciples together, how do we do this sustainably, how do we open our homes to the stranger, welcome people in for healing and health and community and relationship and humanity and all of those things. And um so there's a there's a couple books that I've read recently, and this is just in the last few months, and these are relatively new books. I think they're both written in 2025. Uh the first one is by an author, Paul Kingsworth Kingsnorth. He's a British author. Um, interestingly enough, he used to be a pagan. He used to be like a um uh I forget what they're called, but like I don't know. He was he was he was a uh tree-hugging uh British, you know, green party, yeah uh granola-eaten, you know, pagan guy. And um he went down that road for a long time. He's about my age, he's in his 50s, and um, but he came to the end of himself at a certain point when he realized a lot of the rhetoric and stuff around the green movement that he had been committed his life to really didn't sound that much different than the other side, which was let's grow, let's expand, let's use technology to the furthest extent. You know, it was kind of like he was really struggling with that question. Why do things kind of sound the same across the board when it comes to the our culture's answers to the problems that we think we have?

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Yeah, things like uh like more government, less government, like you know, more money to these people, less money to these people, like it's all kind of the same.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

And and the responses and the answers to what do we deal about, what do we do about climate change? What do we do about you know uh hunger and lack of resources and these types of things? And so he eventually converted, he became an Orthodox Christian, and uh in the process of that, he began really looking historically at just kind of how did we get to where we are today? And he wrote this book, it's called uh Against the Machine on the Unmaking of Humanity, and uh highly recommend it. It's a great book, it's also a very sobering book because at its core, his message is essentially um it's a little bit like The Matrix. You know, when when Morpheus, and I'm dating myself here, but I think you young bucks have all watched The Matrix. Everybody's seen the Matrix. Everybody's seen The Matrix. But that scene uh when Neo finally meets Morpheus, and they're sitting in the two chairs across from each other, and he's like, you know, the world has been pulled down before your eyes, you know, and it's kind of like you want to take the blue pill and go back to your fake life, or you want to take the red pill, and of course now the red pill, that whole analogy has been toasted by politics and stuff. But toasted. I don't care. It's still a great scene and it's a great analogy. But what Kings North was really tapped into is that there really has been for decades, for more than a century, probably at this point a couple hundred years, a consistent move towards a world that essentially is trying to produce the kingdom of God without the king. And I like, you know, so his language, I I've talked about this in the past and used the word empire, but every time you say empire, people think of Star Wars or Rome or something like that. And I really have kind of taken to using his language of the machine. And I would define it this way, and I this is these are my words, this isn't his words, but I think it taps into the ideas that he was he was kind of trying to get at in the book. And my definition of the machine is the collective human effort through government, science, technology, art, business, war, entertainment, philosophy, and religion to inaugurate and realize the kingdom of God without the king. And the machine manufactures what is its product? Its product is hell. So the power of hell is produced when the machine does its work. Now you might sit here and protest and say, well, Mike, wait a second, you know, like there's good things about entertainment and you know, there's good things that have been produced by government and and those sorts of things. Yeah, all day long. But really, if you look back, especially within Western culture and and especially American culture, um a lot of those things are real because they were tapping into an identity that came from Christianity. It came from followers of Jesus, right? I mean, think of how in in in in England the slave trade was abolished. Well, it came because a Christian man decided, who was, you know, barely hanging on to his faith, but he realized one day, like, this is unjust, unjust, and he risked his entire reputation and his political career to say this is this is not what God wants, right? And so these are the types of things that I think we have to start looking and asking about our culture and being critical of and saying, you know, what about our experience as followers of Jesus and being the church is more aligned with the machine than it is with the kingdom? It's more aligned with honestly, with hell than it is with the kingdom of heaven, and our story as followers of Jesus, and our story that's always been the case uh from the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

So you're saying that the machine uh even you using these occasionally good things are producing hell. What's your definition of of hell specifically?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah, I think that's a good good point. And my definition of hell, again, these are my words, but this is just like I how I kind of conceive of it. Hell is is space absent of God.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah, that's that's okay. Definition I've heard previously.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

And it's not a location that can be traveled to, but it's a reality that can be experienced. So it's not like we travel to hell over here, and when we're not in hell, we're over here. It's on Earth, it might be expressed best in in like the idea of the fog of war. I've heard that phrase before. And thankfully, I've never had to be in the military, and I'm sure there's there's listeners and people that have experienced that before, and what that's like, what that's really like. And you see movies and stuff that kind of project that, and it's horrifying, right? It's just like evil incarnate all around you, and the taste of death that's just nonstop, right? Um but I think hell also might manifest itself in a church led by an abusive narcissist. Right? It's it's it's the result of pulling God out of the equation and just responding to things in a way that is completely devoid of anything kingdom, of anything Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Yeah, it's uh who is it that said uh um essentially like heaven is saying like Lord, thy will be done, and hell is essentially the Lord telling us like it's thy will be done. See, it's Lewis, yeah. Yeah, is it Lewis? Right. Makes sense. Most of my quotes are Lewis. Um yeah, I mean, uh if we stick with the Jordan Rayner definition of kingdom, or uh uh I think uh no, it wasn't Rayner. It was in his book that he he cited, uh I forget who it was, that essentially like uh heaven is wherever or the kingdom is wherever God's law is at, like wherever his will is done. Yeah, that's what Dallas Willard quote. Dallas thing. Yeah. And um so if we take that and we invert it, which is essentially what the fall is, it's it's it's creation in reverse, it's undoing creation, it's destruction, it is the will of God actively not being done. Right, then yeah, I mean, we can we can see that in a lot of places where I just see people meet their logical, their their absolute conclusive ends where they've exhausted everything they have and there's just nothing left. Right. I see that in my generation just trying so hard to reinvent themselves day in and day out and just not ever being good enough. Like that seems like an expression of hell to me, you know, where there is no amount of the Lord's will being done here because his will for you is not your own destruction, it's not your not your confusion, it's not any of this kind of stuff, it's not you being the impetus behind your own value, it is the fact that you have had value declared over you and that you are not a mistake, and that you weren't born in the wrong body, and you don't need to amass followers, and you don't have to do this to have value. Like that seems like a very common modern expression of hell. If we can inherit the kingdom in this lifetime, that's inheriting hell in this lifetime, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah, and I I mean, don't hear me say, like, I don't believe in a literal hell or anything like that. That's not the point here. The point is that we have inherited a culture and are part of a culture, it's the water we swim in that the machine is about perpetuating itself and growing and expanding and doing more and more and more and more. And regardless of what side of the political aisle you're on, right, it's there and it's functioning whether we like it or not. And so the question is okay, Mike, what do we do about that? That's that just all sounds gloom and doom. The other book, and I'll just throw this out there, I'm not gonna dwell on it, but I just read a book called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Why Superhuman AI Will Kill Us All. It's a great title. Um, but it's actually two guys that have been in the industry for years.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

And they wrote the book everyone dies because they're dead serious.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Yeah, I believe it. I shouldn't be laughing.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

No, it it's very serious.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Uh I and again, I'm not a tin hat kind of guy. I'm not sitting up here saying, like, you know, this is this is the Antichrist and it's happening tomorrow, and Jesus is coming. I hope he comes back tomorrow. All this to say, like, guys, this this stuff is going on. And and it's it's a trajectory that predates our lives. This is just the nature of things. This is what empire does. This is what the machine does. It functions for itself, not for God's glory.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Aaron Powell So what's the warning to the church? Like what's the message to God's people then?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

I I think it's it's it's like an old message. It's like a Jesus message, don't be deceived. It's it's a it's a message of, you know, like when he was warning his disciples about the impending doom of the temple, and he's like, you're gonna hear of wars and rumors of wars, and you're gonna hear this, and you're gonna hear that. And like, don't don't be deceived. Look for the signs of my coming, you know, of my judgment. And there's a there's a great um I heard a a teacher talk about that passage one time when you know when Jesus he says, you know, one one will be in the field and the other will be left, and you know, of course, that's where we got the book title Left Behind from. Right. A whole movie series around half of a verse. Yeah. Ironically, though, everywhere in Scripture, everywhere in Scripture, the people who are in judgment are the ones who are taken. The ones who are protected and secured and in the mercy of God are the ones who are left behind. And really what Jesus was saying is like, you you want to be in the camp of being on my side, right? And and that's not to escape the world, that's to embody the kingdom in this world. And so I think the word, and and kind of to wrap up the season, like we're we're talking about these things of like starting these communities in our homes and following God's heart and mission for various things, and you know, the practicalities of that and what it means to like actually in in a even in a marriage relationship to do this long term and do it in a healthy manner and all this stuff. But the stakes are that high. The stakes are that high, like the the enemy's roaming around like a roaring lion, right? The scripture says. And he's looking to take us out. He wants to take us out. He wants to take us out of the game. He wants you to stay a lost ball or a sleeping giant. He wants you to stay asleep at the wheel. He wants you to be mad at the church, he wants you to be hurt over what happened to you, you know? And what I'm saying is don't let him do that. Don't let him do that. Like, don't let the machine win. Because that's what the machine is gonna do. It's gonna put you to sleep, it's gonna keep you on your phone, it's gonna keep you distracted, it's gonna keep you drunk, it's gonna keep you busy at work.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yeah. It reminds me of Jesus teaching about Rome to the Israelites, about the Romans, is the the Jews wanted Jesus to come in and be this governmental overthrow figure, and Jesus is just teaching a different way. And so when I hear about the machine, whenever I hear about the powers that be that um are just the infinite multitudes that are self-serving, reaching their logical ends of death manifested, um, I want to overthrow it. How do we change it? But that's my exiled Israelite self wanting Jesus to come and serve me when Jesus is saying, I have a new kingdom that is coming. Like God has always been about restoration. And so what he's telling us, the church, is do not be confused, do not be deceived. Yeah, this is happening, but this isn't for you to change. This is a battle that I will finish one day. Yeah. So return to Jesus, return to repentance, return to community, stay together, share meals, don't lose faith. Start with what you have right in front of you. Keep with what's in your hands, the people in your life, the work you've been called to do. Start there. And then also just let the Lord do the heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Because we're just called to steward only what He's given us. The burden is not ours to carry. And so that the call to the church is the machine may be working, but so is God.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Amen. Yeah. I want to want to end with a a passage of scripture that I think encapsulates us well, and and it's it's exactly where we are at. And the people of Israel were in a similar place that Isaiah prophesied into, and this is from Isaiah 30. And the people of Israel at that time were going, they were going to the machine for help, which in that case was Egypt. Were they in Egyptian exile in Isaiah? No, they were in need of help. And instead of relying on Yahweh, they were going to Egypt for help. And Isaiah prophesies this in verse 15. He says, This is what the sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. And quietness and confidence is your strength. And of course, then he says, But you will have none of it. And, you know, you'll no, we'll get our help from Egypt. But that's the promise. That's that's what God is calling us to. He's calling us to true Sabbath rest in him. Right? In the midst of, you're right, we can't change it. We can't win. Not in our own strength. Jesus is gonna do that. Like, uh, you know, that's clear. But return to me, rest in me, and in quietness and confidence. I love those kind of two, almost they're they're they're like, you know, opposed to one another in our minds. But that's what God's calling us to. And so it's the it's the quietness of being satisfied with a few people in your home, taking care of your family, really sewing into deep relationship, community, discipleship, following Jesus with your whole life. But the confidence that, hey, I'm on I'm on Jesus, team Jesus here, that I'm gonna be left behind with him, right? And I'm not gonna be taken out of this story. I'm gonna see this story through to the end. That's what we're after.