Welcome to the Vanderwoman Leadership Podcast, where our team talks with top leaders about how to better serve and lead your team. Our goal is for you to gain tangible tips on topics such as culture, leadership, succession, and navigating people problems. We hope you enjoy today's show.
SPEAKER_03Hey friends, it's William Vanderblumen here. Thanks for joining us again on our leadership podcast, where I uh my my kids say, uh, Dad, you're like a Jimmy Fallon for the church. And I'm like, no, I'm not like that. But they're like, no, no, you introduced your friends to people. I'm like, well, that I do do, and I'm so excited today to introduce you to a friend of mine, uh, Daniel M. And I think this could be the podcast that combines the simplest last name with the most messed up last name in the Daniel. No kidding.
SPEAKER_02It's good to see you all. Hey, I can spell your last name though. I've I've known you long enough that I know how to spell the last name and what yeah, that is growing up. I played hockey and I had last name Envy. Like that was a thing. Because on the back of my jersey, I only had two letters. So one year, and all and everyone else had all these long last names like Vanderblumen and Dejardin and Smith and all this. So so one year I was like, okay, okay, dad, I want on the back of my jersey to go D space dot space I space M. So that so that so that my my my name would be longer. And then the first face off, the other kid was like, hey dim, hey dim, dim, dim, and I was like, oh, that was a bad mistake. I'm gonna hear this all year.
SPEAKER_03So you know, maybe you should have like if you've got kids in sports, maybe they could be numbered 999. Isn't that I am?
SPEAKER_01Oh, there you go.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, but then the last name will look even smaller that way. Well, I think I am is 999 in uh oh yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay, yeah, there you go. Lord shouting at me with thunder for making fun of your name. Listen, uh, if you're listening today, you're saying, who is this friend and what is he like? Uh or you're saying, why did Daniel come on that guy's podcast? But Daniel and I have known each other quite a while. Um, and and I think we knew each other when you were in Nashville. And I had served, so Daniel is a pastor in Edmonton, uh in Canada. Like it's one of the farthest north major cities in the country.
SPEAKER_02It it is the most populous, northernmost city in in North America. Yeah, 1.6 million people. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a big, big place. And uh oil and gas, like the Houston back and forth is pretty big. So it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and did search work at a church that I didn't know you were already connected to, and then you ended up doing a great succession, which honestly was one of the best ones I've seen. We try to be a student of those, and you guys have done a great job at Beulah Alliance. Uh so it's just a lot of little threads that uh come together for us to be on on this today together. So thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, glad to be on it. And Will, I was at Beulah when you came and did search work at Beulah. When then you went to LifeWay and then I went to Lifeway and then I came back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So my memory's not where it should be. Sorry. No, that's good. That's good. And uh, if you don't know anything about Edmonton, I would say um you have dark out shades because like it's daylight till what this is releasing in June, so it'll be daylight till 11 at night.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, probably past 11 o'clock at that time.
SPEAKER_03And then the sun comes back up at like yeah, 5, 6 a.m. Yeah. Well, it's five now, and we're not in June yet. So that's right. I I I uh when I flew out there, I guess you were there. Uh the the people at the church are like, we're it was not June. It was the other side of the calendar, and they said, We're really this is even cold for us because it was like 40 below, and the sun, I landed at 10 and thought, oh, it's super cloudy, the sun's not out. No, actually, that was about as bright as it was gonna get that day, and it just kind of along the horizon and then and then dropped.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, we're we're nowhere near Alaska when it comes to that side of stuff. But what's awesome about living in Edmonton on a positive side is we have a fantastic hockey team, and there's 320 days of sun in a year. Wow. So it is it is just for a Vancouver boy like me that grew up in rainy, cloudy, dreary weather year-round. I actually quite like it, despite the fact that it does get cold.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Well, lovely place, fantastic church. And I uh as much as I like just catch up, I'm super interested in your new book, uh, The Discipleship Opportunity. Now, I have been out of the game for a while. Honestly, I don't know. I was a pastor for a long time, but I don't know if I would have made it during the pandemic and the and the racial tensions and the political tensions and all the things that are making people be. I think your subtitle said something about we're post-everything or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Leading a great commissioned church in a post-everything world. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I am really fascinated, though. Like, first of all, as a guy who's tried to write a few books, it better be a pretty burning message in me for me to take the time to actually write a book. So, what what did God do in your life that made you go, I I gotta write this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. As I was just wrestling with doing succession in the middle of a pandemic, emerging out of succession, and then looking at this the sense that our city, our province, our country is growing leaps and bounds. I'll just give you a sense. Last year, Canada, so Canada is about a tenth of the size of the states, but Canada as a country grew by one million people, two hundred thousand.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02200,000 of the million came to the province I live in. Oh wow. Yes, so that is astronomical growth for us here. It's the largest measure of growth in decades upon decades. The city of Edmonton, Edmonton region that we are ministering in, it grew by a couple hundred thousand in the last five years. Okay, so there's astronomical growth happening. People from all over the country and outside the country are moving to Alberta because it's affordable, the economy is great, all of that. And I'm in a 102-year-old church having followed a 30-year lead pastor that is still a part of the church. I love Keith, he is well beloved. I he still preaches for us, it's fantastic. But the the issues that I have been wrestling with is okay, we're multi-generational, multi-campus, we are multi-ethnic, and we are living in a world where in Canada it is easier than ever to get medical assistance in dying. Right? It's easier than ever to that people's the idea of the sanctity of life, one side of things, and then you have all the political stuff on all the other side of things, and then the racial stuff, like everything, and this side of being post-truth, post-pandemic, post-Christian, and that's why the title of the book is this post-everything world. Like, how can we lead a great commission church in a post-everything world and not be consumed with all of the other stuff that are trying to that's trying to take the main stage at our church that's trying to take the focus off of Jesus? So that was really the premise and the the basis of the book. It was, I was like, I was we were trying to figure this out here, and with my work through Lifeway, and still helping other churches and keeping my pulse on the church in the West, I wanted to write a book that would be broadly helpful as we emerge and move into this post-everything world.
SPEAKER_03So um what's something new you learned? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I so so the the the trap of any sort of thing is we think the last five years is all of eternity. Right? And and and our and our timeline has shortened more and more. So what I wanted to do is I didn't want to write a post-pandemic book uh because what is this, what is our world gonna look like in five years? Right? There's no way to tell. So what I did instead was I went back as far as I could to one of the most significant trends that still shapes our church today, the church growth movement. So 70 years, I wasn't looking at the recent stuff, I went back 70 years and started doing a literature review on what are ways that the church growth movement is still affecting the church today, and we would never give credit to it because it's just so far away. And and and who's read all of those works? Right. Here here's a here's a quote, and I'm not gonna say who it is. I say who it is in the book, but I don't wanna you know uh throw any shade at anyone. But I read in the this was I think this is in the 60s when this was written. It said, a shrinking church is a sinning church. A shrinking church is a sinning church.
SPEAKER_03So Jesus sinned then, right? Because like around the sixth chapter of John, people quit following him. Oh that's awesome. And it's it's like John 6. I think it's 666. I think it's John 6, verse 56, that says, and then Jesus started to teach some difficult things, and people quit following him. That's the William version. But like, I guess he was sinning.
SPEAKER_02Right? So it's it's interesting. Like, no, no one today would would write that. You would be canceled pretty much if you were to say something like that online. But here's how that translates to us today. You have a pastor trying to lead faithfully in their neighborhood, and they are shrinking. Maybe it's because people are moving out of the city, maybe there's another reason or whatnot. They are being faithful to Jesus, they are abiding in Christ, John 15, and for some reason their church didn't grow by 5%, it shrunk by 5%, no fault to them. So no one today would look at that pastor, and the pastor wouldn't say to himself, oh, I'm sinning, you know, this is probably why it's happening, but they're gonna feel this weight of shame and guilt. Yeah, because what they're reading, the temperature in the church today is if you're not growing, well, the assumption is of course, like of course you're gonna grow, right? Of of course, why wouldn't you? So, what I did in the book was I actually went back 70 years, uncovered the assumptions, and then presented a pay a pathway forward where we're not doing and not repeating the past, but having a different focus in the way that we lead our churches.
SPEAKER_03So, can I play devil's advocate for a minute? Some people become some who think I'm related, it comes very natural, you know.
SPEAKER_01Oh you did quote John 666. It's true.
SPEAKER_03I know subdivisions, not street addresses, but then when I anyway, um, okay, so I came out of the Presbyterian church, right? And we're really good at having everything decent and orderly. We have systematic theology, we're really good at church discipline at making people feel bad about what they messed up on. But um, you know, we're not really into sales and marketing. So, like I I would get so frustrated with how hard I would have to work to get a congregation to realize there are people dying going to hell. Yes. And we actually own the switch that can flip that. Yeah, and we better get after it. And and you know, people say, Well, what's it? It's still my goal. People say, What's the mission of Vanderblum? And you know what it is? Overpopulate heaven. Our mission.
SPEAKER_01I love that. That is fantastic.
SPEAKER_03If we can help a church or a ministry find a leader quicker, get going quicker, there's a better chance they're gonna storm the gates of hell and overpopulate. I want to have the moment where Jesus says, Y'all pop everybody. I wasn't, I was kind of kidding. Like I thought pastors should get paid per baptism. And it seemed like a great idea until I realized that's kind of what kicked off the Reformation. So what do you say? Okay, okay. So Daniel, do you not care about salvations? What's the deal?
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay, so here's the paradigm that for the last 70 years the church and the West have operated off of, right? It's think about a linear scale where on the and and just just put a dash right in the middle, and you had churches on the one side that were focused on reaching non-Christians, they were heavily evangelistic focused, right? We can think about many numerous examples that would then be in today's version of the church growth movement, the seeker-sensitive movement, large churches like that. And then on the other side, you would have churches that are focused on reaching Christians, more discipleship over evangelism. So this is broad general stroke.
SPEAKER_03Oh, oh, I've yeah. Some guys are wired for sales and marketing evangelism. Some guys are wired to be interested in quality control. It's the same, every business faces the same tension, and and they don't really get along very well.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I love I love that parallel. So if if churches have been either focused on reaching non-Christians or reaching Christians, both have their strengths and both have their weaknesses, right? The what I had begun noticing was the people in our churches and the people in our communities weren't as simply put either non-Christians or Christians. There were individuals who were also, and this is the quadrant in the book, right? If left is non-Christian, right is Christian, there was also a vertical axis where there were people who are uninterested and interested. So you have uninterested non-Christians who I call sleepers, and you have uninterested Christians who are the consumers. And then you have on the top part of this matrix interested non-Christians who are seekers, right? And then interested Christians who are disciples. So when you think about and look at our communities and our churches, one thing that uh emerged to the surface, it existed before the pandemic, but one thing that emerged to the surface was this distinction between those who were both interested and uninterested. And I'll give you an example for Christians, you started seeing consumer, and consumerism has been a part of a church of the church, and it is part of our culture, has been for a long time, but you started seeing the disciples and the consumers separate from each other, like oil and water. Right. So what happened was the consumers started saying things like I'm gonna watch you. I love watching you right while take it. Listen to the verb, I'm watching you, and then I get to I loved the pandemic because I get to watch you, and then I get to watch this person, I gotta watch this person. I'm growing so much spiritually. They're not they're not acting out and living out their faith. They're just they're just eating, right? They're eating so much in that way, and you started seeing that you they you they even started saying things like your church when they were talking about the decisions that you, pastor, made regarding race, regarding restrictions, regarding all of the stuff. They started saying your church and not my church anymore, right? Those were the consumers that they were uninterested in the kingdom of God, uninterested in seeing more broadly speaking anything beyond themselves. And you also saw uninterested non-Christians, the sleepers. Because now there's no mom trying to get them to church, right? There's no social pressure or social benefit to going to church either. They they fell asleep spiritually. They were like, Well, I'm not going to concern myself with that. And we actually saw this distinction. So the thesis of the book is essentially, hey, here's how we got to this point. And instead of uh repeating the past and either being a church and having strategy that focuses either on non-Christians or Christians, why don't we flip the script and focus on the interested instead? Focus on the interested non-Christians and the interested Christians because who is gonna wake people up and bring them from uninterest to interest? It's the Holy Spirit. It's when we as followers of Christ love our neighbors when when when the love of Christ begins moving and working in and through us, that's what begins shaping people's hearts. It's not playing the greatest Taylor Swift song as an opener to your service, right? It's not doing some sort of big event that is trying to attract people to your context. No, the Holy Spirit can do that way more effectively. The love of Christ, when we start showing unity among brothers and sisters in Christ, that will attract people more toward the the reality of Jesus than any sort of slick marketing campaign.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, that's really, really good. Yeah. What uh what would you say? So so you move past the uh uninterested, we'll just focus on the interested and then hope things take care of itself. What would be two or three uh new lessons you've learned through your study that would uh that that pastors could take away today and say, ah, there's something I can plug in right now?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. So uh conversely speaking, I just want to talk about the uninterested because I know in the thesis of the book it's very much what does it look like for us to reach disciple and preach to each of these quadrants? What does it look like to shape our strategy around the interested? But for the purpose of the podcast and just as a a slight tidbit, when it comes to the uninterested, I'm not saying throw them to the curb because if you are a shepherd and God has called you to your church and to your community to just ignore some sheep or ignore segments, I mean that would be I would say pastoral malpractice, right? God has brought them to your care. So what do you then do? Okay, so when it comes to the consumers, I have three words challenge, disrupt, and disturb them. I love how this one preacher said he said the goal of preachers, the goal of preaching is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_03So when it comes to consumers, instead of letting them reform the Presbyterian version of that, because we're kind of we're really good at being crabby, uh, is uh to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfort.
SPEAKER_01You gotta afflict them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I love that. I love that. So when it comes to the consumers, right, you're not you're not throwing them to the side, but how do you have an in a posture of afflicting in a gracious way, uh confronting, challenging them, right? Where you're not letting your programming, your strategies, your efforts, your time, the amount of time you spend on emails and responding to emails and all that, you're not letting them drive the agenda and the vision of your church. But instead, you're challenging them with their posture. You're saying, and in the book I say, and we talk about this at Beulah, a disciple gathers, grows, gives, and goes together with others. So then the question is, hey, consumer, you're great at gathering and growing. And I know that's very important that we do as disciples, but how's your giving and going going? Because those are the pieces that often consumers will hold back on. So, so challenge, you know, disturb, disrupt the consumers in that way. And when it comes to the sleepers, when it comes to sleepers, love them and trust that the Holy Spirit is gonna move in their hearts and that Jesus is gonna go after them more than you ever could. I'll just I'll just share the story with you. We are, and this isn't we're not just seeing this here in Edmonton and at Beulah, but I'm hearing stories of this all over, all over, and not just in the underground church in China or in the Middle East either, but I'm hearing them in the west too. A couple months ago, there's There's a gentleman who came to our church. He hadn't been to a church in over two decades. Over two decades. All right. It was it was a childhood thing, but neh nothing he had ever adopted, or nothing he had ever lived and embodied himself. He went to he grew up going to Catholic school, Catholic church sort of thing. So he moves to Edmonton last year. He stuff's going on in his life. And he decides to Google Catholic churches near me. Okay. Because stuff's going on. He's trying to find basis. He's trying to find meaning. And he's like, well, I went to church a couple days ago, may decades ago. Maybe I'll try. So he googles Catholic Churches Near Me. You know that you know what the number one search result was? Beulah. Top. And and we'll for all the skeptics out there, we don't, and and maybe some of the the marketing folks are like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Do keyword searches.
SPEAKER_03Maybe you get a really cool ring out of it, you know, like the thing.
SPEAKER_02We don't spend any, we don't do SEO targeting or SEM in and around Catholic churches or anything like that. Right? There's nothing Catholic related. I know the name of our church is a bit odd, Beulah, but there's nothing Catholic in the name or in our description. How in the world, you know, try to explain how in the world that Beulah was the top result, and every other result under that was Catholic churches. We tried repeating it on different devices, it wouldn't work. Is that not the Holy Spirit? Wow. Calling that guy to himself. Wow. Like stories like that. And and and that's and the reason I share that is because I have so many stories like that. And it's not just our context, I'm seeing them in other churches where if we as a church commit to pray, our vision is to awaken Greater Edmonton to King Jesus. So the vision, the win isn't our churches getting bigger, our church getting because there's no way we can fit all of Greater Edmonton in our church. It's just we just want to see Greater Edmonton awakened to King Jesus. How good is as we are praying that, as we are serving, as we are doing that, what's happening is the Holy Spirit is bringing people to himself, right? Jesus is going after the the one, right? He's going after the one. And what would it look like if we were to trust him more to do that in our context? That's the that's the hope. That's the prayer.
SPEAKER_03So if I'm interested in this, I'm calling it quadrant two. I haven't seen the quadrants, but uh the the interested non-Christian, I'm assuming that's quadrant two.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, seekers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's always the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow on all these axes. Uh oh, quadrant two. So if you're focusing on those, did you find any old practices that are a total waste of time?
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. In reaching the interested non-Christians, yes. Yeah. What is what is interesting about that quadrant uh is that they want to talk about spiritual matters. They're with with Gen Z and Gen Alpha in particular, and and Barna and Alpha has done research on this, and and more and more of it's coming out right now. They're calling these two generations generation open, right? The open generation, because they are actually they're interested in the supernatural. They they they they're they're almost some scholars and experts are calling them pre-Christian, that we've gone from post-Christian to pre-Christian, right? Right. And and and they're and they are they know that more there is actually more to life than what we see with our eyes. They know that. Marvel has done an incredible job at not only entertaining us, but helping us understand that there are more, that time is a that that time is a complex dimension that we can't grasp fully. Right? The the multiverse, right? There and and I'm not saying the multiverse is gospel and truth and all that stuff, but they've done this thing where where it is general acceptance and knowledge that, yeah, you know what, there is actually more to life than go waking up, going to school, going to work, getting a family, you know, having a 401k, doing all they they know that more than ever. So church. Pardon me? I wonder why. Oh, I think part of the research that I saw was a little bit of it is seeing their older brothers and sisters and seeing millennials, seeing Gen X, seeing others around them try to build their lives around wealth and try to build their lives around just the here and now, and things still aren't working out for them.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. So there's there's that side of it. There, there's, I mean, I'm not a I'm not a historian and or a researcher in that way, but um yeah, so so so I say all that because if they understand that there is a supernatural, that there is more as a church, let's stop trying to convince them that there is. Right? Like, let's like let's let's let's just let's just assume that they know that because they do know that.
SPEAKER_03Uh when it comes it it reminds me of when you do public speaking somewhere where you're a guest preacher or whatever, and whatever guy gets up there and says, Good morning, and nobody says, Come on now, good morning. Yeah, oh it's morning. Start talking.
SPEAKER_01It's true. First 30 second speakers, don't lose it. Capture people's attentions, right?
SPEAKER_03But they know there's something else. You don't have to tell me that yeah, no, so it's a different starting point, huh?
SPEAKER_02Yes, 100%. You're not trying to convince them to become interested. They are because if they're not interested, they're not coming, they're not gonna go to whatever you put on, no matter how great or awesome, or even how great your free gift might be afterwards. People don't care about your free gift, they're not gonna give you their information for free gifts, right? Right? They're they're gonna give you their information because they they're interested. And here's the incredible thing we saw, well, we saw 3,300 first-time cards filled out last year. Wow. 3,300. We typically see 1,300. Wow. And that's not 3,300 new people, right? Because not everyone wants to fill it out.
SPEAKER_03And it's also not individuals because you get families filling out one card.
SPEAKER_02You know, no, well, we represent uh every every person. Yeah, so I've done 3,300 people, right?
SPEAKER_03New in our database every single week.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. So when you think about it from that perspective, there is this sense of okay, people are coming. And maybe part of it is understanding, hey, yes, we are a church, we can't quote unquote attract everyone or appeal to everyone, but that's not our mission. Our mission is to be faithful to Jesus and and and we are gonna be faithful, we are gonna love people, we are gonna be, we are gonna show and shine the love of Jesus and be the gospel to this world that's trying to find hope. And then if people know that there's a supernatural, right, why don't we show them that Jesus is real and Jesus does speak and Jesus does transform people's lives? Why why don't we actually as a church get so good at telling people stories that it's not just the the fails or the victories of the pastor, but we're so good at telling the congregation's stories that that is what becomes viral, not your story. Right? There is this one guy, he um he got baptized a few months ago and he was at a pick and pull trying to find a part for his car, and and and he's sharing this in his baptism story. Like the number of people that uh remember this is just astounding because he is at a pick and pull, no relationship to Jesus, no belief and faith, nothing, like no Christian background, none of that. And he there there he sees a book at the back of this truck, the back seat of this truck at this pick and pull. And that's not he didn't come to get a book, right? This isn't a library. He's coming to get parts for his car, so he sees it, but he just keeps on going and doing his thing. He can't get that book out of his mind. So he goes back, he grabs it, it's wet because the the the truck must have been submerged in water or whatnot. He looks, it's a Bible. Has he ever read a Bible? No, but he was there was something about that that he couldn't shake. He grabbed it, he brought it home, he dried it out, he started reading, and now he's a follower of Christ, and he got baptized, and he's being discipled. Like the pick and pole isn't a church, right? Like, this is Jesus drawing people to himself.
SPEAKER_03Has this um research? I mean, uh a book is really the summation of research, right? Has this research changed your preaching?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03Okay, how?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so so like I said, there's there's kind of the the way that I preach to the sleepers, the seekers, the the consumers, and the disciples are gonna be slightly different. Sure, right?
SPEAKER_03And Chris, but way different than a Sunday in March.
SPEAKER_02100%, 100%. But when it comes to preaching, it comes down to what we talked about earlier, too, the starting point, right? I am not trying to convince people to listen to me. Now, is that an excuse to be boring? No, no way. I have a preaching coach. I'm grateful that our elders have invested in me, not only through succession, but in allowing me to have a preaching coach to help me get better, right? Like any professional golfer or professional athlete, no matter how good they are, like they would have a coach continuously until they stop practicing. I believe preachers need coaches too. And anyway, so that was a little bit of a plug. So my preaching coach has helped me understand hey, a great introduction needs to both be create tension and curiosity. Create tension and curiosity. So if you think about a sermon, and we've all sat in sermons where you've been looking at your watch like literally the whole time. And then we've sat in sermons where it is over and it's been 45 minutes. Like you time just go, right? So they're they're the naysayers, right? They're the naysayers who are like, oh, we live in a time of of our society where you can't speak longer than 15 or 20 minutes in a sermon because you can't, you know, people's attention spends are they're they're shorter than a goldfish at seven seconds, right? You got you got that kind of stuff, right? But I think that's probably because you're boring, right? Right? If people are saying that, you're probably you probably don't know how to hold tension and create curiosity. You don't know the skills, which can be learned.
SPEAKER_03It's not that how different is that than what I learned, you know, in seminary about preaching, where it's like build an argument, Aristotelian rhetoric, whole different thing.
SPEAKER_02Yes, no, it's a hundred percent because you don't like the to end a message where no one knows how long it's been, it's been 45 minutes, but then for someone to leave just having been entertained and there's no life transformation, you're not opening up and digging people, digging into the scriptures, like, what's the use, right? Go to a comedian instead. So that's not what I'm arguing for either, right? But there is a sense, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's in some ways it's harder, right? Uh than preaching 20, 30, 40 years ago. I've heard great preachers from 20, 30, 40 years ago that frankly wouldn't that they'd nobody come now. It's or you know, the oratory uh platform has shifted, right? Yeah, but but what I'm not hearing from you, I'm hearing you've got a better starting point now. Yeah. So you have to get them square between the eyes with the tension and curiosity that leads to the gospel. Is that yes?
SPEAKER_02So 100%.
SPEAKER_03This is what excites me. So I am uh a nerd, okay. And in fact, uh before I decided to go into ministry, I was gonna this is gonna be like, no, William is way more boring than Daniel. I almost did a PhD in the history of doctrine, and I was gonna go teach that. Because I felt like if you could really study, this is what caught my ear when you said uh 70 years ago and mega, if you can study how it went in the past, you get a pretty good lens for the future. And one thing I'm hearing you say, and and this is William, sorry, this is my soapbox, former preacher. Um if you look at the mega trends over hundreds of years of people trying to spread the gospel, there is let's let's make it really big polls so you can see the tension and maybe there'll be some curiosity. There's the the on one end, there's the poll of, man, we gotta get some souls saved, right? And on the other end, there's no we gotta love them enough and then they'll come to know Jesus. Right? And and I feel like where discipleship has shifted right now is out of that we've got to uh uh uh get people into heaven and out of hell, make a decision, and more to show love for your city, show love for your region, and people will follow. Well, historically, that's a really bad proposition because it leads to social control, it leads to creation of things. And what I'm hearing you say is no, no, no, no, no. New opportunity, you got a better starting point. And maybe I'm overreading that.
SPEAKER_02Please, yes, yeah, new opportunity, you can actually focus on both. Instead of looking at left or right this way or that way and seeing it as an either or, I'm not saying, oh, well, let's just go both end, right? Isn't that gonna solve everything? No, no, because you can't, right? There's there's there's there's diverging viewpoints for a reason, right? But if right, because right now I'm not talking about left or right. This is a quadrant now with four, it's a matrix with four. So instead of focusing on left or right, let's focus on the top over the bottom. So the new frame is the interested, the interested non-Christians and the interested Christians. Your assumption and starting point is they want to be there, they are interested. You don't need to try to convince them otherwise. So give them the truth in a compelling, tension-filled way, in a way that that addresses an ache that they feel, right? There's there's a lot of um talk out there about the difference between when you do marketing and when you do communications, are you trying to sell a painkiller or a vitamin? Right? And and and the way, right? There's a big difference, right? So so should you take fish oil, Will? Like, should you take turmeric? I I mean, yeah, like I think it'll help your brain. Your thinking, it'll help your inflammation. But if you don't take it, will you notice? No, you won't. But man, if you have a pounding headache, you take that painkiller and that headache's gone within 30 minutes. How do we present the gospel in a way that is a painkiller? Not not I'm not, and I'm not saying it's just like a cheap solution to get rid of your headache, and because because you know, Advil doesn't heal you, it just takes it masks the pain, right? That's so don't take the illustration all the way down that road, right? But can you present the truth of the gospel in a way that actually addresses this spiritual, emotional, physical, psychological aches that people are feeling today? And they are they know social media is not the answer anymore. They know that they're they're trying, they they've probably gone to drugs, they've gone to marijuana, they've gone to alcohol, they've gone to sex, they've gone to all of these other things, and they're realizing that that it doesn't actually help. So when they come to your church, when they come to God, when they realize that, hey, maybe, maybe, maybe this this Christianity thing, may maybe maybe this is it. What if we actually give them the truth?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02That that's the piece, which is the yeah.
SPEAKER_03And you're not afraid of the truth because they might run away and not come back. It's a no it brings the two together because should we be loving the city so they know Jesus? Yes. Should we be people they're gonna go to hell if they don't so it's like it's in all of the above. We don't have to go. I love this. This is so good. So if you had um, if you had uh it doesn't have to be the single best piece of advice, but if you from what you've learned and the guy at the or gal that's listening to the podcast right now is like, I don't have time to read another book. Sorry, Daniel, I'll I'll buy it, but I'm not gonna read it. It's gonna sit on a nightstand, which everybody does. What would you want them to know from what God put in you in this message that will help them today?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Great question. Maybe this is a little bit of a repeat of what we talked about before, but can we stop letting the consumers hold us hostage? Oh wow, that's good. I don't recommend doing this on a frequent basis, but occasionally you should do this if you are a church leader. Uh you should Google your church and see what people say about it. Don't do this often because it's it'll either it'll either be great or it'll be horrible and you can go into a deep dark hole. But occasionally you should do this. And if you do it and you're like, but there's no Google reviews, okay, that says something. Because do you ever go to a restaurant anymore without looking it up first? Right. Never, right? And you look up a restaurant that someone's told you about, and and you have friends who are like raving about it, and you look it up and as one star or only like two reviews, would you go? No, I'd be like, Well, my friends probably don't know what they're talking about. This the culture day that we live in, everyone will look you up first. So look and see what people are saying, but don't let the comments and all of that hold you hostage because the vocal people are often the ones that drive the agenda of the church. And instead of letting them drive the agenda of the church, of the church and and what's underneath of them, what's the gospel they believe, well, we live in a consumeristic culture where the chief end of men right isn't to glorify God, right? It's that's not what it is. The chief end of men is my comfort, my convenience, and my choice. If you don't meet my comfort, my convenience, and my choice, I'm going, I'm taking my business and my tithes and my this and my that elsewhere. Let's start being held hostage by the consumers of our church and let's start preaching to, ministering, disciple reach, discipling and reaching those who want to be there. Because the Holy Spirit's bringing them.
SPEAKER_03I I'm gonna move that quote to the trailer of the podcast. That's gold. It's just gold. And I will say, what a nice bookend after I admit to being a recovering Presbyterian that you close us out with the first question of the Westminster Catechism. That's pretty simple.
SPEAKER_02Hey, hey man, hey, I I grew up Presbyterian, right? So I get you, man.
SPEAKER_03Oh, Daniel, this is such a gift to pastors, and I really enjoyed visiting. What tell me uh uh is there a central website? Is there like a go here and you'll find all the resources because books coming out, there's lots of things to learn besides just going to Amazon and ordering the book. Where should people go?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, totally. So one stop shop, Daniel M.com. So just my name. I M. So Daniel M.com, right? So uh if you go there, you'll find a link. Uh the full links Daniel M.com slash the discipleship opportunity, but that's too long, right? So you can just go there, find a link, you'll see there and more information, but it's wherever wherever books are sold, basically.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. Thanks so much for making time for us, Daniel. Enjoy the extra daylight you get. It's a whole nother 18 holes I could play after work if I lived up to uh good idea. We should go golfing together. That'd be fun. That'd be fun. Oh, take care, my friend. Thanks for joining us. And if you're joining us for the first time here, please consider uh offering a review, offering some kind of comment about what we could do better. We would love to hear from you. We can dial this in a little bit better each week. You can go to Vandercast.com and leave your email address. You will not get beaten up with offers for Ginsu knives and everything else under the sun. It's just for the podcast. So go to Vandercast.com and I hope you'll tune in again next week when I get to introduce you to another one of my friends that's doing amazing things for Team Jesus.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderblumen, we help organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, culture, compensation, and diversity solutions. Visit our website, Vanderblumen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our latest episodes. Thanks for listening.