Becoming a Pastor Theologian | Cole Feix

In this episode of the CPT Podcast, we welcome Rev. Cole Feix, pastor of Carlton Landing Community Church and a member of the CPT’s St Irenaeus Fellowship. Cole shares his journey from faith exploration and theological formation to pastoral ministry in a unique new urbanist community.

Cole reflects on how intentional spaces, hospitality, and deep relationships create opportunities for spiritual growth, and how his experience pastoring in a walkable, close-knit town has shaped his understanding of the pastor theologian’s calling. We explore questions of place-making, community, discipleship, and what the church can learn from the environments where ministry happens.

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Transcript

Cole Feix 0:01

I think it's even more important in the age that we live in. We're trained all the time to curate the way people perceive us. The problem though is you actually will never grow if that's the way people experience. True love for one another has to be rooted in like deep knowledge of one another.

Zach Wagner 0:22

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the CPT Podcast. I'm Zach Wagner, and as always, joined by CPT President Joel Lawrence. Hello, Joel. Hello, Zach. And you just finished a conversation with Cole Fakes, who is one of our newer CPT fellows in our recently inaugurated St. Irenaeus Fellowship, which met in person for the first time this past February. Am I getting that right?

Joel Lawrence 0:49

February. Yeah, that's right. Yep. Yep.

Zach Wagner 0:51

And Cole serves as the senior pastor at Carlton Landing Community Church. It's a pretty unique ministry context, as I'm sure you guys talk about on the conversation. And uh I've had a ton of fun getting to know Cole over the past year. And uh tell us maybe one or two things that stood out to you about this conversation with him.

Joel Lawrence 1:12

Yeah, it was fun, as you said, with a newer fellow just to hear his story and and get a little more background on the way the Lord has been working in his life and shaping him. Um what what's I think one of the really interesting parts about where Cole is serving is he's in this very unique kind of master planned community. I mean, and it's sort of a building out a town within human scale, right? So everyone walks. There's there's a I think it's there's one store, and there's, you know, a post office, and his is the only church in the community. And so all the houses are built, you know, kind of around a town square and they have porches. And it just has gotten him thinking a lot about place and a lot about pastoring in in a very modern world, but in this kind of a location that is reflecting about how we live in that modern world and how for him, now how do you pastor in that modern world, but in this kind of a community that that is more of a throwback to 150 years ago. Yes. Uh, and so yeah, it was it was a fun conversation. We we kind of left it at we need to have another just kind of theology pastor conversation about place, yes, and and how what he's learning can't be translated to certain areas of of our lives, but also what what could be translated, even if we don't live in this kind of a master plan place.

Zach Wagner 2:41

Yeah. Yeah, what's unique about their context is well, I suppose that it's unique. And what I mean by that is it cultivates some intentionality around what does it mean to be here? You know, it's neither your kind of diverse urban environments where you have a lot of socioeconomic and racial stratification, nor is it cookie cutter suburb, nor is it run-of-the-mill rural, small town of Maryland. It's its own thing. So it it I think sets him up well to be thinking intentionally about these things. So absolutely. Yeah. So hope this conversation is uh a blessing and an encouragement and uh stimulating to you listeners, and we'll get into it right now.

Joel Lawrence 3:35

Cole, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on.

Cole Feix 3:38

Joel, thanks for having me on.

Joel Lawrence 3:39

Yeah, so we're we're doing one of our uh Becoming a Pastor Theologian podcasts. Uh, and Cole is newer, new to the CPT, joined the new St. Irenaeus Fellowship that has just launched this last year. So we're we're uh excited to have you involved and look forward to getting to know you a little bit through this conversation.

Cole Feix 3:58

Yes, thank you. And I'm I'm thrilled to be a part of the fellowship and have looked looked to the work of the CPT for a long time and and uh love what you guys have done and really thrilled to get to learn from the group, get to participate in it. It's it's been a real joy so far.

Joel Lawrence 4:13

It's great. Yeah, it's been a it's been a really fun group. We've been really encouraged, and we were just recorded on a on a call yesterday with the whole group and had had a great conversation. So it's been fun. And so um, you know, as is our pattern for these, we're just kind of want to get to know you a little bit and hear about your journey, how the Lord has been at work in your life, your uh your spiritual journey, your educational journey, uh, where you are, where you're ministering now. So, so let's begin at the beginning. Tell us uh where were you born, where'd you grow up, what was your your connection to church and faith in in the early years.

Cole Feix 4:46

Well, I I grew up in Oklahoma City and we lived there from the time I was born until I went to college and uh loved Oklahoma City. I my dad is now a pastor, but he was not a pastor when I was a kid, so had an adult onset pastor's kid. Uh interesting. Yeah, that's related in certain ways, I think, to the pastor's kid, but not you know, in every way.

Joel Lawrence 5:08

That is an unusual pattern. You don't you don't hear that too often. That's right.

Cole Feix 5:12

I I I think some of it I got the best of both worlds, honestly. But uh we were we came from a believing home. He was always involved with the church, Sunday school teacher. That was really important in our family. Um and I have great godly parents, and they modeled the Christian life for me really, really well. Um but like many, many people, it definitely I definitely went through a season where I had to make my faith my own. You know, I grew up going to Christian school, uh albeit a nominal Christian school. And one of the really formative things actually that I think of now in hindsight is I went to a school from pre-K through eighth grade that was uh a school where you went to chapel every day and you did a Book of Common Prayer service. So, you know, you're up and down on the kneelers, you're reading the responses, you know what a collect is by the time you're about seven years old, you know, you're reading from the hymn book, and and some of those things, depending on your tradition, and certainly in my tradition where we went to church, those things have become kind of lost in the way we worship. But but of course now we're seeing a great resurgence of kind of low church liturgy. Right. And I I understand that because that resonates so deeply with me from that formative period of my life that you know those those liturgies and things really do they are powerful. They're not just rote, they're really powerful. And they put something, they put something in me at least that's kind of followed me my whole life. By by the time I got to be a teenager, though, I um was was definitely exploring what life would look like if I believed something different, you know. So not not an aggressive uh atheist by any means, but but it certainly it it you know it I I encountered the thought that if I didn't believe in God and I didn't have to submit to him, then I could do whatever I wanted, which you know to a 15-year-old is a really appealing.

Joel Lawrence 6:56

It's not bad.

Cole Feix 6:56

Yeah, I'd read enough Nietzsche at that point to to realize, okay, there's there's more here than maybe has been offered.

Joel Lawrence 7:03

So so hold on, let me look you you were reading Nietzsche as a 15-year-old. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 7:08

One of my absolute first loves as a philosophy guy, which I would go on to major in and have always loved. Um, you know, I think it was my dad actually that introduced me to him. And that's that's a lot of what the culture of our family was like. Uh, we're never really afraid to explore any thought to the end, you know, lay truth down next to anything else, kind of one of our family mottos. You can lay truth down next to anything else and it will come out true. And so sometimes you have to take a pretty circuitous route to get there. You know, there are really formidable things to read and think through. But yeah, so I had read quite a bit of Nietzsche. I'd done debate in high school, so you know, you're reading through different political philosophy and ethical systems, and so I had this very rich table spread before me. And I like I said, I'd kind of decided, okay, well, if you don't have to submit to God, then you can kind of I wouldn't put it this way, but you can be your own God, you know, which uh as an adolescent is is appealing. So what happened, uh, and this is kind of tied in, there's two big events that happened in my life where God intervened that kind of shaped my my whole who whole of who I am now, both as a Christian and as a pastor. The first one was when I was 17. It was Christmas, it was the night of Christmas, and I was asleep in bed. I I was dreaming, and I had this dream that kind of encompassed all the good connotations of Christianity from my childhood. So camps and youth group and different things that we had done. And the people that had made a big impact, it's almost like this little slideshow of impact, you know, in my life. And so I'm I'm waking up, I sit up in in bed, it's like two o'clock or two thirty in the morning. I sit up in bed and all of a sudden everything stops. Just this total dark emptiness, and there's this voice, and the voice says, Cole, if you want to be content in life, it will only be through me.

Joel Lawrence 9:09

Wow. Wow.

Cole Feix 9:10

So I I was actually kind of astounded by this. I thought, you know, I would imagine. I'd say this kind of tongue in cheek, but I'd grown up Presbyterian. You know, I wasn't really sure this kind of thing happened. We were not, you know, charismatics. Um, but I and so at the in the moment I thought, that is just so strange. I'm not sure what to make of it. So I go back to sleep. I wake up the next morning, and I'm I'm just sitting there thinking through this, and I think, you know, I'm not having an identity crisis, I'm not, you know, panicked about my future. There was nothing that would have precipitated, at least from my perspective at that time, yeah, that I could have just, you know, produced this on my own. I thought to myself, I wonder if this is God. You know, I really wonder if this is God speaking to me. So I thought, you know, I've had this wonderful kind of Christian childhood, but I can honestly say I've never truly submitted myself completely to God and followed Christ. I've never, never made it my own, at least. You know, I've been God's grandchild for certain portions of my life, but I've never really embraced Christ. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna trust God, I'm gonna step out, I'm gonna respond to this. And so I got down on my knees next to my bed and surrendered my life to Christ. And I'll tell you though, I only had enough faith at that time to say, God, I will trust you, I'll follow you, I'll give it my all for one month. And if that month proves to be good, you know, maybe I'll re-up for another month, but I'm not going on a yearly contract, you know.

Joel Lawrence 10:37

But I'll it's it's tentative surrender, right?

Cole Feix 10:40

Yes, not total surrender, but tentative surrender for a month. Yeah. Well, you know, God has a sense of humor in these things. That next month was really uh it was a it was a difficult month. There were all kinds of things that happened. The short short story is I ended up getting suspended from high school for cheating on a test that I had done before I had, you know, become a Christian. I ended up having to confess, you know, and and I remember I can remember sitting in the parking lot at our school, getting ready to go down, knowing because I had lied about it and knowing that I needed to be truthful. And part of the reason was because when I became a Christian, I started to pray every night just as a discipline. You know, head hits the pillow, you be in praying. And of course, you know, I lay there praying and I'm like, man, I can't do this. I've got this huge block, you know, in place. Because on the one hand, I said I would follow God fully and completely. And on the other hand, I'm like, I'm not sure I want to go that far with, you know, trusting him. So I'm sitting there in the car, and I don't I don't remember when this had happened, but I'd some at some point I had memorized Matthew 16, 24. You know, whoever wants to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. But what good is it for a man who gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

Joel Lawrence 11:52

Yeah.

Cole Feix 11:53

And I just sat there thinking, okay, you said, I I said, I will follow you completely. So I trusted God. And that that was the first time that I can remember trusting God in a big way for what felt like my whole world. You know, um, what are the implications going to be? What, you know, all of that. This it was like one of those clear moments where I said, Okay, I'll trust you with the results. I'm just gonna be faithful. And so anyway, went in, confessed, got suspended, and and God, God did some amazing things there where he started to build me back up, you know, according to his plan. So it became impossible at that point to build my reputation on my own merits. Uh, relationships were different, you know, all of that stuff was kind of wiped clean, which I never would have done, you know, on my own. But through that, God used it. And the funny thing is, I don't think I even re-re-evaluated after that month. I was so convinced by trusting God that that's what I wanted to do, that He was willing, you know, He was willing to love me. My identity was now based on being a forgiven sinner as opposed to like a perfectionist or a performer or whatever. And so it wasn't until way later that I went back and I was like, oh, I didn't even reevaluate my my month here. You know, in some ways here, you know, almost like 20 years later, I'm I'm on my month. It's an extended month now. But I never looked back because I just see that as kind of a watershed of God inviting me to trust him with everything and then him proving himself true. Not because it wasn't difficult. I mean, we all know that trusting God is not easy, but just in the way that you get God. I mean, that it was the first time that became clear to me. It's like if you surrender everything else, but you get God, that you know, that's worth it. And that that just was like the profound moment of my early life and life as a Christian that stayed with me to today.

Joel Lawrence 13:37

I I I thanks for sharing that. Uh it's so it's so fun to hear. And one of the the joys about doing these conversations with with so many people over the years is how different people's stories are and yet how how how similar the the similar thing is that God is in pursuit.

Cole Feix 13:56

Y es.

Joel Lawrence 13:56 Joel Lawrence 13:56

Right. I mean, there's the activity of God that is pursuing, and how that plays out is different in different people's lives, but that that kind of consistent, that consistent testimony that comes through is God was after me in ways I didn't understand. Um, I'm thinking I'm making all these decisions. I'm thinking I'm I'm evaluating all these things, and and God's at work. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah. So at what point? Um, so this kind of taking us into high school, at what point do you start sensing call to ministry? Where where did you go to your undergrad? How how does the story go on from there?

Cole Feix 14:35

Yeah, so it was right about that time, probably shortly after that time, that my dad did become a pastor. And so it hadn't occurred to me career-wise to be a pastor, probably. Um, it just wasn't kind of in my view, I wouldn't say it's like a viable option.

Joel Lawrence 14:51

Can can you take take like one minute and just tell us a little bit about your dad's about your dad's process? Because that's that's so interesting. Yeah.

Cole Feix 14:58

Yeah. Yeah. So so my dad, the entire time I was growing up, my dad was just a corporate executive. He he worked for Southwestern Bell, and then when Southwestern Bell and ATT merged together, he was at a place in the company where through the course of that merger, he was able to effectively retire. And um so he so he had all this business experience. You know, he had done everything from you know, starting in like early IT. I give him a hard time. That was there IT back then? Yeah. Right. Early, early IT, uh, all the way up through sales and then and then through executive leadership. So he had this very unique skill set. And at the time we had switched and we're going to this really big church in Oklahoma City, really great church. He had gotten involved as a Sunday school teacher, had gotten close with some of the pastors on staff, and so God really just aligned that time period perfectly that as they were hitting a big season of growth, he's retiring effectively, and they hire him to come in as an executive pastor. And so their first time of kind of making that switch from everybody works for the senior pastor, and everybody's, you know, you have a very flat org chart to hey, we're poised for growth. We've got so many people coming, we don't know what to do with it. You bring in a guy like that who's able to put systems and and really healthy organizational structure in place, and it suited him and it suited the church just perfectly. And he's still he's still on staff there.

Joel Lawrence 16:19

Uh is that a is that a Presbyterian church? Do you stay within the Presbyterian or yeah?

Cole Feix 16:24

One of the other themes that's going to emerge is is kind of this uh the I'm a theological mutt in so many ways. And so this is a church of God church.

Joel Lawrence 16:33

Okay.

Cole Feix 16:33

Functions basically like a non-denominational church, but their historic affiliation is kind of restoration movement, church of God.

Joel Lawrence 16:40

Yeah.

Cole Feix 16:40

Um and so it was a big church, then it became a huge church. I went ended up going to work for them, which we'll we'll get to. Um, and today they're a huge, really thriving, great, great church. Um, so anyway, so he so he came into ministry from a business standpoint, but he's a wonderful teacher. He's you know, so he's got the kind of organizational leadership gift, he's a great teacher. Um, but but again, not your traditional ministry career path by any means. Right. Um so yeah, so I I hadn't really considered uh ministry until so I went to Oklahoma State for my undergrad and uh had this just wonderful experience that we'll come back to in a little bit, talking about ministry culture. Uh for me, this doesn't happen for everybody, but for me, one of the most transformative experiences in my Christian life was being a part of a fraternity at a state school. I mean, it was just you know, I mean, it had all the fraternity stuff, but there was this group of Christians really small at first who really believed in discipleship and sharing their faith and what we what we would what we'd call now spiritual formation. We wouldn't have called it that then.

Joel Lawrence 17:46

Yeah

Cole Feix 17:46

But you know, just sharing your life together. And so I was growing, I was involved in some ministries on campus, and I was working, and I don't know what I thought I was gonna do. I was a math major at that point and a philosophy major later that I added on. So I I think I probably was gonna go into business. But anyway, I'm working at this summer camp between my sophomore and junior year of college, and the kids are in this activity. We're out in this barn basically, and I'm standing there kind of watching them. I have this moment of lull, and uh I feel this presence of the Lord. And again, this is kind of odd because I don't think you have to have a supernatural call like this in a ministry. I don't, that's nowhere in my theology do you have I'm much more of kind of like a Spurgeon pragmatist on the calling piece. But but I do happen to have one that is like that. I feel this presence of the Lord, and it was interesting because on the one hand, I felt like maybe I was gonna be crushed. I mean, it was just this overwhelming weight of presence. But at the same time, there was this beauty in it. There was this just thralling beauty in it, which which is why I knew it was the Lord. And again, I hear this voice, and and this voice says, mouthpiece. I was just totally baffled by that. That's all it said, just mouthpiece, but it was clear as day.

Joel Lawrence 19:07

Wow.

Cole Feix 19:08

So I'm kind of wondering what that means. I spent some time praying about it that next morning and the following week as I'm working at this camp and trying to flesh out what that was. And after about two or three days of praying, it was just very clear in prayer that there were three things that God was calling me to do. The first one was to surrender my life to Him in ministry. And I didn't know, and I don't think I perceived like you need to be a pastor forever. I just knew, hey, your career plans are now mine. You know, you you surrender your plans to me, and I'll open doors for you in ministry. And it's been different paths in ministry, you know, since then, which has been wonderful. But I knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt and never have doubted it since. Uh, the second thing was he I felt led to go back and read Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the prophets. And before I had read those kind of as like historical curiosities, you know, obviously inspired scripture, but you know, their setting, their place, their time, very important prophets for the, you know, the story that God was telling, but probably had never seen any real connection between them and me other than just devotional connections. Yeah. But I felt really pressed to go read them not in that way, but as a picture of people who are taking God's word. Obviously, they're you know inspired by the Spirit, but taking God's word to people that don't want to hear it. Yeah. You know, and it's stories of resilience. Um, and so that that that lane of what the prophets are and do in the history of Israel really came alive to me in those next few months, reading those books, thinking about, yeah, how do you faithfully steward God's word? How do you what where this has become big to me in ministry is how do you, like Jeremiah, for example, faithfully take what God has said and you internalize it and you do it, you live it, you teach it, all of that, when you actually cannot control all the results. I mean, you can do some great things, you can do bad things, but you you are not in charge of what happens. You're only in charge of being faithful. And so he really pressed that into me in those months. And then the third thing was there were some sin areas of my life that he just miraculously took out of my life. Now, there's other ones I wish he would have taken, you know, that you know, still just put them to death, you know, every day, you know, all of that, like like normal. But but there were a couple of things that I had struggled with. I was trying to work on. One of them honestly was the way I talked. My taming the tongue was a very difficult, and not just in language necessarily, but just in what I chose to say. That you know, it was just a real sticking point for me in my sanctification. And not to say that it's perfect now, but man, it just immediately transformed. Like from one day to another, I could feel this release from temptation in a couple of areas, and so so from that point on, I knew I was supposed to go into ministry. I just had to figure out you know what that would be. And so I stepped into some college ministries, kind of uh led a led a worship ministry at OSU for a couple of years. And when I got done, uh I started looking at churches. I thought, okay, I need to go into ministry. I wanted to plan a church like so many 22-year-olds who think I've basically figured out everything. I mean, you know, everybody else has done it wrong. You know, so I had some very wise people intervene and say, yeah, no, that's a horrible idea. Why don't you go work on staff at a church for a while? I'm so glad they they did. I went back to work at the church my dad worked at, which had been our home church from about you know sixth grade through the end of high school. Started a college ministry there at first, moved into adult ed is what they call it, their big programmatic church, I think kind of community church model. They've got Sunday school, Wednesday night, men's, women's, young adult college, you know, care series, suburban, everything. High program. One stop shop. Yeah. And so my my job essentially became non-Sunday programming. So all of our adult ed Sunday school teachers and leaders and groups and stage of life, and it was a ton of fun. It was a it was an awesome job. And through that whole thing, I had young adult college and then eventually teamed up with young adults. And so kind of having an area that I pastored, you know, the college students that I pastored and taught frequently, taught men's Bible study frequently, and then learning learning how to manage programming and a staff and volunteers, you know, in this other area, which, you know, somebody like my dad, who that that's what they're really good at. Of course, he trained some people that were really good at that. And so there was this culture of learning how to do what I'd call the business of church, the administration of church. That's what I spent seven years really doing uh at that church before moved into the next season and eventually became a lead pastor.

Joel Lawrence 23:58

So, so uh along that path, where did where did seminary come in and and further education take us through your educational path?

Cole Feix 24:08

So I I originally um had thought about going to seminary somewhere, I'd applied for a couple places outside of Oklahoma City, thought go somewhere, spend a couple years, and it just became apparent to me that financially and calling-wise, I really didn't want to leave a ministry opportunity where I could work full-time in ministry while I was doing school. And yet, this was still kind of in the years where the online, I think there probably were a few online programs, but it really wasn't the norm. Yeah. And so, kind of by happenstance, I was working at, I was going to work at this church in Oklahoma City. The only place that you could do a residential MDiv in a you know feasible way around where I was was at Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City in Edmund. Now, Oklahoma Christian is uh Church of Christ school. So here you're getting, I've I've been Presbyterian, non-denominational, you know, uh Church of God. Now I'm now I'm going to a Church of Christ school. That was interesting because, on the one hand, the Church of Christ, you know, is very big in this part of the country, especially in rural areas. You're almost always going to have a Church of Christ. And most people think of them as being somewhere toward the fundamentalist end of the spectrum theologically and culturally. And that's true on the church level. But what was interesting was at the school level, they were ultra liberal theologically. So that so the MDIV program I went to uh just classic liberal theology, almost like antiquated liberal theology. Like that, you know, that was like Boltman was still like a big guy.

Joel Lawrence 25:44

So not even the kind that's that's keeping up, right? Just kind of got locked in their tradition. Yeah.

Cole Feix 25:50

So yeah, we were doing a lot of this kind of uh, you know, just after kind of higher criticism had come in. But we're we're still like really rocking on um, you know, documentary hypothesis and a lot of things. And then of course all the ideological criticisms, because that's that's one of the things that they were really into, was just the various ideological readings of the of the Bible.

Joel Lawrence 26:12

Yeah.

Cole Feix 26:13

But but it was, it was, it wasn't ever really faith-threatening for me, but it was certainly expanding. And I and I look back now and I'm really grateful for it because we were reading stuff that I never would have read on my own. You know, like in my Christology class, the most conservative they could conceive of somebody being was like a baptism adoptionist, you know, like that's that's I mean, that's almost pushing credibility. But you if you think that Jesus was God, maybe he became God at his baptism. You know, it was just kind of like, wow, I'd never even thought of that before. I never even heard of that before. And here I am, you know, having grown up in a very traditional evangelical home, and and I didn't know how to articulate a lot of my theology well, but I learned to in that environment, and I also learned to really appreciate some of the things that motivate the different different theological streams. So I'm not necessarily trying to dunk on liberal theology by any means. I didn't agree with it at the time and don't agree with most of it now. I'm just saying I I grew to really appreciate some of what was written that was outside of my outside of my camp. And so anyway, when I I did three years of that, learned a ton, made some lifelong friends, pastors that I talk to, you know, to this day. Uh they ended up sunsetting that program a couple of years ago. And that's why I don't feel bad talking about it because that this is the problem they identified with it is hey, it's disjunctive from the rest of our movement. Um, anyway, so when I got done with that program, though, I really did have this sense I want to go somewhere that's a lot more like what I believe. I want to go do a PhD. It was a stewardship of the mind thing for me. I'm not in a tradition where you have to have a PhD for credentialing reasons, but just thought I I I want to do that. I I want to be pushed, I want to get to the end of kind of the exploration journey of academia.

Joel Lawrence 27:59

And did that did that really come through in this in your seminary? Had you thought about it even at all prior to seminary, or was it in seminary that kind of the realization of I I want to I want to keep going, I want to keep pushing and exploring, that that started to come into your mind?

Cole Feix 28:15

I had thought about I had thought about getting a PhD when I was a math major in undergrad. I'd done some research on a couple of teams that was pretty exciting, and thought maybe I'll just go get a PhD in math. Um but then when I when I felt called to ministry though, I kind of I was like, I know God can use anything, but using a math PhD would really be difficult.

Joel Lawrence 28:34

It's tricky, you know.

Cole Feix 28:35

So I that's when I added on the philosophy piece. I was like, I gotta learn to read and write, you know, if I'm gonna go to seminary. And so so you know higher education had always been really on my radar. It's just it was just a matter of switching to what's gonna be most used by God. And I I wanted to be challenged. I and so I I went to Southern in Louisville uh because I loved what they had going on. They had a great modular program. Um I knew some of the professors that I thought would be great uh influences on me and and and just loved the program. Yeah. So I went there. Uh I started out as a philosophy, philosophical theology guy, and so took philosophy classes in my first couple years. They shifted their department a little bit while I was there, and so ended up that I completed working under uh Timothy Paul Jones, who's in apologetics, was super helpful, and I and I love him. He's a he's been a wonderful influence on me. But I felt myself really gravitating more towards something like New Testament. But the thing at the time, and this is different now. So if you go to Southern Now, you can do any discipline in the modular, and I'm sure we could have a conversation about theological education, but but when I was there, you know, you couldn't do any of the mainline majors as a modular student. So you couldn't do schematic biblical Old Testament, New Testament, historical, you couldn't do any of those. So I went in the side door of philosophy and then by the end wrote a dissertation on intellectual virtue in Paul's letters. And so you have kind of a philosophical front and back, and then you have like four chapters of exegesis. And so that was such a perfect blend for me at that point. Jonathan Pennington became really, really influential and was on my committee. Peter Lighthart has always been a huge uh influence on me and was on my committee, and so was able to kind of bridge the gap a little bit between those loves and bring them together in that dissertation process.

Joel Lawrence 30:31

Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, so um in that in that process, you were still living in Oklahoma City, still pastoring at the at the church while you were doing the the PhD process. How did how did the the process of doing a PhD start to shape your understanding or or continue to shape your understanding of of your vocation, of your calling to be a pastor?

Cole Feix 30:58

I think that shifted a little bit while I was in the PhD program because I I started out and I was in Oklahoma City almost through my coursework. I think probably the first two years at least, maybe three years. But after that, I moved to a church in in Kansas City for a year and I learned a lot there. It was not what I thought it was gonna be, ended up being a setback in a lot of ways. Long story short, I end back, I end up back in Oklahoma City. I'm trying to get my dissertation done, and I'm wanting to go to Louisville for a while. I go out there, but it's February of 2020, and so I'm like, spend a nice long semester here. It's been wonderful academic research, you know. So anyway, I come back home like you know, three or four weeks later, which in God's providence, COVID was the greatest time ever for people that needed to finish a dissertation.

Joel Lawrence 31:47

Yeah, the the the big winners of COVID were those people.

Cole Feix 31:51

Yeah, if there were the most advantaged people in COVID, I was definitely one of them because you could you could legitimately make uh sit inside and write your dissertation, and that was a great excuse to do nothing else because COVID was happening. So I finished during COVID, and that's when I so it was that summer, late summer, that I got a call from a guy that had been in a men's Bible study I had taught in Oklahoma City, and he told me about this church where I live now in Carlton Landing. They were uh they had been a church for a while, but they're still kind of a church plant, had started as a house church, had some elders, they were looking for a pastor. And so I come out, preach, get to know the people, and what clicked for me, and this this is a lot, this is a lot where the kind of vision of pastor theologian started to be kindled for me. When so when I was in Oklahoma City doing programs, one of the things that really occurred to me was, you know, we're doing these really big programs and we're doing them well, and we had a lot of talented people. And uh, even though I'm in a small church now, I I love mega churches. I think mega churches, I'm not, I'm not part of the camp of like, you know, resentment. I think they do a lot of things really well. But one of the unique difficulties I encountered being in something that big is you put on these wonderful programs, you have truly world-class people teaching, shepherding, but people's lives are changing very slowly on the whole. You know, so you'll do a Wednesday night program and you have 2,500 people in the building, but you're not seeing the kind of growth, you know, that I did when I lived in a fraternity house, you know, and saw that life on life piece.

Joel Lawrence 33:23

Yeah.

Cole Feix 33:24

So what had been really kindled in me over the years, kind of my throughout my 20s basically, was this disjunctive problem, trying to solve this problem of why is it that people slow down so much as they get into young adulthood, as you get into bigger churches, get into more programming. Certain people continue to grow, but a lot of people really slow down. And how do we as church leaders and pastors, what should we do about that? So, what occurred to me there was that most people live in this very fractured, kind of segmented social world. You know, so you, you know, wherever you live, maybe you know a few people around you, although a lot of people don't, you know, you you know the people you work with, the ones your kids play soccer with, you know, some church people, you see your small group for one hour a week, but you but you don't have anybody, uh, maybe family and some close friends, you don't have anybody in a bigger sense that is your core group. You have a bunch of those groups. And that that's kind of just a reality of life. But what I started to realize was that when people really grow in the church, it's because their social center of gravity and their spiritual center of gravity have a huge overlap. And when you can make that happen, the ingredients for growth really start to bloom. And I and I think it's even more important in the age that we live in now with kind of social media and digital disconnectedness, is we're trained all the time to curate the way people perceive us. So, and it's like, no, this doesn't just happen by posting your highlights on Facebook. It's like every time I see someone in one of those contexts that I switch between, I subconsciously, because I don't think this is really intentional a lot of the time, but I subconsciously put on whatever version of myself I think is going to be accepted or admired, you know, in that different social setting. Okay, the that's natural. It's a very human thing to do. And I don't think it's it's even trying to be deceptive, it's just what we do. But the problem though is you actually will never grow if that's the way people experience you. So you don't actually practice very many of the one another's of the Bible if people don't encounter you when your guard is down. You know, like I didn't get to control the way you perceived me now. Those are the moments you grow, actually, because those are the moments where you need to ask for repentance, bear one another's burdens, see weaknesses, you know, work out differences in personalities and true love for one another has to be rooted in like deep knowledge of one another. So I'm kind of working this out in my head of like, oh, how do you create those kinds of relationships and communities for people to it can't be their whole life, but at least you have some part of your life where people have that kind of access and relationship with you. So when we get this call, so I'm so I'm just playing this out. I'm just trying to figure out how you do this. So we get this call from this church, and it's out in southeast Oklahoma. Again, we're city people. My wife is from Kansas City. I grew up in Oklahoma City, you know, we have no rural experience at all. But it's this tiny, tiny little area out on a lake. It's beautiful, it's this wonderful uh new urbanist town. And when I get there, it's like something clicked for me in a really profound way. Oh, there's this core of the community that because it's small and unique and walkable and all of that, they have this center of gravity socially. And they do stuff together all the time. People are in each other's houses all the time. You know, the one thing you can really do for entertainment out here is hospitality. And so by spending that kind of real quality time, you have these like super deep relationships that form. And if you do so, so my thought was if you do church in the middle of that, all of a sudden you have the relational mesh, the relational fabric there for true growth. Now, it's difficult in certain ways because you got to do a lot of conflict management and like real repentance, you know, not just like my feelings were hurt here, so I just don't go there anymore. It's like, no, you're gonna see them like two hours from now. So you better, better work some things out. And that that caused me when I came out here, we we knew immediately this is where God was calling us, almost because of that question. There's a lot of other beautiful things out here, but almost because I just felt so zealous to plant our lives with these people and see what God would do. We knew it. But when I got out here, what I realized is oh, you have to reimagine how to do church in a context like that. So, you know, instead of being like really program driven, which is good in certain contexts, we're really people hospitality driven, you know. So we had to reimagine all that. We're meeting in a tent, you know, there's all these other things that are just kind of now, they're really nostalgic. Um, you know, the church is small, but but the people loved each other. They just they absolutely loved each other, and it was kind of real life together. And so now we've been out here a little over five years, and a lot has changed. You know, we have a church building now, which is great. Love having heat and AC. Uh, although there's like four Sundays a year, you know, where it's like, man, I wish we were back in that tent.

Joel Lawrence 38:34

Yeah.

Cole Feix 38:35

But that's changed, but the culture has stayed the same. And that's what's really formed me, I think, in the way I think about the vision of a pastor theologian, is for the first four years I was here with solo staff. We have some contractors that help with different things, but solo staff, you are the pastor, but you're also the maintenance guy, you're you're everything else. And um, you're doing things in a way that the floor of the ministry is how much you're willing to invest your life in other people. And not every context is like that, but I love that. I absolutely love that. And it's led to the flourishing of seeing how the vision of that relational and spiritual community works, how a local church, you know, func a congregation functions. And the other unique thing is we only have one church in our town. And so it's almost like a little parish from 200 years ago. Yeah. Um, and again, that comes with with things that are really easy and things that are really difficult, things that are different, but it's just it, it's it's it's flushed out that vision I had in my heart that God has now fulfilled, and He's teaching me about it every day.

Joel Lawrence 39:44

Yeah. I I think that's uh a great way to reflect on the past with theologian vision because it's like the lived nature of the vision, not just the the studied nature or the thinking nature, but the theological presence and the cultivation of a theologically sound, theologically formed community. Um I I want to hear a little bit more about your setting, because it's a new urbanist, it's a planned town. Um, tell us a little bit more about that, because that's obviously a unique kind of a setting, and yet you're putting your finger on things I think a lot of people are longing for, of this more kind of settled our lives overlap more. I just love to hear a little bit more about the about the town and about how this plays out in in your ministry.

Cole Feix 40:36

Yeah, new urbanism is really interesting, and I I was not as familiar with it when I first encountered it, but it but it is one of those things, like you mentioned, you come out and you're like, man, there's something about this, and you and then somebody explains to you what's happening, you're like, that's it. That that's what it is. Because what New Urbanism wants to do is it new urbanism is essentially the belief that you can inculcate certain community values by the way you do your city planning and architecture. Yeah, which when somebody first told me that, I thought this is the most ingenious marketing strategy. You know, I'm not sure you can actually do that, but that but man, if you convince people of that, that's great. Well, now that we're not gonna be a good thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can say that that it is true. So one of the things about our town that's unique is, and this is a principle in a lot of new urbanist communities, is that the community is scaled to the human rather than scaled to the car. So, you know, the suburbs, for all their wonderful qualities, the suburbs are scaled to a car. If you want to do anything, you have to get in a car and go. And that leads to fragmentation. So school is in one place, commerce is in another. And the other thing is new urbanism has a different version of zoning. So, you know, zoning in most places is is it residential or is it commercial? In new urbanist communities, the zoning is mixed use, and the zones are done a little differently. They're basically organized around population density rather than by residential or commercial use. And so what that means is all the things that you need to do in an ideal, you know, new urbanist community are within walking or communal distance from where you are. So, you know, the school is walkable from our house, the restaurant is walkable from our house, the church is walkable from our house. Now it's Oklahoma, it's Southeast Oklahoma. You don't want to walk to these places sometimes, but but theoretically you could.

Joel Lawrence 42:27

When it's 110 and humid, you don't really want to go for the walk.

Cole Feix 42:30

It's super windy in the winter, but people drive golf carts everywhere, you know, and cars. But but but the whole purpose is that the design would inculcate these relationships. And so another thing that's interesting in the in the architecture of it is there's sidewalks everywhere. So isn't people come out here and they're like, this is like a nostalgic old neighborhood. And in some ways that's true, because a lot of a lot of urban building was done with kind of a subtle new urbanist, they wouldn't call it that then, yeah, approach, where you have sidewalks and front porches. And so if you're walking down the sidewalk and you have a front porch, it actually follows, and I think this has been the most impactful thing to take advantage of in the church. It follows a natural pattern of gradual human relationship and intimacy. So it's very easy to say hi to somebody. If you're sitting on your porch, you have a barrier, you know, so you have the porch and then you have some plants, and then you have a sidewalk. So you're you know, 10 or 15 feet away from somebody, but you're at eye level with them, and they come by, it's actually hard. It's it's hard not to say hi to that person or at least give them, you know, a heads up, you know, nod. Yep. Um, but you make eye contact and a lot of times you start talking, and then you invite them onto your porch. And there's an article actually that Tim Keller wrote uh pretty shortly before he passed called Lemonade on the Front Porch. And he's talking about the church creating front porches, kind of third spaces, and but he's using it metaphorically. You know, what is our front porch? You know, and it can be any place that a non believer. And a believer can participate on equal terms and build a relationship with each other. Well, we have literal front porches. You know, we we've tried to create third porches. This has become like very ingrained language for us because it fits so well with our kind of relational model of doing things. But you invite somebody on your front porch, that's non-threatening. It's easy for them, it's easy for you. Most of the houses here, if you come in the front door, there's no entryway, you're just right in the living room, which again is just another layer of building that relationship with someone. And so, like I said, because of that, again, this it is pretty ingenious from a design perspective. It inculcates the values that I think as Christians, we really want, you know, I think a lot of times as pastors, we really want our people to do that kind of organic relationship building, share your faith just by talking about what's important to you. But then we struggle to create the settings where it can really happen. And one thing I love about here, and I and this, it's not something I've done. We've opted into kind of easy mode on this, is those settings are there. So now we just have to take advantage of doing it. You know, so we train, we disciple, we coach our people to take advantage of those natural settings instead of having to try to create them, which has just been this beautiful, wonderful way of seeing the church kind of thrive outside of the church building.

Joel Lawrence 45:16

It's so interesting. I I I think we should probably schedule a part two conversation on kind of ecclesiology in place and and what what you're learning from this. Um, because I I just it's it's a there's so much thinking these days going on around the nature of the church and the nature of place, and yet we're trying to make it work within the places as they are.

Cole Feix 45:38

Yeah, can I put a coda on that? Because I think just to give a uh like a huge props here to the vision of being a pastor theologian, what what that's kind of alerted me to, though, is the the pastor theologian, the the theology arises out of the situatedness in the church. Yeah, I never would have thought about these things when I was in seminary. No, you know, no data on seminary. And there's been some good books written on this. It's because I live here and have to think about this that this has become this live issue to me. And I want to think about it and talk about it and write about it so other people can experience it. And maybe that will lead to place making, you know, I love that in in areas where it's not already there.

Joel Lawrence 46:17

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, that that value of the CPT of social location drives theology. And and I I think, you know, in your situation, there's a really interesting angle into that that I think would be fascinating to continue to explore. So, Cole, it's been great to have you on. Really enjoyed the conversation and enjoyed getting to know your story a little bit more and and do look forward to another conversation on this. I think that would be really fruitful to think that through a little bit more.

Zach Wagner 46:49

Would love that. Thanks for having me, Joel. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the CPT Podcast, a theology podcast for the church. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider subscribing if you haven't already? You can also help us out by leaving a rating and especially a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. We love hearing from listeners in this way, and it helps others find out about the show. The Pastor Theologians Podcast is a production of the Center for Pastor Theologians. You can learn more about the CPT at our website, Pastor Theologians.com. You can also find us on Facebook, YouTube, and follow us on Magics. This show is produced by Seth Porch and Sophia Luke. The show is recorded and edited in partnership with Glowfire Creative, and editing is done by Seth Creekmore. Hosting duties are shared by Joel Lawrence, Rae Paul, and me, Zach Wagner. Thanks for listening.