EP212: Steven Barr & 9 Non-Tech Pivots Your Church Needs To Consider

When we look for God's image, look past the surface stuff. Look past the things that annoy you. Look past the things that offend you. Look at the person. Maybe they're passionate. Maybe that—maybe there's—maybe they're articulate, but there's something about them that is a reflection of God. When we find that and acknowledge it to them—like I had somebody one time who was going off on a political rant, and I didn't even bring up politics, but he was going off on this political rant, and it was like if I had hair it would be blowing backwards. It was just like, you know, hitting me. And I just looked at him and I said, "Man, you have the most amazing God-given passion."

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions. Is disciple-making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey, we got episode 212 of the Church Digital podcast. I'm excited about this podcast. I'm wearing my Boba Fett t-shirt. We're talking Disney. It's going to be great stuff. By the way, so not a Mando fan, but that's a much different conversation than what we're going to have here today. I'm really excited about some of these shifts and the guests that we've got. I said shifts—S-H-I-F-T-S—just want to make sure that was clear coming through the podcast. No, don't I don't play that on the podcast. We're good.

But listen, hey, sneak peek, podcast audience. On Tuesday, April 19th, 2 p.m., we're making some big announcements for the Church Digital, for Digital Church Network, and for many of you, I think this is going to be a game changer for your ministry. So if you are part of FAM, you're welcome to join us, 2 p.m. Eastern on FAM. Join in there. It's fam.digitalchurch.network. If you are not part of FAM, what are you waiting for? Jump in there. The announcement's going to be in FAM, fam.digitalchurch.network, and hear this announcement as it's coming Tuesday, April 19th, 2 p.m. Eastern. Good stuff. We'll make some other noise on social and things, but you want to—if you want to like get this sneak peek, the early announcement—you want to hear it right there direct on FAM.

Well, I tell you what, I'm excited about today's guest. We brought him here on the podcast before. I had the luxury of bringing him in to speak at the Exponential in Orlando, just maybe a month or so ago at this point. And to be honest, like I brought him in to talk about maybe ten minutes, and dude ended up talking for like thirty or forty, and it was powerful, was meaningful. And at the end of it, I was like, "Hey, I want to do a podcast on everything you just said because it's so rich of what he was getting into." And so we're bringing into the conversation Stephen Barr, who's the leader of Cast Member Church. You may remember back from earlier conversations—put the link in the show notes—but there's he has a church that literally operates to reach Disney cast members. That's code word within Disney for employees. And he's got a number of books. One's getting ready to come out. He's in the process of writing another one. And then really, I'm just really interested in digging in to this conversation here as we're talking. Well, we'll get into that in a little bit, but a lot of these shifts of how we as leaders, we as Christians, we as the church need to be thinking differently.

So hey, Stephen, man, thanks for jumping on the show again and being part of this.

Thanks, Jeff. It's great to be here again.

Awesome. Love it. So right off the bat, I'm just curious. Like, this is a contextualization type of thing. You don't—your title is leader. You know, maybe visionary leader is probably a little more accurate to what you typically sound like you do, but you don't take the title pastor. Like, I'm just curious. Like, what's what's coming the mindset? Why do you do that?

Well, first of all, I really don't consider myself to be a pastor. I'm not really a shepherd, although people will argue that with me, but I don't feel like one. But that's beside the point. The reason I chose leader—I was lead pastor for a long time, but I realized that our mission field, we serve a mission field that does not have a church context. They don't have a church background. And so the word pastor can immediately raise flags to certain people. And in Disney, the way the structure is there, there are leaders. And so the easiest way to connect people and help them contextualize what I do is to tell them that I'm the leader of Cast Member Church, and they're like, "Oh, okay, that makes sense," in their Disney speak. So yeah, I'm comfortable with that. I do pastor. I mean, I'm a—yeah, I'm more of like a visionary catalyst, I guess, would be the real thing. But hey, leader covers it all, so I just stick with that.

That's great. And you can go back—I like there's a whole conversation that I had with Stephen talking about Cast Member Church in an older episode. Links in the show notes. But we went into great detail talking about the idea of operating a digital church, a discipleship movement that's literally reaching international, so many of these employees are scattered across the planet. And so some really fascinating stories we dig in deeply into the context of doing a church aimed specifically at a Disney cast member, at former Disney cast members, at Disney employees, and kind of what that balance is. You can even like look at the art, the logo, and it like looks like a Mickey Mouse kind of the hidden Mickey head with the ears, and like there's all sorts of contextualizations that you go through.

But for this conversation, really, what—actually, you know what, Stephen? Let's just give you the opportunity up front. You wrote a book, Kingdom Influence. You're working right now on a second book, Irresistible. Why don't you talk a little bit about Kingdom Influence and then also set up the Irresistible book? Let's just talk about the books right up front.

Well, thank you. Kingdom Influence is a book that I've been writing for—well, I've been writing it for ten years, to be honest with you, but because that's how long Cast Member Church has existed. But we finally got to the point about a year ago where we started realizing we know what we're doing, although that's a dangerous thing to say because as soon as you think you know what you're doing, everything changes. But we just realized that the church in general—capital C church—really doesn't have a problem with articulating the gospel. The problem we have is we don't have the humility to live the gospel in such a way that it brings credibility to the gospel. And so what we discovered is evangelism is certainly articulating the gospel, but it's about living it out in such a way that it makes it contagious and that people want to be around. They want to know more.

And you know, when I—when we first started Cast Member Church, we came at it with traditional ways, approaches, attractional type stuff, and nothing simply because, well, part of the reason is because Disney is the show. You can't out-Disney Disney. But we also realized that the one thing that Disney couldn't offer cast members was relationship. And I've learned in talking to hundreds of pastors that we're just not good at it. We're not good at relationship because it's messy, it's inconvenient, and we like—as I've learned this from my European cast members—Americans like the quick fix. We like the quick win. And the problem is leading someone to Jesus is something that moves at what I call the pace of grace. It's very slow, and it takes time. It takes investment. But it is worth it.

And so I wrote a book that simply simplified: this is what we can do, this is what we can learn to do really well. And we have identified three keys—proven keys—that reveal Jesus in a skeptical and suspicious world. And so by going through this book, you'll learn these keys. You'll learn how to apply them. And you'll discover that wherever you go, whether it's the grocery store, the car line at the school, wherever you are, you have an opportunity to reveal Jesus in a way that is not weird, that is not uncomfortable, and yet is appealing to the people that you are spending time with.

So that book comes out in just a few weeks, so you can look for that, Kingdom Influence, on Amazon. And I think that we will definitely—I'll be making a lot of noise about that when that comes out because I'm excited about that. And even highlighting some of the things that you're doing—like, I just think that's incredible.

Now, let's pivot here because, you know, I knew you as Kingdom Influence. I bring you into Orlando, and I wanted you to speak about the uniqueness of your church, of what you're doing through Disney Cast Member, and instead you went on a—you know, I don't want to say diatribe because it was incredibly helpful—but it was this long monologue on these pivots. And as you talked about it, it was like, "Oh my gosh, like this is great." You're like, "Oh yeah, by the way, I'm writing a book on this." It's always like you haven't even published your first one, you're writing a second one. Like, I mean, you're like the modern version of Max Lucado here. But I just wanted to really highlight these nine influences, these nine shifts, these pivots that are happening in context. So maybe set the stage here a little bit. Let's talk about this new book, this new idea. You know, a working title, Irresistible: Shaping a Culture of Kingdom Influence in a Skeptical and Suspicious World. So where did this idea come from?

Well, it came from the first book I just talked about. Kingdom Influence is the everyday man's book to learn how to be contagious in a skeptical society. But then I started realizing that the church is kind of sitting over here in one place, and we as Cast Member Church have found a different way of doing ministry. And I realized there were pivots that were going to have to happen if you're going to lead a community that's going to have a kingdom influence. And so we just started identifying things. I mean, I could have written a hundred pivots that need to happen, but we focused on the ones that make a church irresistible, that actually make Christians irresistible people. We don't have to turn the world off. We don't have to be known as hypocrites and judgmental and all that. We actually have something incredible called the good news, and if we're living it, and by making these pivots, we're going to actually be irresistible, drawing people closer to Jesus.

So we identified nine pivots over the last ten years, and again, these are proven. These aren't just theory. These are things that we have put into practice, and we've seen results. And yeah, that's kind of what it comes down to. But we realized that as I would share these pivots with people, there was a lot of hesitation because it's a paradigm shift. It is a big paradigm shift, just as you well know that we're looking at paradigm shifts just over the last couple years that churches have to take an honest look at.

Look at, and regardless of whether they're physical or digital or any of that, there's some heart stuff behind all of that that we're going to have to shift. And so we came down to these nine things. But the first thing I realized is there's that question that Jesus asked the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, and he said, "Do you want to get well?" And of course, the man responded the way a lot of churches do: "Well, you don't understand. We've got this, we've got this, we've got all these other things." And it's like, wait a minute, that's not the question Jesus is asking. He's asking, "Do you want to get well?" And so if a church is going, "Wait a minute, we're not contagious in this community. We are not irresistible among skeptical, suspicious, cynical people. How can we do that?" That's where the nine pivots were born.

I know the word "pivot" is even scary, or not scary, but it's been overused. It's been weighted. I say the word "pivot," I say the word "shift," and you know, pastor's eyes glaze over at this point—this desire to go back to the way it was. But as we talked through this, hopefully we're recognizing, "Hey, this isn't like technology. This isn't technology. This isn't like a technological jerk or jump. We're not talking metaverse. We're not talking like this is a very practical approach, like almost an introspective soul-examining approach to how we do ministry." And maybe this is even an opportunity for some of you that are listening to be introspective in your own ministries and how the people in your church view you and your ministry.

An interesting stat—and actually, Stephen, I don't know that you've known this one. This actually came out from Barna maybe a month or so ago. Fifty-seven percent of people that are active within their church strongly trust church leadership. Now, that's not a bad stat. The reciprocal is a little scary to me: forty-three percent of people that are actively involved in church do not strongly trust church leadership. Now, I mean, there's different tiers there. There's "strongly trust," there's "trust," there's "somewhat," and I don't know what the different levels were, but we're talking about the pastor, the senior leadership of church that is designed to lead people spiritually. The fact that those people don't strongly trust is a little scary. And so I think as we're looking at some of these shifts, this is an opportunity for all of us to maybe stop and examine how we fit. Maybe there's some things that we're strong at, maybe there's some things that we're weak at and need to adjust.

So hey, let's kick this off. Let's go through some of this and see where we get. So number one here, I've got "mission over me." So "mission over me"—tell me a little bit about that one, Stephen.

Well, that's the high hurdle we've got to get that one out of the way first because it's such a paradigm shift. And it really comes down to, you know, there's two scriptures that I rely on when it comes to that one. One is where Jesus said, "Take up your cross," which means we know what that looks like. Just being here on Good Friday, we know what that looks like. It means surrender. It means giving up what Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane: "Not my will, but yours be done." So there's a mission that is in front of us, and it's so easy as leaders to focus on the people in our congregation that are saying, "Well, I want this. I want this. And if I don't get this, I'm going to go somewhere else." And of course, that's a culture of consumerism. If we feed that, almost like a buffet, we put a buffet out as, you know, trying to please everybody, we end up missing the mission. And so we've got to start talking about the hard pivot of, "Look, this is not about you. Yes, the church exists to equip you, to empower you, to give you a family, and all, but it's really about moving out and being empowered to be salt and light in the world around us." And so that's kind of like that's the first one. We can't even get into the other eight pivots if we can't get past "mission over me." And I'm not saying that your needs aren't important. I'm just simply saying that we need to shift over to mission over me.

And I'm not saying that the one that we're shifting from is bad. I'm just saying that we focus on that too much and we need to make the shift. So mission obviously is at the top of the list. That's well said. I used to have a bumper sticker, and actually I used to run a Christian bookstore. I used to run a clothing store called C2A. Like, I don't get too deep in the weeds here, but it was a bumper sticker and it was John 3:30. And it's, you know, it's "not about me." And just like having that as we're talking about it, it's more about the mission. It's more about being humble in those moments like that. Just resonates so strongly, you know, even a couple decades later.

So number one: mission over me. What will said there. Number two, this is interesting: human beings over labels. Human beings over labels. Talk to me about this one.

All right, well, that's this was kind of obvious, especially in the age of social media. We put people into categories immediately when we meet somebody. We find out if they're with us or against us, if they're left or if they're right, if they're vaxed or unvaxed. I mean, we immediately classify people, and even to the point where, "Are you Baptist or are you Pentecostal? Are you...?" And it's a human thing to do. We categorize people, but because of those labels, we immediately are prejudiced. We immediately are prejudiced by our own thinking. And I'm looking at Jesus, and I'm going, "He treated every person like a human being." I mean, the Samaritan—the parable of the Good Samaritan is a perfect example. But there's a great little story that takes place in World War One, and it's called the famous Christmas Day Truce, where Germans were fighting the French and the English, and on Christmas Day they agreed to a truce. And they started popping their heads above the trenches, and long story short, they kind of came out and talked to each other. There was a soccer ball being kicked around. They were showing pictures of their families, and one of the soldiers commented on the fact that when the truce was over, he realized he wasn't facing an enemy. He was facing himself. And when we start to see people as human beings made in the image of God, regardless of what they believe, regardless if they offend you or what they are, made in the image of God, we have to start there. And when we do, it's amazing how we can discover what I call the essence of a person—it's that reflection of God. And that's where we can start. But we've got to stop categorizing. We have to stop labeling people and just simply look at them as human beings created by God.

How is that empowered? Let's just follow up on that. How is this "human beings over labels"? I mean, you're literally a Disney cast member church. You're working with people all sorts of people all over the country, different slices of life, different—how does a human being approach? How does that help you maybe reach some of your diversified audience? Like, I would imagine you're dealing with all sorts of different labels, right? And so like, what does that look like practically for you?

I have, you know, at my dining room table every perspective and persuasion has sat there, and we've had over twelve hundred Disney cast members sit at our dining room table and encounter Jesus. And the thing is, when we look for the—I call it the essence—essence is recognizing the image of God. When we look for God's image, look past the surface stuff, look past the things that annoy you, look past the things that offend you, look at the person. Maybe they're passionate. Maybe there's something about them that is a reflection of God. When we find that and acknowledge it to them—like, I had somebody one time who was going off on a political rant, and I didn't even bring up politics, but he was going off on this political rant, and it was like if I had hair it would be blowing backwards. It was just like, you know, hitting me. And I just looked at him and I said, "Man, you have the most amazing God-given passion." And he just stopped and he goes, "Oh, oh wow. Well, thanks." It's acknowledging the image of God in a person. I have never had a person, regardless of what they believe about God or don't believe about God, be offended that I acknowledged God's image in them by something that was apparent. That changes everything because now that person feels valued. That person feels valued, and value is really the first step in building a relationship that says, "You actually matter to me." Value is the first step in building relationships.

I mean, like, that's the takeaway quote. That's the pull-out quote right there. That was well said with that one. All right, number three. I need to write that down. Okay, go ahead. It's going to be online. Some people are going to listen to it, so we'll share. You can pull it from there. That's good. That's the byline of your book, right? We will work that in. Number three—it's beautiful.

Number three: the one over the crowd. The one over the crowd. So what about this?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, this is kind of obvious. We have metrics in our churches based on crowds—buildings, budgets, butts, and seats. And so we've always figured the bigger the better. And again, not against the crowd. Jesus taught the crowds, but Jesus did also some of the most amazing stuff in Scripture one-on-one: the woman at the well, the woman with the issue of bleeding, Zacchaeus, Matthew, Nicodemus. It's these one-on-one conversations that really where we see all the character of Jesus on display. And I like to tell the story. There's this great little—it's on YouTube somewhere—but the eighties band Journey. Of course, they were huge in the eighties. They're kind of one of the quintessential bands of the eighties. And they tell the story about how they were at the peak of their success and they had an album about ready to come out, and they had heard about this little boy in the hospital that had cancer, and his dream was to hear the next album. And so they all went to his hospital room and they brought a Walkman—eighties—they brought a Walkman and had a cassette tape of their soon-to-be-released album. No one had heard it except the guys in the band. And they put it on, and the young little boy put the headphones on, and they all stood around his bed and watched him listen to this album. And he died the next day. And the guys in Journey, they will weep when they tell this story. But for Journey, it—the stadiums didn't matter. It was the one. It was the one person. And they felt like the album had done its job. It's already done its job. And I think we as the church, we tend to, especially pastors—and I'm going to make fun because I are one—but in a general sense, we think the crowd is it. That's the pinnacle of success. But it's not. We've discovered in Cast Member Church it's sitting around the table at Starbucks over coffee talking about the real things of life, going back and forth, and someone's saying, "You know, I'm not sure I believe that." "Oh, okay. Well, tell me why." Tell me. Rather than, and really looking at who they are, what their needs are.

Are and that don't, that doesn't happen in a large room. That doesn't happen in rows. It happened even, Jeff, even like this, you and I one on one. Even though there's people listening, in there's it's one on one. This is where Jesus really does his best work. And as we talk a lot about digital churches and you and I have had this conversation, it's not it's not macro, it's not megaphone, it's it's not yelling to to crowds. In many ways it's it's having these these small conversations, these one-on-one, one-on-three, one-on-fours, you know, almost more as a whisper. And what's what's fascinating is actually Stephen, you even said it here in this conversation today where it's like I've invited 1200 people, 1200 people have sat at my table. And so that's not a 1200 person table. At least I'm assuming you don't live in a house that big. You know, it's probably a table of four, six, maybe eight. And it's and it's having and it's having small conversations. And and as we're wanting to be more effective in ministry, it's it's not growing into massive numbers that takes us beyond what we're capable of resourcing and disciplining and multiplying. It's you know, a friend of mine, Jim Tomberlin, has said, "Hey, we need to grow our church not as big as possible but grow to the point where it can multiply, multiply it, and then grow again some more." And it's it's about having these small conversations that allow us to get to the place of of multiplying and seeing that generational growth happen.

And so well, and that also, that's also, that's also looking at when we have the conversations with the one, that's where we're also recognizing the image of God. That's all part of that essence thing that doesn't happen in a crowd. You can, it's hard to see the image of God on a thousand people or even 75. It's it's when when we focus on the one and we're listening and we're paying attention and we have one ear on the conversation and one ear on the Holy Spirit, and that's when that stuff starts to happen. And it's beautiful, but it takes time. And that's that's why it's a pivot. That's beautiful.

The one over the crowd. Moving on, number four: acceptance over change. Acceptance over change. Well, this is this is another good one too. Yeah, this is a controversial one because people think that um I'm getting into some dangerous waters here, but I'm gonna be real. I'm gonna make it real simple. Scripture says, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." And so there's so when we think about it, when I was at my worst, Jesus goes, "I'm going to make you acceptable." That blows my mind. That absolutely blows my mind. And we have had this tendency to to want people to change before we accept them. Acceptance doesn't mean endorsement. It doesn't mean you're celebrating it. Just it just means that you meet them where they are. And I think a perfect example of that, real quickly, is when we look at the woman caught in adultery and Jesus. We know what Jesus did, the writing in the sand and the things he said, but pay attention to the order that he did those things. The first thing he did was he dealt with the sins of the accusers. Number two is he forgave the woman. And number three he told her to change the direction of her life. The problem is is the church, look at social media, reverses it. "Stop sinning, then I'll forgive you, and maybe I'll deal with my own stuff." And we've got to get back to Jesus's way where he meets a person where they are. And we have found that by just accepting a person in their brokenness, even if they don't think they're broken, and but but getting them to a place where they're attracted to be with us, where they where they find this, dare I say, irresistibility of who we are, that's Jesus is going to do amazing things. But he's not going to do it if I'm pointing a finger in your face. And I'm not just talking about certain communities. I'm talking about everybody. We've got to start understanding that Jesus has already done the heavy lifting. We get to share the message and then let him pick up the heavy lifting again as we draw people close.

You know, that that's that's a beautiful pivot. That's a beautiful opportunity for us as the church to maybe re-examine what we're doing. And once again, that has absolutely nothing to do with technology. It's measurable. You can measure that. That's what's one of the things that we always say about, with, well, how do you measure this stuff? Hey, listen, are you seeing people be more more accepting? Are you seeing them hang out with people that they normally wouldn't hang out with? That is measurable. And so these are things that we can kind of take the temperature on how these pivots are working.

Totally, totally. Number five: empathy over explanations. Empathy over explanations. Great story. He's smiling, he's got a big grin thinking about this one. So yeah, go ahead. I love the stories of that that come with these. Um, there was a woman who had a brain condition that would cause her to uh just drop, just collapse. And one day she was in a grocery store and that happened. She just collapsed. And she said that people immediately came to her aid and tried picking her up. And she says, "The problem is with my condition, my brain wasn't ready to stand up." And she said, "Adults are very uncomfortable with seeing someone vulnerable laying on the floor, especially an adult." And she said, "They were so quick to pick me up, but what I needed was for someone to get down on the floor with me."

And I think what happens is we as a church are so quick to offer explanations. Uh, read this book, listen to this song, here's the scripture. And we offer quick fixes. Going back to that what I was saying earlier, these quick fixes that really what Jesus is wanting us to do, and he did it at Lazarus's tomb, Jesus wept, is to get down on the ground with people, to get into their mess, and just sit with them and go, "This doesn't make sense. This there is no expert," you know, and just weep with them or hurt with them or even in their anger carry that burden of anger with them. Let them know they're not alone. And Jesus is acquainted with every bit of our suffering, and he did that by choice. So we have to be willing to stop trying to fix everything. We're not Jesus. Does there's nothing in scripture that says we're called to fix anybody. We're just supposed to introduce them to the one who can. So that that happens by getting down on the ground and being willing to hurt, to be willing to say, "No, it's not fair. Yes, I can understand why you're angry at God. I can understand." And and and really take on their pain, take on whatever it is they're feeling. Again, that comes out of value, but it also starts to build trust because it says we could even say, "I understand." Maybe we, I actually, let me rephrase that. We maybe it may not be able to understand, but we want to help me understand what you're going through. And that that builds trust. And we've got to stop. We've got to start empathizing more and stop just simply saying, "Read this, listen to this," you know, and walk away.

So so good. Let me ask you this, just see if you follow up on on that one. So you're you're operating in digital, physical, you're kind of all over the space. What what what is that, what is actually like, it's a beautiful story, get down on the ground with the person. Um, you know, and and be in that uncomfortable spot with them. You know, often talk about how digital ministry actually get a lot more dirty than you do in physical ministry. And so give me give me an example. I mean, I don't need names or anything like that, but but what what are some examples of of how you've done this uh through cast member? It can be as simple as someone um someone being reprimanded for something they didn't do, and they want to and they're angry. They're angry at the the person that got them in trouble. They're angry about um this isn't fair, and there's nothing they can do about it. And you know, you could say, "Well, here's your here's your chance to be Jesus and and and you know, turn the other cheek," and all that, that's all good. But we got to get through, we got to get with, actually understand where they're coming from. They have felt betrayed. They have felt, they have felt violated. So in a sense, and so we need to embrace that.

There's other things that we've you know, we've seen. Um, I've had cast members that have lost family members. Uh uh, a cast member who lost her father. Um, long story short, she was separated from her father because she was here at Disney, and he was in another country. COVID shut down Disney. She went home. She had to quarantine. She couldn't see her dad. Um, and she saw him for one day after her quarantine, and he died. And she was just utterly dead. Who wouldn't be utterly devastated? And so there is no, "I understand," or or a scripture quote or anything like that. It's just like, "I am so sorry. I I, it doesn't make sense." And and not not just offering an explanation. I'm going to be honest with you in doing this, I the majority of the time I don't have an explanation. Life doesn't, life doesn't make sense. I mean, I can, I can, I can refer to scripture and point out those things, but when I look at things through the eyes of the world, that's why it's hopeless. And so to be able to embrace that hopelessness and understand where they're coming from, I can begin to understand how Jesus wants to work in their lives. But I have to, I I need to feel what they're feeling. And and that I can't do it, that I can't do that from an arm's distance.

It's interesting you're using even the physical example of arm's distance in digital context where there is no arms. Uh, and but that's, it's it's embracing you using these digital tools. And some would say you can't do that digitally. Like, it's amazing to me still, the number of people that are that are like, "But it's not real." Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, that's a whole other conversation. Let's let's let's stay positive with this one. You did say, and I love what you said, and the idea of we we can be more real digitally than than physically. And that is absolutely true. We were doing Zoom before the world knew about Zoom. We we were doing because we were, we had to figure out how to be a global church. And I found this is amazing to me. I found that looking at a screen, talking like you and I are talking, what people opened up more than sitting across from a table. And I and I, no one can convince me otherwise because this is based on my experience. Now some people, some people don't have that experience. Some people don't aren't comfortable with it. That's fine. But don't say that it's, it's no one can just acknowledge that you're not wired that way. Some people can, a lot of people can't. Anyway, that's a rabbit trail for another show.

Moving on here, number six. Uh, this is this is going to be a rabbit trail. Conversations over teaching. Conversations over over teaching. Go for it. Yeah, well, that that piggybacks empathy over explanations. Um, I you know, I I seldom remember sermons after about five or six weeks, but I remember conversations. I it's there's just something about uh when I'm talking to somebody at my dining room table and we're talking about a life thing, something that's going on, and it goes back and forth. It's it's you, it's almost like each one is a shovel that digs a little deeper. Each each time somebody says something, it's you're digging a little deeper. And conversations stir up amazing things about what's going on inside a person. But if if we're teaching, that's one-sided. That's like when I think of teaching, I think of lecture style. And I know you can teach other ways, you know, life lessons, but but by and large what we need to do is we have got to learn to listen. It's we have got to, if the Holy Spirit is going to open our ears and our eyes to to hear and see what he wants to do, it's got to be through conversation.

To be by listening to the other person and finding out what's going on behind what they're talking about. And I've just found the more I learn about a person, the more I love them. And we've got to stop thinking one-sided, going back to explanations or simply trying to teach somebody something.

I learn from experience and I learn in conversations and I learned different perspectives that I might not agree with, but I totally get where they're coming from. And that's a huge piece of the pie.

Yeah, platforming, as in standing on a soapbox and one-way conversations, does not work in 2022. And the more that we can dialogue, people will not listen to you until you listen to them. And you know, that almost gets over the human beings over labels. You know, so much of what you're—it's all baked in into that. We don't want to come across as a salesman. And that is, and I again, I work with thousands of cast members. That's how we're perceived. We're perceived as sleazy salesmen. And I—that no, I'm not. That's not their word's, not mine, but that's the perception. And we have to remember for them, that's real. And so we have to figure out how to shift away, shift away from that perception. And part of that is simply having conversations and saying, "Tell me, tell me about you. Tell me, tell me about where you're coming from on this." And it opens up doors.

Moving on: risk over reputation. Oh, this is a big one. Risk over reputation.

Yeah, double-edged sword. It cuts two different ways. There is the individual reputation where we see Jesus not caring at all about what people thought. He ate with who he wanted to eat with. He ate with whoever the Father led him to—tax collectors, prostitutes. He hung out with people that religious people would not condone. And so, but he never worried about his reputation. It was about the mission. Mission over me, going back to the original one.

On the other hand, churches also wrestle with this too. We don't want to take the risk because, "What if we fail? What if this doesn't work?" And we've got to get past that because so much of what Jesus is calling us to do will not make sense in human terms. It has to be done with him. But if we don't take the risk, well, we don't need him. I mean, let's—I mean, I'm oversimplifying and maybe being a little dramatic, but the fact is we take the risks that we think are manageable. And I just don't see Jesus doing that to his disciples. I see him sending them, sending out the seventy. "Oh, by the way, don't take anything with you." Now, that's not a good strategy, Jesus. We, you know, I kind of need this and I need that, you know? And Jesus is kind of going, "No, I'm going to show you what it means to depend on my Father." And I think we've got to get past what people think about us, whether it's individually or as a church.

Yeah, and even in that, there's a little bit of control, right? Where it's, "Hey, I'm trying to control that situation. I'm trying to plan. I'm trying to organize. I'm trying to strategize far beyond." And it's like we've strategized the Holy Spirit out of the conversation. We're limiting ourselves unintentionally by not making Jesus first in some of these conversations and instead trying to control it out.

We, yeah, there is. We've taken the risk out of it, which actually I think limits what God can do through us.

Yeah, I had a conversation with a pastor several years ago, and we were talking about—I didn't have these pivots yet, but we were talking about a lot of these things. And he sat there and he looked at me. He said, "Stephen, I agree with you 100 percent. These are things that we need to do in our church, but if we do that, if I try to do them, I will lose my job." And I'm going, "Um, you know, it was there was a point where you go, 'I don't know how to respond to that.' Maybe you don't want that job." I'll say it. I'm just—yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, that's it. That's it. It's kind of like, are we fearing man? Are we fearing losing our comfort, our credibility, and our control more than actually embracing the adventure God actually wants us to live?

That's so hard. I totally, you know, I respect the pastors in that situation. I respect those out there listening to this conversation right now. It's hard to let go and to put faith. But that's why it's faith. I mean, really examine what are you putting your faith in in those moments?

And this risk over reputation—this is the one I think that stings me the most.

Yeah, oh me too. Me too. Oh yeah, yeah, totally.

Number eight here, moving on: love over conditions. Love over conditions. Unpack this one.

Yeah, these just get, you know, as we're going through them, I'm like, "Wow, these just get harder and harder." But you know, it's so funny. We are—so everyone has heard this: "I love you, but..." I love you, but. And the perfect love that Jesus talks about in Scripture never says that. Never says that. That love, love has no buts, as I like to say. And the idea is, and I understand why this one is so hard because we as human beings do not understand something that is without condition. You know, because we live in a world where everything is finite. I mean, even, you know, as these bodies that we live in are finite. If you know, even if you know Jesus and you know you're going to heaven, there's still this finality of what we know is going to pass away. And so everything has this condition. And it's very hard to say love over conditions because we just put a condition on everything. It's like labels—we can't help it, but we have it.

It's counter-intuitive, but the thing is, Jesus is calling us to a counter-intuitive lifestyle. He's calling us to a way of loving. Even, you know, agape love—the Greek word that the Bible likes to use most about love—is a love that chooses. It's not based on feelings or butterflies or any of that stuff. It's a love that chooses to love even when love isn't returned. And I think I wrote this in the book that's coming out, that love—shine. Perfect love shines brightest when it's rejected. And we have to be willing to step across that line and say, "I will love you no matter what," because that is perfect love.

So a great example is Jesus ate with Judas at the Last Supper. Jesus, I mean, here's a person who's going to betray Jesus. It's going to put that, sets everything in motion. And Jesus eats with him and treats him just like he treats all the other disciples in that moment, knowing, knowing. And so there's this—Jesus loved Judas to the end. To the end. And that just blows my mind. In fact, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. That's like, that means he loves me to the end. It means no matter what happens in my life, no matter what I do, Jesus says, "I love you no matter what." And how, what confidence that gives us, what peace that gives. I mean, pick every word, every adjective you want to pick. It's amazing. That's why it's good news. And that's why we should be a picture of that good news as well.

That's beautiful. That's heartfelt. That ties in so much with that acceptance over change as well, right? Where we're loving all regardless of the conditions, we're accepting them over the change, and we're getting that priority in place where we need to love before that change rather than expecting to change first and then that dictates the love. Like, this is just beautiful. All this fits together.

Which actually lands us right here at number nine. Jesus over everything. So I mean, obviously this is baked into all of it, but let's land the plane on this one. Jesus over everything. Let's get some of your heart here.

I saved the best for last, you know? It comes down to this: Jesus wins. I mean, it's like whatever we're doing, whatever decisions we need to make, Jesus wins. There's no discussion. We just look at who Jesus is and how he responds, and that's how it works. There's so much discussion: "Well, should we, you know, we don't know if this or that?" Look, look, look at Jesus. Look at what Jesus did. Look at what Jesus did with the woman caught in adultery. Look at what Jesus did with Judas. Look what Jesus did with Nicodemus. Look—Jesus wins. There's no discussion.

And so it's almost like the exclamation point at the end of the sentence that just says, "Look, Jesus over everything." This is not that hard. It's not hard to recognize that. It's hard to live out. But because Jesus is over everything, every one of these pivots are pivots that we can make that allows Jesus to exercise what he wants to do through us from the beginning—to be irresistible, to be contagious, to be a church that people look at and go, "Wow, there is something different about them. I need to know more."

You know, it talks about how in the Book of Acts, the church they added to their numbers daily. That church was irresistible. There was something going on, and they couldn't stop it. It was growing before the persecution, and even after the persecution, it didn't stop. The church was irresistible. And I believe this is a time for us in this day and age—no better time than for us to become people that are irresistible, pointing to the irresistible Savior. And each one of these pivots will help us accomplish that.

Awesome. This has been so good. It's been a great time. All of these nine pivots, the nine opportunities for us as the church to examine itself, to look at what we're doing, and maybe there's something within our DNA, within our processes, within our policies. Do we see this within our volunteers? Do we see this within our staff, our leaders? And let's start to examine. Once again, the majority of these have nothing to do with technology or embracing, but it's much more about how we are being the church in this 2022, post-pandemic, post some just the cultural shifts of where we are.

And so, sir, I want to thank you for the time here. Just even as we're coming in, so I appreciate this. Once again, Kingdom Influence is going to be hitting the bookshelves, Amazon.com, as well as your—all right, are local Christian bookstores still around? I don't know. Should maybe a couple. I used to own one back in the day, but I don't see them around too much more. But you know, wherever you buy those physical books, or I'm sure you get on Kindle as well. But so Kingdom Influence, look for that in the coming days.

Stephen, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

No, I just want to—I just want everybody to know that these pivots are doable. It starts, and it starts with me. It starts with you. We can't teach what we aren't living. And so the best place to start is not looking at this through the lens of our leadership. We need to look at it through the lens of our own learning. And if we can start there, please know that your example will be the best teacher. I know that from experience.

Awesome. I totally want to quote Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" right now, but I'll let you guys Google that and you can pull those lyrics up and find the parallel. It'll be beautiful.

Hey, so we're going to land the plane here. Stephen, man, thank you for jumping into this conversation and walking through your pivots. Kingdom Influence, coming soon. Irresistible, looking forward to seeing your deep dive on this, which is incredibly relevant in today's culture. And so it's going to be great. But we're going to land the plane. Thank you for what you're doing with the books. Thank you for what you're doing with Disney cast member church and maybe looking at the world differently. Do that. But we're done. So hey, we're going to land the plane.

You, Stephen, for Steven. This is Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network, and a bunch of other fun stuff. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here, and we'll see you next time here on the show, y'all. Good day.