EP305 - Wait! That's a Church? - Tattoo, Tesla & Dog Park Church Oh My! with Michael Beck

So realize, oh okay, so we need to like do what Jesus did and not stick up a building and say hey come and meet us here because Jesus never did that. We need to go out with people in the midst of normal life and cultivate communal life in Jesus with people where they live around things that they already do.

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 will address deeper questions. Is discipleship 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 and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey, welcome to the Church Digital podcast, episode 305. We're in season eight here. Wait, that's a church. Joey, was that inflection good?

It fantastic sounds. So I feel like I'm getting better. Like it's becoming more natural to do that. So in this season we're exploring unique expressions of church. Joey Santos, Church at a Bar, has been the co-host here with me this season. We've talked, we did a deep dive for three episodes or so, really exploring the idea of church at a bar, minimal ecclesiology, a lot of what church can look like. And as we're talking about moving away from you know the church at a bar and starting to talk about others, you know the idea came up: hey, let's bring Michael Beck into the conversation.

Michael Beck has been, honestly, one of the leaders, if not the leader, in fresh expressions and really exploring unique expressions of church, I guess primarily within the United Methodist, but some other denominational and organizational work as well. And so Michael, thank you very much for jumping on this podcast with us.

Yeah, thanks for having me guys. I'm honored to be on.

Michael, just to maybe set the stage a little bit and tell the group here a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, so Michael Beck. I'm a follower of Jesus and a husband of Jill. Together we have eight kids in a blended family. Just added my eighth grandchild this week. Juniper Jean was born, healthy little girl. And my wife and I have co-pastored churches and we've been doing this fresh expression thing for about seventeen years where we plant churches with people outside the church. So our two local churches are old United Methodist congregations that were in decline for several decades. We kind of went in and work with the existing congregation and then we plant new expressions of church out of those.

And our two churches are also converted the buildings into sober housing. So we have men's sober housing over at St. Mark's, women's sober housing over at Compassion. And then we have church in a tattoo parlor. We have church in a dog park. We have church in a burrito place called Burritos and Bibles. We did a church in VR for a long time called Living Church Room Church VR. We have church at a Tesla Supercharger. We gather at the supercharger, talk about ego theology and creation care. We have church in a the local rehab, the substance abuse inpatient detox place. It's called Higher Power Hour. So we go in there every week and do that. We have church in a senior assisted living facility. Some of my old saints were kind of going to live in this one facility called Brookdale, and so we said hey, we're not going to just say hey thanks for the memories, you know, see you in the new creation. We're going to come in and be church with you. And so we start a little thing in there called Shenanigans where we gather and have a little Jesus story and some prayer. So we have a bunch of those. And then I kind of direct that work for my denomination, so I travel around and help other people do this kind of stuff. And then I teach it at a couple of seminaries.

Oh, so just a little work there. I want to totally get into this, including Tesla church. That was intriguing. But let's back up and let's really discuss the important part. What do you use to color your hair? Because eight kids, eight grandkids, I mean I got two kids and I got no hair and nothing but gray, man. You don't look old enough for eight and eights. What's the secret?

Well, I don't recommend this to our listeners, but I have my first daughter when I was fifteen. And my BC life was pretty rough. I was mixed up in drugs and incarceration and lots of trips to juvenile detention and then later jail. So I kind of grew up in that space. I actually encountered Jesus in a solitary confinement cell, and that encounter with him kind of turned my life around. And just funny, quick full circle, so I got out of jail the last time and I went to this little church called St. Mark's and became the assistant pastor. I was a youth pastor all that. So the church had actually baptized me when I was a baby. It was kind of my orphanage. I was born addicted and didn't have any parents. And so now I'm back as the pastor of that church. So I have people that were present at my infant baptism that are now my congregants, and I preach to them every Sunday in the place where I was baptized as a baby.

Wow. So yeah, that I ended up having a big family very young, so now I get to enjoy grandfather life young.

So preaching at the church that you grew up at, a prophet does have honor in his hometown. You've been able to manage that well.

Well, typically, you know, I more resonate with the dude that's sitting out, the crazy guy, you know, that has the legion of demons and Jesus casts them all out and they go off the side of the hill and the pigs, you know, and he's sitting there in his right mind and everybody's like that's that dude that was like cutting himself and acting crazy. And Jesus, he's like hey, I want to follow you. I want to join your squad. And she's like no, you go back to your city and tell everybody what I've done for you. And I feel like that's kind of my calling, is to be back in that place where the city I used to sell drugs in and got incarcerated a lot, and now I'm back telling everybody I can about Jesus.

So good. So yeah, I want to know this, and Joey, I'll hand it off to you in a second. How did you get started in fresh expressions? You rattled off a bunch of unique expressions. It never occurred to me to do church at a Tesla Supercharger. I mean, that's really interesting. Like, where did the idea to really explore the space come from?

Well, it's the gift of desperation. My first church, just kind of failing forward in the Holy Spirit, I guess. Probably it's part of my own experience of having a season in my life where I was very far from the church. And I write about this in a book called Painting with Ashes, that there's no church in the wild, but we need to plant churches in the wild. That's a Jay-Z and Kanye West song. But so I realized I'm going to churches where there's seven people, there's eight people, and they're like hey, you know, go pastor these things. And people are not connecting with that and haven't been for generations. So I try to sustain that and nurture people and pastor people in that space. But then that's about half my work. The other half I'm out in the community trying to connect with people.

So the first thing we ever started was a recovery fresh expression. We didn't know that's what it was back then. We were just like hey, there's a bunch of people that are exploring a higher power. Why don't we get together and explore? For those who maybe that could be Jesus, what that could look like, and connect that to the twelve steps. And then we started a church in a rural place where I had like eight congregants in a barbecue restaurant because people wouldn't come to church, but they would gather. And this one was like a one-town, one-diner town up the road from us, you know, no stoplights, no post office. We didn't have a Dollar General, which in Florida, that's like if you don't have a Dollar General, you know you're pretty rural. But so that's where we were. But we started this thing in the barbecue joint. We'd have thirty to forty people some nights come in eating barbecue talking about Jesus. And then I got a church, you know, my twelve people on Sundays. So realized, oh okay, so we need to like do what Jesus did and not stick up a building and say hey come and meet us here because Jesus never did that. We need to go out with people in the midst of normal life and cultivate communal life in Jesus with people where they live around things that they already do.

And then I learned about fresh expressions and that there was a language for this over in the UK and then I was part of a team who tried to help bring that UK stuff over here to the United States.

Joey, I'm sure that's something you can relate to.

I know, right? I remember, Michael, I was in like Tampa two years ago when I first met you. We had this meeting cohort on talk about church expressions, and you had this incredible presentation. And what I remember vividly is that your point was about the coexistence of the inherited church, the traditional church, with these fresh expressions. Tell us a little bit about that because I thought that was incredible. Like we've been talking about this here, Jeff and I, and about this opportunity that the established church can see in fresh expressions to create a connection and actually expand the ministry. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, thank you, and Joey, I'm just remembering that event that we were together. It's we call that a blended ecology of church. So I guess call me a traditionalist or whatever, but I'm not ready to give up on the inherited church. The inherited church saved my life. There's lots of problems with it. There's a lot of colonialist things. There's a history of slavery, racism, exclusionary practices. There's just a lot of things. But also for two thousand years, that same bride of Christ has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the stranger, and done more good in the world than any other body of people.

So I'm a little United Methodist church. You know, when I was an orphan, born addicted, drug addict, they gave me food right at their never-ending potlucks. They nurtured me. They cared for me. So I have a deep love and appreciation for that inherited stuff. I don't mind putting on my bathrobe and my stole on Sunday mornings and you know having some liturgy and lighting some candles and all that stuff. I'm fine with that. But also realize that's not going to connect with the vast majority of people.

But I think we set up a false dichotomy if we try to make it an either-or thing. I think it's a both-and thing, and I think that's actually most faithful to scripture because in the book of Acts we see this unfolding thing. There's like Jerusalem and Antioch, you know, there's the very centered, traditional kind of Jewish expression of the church, and then there's this really crazy Gentile thing happening on the edge that's very different and weird, but they're learning how to live together. And I think that applies to the onsite and the online too, that the anchor church or the centering kind of inherited brings some value and some benefits to the stuff that we're trying to do on the edge. I think the problem is a lot of times the center wants to suffocate or exile or diminish the stuff that's happening on the edge. So learning to live with that kind of tension is kind of my day-to-day. And I think there's something powerful about that.

That and tell me a little bit about you know, did you face any obstacles from the traditional church, you know, seeing you going and also giving attention to all these expressions? Or do they like, "We're okay with it, we think that's great"? Like, did you? What was the dynamic there from the beginning?

Yeah, that's a great question and it continues to be a struggle today. So don't let me put off this image like everything's solved because, like, just last week I had people in my inheritor group saying, "Who's paying for that food?" You know, we have this dinner church at St. Marks and it's about a hundred—it's a hundred people that come on a Wednesday night for a Jesus story and a meal and we do some prayer and then a Bible study after. And those are a hundred people that don't go to church and they're messy. They drop F-bombs, they leave cigarettes in the parking lot. So my church folks, they're like, "Who's paying for that? Can they be more clean? Can they clean up better after?" You know, those kind of things rather than saying, "Wow, we have a hundred—you know, our church had twelve people in it four years ago, now we have these hundred people that are coming to worship Jesus around a meal." So that's an ongoing thing.

But one of the benefits I've had—and this may be a rabbit trail you guys don't want to go down—but I'm not the church, can't afford to pay me. So I've always been bivocational in my ministry. When I first became ordained, you know, when you sign up for that in the United Methodist Church, you have to actually own have one source of income. So I sold a business that I ran for ten years and went into ministry and then got to churches and they're like, "Uh, we can't actually afford to pay you." So then I was like, "Hey, denomination, do you mind if I go start businesses again because I have to feed my family too?" Um, so they gave me special permission to do that and I have lots of different employment so I can change that social contract with the church and I can say, "Hey, I'm not going to be in that office sitting there waiting for people to come in. You know, those days are over." Um, and we have in our history as Methodists this idea of John Wesley—the world is our parish—and so I can say, "Hey, here's the things I can do. I'm going to visit you, I'm gonna love you, I'm gonna preach and do all those things, but that is a small part of my job because this community really is our parish."

Yeah, a lot of the planters and missionaries we work with are bivocational and so that's a common deal. And, you know, there's probably some fundraising conversations that we could have. It's interesting you're running multiple businesses. That's—I'm the same way where I've got probably four or five different streams coming in from different places. Um, and it's like, "Okay, this contract's coming up, I really need to find something else, you know, that's gonna cover it." So that's an interesting life. Um, but one that I can relate to.

How do you—well, while we're talking about relationships with churches and denominations—I, um, I thought, like, I am, you know, a lot of what we do with digital is um, it's different than what a physical church is like. You did the living room VR for a while and so I know you can relate and kind of understand that. Um, I find it's, um, you know, there are churches that because I'm doing unique expressions in digital and not in physical space, churches will assume the worst of that and, uh, it's judgment. Um, or even, you know, I find myself not intentionally disrespecting the model but perceived to be disrespecting that. Like, specifically, how did you manage that tension? Because I know you're doing so much work denominationally. Um, where did—were they more open to it? Like, is that something you—um, they're more receiving for, like, what did that look like?

Some of—did you feel that tension of disrespecting what their perceptions were like? Talk to me a little bit about that.

Yeah, there's definitely been some of that. Um, when we started Tattoo Parlor Church eleven years ago—oh yeah, I mean, I would—that would be a field day. Oh my gosh. Yeah, one of my key leaders at my church who was my church council chair—so she's like the head lady of the church—and she was like, "You're gonna do what? Y'all are doing what in the tattoo parlor?" She says, "You're gonna go to hell for that, right?" So she was not super supportive of it. But believe it or not, she came and, um, you know, I just kept saying, "Hey, just come and see this." You know, we got millennials and Gen Z sitting around the tattoo parlor, some of them are getting tattoos, some are not. We're worshiping Jesus, we're studying scripture. So she came and experienced that for herself and by immersing herself and seeing the Holy Spirit at work in that space, she actually became one of my biggest advocates.

So my thing is, if you're going to change the social contract, you have to build healthy teams and then you have to get leaders in the inherited space that are on board with what you're trying to do that become kind of your advocates for it. That they're respectable, you know, church leaders in the congregation who can help change the conversation. So like, we have um, a preaching team that we—I have six lay people and my wife and I and we all share the preaching. We create the sermon series together in a democratic process. Everybody brings their series ideas. We share the care-sharing ministries of the church. So different people handle visitations on different days. Uh, we have, you know, a team that focuses on like the administrative kind of stuff. So you can't just say, "Hey, I'm just going to do all this fun stuff out here and, you know, whatever," but if you build strong teams that cover all those vital areas of church life, then you create teams that are doing the fresh expression stuff, then it gets us out of this heroic solo leader, the pastor cult, and it becomes a priesthood of all believers the way that Jesus intended it to. So I can go on vacation for three weeks and, yeah, some things—we've had some stuff over—but for the most part, the church is still there. Everybody's using their gifts and uh, it creates a really different discipleship ecosystem because people have space to use their gifts and they have space to, you know, explore and realize, "Oh, I can do a lot of this stuff. Um, it's not a pastor doing it for me." Um, so yeah, sorry, that was a long answer.

Yeah, you mentioned this idea of priesthood of all believers. Um, and that's—it's interesting, sometimes that's controversial within established church here in the US. Um, you know, I've been kind of chewed up and down for in some context talking about that. Me too. When you—like, what is your take for that? Like, when you say priesthood of all believers, what does that look like? And I would love what's your biblical reference um for why you believe that's in place. Like, I know a lot of us um stand on that line, um, but what's the uh, what's your opinion and like, what's your reason why you believe that?

Yeah, if I can start with the Bible and then go to church tradition. Uh, forgive me, I'm a Methodist, so I'm going to go quadrilateral here. Um, the scriptures, right? So Jesus wasn't a priest um by any standard. He didn't go through the, you know, he wasn't part of the temple establishment or any of those things. So we would call him today a lay person. And most the people that he selected or that were part of a church were ordinary, normal. They weren't Levites, they weren't from the priestly families. Um, he did have some Pharisees and some followers that were part of the religious establishment. I think it's good to have that mix.

So there's that, and then you get to First Peter and you get, you know, reaching back to Exodus, which was always the plan for God's people—that you'd be a holy nation, a royal priesthood. It would mediate God's presence to the world. Welcome back, Joey, welcome back. And then you get, um, you know, that's the early church is more for three hundred years until Constantine. You didn't have priests in the way that we think of it today. You had, you know, episcopos and diakonos, and those were more missional functions. As the church grew, certain people had to take on certain responsibilities. It was really apostles, you know, our friend Alan Hirsch writes a lot about this—apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers. We've collapsed priests into just one identity, just the pastor-shepherd person. They pretty much have exiled the other, you know, especially the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists.

So all that biblically, that's the church that is expressed in the scriptures. It is the priesthood of all believers with everybody ordained in the waters of your baptism to follow Jesus and be a priest who mediates God's presence. Um, and then, you know, you can get to Hebrews with Jesus, the great high priest in the order of Melchizedek, who we're all priests and he's the high priest, and all that imagery is really helpful.

But then, so I get a lot of stuff from this. I've had Methodist pastors say to me, "My lay people are going crazy with this, you know? They're reading your books and they're talking about this idea and they're basically just starting things." And um, they have some valid concerns like an unhealthy lay person could, you know, go off and do some crazy stuff. But for the most part, it's about control and it's about unwillingness to release people.

So I always pull it back to like, whatever your tradition is—whether you're Lutheran, whether you're Catholic, whether you're Baptist, whatever—embedded in each one of our traditions, those of us who come from some stream of Christianity, uh, in those that uh, today we would say the diversity of denominations, there, if you look deep enough, that idea is there. So for example, the Methodist movement in the beginning was about lay empowerment. Susanna Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley, started a fresh expression in her kitchen. It was the first fresh Methodist fresh expression with a couple hundred people meeting outside the inherited church. John Wesley was doing field preaching and societies and classes and bands and empowering lay people, men and women, to serve in those functions.

So now if you look at Methodism today, you're back to this hierarchical kind of priestly kind of idea. So I try to call people back to the origin of our movement, like the thing that made us distinct and helped us thrive and flourish was how we empowered and equipped the whole people of God. Uh, that priesthood of believers idea was deeply part of how Methodism thrived and became a global movement of the Holy Spirit.

So yeah, that's how I try to frame it.

So like, the your denomination's more open to um, to it, I think, than some. I, you know, I don't want to call out my SBC friends, but you know, and and actually I think denominationally they may be more open to it, but individuals within kind of struggle to see things kind of outside of that box. Um, it's interesting where it feels like there's just limitations, you know? It's um, go with what works, but when it stops working well, let's just work harder to get it to work. I don't know. Um, what makes things, you know, it's interesting you've talked tattoo church, you've talked Tesla Church. Um, for you, what makes a church a church?

Yeah, for me, my minimal ecclesiology goes back to Jesus. Um, when he said, "Where two or more gathered in my name, there I am in the midst," so that's a pretty powerful, you know, minimal ecclesiology for me. Where there's a community of people gathering around the Risen Jesus in worship and uh, growing as disciples, that's a church. I try to think of uh, the Nicene Creed to give—

us a little helpful framework for that so in that Creed you know you got quite a bit about God the Father God the son little tiny bit about the Wild Child the Holy Spirit but then you get to the church and it's four words the church is one Holy Catholic and Apostolic those four words really describe four interlocking relationships so the church is one coia there there's a inness and a community the church is Holy so it worships a holy God and as we worship and interact with that holy God we get transformed to love God to love neighbor to grow in Holiness there's a of word Mark the catholicity and that's why I feel like some movements go too far with like let's just throw the whole inherited system away because that ESS Mark is that we're connected to a historical church of many Expressions all across history and we belong to that little sea Catholic connection universal church and then there's the apostolic Mark which is the outward reaching people currently that aren't currently connected so you got an inward upward outward and upward relationship if you have those four things people are connecting with each other in a deep way growing in Christ worshiping God in some way uh if if we are staying connected to the larger church so we don't become some little like cult kind of thing and then we're constantly reaching out and new people are kind of coming into the life of that then I'd say you got pretty good framework for a church there if you see those four marks so tell me this like I mean let's let's let's pick it apart here a little bit holy tattoo parlor I mean that's that's um that's an interesting pairing how how do you get Holiness out out of a tattoo parlor like what what what does that actually look like when I use the term Holiness um I follow the stream of of God's revelatory kind of unfolding throughout the scripture so God isid God is unfailing love the Old Testament talks about God is uh filled with ra he's filled with compassion so if you like poke a hole in the heart of God compassion pours out so when I think of Holiness I'm not going you know 613 levitical restrictions Holiness I'm going God's Essence and nature is Holy that God is love the New Testament talks about you know that God is agapo God is love and Jesus really summarizes right all the law and Prophets hang on these two things that you love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind strength love your neighbor as yourself then you get to a bunch of stuff with Paul who's like hey some people eat food sacrific to Idols some don't if the holy spirit's poking your heart and saying don't do that you shouldn't right but we can't hold the Gentiles to the 613 levitical restrictions that we ourselves have disobeyed for thousands of years right so there's freedom and Grace and Holiness is a journey of sanctification and growing in love with God and neighbor so I feel like Holiness is not about uh it it can't just pour out anywhere like in a tattoo paror because wherever God's presence is his holy living self is going to saturate that place and make it holy not because of our behaviors right so people just since you went here with the tattoo thing like we can look at the people say the Bible says you know Leviticus uh do not tattoo yourselves for the dead or mark yourself for the dead so right before that statement and after that statement it sayso not eat any meat do not eat shellfish do not trim your beard do not cut your bangs do not wear any clothing with mixed Fabrics D don't don't eat fruit that hasn't laid phow for so long so all these things that we do every day right I shave this morning we'd all be walking around males with looking like hidic Jews you know with the locks and the beards and all that so we'll we'll ignore all that stuff right but then we get this tattoo thing and we go that that one so when we're sitting in that tattoo parlor with people that have been traumatized by the church that are ever going to come to Sunday morning the question I'm asking myself is do I love those people enough to go and incarnate and be with them in their normal life in their normal space and try to be the aroma of Christ in that space and a lot of people consider their tattoos to be sacramental so it's an outward sign of an inward Grace so people that are getting tattoos at tattoo parlor Church they're not getting like um you know uh random things like you know poop emojis or or you know their favorite football team we're getting scripture we're getting Jesus iconography we're getting Christian symbolism that's meaningful to us and so we do this thing called tattoo talk where everybody goes around and they share the story behind their tattoo and so people will share about you know when I almost committed suicide I got this Jesus fish over the scars on my wrist to remind me that God loves me or you know I got my kid who overdosed on fentol I got their handwriting tattooed on my forearm so I can these are the kind of things that come out and then we're just inviting Jesus into that conversation and healing is happening and people really disconnected from the church in every way are starting to say hey I think I want to follow this Jesus guy you know tell me how to pray what does the Bible mean about this or whatever so it's a little church forming there in the tattoo par and it's God's holiness you know transfiguring that space yeah with God's presence yeah is the is the goal of tattoo par and I'm I'm I'm picking on tattoo parlor and and I'm not even picking on it I'm just it's it's an example right and so but is is the goal of tattoo parlor or Tesla tattoo church or Tesla church or any of these is is are they are they self-sustaining where it's like you know the goal is to see somebody two three five 10 years still involved in in tattoo church is it designed to hand off to a a larger more corporate expression with with other believers that aren't as aligned to to tattoo lifestyle like what how what does what does longevity look like uh with some of these fresh Expressions that you're working with yeah so longevity the the beautiful thing about fresh Expressions is it kind of recaptures this what longevity look like in the book of Acts so typically when we we use the word sustainability we're like can we build something that lasts 50 years when the Bible talks about sustainability it talks about can a group of disciples flourish and multiply in this area and then move out from Jerusalem Judea Samaria the ends of the Earth and so multiplication and discipleship formation popping up in Jerusalem for a while then it moves out to Antioch and really flourishes there goes underground in Jerusalem for a while then it's out in the seven churches in Asia Minor and then Philip the Ethiopian unic going down to Ethiopia the oldest continuously existing Church in the world so that is what we're thinking about as far as sustainability multiplication you don't have to pay people to do these things they don't cost anything most of them you know dinner churches messy churches have some costs they're usually lay Le so you don't have to have a clergy on a to start a tattoo PR church so in some sense it's much more sustainable than our current models of church because it's organic and it it's mobile now I did not think when I started tattoo par Church 11 years ago that we'd still be doing it like I'm literally running out of place on my body to get tattoos but um it's still going right and it's formed so many disciples who like spun out and started these new little things all over the place cuz you yeah cuz it it Formed them and then they found their calling in Jesus and then they went and started this thing like a runner's church and a so SE life is seasonal some of the fresh expressions like with soccer parents like uh you know we're sitting around while our kids play soccer or whatever we probably won't do that forever but the relationships that we form we can start a little Christian Community on tailgate of our vehicles while our kids play soccer and pray and study scripture and do those kind of things will that last forever no but will it form us will it create disciples who will go on and then start other kinds of things like that in different spaces and season of Life yes so that's honestly why I think a lot of institutional churches and denominations kind of reject it or they're like okay we don't really want to invest in this because it's not going to like make our our institution you know financially viable or it may not pack butts back in pews but they can't get they can't get past the vision of but it's unleashing people in Christ to share the gospel and plant these little communities all over the all over normal the normal life so but we want to see people butts and bucks and money in the offering plates to sustain this thing we've built so it's not sustainable in that way like is it going to oh now my church is going to have thousands of dollars coming in because maybe that could happen but that's probably not the goal of it it really is to form new Christian communities with people outside the church that probably church is not even on their radar and walking in on a Sunday morning is certainly not something that they're even thinking about this this is so interesting where where do you get let me ask this question first um 11 years tattoo Church tattooed parlor church I'm I'm I'm going to ask his Southern Baptist number and I apologize how many people have have you influenced like um what do you have any idea um how many have you spun off like I'm I'm kind of curious what the ROI is on a decade plus of tattoo parlor Church like what's happened as a result of that yeah here's here's the exciting number for me around 300 baptisms in a decade not just tattoo brother Church um but in all the fresh Expressions we've done over the past 10 years all of those baptisms occurring outside the inherited space so when someone comes to Faith in tattoo PR church we baptize them right by the way we take the Lord's supper and Holy Communion at tattoo par church we have a moment of confession and repentance and then we take the Lord's Supper I break the bread and give it to everybody you know we do that so um but that's for me that's the return on investment it's new Christian Chans and then you know all the things that I described that whole ecosystem that started with like burritos and bibles and tattoo church and then that spun out you know connect in the MLK and then that spun out um you know Tesla church and all these things so people get connected in those and they're like hey my thing is taking my dog to the dog park on Saturdays so pause of Praise was born out of that dog park church so dozens of little communities springing out out of that that's the return on investment do are all of these um fresh expressions are they connected in any way networked together where it's part of something larger or do you try to keep everything um I mean I'm saying the word isolated I don't mean it negative but like is there is there a larger umbrella connectivity to all of these um uh like how do you network them yeah do you network them we do so that's where the um inherited Church comes in the kind of the center of all this so we have a new worship experience we've created called Fresh worship and then we have vintage worship so anybody who's open to like I think I'll check out what a more inherited kind of thing looks like so it's very different like we have a rap song every week and kind of like a little poetry slam type thing we have food at that and dance breaks and coffee toast so it's not like a church you would think uh con conventional and then we have a monthly gathering in our home so we get all the different fresh expression leaders and their core kind of team people that are their team they all come to our house we got a big old table we get everybody around for a

meal and then we break out men with men women with women and we do these little discipleship groups or what we call band meetings where we go deep on how goes it with your soul how you doing with prayer how you studying scripture did you sin since we met last time that kind of stuff so we bringing all those people together and helping them understand that they're part of this larger thing some people that are in the different expressions they'll never participate in that that wider kind of thing like and that's fine but a lot of them are kind of networking connecting.

Yeah, it's interesting you provide I'm guessing like vision at that you know reinforcing that um and then the the holiness aspect of it the you know did you sin and giving it an opportunity like it didn't um to be honest that's something that hadn't occurred to me kind of wrestling with this um what is the like where do these ideas come from I mean tattoo parlor okay look you got you got tattoos but like are you walking around saying hey let's start dog parlor church does somebody come up and say hey or a dog uh dog park church is somebody else saying hey I I there's this dog park over here let me do church over like how how does that even like start.

Great question so now it's kind of like a runaway train where people just have imaginations ideas because they're seeing all these other things they're going so what's my thing like who do I hang out with every week what what do I do so we follow this like Luke 10 blueprint so Jesus says go out two by two find the person at peace that person welcomes you you do life at their table they open that neighborhood that space that network to you so we're always looking for those people praying for those people um so I can I can walk you through a couple stories of like how they evolved to help put some flesh on it but so we're looking for those people um that are opening those spaces and then I'm asking people like I already know life is busy it's already crazy um you don't want to add anything to your life so these are the kind of questions we ask what do you already do every week who do you do that with what are the things that you all do together and then can you think about how those things could become a form of church because the inherited church it's a lot of hey come serve on the committee you know or join the care sheeper team or whatever those are great things but this is asking a different question and helping them be a missionary to their normal co-workers and family and friends.

So for instance the rehab church I talked about that is uh our person of peace as the director of that rehab her name is Megan and she had she asked me to come in and do like a spiritual kind of talk and try to get the the residence open to that so I did it one time they were really receptive to it she's like hey how regularly could you do that and we were like every week was that be that be good she's like yes she's like you can't call it church cuz we're a state facility and some people are cold ordered to be here and all that so we called a higher power hour but she's our person of peace she's opened that up now we can go in we do church there every week.

Larry was a a seventy-year-old church member who went to church his whole life dog park church I like that you call it dog parlor church that was cool that was a remix um but it's called he called it pause of praise um that's his thing he goes on Saturdays he hangs out with his friends they talk about sports and the weather their dogs running around and play so he started a little church there uh Denise she started Church 3.1 because she's a runner she does these five Ks mud runs marathons so we do Church 3.1 we circle up Denise takes out her phone reads a little scripture or Jesus story asks some questions we run a five K we come back pray out um so you can see how those those intrinsic motivation questions lead to all kind of possibilities.

Yeah, when did you lose control of it I mean because because I mean something like this at some point you said Denise is the five K right and so like Denise needs to own the vision to be able to do that um a a at what point did you go from you manufacturing vision at tattoo church and and others of those to where it became viral it became catching it it had a life of its own outside of you manufacturing it.

Yeah I I think a couple years into it sometimes you have to start by modeling the behavior that you want to see and that whole Jesus model of uh I'm gonna do you watch let's talk about it you do I'll watch let's talk about it so there's some of that in the beginning that you do have to in my context if you're coming to a church with you know twelve eighty year olds um then there's not a lot to work with there so you have to go outside the camp kind of find those person of peace start doing things and then that opens up every relationship opens up possible networks of more relationships so that's how I kind of start but once we have a little bit of energy and kind of a core team I start asking those questions like what is your vision what is your god dream who who in your life does it break your heart that they don't know this precious gift of communal life in Jesus that God's calling you to be that person that's going to bring it you know so for Denise that's her runner friends that's for Larry that's his dog park buddies um but yeah and you're right it's totally out of control like and I'm totally fine with that and that's where there is there is a different kinds of personalities right and I love my clergy siblings where we're covenant there some of them are beautiful amazing people but if you try to do this kind of stuff like this you know with your fist clinch holding on it's not going to work you have to do this and you have to trust the spirit and you have to trust people like my lay person's going to preach Sunday and I'm not and I'm totally fine with that and you know she's going to do a great job and I'm going to show up be supportive encourage people but I'm fine like some people are not fine with that they they need to be the person bring the preaching doing the doing the stuff so it's this shift from growing fruit on my own tree to growing fruit on other people's trees I think it's how Jesus did ministry because he was like hey watch how I do this because next time you're going to do it like I'm going to heal these people but then I'm gonna send you out to do that these people are hungry I fed them last time you give them something to eat.

What did there are lots of people that that I work with that want to go from this from clinching to releasing to holding on squeezing making and instead releasing uh releasing losing control like you know I talk so much about you've got to release you've got to lose control of of something you know the the tighter you hold on uh the more that you try to control the less that you're going to do um your less you're going to see happen.

Absolutely give some advice give some coaching um how do we go from this to this uh somebody wants to they're not able to or they boss you know they're they're at a structured church that that isn't willing to to let go um they've been trained to do this they've been trained to clinch they don't know how to release like how how do we take those steps to actually release or even the patients to wait a couple years to see fruit happen like there's a couple things there.

Coaches through that yeah well you know this better than anybody Jeff the entrepreneurial mindset is a little bit different than the managerial mindset um so like there's Sarah Sarah's done all this research on how entrepreneurs think and versus managerial thinking and it's like effectual reasoning you just start stuff you pass it off you iterate see if it works we'll experiment with it and then you if it does that's great but if not correct course correction managerial thinking is that here's a target vision steps to fulfill the goal we want to see this by this many years years so all I'm a seminary professor so I'm throwing rocks at myself here but all of our seminary education all of our ordination processes all those things are managerial logic we're teaching people to control we're teaching people to manage the system where it's that McDonald's church right where you're like the manager of McDonald's you're serving Big Mac and fries to a consumer Christian culture and you got a system to manage it's a total mindset shift of metanoia and repentance to basically unlearn all of our training and a lot a lot I'm not going to say all seminaries do this I don't know all of them but a lot of them do we're like totally preparing people for that so there's an unlearning process that has to take place um and some people are just more wired for that than others so I say go hang out with some entrepreneurs learn how they think check out what they do differently try to learn from that um and and bring some of that kind of thinking into your ministry doesn't mean you have to totally like turn everything over and you have no control at all like you still have committees and you still preach and you know run meetings and all that stuff you can do that and you can have this little experimental kind of you know uh disruptive innovation department in your church too um and do that.

I think when I have people come to me that it comes down to this like I I have these questions of is it a good idea or a god idea and there is a difference sometimes so I'll say first of all do you have a team if this person has an idea and they don't have a team that's usually telling about the person's spiritual capacities I say do you have a person at peace so do you just have an idea to go do some stuff in a tattoo parlor or do you know the owner Brian who's inviting you to come in and do that um and are what I'm really trying to find out is are they teachable but can I help shape coach cheerlead encourage them um so do I have the relational capacity with them that I can speak into it so if it's a person who's like one of those they always have the best idea in the room and they don't seem like they're very you know you can have a lot of problems down the road so if you're going to to do this you have to have some kind of framework of how you're helping people so those things like working through team having actual incarnational presence in the community and connecting with people building those relationships having people that are teachable coachable that you can say hey that worked really good did you see how this kind of went off the rails here I wonder if we tried that next time and then say there's this co-creative process that's happening that's how I do the the open-handed releasing part.

That that's fascinating um the idea of of seminaries teaching managerial and and not like I I mean it makes perfect sense I I don't know that I had had put that together um do you at the seminary level do you feel that tension like have you had this conversation with uh powers that be in the educational field like are they do they see that are they okay with that is is there growth towards fresh expressions ideas in in seminaries now what's the educational front look like.

Yeah so without um putting myself out of a job um here sorry I don't want to do that but hopefully you've got other revenue streams to cover I got I got backup tows um I do I do feel like there's a lot more openness now there's a definitely a shortage of students right um ministers are quitting in droves not a lot of people signing up for seminary so there is a lot of openness to change curriculum to rethink like could we do more stuff around praxis and like we have definitely prepared people for a world that no longer exists so that whole managerial thing is like you're going to go to a system

There's going to be people there if you just manage it well. You know, that's a Christendom idea, but there's very few churches where you're going into a healthy system. It's mostly you're a missionary church with eight people, twelve people, ten people, twenty people. If you're lucky, you know, you get a thirty, forty, fifty in Methodism. You know, you get a thirty, forty, fifty people. That's a good start. And of course there's anomalies. There's Methodist megachurches. But um, so like we have a house of studies at United specifically for Fresh Expressions. We have demon masters and certifications. I teach a course at Emory on Fresh Expressions now, and Duke Divinity School. I've got a conversation going with SMU Perkins. So these are a lot of seminaries saying, okay, we think maybe we need to include this kind of entrepreneurial, fresh expression, missional kind of thinking stuff. And they have not said we'll not do some of the other core curriculum stuff. So we haven't got that far down the road with it, but as far as it can be electives, it can be specific tracks or focuses that people take on. So that's happening in seminaries across the country, which I feel is a really positive sign. Now figure out the economic model and all that. We haven't even really made much headway there.

Yeah, I mean the economics of all this is, um, it changes. And that's one of the challenges of bivocational ministry. And it's you're not paying salaries and you're not paying mortgages. And so like it's, um, money just looks different, right? And so at least, you know, especially in digital space, we can relate to that.

Well, Michael, this has been, man, I always love hanging out with you and talking Fresh Expression. This has been so good.

Same, same.

Yeah, man, Joey has been, uh, Joey had some tech issues. God bless him. And so, uh, he cut bait and, um, was like I'm going to restart my computer, and we never heard from Joey again. So I don't know what's going on in his world, but, um, it's been good. I mean, I always feel like it's, um, you know, somebody who understands how I think. You were actually one of the first guys that I talked with that I was like, oh my gosh, this guy is me. He understands this. He thinks the way that I think. And so like, it's just been so, I'm so thankful for you and the work that you're doing in the space and carving it out.

And so, hey, but we're going to land the plane because I have another meeting to go to. Hey, heads up. Um, we've got, um, wait, that's a church is going to be spinning off into its own podcast and show starting August seventh. And so you can look for that August seventh. I'm sure we'll communicate out the podcast subscription links, and it'll be on the Church Digitals YouTube. And so look for that. Uh, hopefully Joey gets his tech stuff figured out by then, and, um, and we'll be good.

Uh, I don't know if we know this, and I don't know that I can confirm this, but my hope was to interview Whitebeard for that August seventh show. And Whitebeard's actually in the audience right now on Discord. So I don't know that he got that email, but Whitebeard, we got to talk because I want to interview you soon. And so, no, uh, no pressure though. He says he's on Discord, so we're good. So we will look for, uh, Whitebeard coming soon, launching in the next episode. But once again, Michael, thanks for hanging out with us today, and we're going to land the plane for Michael and the disembodied Joey Santos, wherever he is. This is Jeff with the Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us today, and, uh, we'll talk soon. Have a good one.