EP219: Michael Beck, Missional Imagination, & Following the Holy Spirit

People want to have conversations and they want to be known and to ask, "Oh, so Jesus did that? Well, that's great. I didn't know that about, or that's really weird that Jesus did." So we're trying to create that kind of a dialogical environment where people can say, "I don't believe that," and we can say, "You know, I wrestle with not believing that sometimes too, but here's the way I think about it." So I was creating that, but I think your question is so spot on about we have to have our ecclesiology straight going into this.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech itself will 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 would discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. This is Jeff, and man, I'm glad you all are here. We're gonna have a really fun conversation. I can't wait to see where this one goes today. But hey, before we get started, we may talk a little bit about metaverse, not too much maybe on this show, but I just want to remind y'all with metaverse, so I'm doing a live show over on Leadership Network and it's called Metaverse Church Next. We're really digging into a lot of the innovators, a lot of the innovations that are surrounding the idea of metaverse church. Now we've talked a lot about virtual reality, but I'm starting to turn the corner here, dipping into blockchain, crypto, DAOs. Really intrigued on DAOs right now. That's for some, that's another conversation for that other show, Metaverse Church Next. And so you can check that out. Actually, go to metaversechurchnext.com. That'll redirect you to Leadership Network's website, get you connected, see the schedule, see some blogs that I and some of the other guests have written on there. But check that out, Metaverse Church Next, for more information.

As a matter of fact, today's guest, Michael Beck, is going to be joining me in July, I think, talking about his metaverse church, living room church, right? Is that what it's called?

Direct, yes sir. Awesome. And so I was introduced to Michael Beck here talking about living room church, and I'd actually seen the church, hadn't gone in, and we had a mutual friend through Leadership Network that connected us and then jumped on a Zoom call and realized that he was like my soul mate from another life or something. And suddenly we like found ourselves—you ever have those moments where you're like speaking the same words, like in just the heartstrings or lining up? It's like, "Oh my gosh, Michael Beck is my type of person right here." And so I cannot wait to have this conversation just to dig in a little more and start to explore some of these similarities.

So hey, Michael, just even as we're opening up here getting started, why don't you introduce yourself, set up a little bit, tell the audience maybe a little bit about what you do?

Sure. So my name is Michael Beck. I'm a United Methodist clergy person, ordained elder. My wife and I are co-pastors of inherited congregations, you know, older traditional congregations. But then alongside those, we kind of live in this blended ecology where we create these little missional communities, fresh expressions of church, contextual forms of church for people outside the church. So in the physical realm—or I don't really like the whole physical-digital dichotomy, but I like to say on-site, online—because when you're online, you're still a physical embodied person. Just saying. But so we have those in tattoo parlors and tex-mex restaurants and dog parks and all over the place. Then we have a bunch of those digitally that are fully online communities, like the Living Room Church Facebook group, which is about 1,500 members now. And then we have yoga church, which is digital. And then we have church in the metaverse, church in VR, so Living Room Church VR, which we put on our headsets, we go into all space, and we worship Jesus and we have sermonic conversations and pray, and the Holy Spirit is there and moving and transforming lives.

And then my day job, I'm a professor at a couple seminaries, and I work for my denomination doing contextual church planting across our kind of global connection.

So I didn't realize the seminaries. That was a surprise to me. What do you teach? Digital in seminaries mostly?

Yeah, my main gig is at United Theological Seminary. I'm the director of the Fresh Expressions House of Studies there. And so we're trying to, as a seminary, prepare leaders for the world as it currently exists, you know, not the world that used to be. And so part of that is some of what we're going to be talking about today: digital church and missional ecclesiology. Most of my teaching, I go and do these intensives, five days in a classroom. In some ways, you know, we're still stuck a little bit in that old way. But then a lot of online teaching as well, and lectures and stuff. I also teach at Northwind Seminary and then Memphis Theological Seminary as well as adjunct here and there.

So that's interesting, you know. I mean, we've had here on the podcast we've had conversations with some seminary profs and seminarians and students, you know, about some of the lack of digital in your context, the fresh expressions. How really a lot of the majority of our seminaries don't seem to be educating much into that. And so it's encouraging to me that you're one of those voices out there that's training this next generation and bringing attention to different ways of thinking as we're working through here. So that's really cool, man. Shedding light. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Well, let me give a little caveat there. That there's still a struggle in the academic world, as you know, Jeff, around digital church. And so I wouldn't say that it's a broadly accepted thing in academia. There's still a lot of struggles with it and ivory tower kind of picking it apart before we really experienced it and had to be practitioners of it. So but we're trying to create some change in seminary education, some culture shift in the area of digitality. But it is definitely an uphill climb.

So you did attend those meetings? No, I'm kidding. This is so—I'll fly. We could talk through some stories, and I've seen some of my digital and metaverse friends get beat up by the seminarian crowd, you know, very—you said the words "ivory tower." I did not. But that does describe it. And I mean, just to be honest, like there were some shots. I had a kid, and I say a kid, I really do—yeah, he was a kid, mid-twenties, I would consider a kid. I had a kid on my podcast, and he was talking about some of the things that were out there. And seminary prof heard the podcast. First off, thank you, seminary prof, for listening to the podcast. That kind of surprised me. But coming out of it, like this seminary prof starts a war on Facebook with this twenty-something-year-old who's launching a digital church, and like he's taking shots left and right. And give credit to the twenty-year-old for replying humbly and replying in the spirit, while the seminarian—I don't know that they're actually giving credit to. And I don't want to do a play-by-play here on the show, but it was surprising to me, the lack of imagination that really comes around when we're talking with these seminaries and digital church in general.

You know, coming out of COVID, coming out of COVID, we saw digital rise up in many ways. Was it perfect? No. Are many churches struggling with the idea? Yeah. But many churches have that false view of what digital is or what digital could be. And it's fascinating, you know, even where we are in 2022 now, summer coming in, and trying to analyze the people that are doing digital churches, that are doing fresh expressions, how even after COVID, even after the model broke, we're still needing to fight for validation, for recognition, for credibility oftentimes.

So you know, I know you've been one of these guys that's been in the rough for a while. You've written—you told me nine books roughly centered around this topic or around digital and fresh expressions. Is that all nine are on that topic?

Well, they're around fresh expressions, missional ecclesiology. The Fresh Expressions in the Digital Age was the book that I really started to dive in and try to provide a more robust kind of ecclesiology, theology for digitality and what community can look like in that space.

Yeah, love it. Which really gets us to the heart of this because if churches and seminarians—I'm going to be done picking on the seminaries, but you know, if they're lacking imagination, I mean really what we have the opportunity to here in 2022 is to embrace our imagination. And you know, I've started utilizing the phrase "missional imagination," and being imaginative and using that towards missional purposes. You know, I've heard you use the phrase "imagination is your superpower," and I would almost love to like start the conversation here. Imagination is your superpower. Start to unpack that for us. What do you mean with that?

Yeah, well, let me ground it in scripture a little bit first, and then I'll get into the practical part of it. But you know, God imagines creation, right? And then speaks it into existence with a bang. When he says, "Let there be light," and the Spirit hovers over the swirling chaos and brings forth, you know, beauty and order. And so imagination, I believe, as human beings made in the image of God, we've been instilled with this imagination.

In the book Painting with Ashes, where that chapter is "Imagination is Your Superpower," I was kind of talking about in the context of growing up as an orphaned, abused child. And in that situation, you either get your imagination crushed and basically you can't flourish and live when that happens, or you use your imagination to recreate your reality. And you start to dream or imagine how things could be differently, could be different in your life. And then you put in the action to do those things.

So like in the fresh expression movement, we talk about pioneers as dreamers who do. And that was first used by Gerald Arbuckle in his book Refounding the Church. But there's this connection between what you can dream and imagine and what the Holy Spirit can bring into being—not that you are bringing it into being, but the Holy Spirit through and in community. And so then I just looked at, you know, how in the church, even in the missional church conversation, right, we've already gotten into like a stale kind of imagination. And we've already gotten into like a kind of being dogmatic about it. And there's this beautiful idea about the missio Dei, that we don't have a mission—God has a mission, and we get drawn into that mission. And the Holy Spirit is drawing the world into the life of God. And so that means we're not the primary actors. God is.

Our key ability is to be able to discern what the Holy Spirit's doing and join into what the Holy Spirit is doing, not making something happen through our own activity or action, but watching for what God is doing and getting into that. And so to get dogmatic about Missio Dei and all of that and new forms of church—even I've seen this happen really fast where all of a sudden we got like all this dogma around what a new Christian community is and what a fresh expression of church is and what it has to look like. And in some ways it kind of diminishes what it could be, the imagination.

So for instance, people that are really big about, you know, third place ministry—having church in a tattoo parlor or a dog park—they're like, "Yes, Christian koinonia going on, yes." Then we say, "Well, what if the digital place is a third place?" Then they go, "Oh no, no, no, you can't have Christian community in a digital environment. That's impossible, right?" And our imagination just like withers all of a sudden around the digitality conversation.

I'm like, "Well, no, because the digital space is its own built environment, just like we go into a tattoo parlor or a sanctuary or, you know, just a normal fellowship hall. Let's keep it in like normal church world kind of—that's a built environment where people come together and they worship Jesus and they interact. Well, the digital space is its own kind of built environment where we're inhabiting a space together in our bodies. We're just connected through distance contact, which is not a new technology. I mean, it goes back to the telegraph really, but we're being enabled through space and time to be in a room together in a physical way that's enabled by this digital environment."

So our missional imagination kind of collapses when we start to think about that and go, "Oh, I don't know, koinonia, depth of relationship." But just to give you a real practical example: somebody who's in the Alcoholics Anonymous community, me in recovery—throughout the pandemic we couldn't have meetings, right? And these meetings are foundational, fundamental to our ongoing recovery. Now I don't necessarily go to meetings because I'm thinking about getting drunk or high. I go to meetings because of the community and to help others and all those things. We couldn't do that during the pandemic, so we had to work with Zoom rooms and create community in that way. And guess what? It worked just like if we were sitting in a church basement or a clubhouse somewhere. We were building relationship, we were growing spiritually, we were helping sustain each other through the challenges.

So if that's not koinonia, that's not community and reciprocal relationship, there I don't—I don't know what else you would call that. So as you described, you know, kind of collapsing back into, "Oh, we had to do digital for a while because of pandemic, but now, oh, let's get back to the real thing"—I just think that diminishes the beautiful thing the Holy Spirit was like leading us into, this new space, this new frontier to be church in new ways. And we've kind of said, "Well, that was good, but now let's get back to, you know, what we've always done."

Yeah, I mean, the way that you're describing this is that the imagination—it's not from us. Like the picture you're painting, it's the imagination comes from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was, is leading us to something different. Can you just maybe give me some background or some grounding in that piece where the Holy Spirit is leading us into these fresh expressions, into these new ideas, into this new realm?

Yeah, and there's this really underutilized—Saint Ignatius of Loyola developed the imaginative prayer practice, praying with the imagination. And there's a kind of meditation where it's like stillness and we're just trying to cease the hamster wheel and like just be, you know, still and quiet. And that's a very biblical way to pray and meditate. But then there's this whole other idea where it's like you, through your imagination, you take all of your mental faculties into the prayer task. And you—a good way to start is you take a biblical story or text and you imagine yourself in the text and what is Jesus doing and saying. And these little things come out that maybe you wouldn't have seen.

And then as you get more into the practice, I think that the Holy Spirit's communicating directly to our imagination through images, through kind of scenes or whatever you want to call it. And I believe that's the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working on our mind and our heart and our soul to show us new possibilities. I think throughout the Book of Acts it's very clear that that was a gift that God gave—like dreams, visions, Peter and Cornelius, Paul and the Macedonian man. But it's something in our kind of Enlightenment Western version of Christianity we've like shut the door to those kind of things.

So I think when you're working from that lane—like the Holy Spirit can speak to our imagination and our dreams and show us things—then that opens up all these new possibilities. We get our self-limitations out of the way, and then we start to look for that imagination. It leads us to look into the community: what is God already doing? And it changes the focus from "What do I need to come in the situation and do?" to "What is God doing here that I can join into?"

So like when I'm going into Living Room Church VR and we've got our headsets on and our avatars and we're worshiping, we're having our sermonic conversation, I'm really listening to what people are saying. And I'm, you know, just trying to be conscious of how is the Holy Spirit moving in this community? And if Jesus is Lord of like all nations, all societies, all people, all the universe, isn't Jesus Lord of the metaverse too? Is Jesus limited to me at work and moving in this community right here in this space with real people that are bringing real needs and real situations? And so then I'm just thinking, "What is what is God prompting me to say or do in this situation?"

So that's what I mean by looking at imagination in that way—that it's a gift from God and something we can access. If Mark Zuckerberg was capable of creating something that would keep God out, we're in serious trouble. Like if Zuckerberg, if Facebook, if Meta really is capable of creating a device that prevents God from entering in, we are like the end of the world just happened, or maybe our faith is just a little too small. I'm not sure, but we can maybe offline that conversation.

Yeah, totally. So I love that. I've never done—are you kidding me, man? Created something that could kick God out? Like that did not play well in the garden. I just, uh, anyway. But there's some biblical context that maybe we can go back into, and it's the other biblical line I throw a lot these days: "Hey, listen, like, you know, a lot of people—Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. God got him to Nineveh at some point, you know, the hard way maybe, but in many ways a lot of these churches that are fighting against this mission field—well, you know, maybe God will get you there one way or another. We'll have to see how time plays out."

Hey, let me ask this: like, so with you're doing these fresh expressions, you've got these people that are imaginative, where some things are happening, and you're seeing this in—like, never mind some of the digital and metaverse—I don't even think is the most controversial thing that we've said in this podcast. Tattoo parlors—like, is there—that's that's too far gone? Let that's that's okay? Like, how do you measure the ecclesiology, the functions? Like, I'll just put it in my context. DJ—we've talked about this on the show. DJ Soto right now is doing—he's experimenting with church in Grand Theft Auto, you know? It's like, "Hey, I'm going to go kill the pimp, I'm going to steal this car, and now it's time to go to church." And like, I don't know if that's too far gone, you know? Like, I really—that I've never questioned anything. This is the one example that I'm like, "You know, maybe, maybe we actually want to like look at this experiment, see what's happening." You know, tattoo parlor is one of those areas. I'm not calling it an unsacred spot, but it just never resonated for me to be like, "Oh, let's do church there." But I know people that do churches in bars and are incredibly successful—cigar bars, alcohol bars, different places—and they're resonating. So like, how do you walk that line of, "Hey, here's a new idea. Is this of God? Is this a man? Does this line up to something biblically we can do?" Like, you're living in this world. How do you balance that tension?

Yeah, it's a great question. And by the way, let me preface this and say the heroes of my story are lay people. So these are non-ordained, non-pastor people who are planting churches in tattoo parlors and tex-mex restaurants. And the VR church is a team of lay people. So my primary role is like cheerleader, encourager, facilitator. I like to grow fruit on other people's trees. That's the way I see it, rather than growing fruit on my tree. How do I help nurture the fruit in the trees of others?

So when somebody comes to me—"Is it a good idea or a God idea?"—I have this kind of evaluative framework. One: I'll ask, do they have a team? Because Jesus never sends us alone. It's always at least two by two. So if they have a great idea and they don't have a team, I'd say, "Let's work on that part. Let's get a team together."

Do they have a person of peace? So Luke 10—find the person of peace, the welcomer, opens the network, opens the door, opens the third place to you. So if they just have a real cool idea, "I want to go do something in a tattoo parlor," I'd be like, "Really? Do you know anybody in tattoo product culture? Do you know the artist or the owner or whatever?"

So in the case of tattoo parlor church, we had an owner. And this is a ten-year-old fresh expression, so it's not all that new. And by the way, I thought this was like a new thing, and then I found out about Razook's Tattoo Shop in the Old City of Jerusalem. And they've been tattooing Christian pilgrims for some sick four or five hundred years, a long amount of time where they pass it down generally generationally. And they do Christian—like this Jerusalem cross. I got on my finger at Razook's in Jerusalem. So I was like, "Oh, nothing's new under the sun. They had tattoo parlor church four hundred years ago."

But then I'll say, and then do I have the relational credibility with this person? So if things start to go a little off course or we need to like bring things back, do I have a—I don't like to use the word authority, but a relational credibility to like bring it back to Jesus kind of, or get us back on course?

So if I can say yes to all those things, I'll say, "This is a God idea. Let's experiment with it and see where it goes." It's not a—a lot of things fail. So we try to create a failure culture. It's not good or bad. It's just—it's never, you know, right or wrong. It's just, "What did we learn out of it, and let's try the next thing that God might be leading us to?"

So there are some people that get hung up. It's probably a good—not a good example to lead with tattoo parlor because that's going to be on the edge of some people's imagination for where the church can happen. But I do want to say that the really cool thing about tattoo prayer church—so we're sitting around in a circle and a coffee table in a tattoo parlor, and we're doing baptisms in there. We're having the Lord's Supper in their communion. We're worshiping Jesus, we're studying Scripture, people are coming to faith.

are going back getting tattoos while they're doing that but they're getting faith-based symbols so scriptures, you know, different meaningful symbols iconography in the Christian tradition. And then while there's other people who are coming in, they're just getting their piercings or they're waiting to go back for their tattoo or whatever. Now they find themselves in a conversation with a bunch of people talking about Jesus, and then they jump in. So it's just this really cool thing that the Spirit's doing.

People get caught up on the Leviticus restriction. I think it's um, 29, maybe, or 19:28, somewhere in there, Leviticus. Um, but it's funny if you look at that restriction, it says, "Do not tattoo for the dead or gash yourself for the dead." But then if you look before and after it, it says, "Do not trim the corners of your beard. Do not wear clothing with different kinds of fabric. Do not eat shellfish or anything with the blood in it. Do not eat fruit that doesn't lie fallow for such a period of time." So we look at all those things, we go, "Yup, did that today. Did that today." Like we'd all be walking around as Hasidic Jews with curly locks, big beards, all of that. Um, but then we look at that one thing and go, "Oh, tattoos evil, bad, right?"

So what if using missional imagination is thinking about how can something like tattoo culture bend to point to the truth of Jesus? How can it be a sign and a symbol and an instrument, a foretaste of God's kingdom in the world? How can my tattoos be something that's an evangel, evangelism conversation starter? Which, by the way, if you don't want to get conversations about Jesus on airplanes for the rest of your life, don't tattoo Jesus's story up and down your arms like I have, because you're never gonna get a break from talking about Jesus. So be ready for that.

But so it's just a different way to think about it. And I wouldn't say everybody's called to go and do that, and we all have our different convictions around Scripture and how we interpret that. But the key thing, and everything I just said, if you could just hear this: there are people in the tattoo parlor who are going to never hear the Gospel and they're going to never come to know the love of Jesus Christ that we know if we don't go be church with them where they live. They're just not ever going to come to our church. So I think Jesus's approach was we go and we form church with people where they are. And that's why I do it. It's not really about the tattooing or any of that. It's about God opened this door for us, and there's people there that are coming to know Jesus. And to me, that's the ultimate kind of motivation for this.

Yeah, I'm intrigued. You're right, we've been living on the edge, I'm sure, a little bit here with the tattoo parlor you mentioned. Like Facebook group with living room church, you mentioned the virtual reality implementation of that. What are some other fresh—I mentioned bars, you know, several bar churches, cigar bars as well. What are some other maybe unique expressions or ideas when we're looking at like missional imagination? What are some unique cases that are out there that you've worked with?

Sure. So I mean, just in our little network, we have 15 of these around our churches. And let me let me just share some more normal ones, okay? So like my 80-year-old, um, long-term congregant, Larry, uh, who just has been going to church his whole life. He's a faithful servant bringing his prayers, presents, gifts, service, witness to the church. So he says, "Pastor, I'm boring. I don't do any of this stuff." You know, we got church in the most southwest grill church, in the dog park church, in the yoga studio church, in the burrito place, and the tattoo parlor. He says, "So what I do on Saturdays, I take my dog Rocky to the dog park, and I talk with my friends about sports and the weather and whatever, and I have a little community there." And so we just had a conversation: "Well, Larry, what if we started to think of that as it could become a little Christian community with your friends that don't go to church but gather at the dog park?" And so I have two little pugs, Vader and Ferdinand, and he's got this big, like, horse dog, Labradoodle dog. Um, Larry plants his first church at 80 years old in the dog park.

So um, he leads the sermonic conversation. He takes it way too serious. He's like borrowing my commentaries and stuff. He's like, "Pastor, can I say this and say that? I want to—" I'm like, "Larry, just just let it. Let the Holy Spirit lead." And so he'll have, you know, humans come in, have a passing of the peace. The dogs come in, have a sniffing of the butts, and we have church right out there in the dog park. Um, and that's just church happening where people do life.

My one of my younger folks of our church, her name is Denise. She came to faith in Burritos and Bibles, and that's where we gather in a tex-mex restaurant. We eat all-you-can-eat chips and salsa and burritos and we worship Jesus. Um, she came to faith in that community. And then within—so she's 30, she's probably mid-30s now. This is a while back. But she she said she came to faith, and she's like, "Well, I like to run. I do these mud runs and 5Ks and marathons and stuff. What if I get my group of friends and um we'll get together, we'll have like a little prayer time, sermonic conversation is the language we use, and then we'll go do our run and then we'll come back and we'll go back to work and go back to our kids or whatever?" So she started Church 3.1, which is church where they run a 5K. She leads the conversation, and we we give our teams like some questions. So it's not necessarily a sermon like you would think of it, but we'll take a Jesus story, we'll read a couple verses of a Jesus story or something Jesus taught or said, and then we'll ask a question like, "If this Jesus story happened today, what would it look like?" So we got Christians, non-Christians, definitely don't want to be Christians, all in this circle, right? And we're just saying, "What if this happened today? What would it look like?" Everybody can get in on the question. It's not a right or wrong answer. It's just, "I think Jesus would do this. It would look like that." So we're really teaching people to have a scriptural imagination, to focus their attention around Jesus and what he would do and say. Then we go run our 5K, and we pray, and we come back.

So I think it's just the simpleness of it. I think the key thing of what many young people that I work with that say that the frustrating thing about the church—it's like, "Oh, I get to serve on a committee or you know, I maybe I preach for my pastor here and there. I'm a really good lay person or I lead a you know group in the church." But they just feel like this disconnect with that in their everyday normal life. And this is a way to say, "No, have an imagination for your everyday normal life. That anything you do with anybody that you like to do, it could actually become church with them where they are." And I I just see people getting really fulfilled by that and saying, "Okay, if this is for being a follower of Jesus, I can do this. I get it. And I'm bringing something in the conversation, and I'm making a difference in my community and my friends' lives." And it just really ups the whole, you know, game of being a follower of Jesus, I think.

Yeah, I've had hundreds of conversations with people that are wanting to launch a digital church. Um, and the majority of them find me on Google. We've we've talked about it before. Um, and and but to the T, almost a hundred percent of them—maybe it's 99, 98, 97 percent—all they really want is permission. Like, for somebody to validate the idea. They're going to their pastor. Their pastor doesn't understand the fresh expression or the digital church. The denomination doesn't want anything to do with this. Even like their their spouse and their friends—like, they're just, it's the idea of the digital church is is too far out or metaverse church is too far outside of the box of like normal acceptance. Um, and so but honestly, it's at this point when I hear these ideas—like, it used to be, "Hey, that's a great idea. You should do it." And it still is, except now it's, "Hey, that's a great idea. There's four people who are doing the exact same thing. You should meet them, and so you can maybe like learn from each other." Because there's, you know, Ecclesiastes—there's nothing new under the sun at this point. But what what's happening is is that we're these people that have been looking for permission have gotten it, and they're they're seeing it, and now they're starting to run with it. And it's and at this point, you know, I used to be able to like actually—Chess Lee Lundy texted me today. He works with me, help me co-found Digital Church Network. And he's like, "Hey, do we have a list of the digital church planters?" And it used to be that I could sit down like on a sticky and write down, you know, the six, eight, ten, twelve names. And at this point I'm like, "Dude, I mean, I yeah, like I'd have to, you know, it's our bad for not actually like getting the database up and running sooner, but it's like man, we're gonna have to like scrape it and to go through this because there's just so many people that that are out there serving, that that we're helping, that that are thinking different." And so man, I I love what you're you're talking about here.

Now let me ask, let me ask this: if if we're—you've said the the uh the sermonic conversation. You've used that phrase a lot. I guess that's like that's more of like a conversational sermon, going through a Bible study. You kind of alluded to it a little bit. Some questions to try to help the conversation go through. And and so, you know, if you look at Acts 2, the the ecclesiology, biblical functions of a church, you know, I guess that there's the teaching that that's involved with that. Um, you know, whether we do dog park church or where we really do um uh tattoo church, there's there's still a portion here of: is this a is it a rich ecclesiology? Is is it more limited? Or like my friends over at the Wesleyan Church, is there any central ecclesiology that you're holding at a higher standard than the other things? Like, how do you throttle that ecclesiology when you're helping people start a tattoo church or a dog park church or all these other types of churches that that we're hearing about?

Yeah, excellent. Um, so when we're doing this sermonic conversation where we're thinking about um the the the report of young people and emerging generations like the whole faith unbundled concept of uh we don't want to be told what to believe, right? We don't want the 30-minute monologue. Which is why I'm sure um pastors who are streaming their worship services from their inherited congregations and going, "This is terrible. Nobody's engaged at all." Well, no duh, because it's like a new form of digital colonialism where we're like projecting ourselves into a space where we haven't been invited, talking a language only we understand, right? People want to have conversations, and they they want to to be known and and to ask, "Oh, so Jesus did that? Well, that that's great. I didn't know that about," or "That's really weird that Jesus did." So we're trying to create that kind of a dialogical environment where people can say, "I don't believe that," and we can say, "You know, I wrestle with not believing that sometimes too, but here's the way I think about it." So I was creating that. But I think your question is so spot on about we have to have our ecclesiology straight going into this. And so we have like a minimalist ecclesiology that um that being part of a of a almost 400-year-old uh you know movement uh church denomination, third largest denomination in the world, which probably lost steam like 350 years ago but it's been riding the wave of what God did back there in the fields in Bristol, England. But um, so we go back to the Nicean Creed, and in that creed there's a lot about God the Father, a lot about God the Son, a little bit about...

About God the Spirit, because they didn't know what to do with the wild child of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. But when they get to the church, it's just those four words: the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. So I think there's a lot of wisdom in those words because if you think about like a robust fresh expression, it'll have those four marks. Is there a oneness? Like Paul gives us those seven ones in Ephesians. One Lord, one God, one baptism, one Father. Is there a holiness? So are people worshiping a holy God and being transformed in their relationship with that God, a God of hesed and unfailing love? Is there a catholicity to the church, little c? So is there like a connection, a universality? Are we in collaboration with other churches? Or are we like a little cult, you know, meeting in a tattoo parlor? So those relationships with the wider church are a sign of like a mature church. And then apostolic, so is there a sentence to the church? Is there a missional dimension to this that we're not just for ourselves? We're here kind of reaching out in the community as part of God's mission. So you could break those down like the way we talk with our teams or like what do those words mean? We're just like, is there an upward, inward, outward, and upward dimension? Are we having an upward relationship with God and a word relationship with each other? An inward relationship, um, inward relationship with each other of word of the larger church, and then outward? Like, are we thinking about people outside ourselves who might find this community to be a gift? So that just gives us like a framework to think about maybe some of these things. We're not church yet. We're like we're on the journey towards that. But if we're not worshiping God, then you don't have church, right? If we don't have koinonia where there's a real deep relationship among each other, people saying this is my church, this is my peoples, this is my community, then that's not really church either. And then last thing I'll say, and I'll shut up because you were coming in there. Um, we don't see that really defined, kind of robust ecclesiology. Even though it's very simple, it's also very profound in inherited churches. Like I could make the argument people go, well, that's not a church in a tattoo parlor. I can go, well, if you look at what's happened in a lot of sanctuaries across the country, I could say the same thing. Like, are people worshiping a holy God and being transformed? Are they in relationship with each other that's deep and authentic and real, or they just say hi on Sundays? You know, we could go through the whole list, but I think that just gives us like a center to move towards. Sorry, you were jumping in there.

No, well, and that that's a great point. I have, um, so you have a much gentler filter than I do. And so when I say that, it comes out a lot more sarcastic and pointed and poignant. So congratulations. Now that we've got that recorded, I'm going to practice my gentle tone. We're working through that. Um, but yeah, I mean, and in many ways, I do feel like, at least when we look at digital, which is primarily what my context is, but the fresh expressions of what you're describing, I almost feel like it is held to a higher standard because of hundreds of years of, well, that's just the way that it is. Even going back to, okay, well, why do we do it the way that it is? And some of those, some of our practices that we're currently holding don't necessarily come from, well, you know, I think Francis Chan said it best. Is that if we actually look at the Bible, how the Bible calls the church, and we look at the organization today that the church is, I don't know that the two match up. Um, which is ironic because Francis Chan himself at this point has become a celebrity pastor who is struggling with running a church in America because of his celebrity and goes back and forth overseas and struggling with maybe his own identity in the church thing. Like it's hard to produce something, you know, at this point in 2022, any large organizational church is not going to be trusted. Is not going. There's this even this move of decentralization as a result of the metaverse that we're walking into and fresh expressions, unique expressions, decentralized movements, um, like what you're working with and like what we're seeing with DCN, uh, to be honest, I think this is going to be far more successful moving forward than some of these massive organizations and institutions we're creating. If only because people don't trust those organizations and those institutions near at the level they did. Are you seeing that? Are you seeing some of that distrust? Are you comfortable speaking into that within some of these organizations?

Yeah, and I think what it comes down to is the fear of the loss of power and control. And um, this is pretty revolutionary stuff because I love Alan Hirsch. He does a lot with like documenting movements across history, and one of the key things about every really explosive movement of Jesus in the world has been like lay empowerment, priesthood of all believers, releasing the whole people of God, um, you know, relationships, uh, in, um, you know, following the Holy Spirit, uh, taking precedence over like pyramidal institutional structures. Now I think over time, every movement we've ever seen in history, and I'll just raise my hand here as a Methodist, they do institutionalize at some point. Like those structures kind of harden and concretize around the mission. But then they also become restrictive and we can't move and we're not nimble like, um, we used to be. So I think it's part of the whole cycle. And one of the really cool things about fresh expressions, it can exist alongside or any, we could talk about, you know, the underground church movement. We could talk about lots of different similar kind of things that are happening. But they can exist alongside the inherited systems and institutions. And the institutions, they want to like stiff arm and porcupine that thinking rather than going, well, what if it just becomes kind of like our R and D department? Like it doesn't threaten our system. It doesn't completely destabilize it where everybody, but it just gives us a way to actually kind of do both. So I think really forward-thinking, uh, you know, leaders in those institutional positions are starting to see that, um, but probably they're the exception to the rule.

Yeah, it's hard to. Well, in this even gets back to the seminary piece, right? Because for decades, these lead pastors have been taught systems that are not what we're talking about. And it almost surprises me when you're like, yeah, we talk fresh expressions in seminary. I'm like, really? That's, I think that's the first time I've ever actually heard that, uh, because the majority are not. And uh, to even be, you know, in twenty-two, even to be sticking to that old system without adapting it, it's funny. There was a, um, uh, there's a high-level, high-capacity Christian leader, well-known. I'm not going to drop his name, but he did a podcast maybe a month ago at this point. But the whole point of the podcast was, hey, pastor, you've pivoted enough. It's been a hard stretch and it's time to stop. No more change. Just wherever you are is good enough for today. And, um, okay, maybe there's like, that's addressing the mental health issue where maybe it's necessary to slow down and stop. But where we are today is not good enough to be where we need to be. And it just was like, this really, man, like we need to, we don't need to stop. We need to keep rolling through this. Um, if our churches are going to be relevant, or worst case scenario, just let the people that want to think different think different instead of trying to box them in and limit them what they can be. And so like your R and D angle, yeah, I mean, that's something that we've talked through with churches and trying to get them to look at it that way. And uh, some do, some don't. Uh, some do and won't put, they'll acknowledge it. This is the problem I see a lot. They'll acknowledge it, but at the end of the day, they're not gonna put energy into it. Um, and so more often than not, those fresh expressions, like there, they gotta be built entirely on their own because the organizational church is not feeding into it. Where do you, and let me ask this, where do you find these people? Like, are you finding them through churches? Are you finding them through the denomination? Are you finding them just like, where people are finding me on Google? Like, how are you making these connections with people that are wanting to think different?

Yeah, and just a follow-up comment to the seminary, uh, so the fresh, this is a shameless plug, so I beg for forgiveness in it. Go for it. At United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, we have the only fresh expressions house of studies in the world. So I wouldn't say that this has become part of seminary culture, but we're certainly trying. And even in this sense, it's a track that you get in your master divinity or your doctor of ministry degree. It's a focus. So it's you can mess with it or not. It's not built into the core. So I just want to say that, um, but yeah, so where are we finding these people? So in the pews, for one. And so I like to use Larry as the example because this is a guy who's gone to church his whole life, eighty years old, and no pastor ever asked him, like, what do you do on Saturdays? You know what I'm saying? Like, we typically think of, you know, these gifted, like, you know, whatever, they have the stereotypical kind of in the professional expert, you know, church planter evangelist. Larry is eighty years old. He knows Jesus loves him, and he has friends and gifts and graces that God's given him, and he could do this. Um, so I think the key thing with Larry is he had this group that he liked to gather with. He had this passion around animals, dog lovers. It's like a huge thing across our culture. Um, and he was willing to just try to experiment, see where that goes. So I think one, I don't want to set this like image of these people are these, you know, edgy, abnormal people. I think that they are just sitting in our pew. My United Methodist women, Jeff, the United Methodist women are like the most traditional Methodist group in the church, okay? They're the ones who actually really run the church, by the way. They tell the pastor what's going to happen. But anyway, they got together and they were like, pastor, well, we know sea glass jewelry and we know arts and crafts and we know these things. So we want to rent out the community center on Sunday afternoons and we want to teach the community how to do sea glass jewelry, these things. And I was like, all right, you know, I don't know that there's a huge demand in the world for sea glass jewelry arts and crafts. Well, they started this fresh expression called Arts for Love, and there was like dozens of families coming to the community center to learn sea glass jewelry and arts and crafts and all the cool stuff they were doing. So I totally underestimated their missional heart and their ability and the community's like would lean towards something like that. So one, just demystifying who are they. They're like in our churches. They're followers of Jesus. They're just the normal people that the Holy Spirit's in their life. And then a lot of times, like, I've been in some congregations where there wasn't maybe a handful, two or three, or I could imagine in some cases there might not be any who would want to do some things like this. Um, and that's when I kind of go outside the camp and I just start hanging out in the Moe's Southwest Grill talking to Adrian, the manager of Moe's, hanging out, uh, you know, down the Martin Luther King Junior building where we're doing different kind of.

You know, rallies and things like that, meeting people, connecting with the community, and then partnering with those people that are already doing stuff in the community. So it could work those two ways. There's like the people that are already sitting in their pews, and then there's the people in the community. If we could just get out there and inhabit those third places and hang out with people, we would meet them. And to what you said, I think something really important—I had somebody ask me this week. We took over a congregation during COVID that was on the closure list. And that's my wife and I, that's our jam. We like churches that are like fixing the clothes on death's doorstep. That's our calling is those churches. We pray for God to send us through the churches no one else wants or sees. And this congregation, you know, they've been really tired. They've been trying to hold this thing together for so long, and it's like long-range plans and strategic goals, and they're like, "We've seen that for 140 years and they don't work." And so I was like, "All right, well, what if we start a community dinner? Give me three months, and everybody divide up and pick a night. On Wednesday night, it's called Family Table. You'll cook a meal, and let's see if we can invite people in the community and see if they'll step in and maybe they want to prepare some meals and be a part of it. Just give me three months."

So you were talking about, you know, the massive level of change and how hard that is. Well, short-term experiments—try three months. So we start this thing out, and people from the community start showing up, and it's good. And we're like, "Hey, can anybody cook the meal in three weeks? We need a team to do that." And so they start taking ownership. They start—so I think in the church, we think we have to do ministry to people all the time, rather than let's create a space where the community can come together, and then we'll figure it out as we go.

So somebody from the church last week, they asked me what the plan was, and they really wanted that like five steps, you know, vision statement three. We're going to do these three things, and here's the, you know, goals for 2023. And I said, "Here's what I think the plan is. I think the plan is to discern the activity of the Holy Spirit on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and join into what the Holy Spirit is doing." And they're like, "So when are you going to tell me about the plan?" And I was like, "That's the plan." Um, but yeah, so that kind of thinking, it just doesn't come natural, I think, to church folks.

Yeah, well, I mean, there we've—we're at this place where, man, we've really planned the Holy Spirit out of, in many ways, the churches that we're operating in. And, you know, we've led, we've strategized, we've planned, we've forecasted, you know, and as a result of it, I honestly, I feel like sometimes it's hollow. And when I look back at my church staffing experience, you know, and I've said this publicly, like I don't know how much of it was really the Holy Spirit move, and I was just really working really hard to get it done. And I can tell you, you know, even in my own life today, I struggle with that. You know, it's I need to fall back on more spirit, fall back more on prayer, position myself more in a place where I'm trusting instead of working. And if you know me, I'm a workaholic, and so that takes a lot to say. But I think what's happening as a result of it is we're really leaning more into that experimental nature, and there's a lot of fundamental shifts that are coming as a result of the metaverse, where decentralization's a big part of this. But moving from a hierarchy to a network leader and a hierarchy to a network—more of, hey, we want to work with people instead of being told what to do. We want to—we don't want the five-year plan. We want the three-month plan. We want to experiment, and we want to be able to provide feedback on how it's going and not be told how it's going, but be part of that conversation.

And so more and more of what we're doing and what I'm hearing as you're describing these fresh expressions, man, this is what the future of church is going to look like—is more decentralization, more fresh expressions. And yes, the big buildings will have its part. Physical locations will have a part. But I can tell you, at least what I'm seeing on the digital space, is that the people that we're reaching in the digital and metaverse churches are people that the buildings are not. Like, I honestly can stand before God and say that we are not competing with the physical buildings. And I'm willing to bet the person that's going to go to tattoo church or dog park church is probably not the same people that are going to the buildings on Sunday morning. You would agree to that, wouldn't you?

Absolutely. And so we've just got this great opportunity to do something literally—to do something different, to reach a different type of person than the buildings are. And so, hey, Michael, this has been a great conversation. I'm looking forward to learning more and talking more over here with Leadership Network here in a month or so, digging into living room church. I'm excited to hear some stories centered around that. But hey, as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

No, I just—it's been an amazing conversation with you. And I think if I had to say one last closing thing, I would say that this is an exciting time to be the church. It's a challenging time, and it's hard. No, I don't think anyone of us like change when it involves us, like losing things or even losing a sense of our bearings in a particular situation. But I think the Holy Spirit is doing a groundswell movement that is really going to become the future of the church, and we get to be a part of that right now. But it does require missional imagination. It does have to understand mission as a tribute of God, of his outflowing love in the world, and that there's really no boundaries to that in my mind of how God will reach people that he loves, his children that are fearfully and wonderfully made in his image, male and female. And if we can just get into that channel of God's love, we're going to see all kinds of amazing stuff happen.

Beautiful. Well said. Hey, we're going to have to—we're going to have more of these conversations. This is exciting. Missional imagination—and I didn't—it is. Just those two words are resonating with me right now at a very high capacity, and it's like my mind starts going crazy in different directions, to be honest. I've not even told some of these ideas to my wife yet because it's just too crazy and it's half-baked, and like I need to solidify some things. But I'm really excited at how, you know, tying it into DCN, Digital Church Network, and how we're going to be able to help this. And so, Michael, man, thank you for the time. This is great, and stay tuned towards more missional imagination coming soon here to a Digital Church Network near you. But for Michael, this is Jeff with the Digital Church Network, the Church Digital Leadership Network, and a whole bunch of fun stuff. Thanks for jumping on the podcast here. We'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.