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All right, everybody, welcome to Ordinary Discipleship with Jesse. Also with me today is Jacob. And of course, I'm Chris. We are talking about practical issues in discipleship, namely today. I've got one for you, Jesse. I want to see how you would handle this. All right. Let me paint a picture real quick. Okay. What if you are pastor at a church, right?

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And you've got a gentleman. Let's just call him crazy, Mark. Crazy. Mark comes in and he says he wants to start a small group program. And you're wondering, is this guy qualified to even lead a small group? Because you've heard some stories, you've seen what he's posted on Facebook, and you're kind of skeptical. Right. And we probably just had a whole sermon series on how everyone can disciple.

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Well, we just said in the previous podcast. So, yes, we just told everybody on planet Earth that everyone can be a disciple. In walks crazy Mark. So, yeah, I'm wondering, you know, because he's got you're kind of nervous. You're a little bit worried like this is going to be he's going to be running a group doing discipleship with your church logos name on it, right?

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So the and I'm going to get the letters and the phone calls 100%. Yeah. It's not going to be crazy. Mark. No, not usually. Right. You're going to get it. You wouldn't believe what crazy Mark said. He said if you don't vote Republican, you're if you don't vote Democrat, you know. Right. Phil, what if your boss let's you both sides?

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Well, you know, listen, every church has both of them. So but the point is, I don't know if people are qualified to disciple. That's the topic we're tackling today. Right. And it's a great question. And it's a question born out of real pain and experience. Right. It's the people who haven't experienced cleaning up the mess of somebody who, like, went a little rogue, but that don't ever ask the question.

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Right. So I actually get that question a lot. And first of all, I just want to if you you know, you've heard me say everyone can be a disciple maker and you're like, wait a second, what about like, have you met Crazy Mark or Linda or whoever it is, Right. Have you? Yeah. I just want to validate that that's a real question based on real consequence.

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absolutely. There are consequences of this scorched earth, maybe to letting everybody be a disciple maker. Right? And yet I still absolutely believe in it. Okay, so you must know. Crazy Mark. So not only like the people teaching, you know, stuff are asking her to be in a Bible study or saying, Hey, I'm going to start meeting with this person because, you know, maybe it's not a group discipleship, but it's like one on one discipleship and like, let me back up and tell you a story.

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Yeah, about when I was leading the Wilderness Ministry. Like we're totally adding in sound for that, aren't we? And I had 20 year olds going into the wilderness as instructors for three day, seven day courses or even sections on the 40 day course. And they were hot mess like personally, emotionally emotional maturity. Maybe not. They're definitely not there.

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You know, they had the technical skills because, you know, that's what insurance is actually like looking at. They're not looking at a personality. They're just looking at your technical certifications and you send these people into the wilderness to lead and guide and disciple other people who are usually older than them. And you're not even present, right? There is no supervision.

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The you if you hear about it, whatever we would hear about, we hear about way after the fact, Right? Like when they come back in the debrief and you're reading the emails and you're like, my gosh, they said, What? And I'm accountable for that, right? I'm responsible for that because I'm, you know, part of the leadership of this organization.

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Okay. It's a terrifying thing. It always is a terrifying thing. But I think that that is part of the point, because a couple of things that I learned in that was, man, I have to pray harder. Yeah. Because even though I'm not present, you know, who is present is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is present. And as I started to lean into this idea of, okay, God's actually more in charge than I am and more capable than I am because I have zero control of what anybody actually ever says, whether I'm present or not.

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Right. And I am responsible to clean up after them. But the Holy Spirit's present. It started changing the way that I asked the question, and my question went from How do I manage this person to what am I actually accountable for? Because I can't control nobody? And who knows if they're actually right or not? Maybe I'm the one who's wrong, Right?

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And we can get into that where I have been wrong. But what am I what am I accountable for? And I think that's that's the question we have to answer so that we know how to deal with crazy. Mark. Yeah. What do you think about that, Jake? Well, I think I think like what, what, what, what Jesse started to say is like, I think sometimes when we go, okay, everybody, yes, I want to release disciple makers and everybody can be a disciple maker, but I'm concerned about what Mark or Mary might say.

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Crazy Mark. Yeah. I just want to be careful. There are actual mental health issues and we could talk about that another time, right? So Mark might have some radical political views or that's what I'm not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he was like, you know, it's crazy people, you know, crazy everything. She's so sketchy. So. So we're saying, okay, everybody can be a disciple maker, but I'm concerned about what Mark or Mary might say.

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And I think what Jesse is saying here about, like, knowing what I'm accountable for is like when we when we worry about what what Mark might say, it's because we think we're accountable for what Mark says. When actually Mark is accountable for what Mark says. Right. And and and we have to trust and believe that if God can really use this person to make a disciple, God will look after them and make sure they're on the right track.

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Now, I am accountable for like I am accountable for checking in with that person, talk to them about doctrinal distinctive. So like in my in my tradition, a key doctrinal distinctive is God is always passive or God is always active. We are always passive. So like this plays out in if we say so for us, for in my tradition, salvation doesn't come through a decision of the individual because then we would say, Well then now my salvation is contingent upon my action and therefore we say salvation is only God's word, right?

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And so before I'm releasing somebody, I'm usually saying like, just so you know, this is going to be one of the things I hold fast on. Like and so I'm trying to establish that expectation on the front end to say, like when we communicate about how things work, always make sure you're not putting the person in the active role, you're putting God in the active role.

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And then now I've established a ground rule with that leader. And beyond that, go for it right? Yeah. Yeah. So this right size expectation is is everything. So so maybe let's use an example that's very parallel, but a little less maybe dramatic. Sure. Baking with your kids. Right. Okay. So you're going to help your kid learn how to bake and you need to have some appropriate expectations ahead of time.

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Right. You need to expect that it's messy. Like you got backup cleanup crews. You're going to get the carpet cleaned, you know, scheduled for the next day, Right? You got plenty of soap, right? You need to expect that it's going to be a mess and that keeping it clean as a professional kitchen while you go is not is not even on the radar.

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The point or the goal or anything like that. You also have to expect that it might taste a little wonky, that some things may not be measured. Right. That baking soda and baking powder might get switched and then it's actually disastrous and an edible like you have to have the appropriate expectation based on where they're at. But just because they can't do a commercial like FDA approved kitchen level of baking doesn't mean that you're not going to teach them how to bake because how would they ever get there?

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Right? So you're with your kid. You're helping teach them how to bake and you're supporting them to the degree that you're willing to absorb the consequences. Right? So if you're like super free range parent, I have some of those. I love them. They have hold like, like they don't the clean up like they're fine with, right? They're fine with the mess.

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They have a different tolerance than I do of how gross the food is or how messy the kitchen is. Right. And that's and that's fine. Right? Or maybe my friend who is gluten intolerant and has to have some very strict things happening in the kitchen so they have a different level of tolerance. And so there's going to require a different level of expertise of the baking people in that room.

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Right. So so you have a range of tolerances, you have a range of skills. And as a disciple maker, I'm supporting the person also learning to be a disciple maker in an appropriate way so that the expectation is right sized. And isn't it an amazing for a religious disciple maker to say, you know what, I want you to live further into what God's called you to be than maybe you could by yourself.

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And I'm willing to clean up after you. Like, think about how much God cleans up after us. yeah, for sure, right? Yeah. We make disasters out of the world and he's like, okay, no, I. I got a big enough broom. I got a big enough mop. I'm. I'm patient enough to do that. So if we look at people and go, that's God's asking me to do that.

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But you know what? It's going to be too messy. I'm not willing to do that. That was one of your guiding points that you've made on this podcast, but I almost cracked up and I'll tell him because like you said, free range parents and I kept imagining like kids running around a field with diapers on and parents just throwing out seed like, no, I knew people who actually paired that way.

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They got like a giant mud kid. The kids are half clothed. Maybe they just hose them. They just have a giant hose before they come in. I can see your wife actually, for your age parents. that's actually what we would call what we did, especially early on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There just be pictures of, you know, naked kids with boots just filled five cavities of my kid's head.

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Yeah. Yeah. What? You know, like, so we read a book or a parenting book early on about natural consequences, and it's like, Listen, your kids get a second pair of teeth on purpose. If they don't know how to brush their teeth, they're going to get adults, you know, like, I don't experience the natural consequence. my gosh, that is something.

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So yeah, that no, that's really good. That's a great analogy, Jesse, that like, we can't expect perfection from our disciples because we're not perfect. They're not perfect. And so, so to expect a child going into a kitchen to make, you know, Gordon Ramsay Desserts is not going to be the goal. They're not talking like Gordon Ramsay. They're like like that's a different well, they're a free range parent.

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They might be. Well, again, what I would say is, like, again, for us, the definition of discipleship is being changed by Jesus. A definition of disciple making is helping others be changed by Jesus, too. And so what we're saying is, if there's a Mark or Mary in your congregation, who's in the position to disciple somebody, we have to trust that God is going to put the right person in front of them for Mark or Mary to help them be changed by Jesus, and that, you or someone is disabling Mark or Mary while they're discipling, because that's the it's the feedback loop, not the perfection that we're looking for.

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Right? The feedback loop. Because so so I like to share my leadership fails. Yeah. Because I got to be worth something other than just like emotional scars and therapy for the people that I love. Like, let's get some benefit for the rest of the world out of that. And I used to teach the people that I disabled performance.

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I used to teach them to work harder. That's why I'm so like, big on. No, actually, you don't work harder because that's been a huge life lesson for me. I'm a I'm a recovering perfectionist, and so I used to teach stress over performance. Step in the gap, try harder, stay up late 70 hour work week. I did that for almost a decade teaching people that and I burned through people.

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I burned them out. I burned them out of ministry. There are people who are no longer in ministry because of my leadership. And that like, is the thing that weighs on me. Yeah. So what I, I was disabling this performance oriented thing and didn't even know it that I was I was just like, no, we're responsible for stuff.

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We have to get stuff done. And my mentor sat down with me and was like, I want to talk to you about how busy you are. I want to talk to you about how driven you are. Like, Tell me about your to do list for a day. And and we walked through everything that I had on a to do list.

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We talked about what I did if I didn't get it done. And I'm like, Well, I'm just going to stay at work until I get it done. And then he showed me a different way. He's like, Well, what if you write your to do list down and then you just put it before God and you say, God, my day is whatever you give me.

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So I'll make a plan, but I'm just going to submit it as a sacrifice before the Lord and the Lord's actually in charge of my day. And I'm going to trust Him that whatever I don't get done that day is actually what he didn't intend for me to get done that day. Because did I actually believe that he's written every day of my life before the foundation of the Earth, as Scripture says?

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And could I trust that that was true and he didn't have anything. I wasn't accountable for anything in that day that he didn't actually give me the grace to get done. And I was like exploded my face. Right? My brain exploded my heart. And I saw how I had been discipling people into something very unhealthy. And I've spent the rest of my life like actually trying to help teach people the opposite.

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So it was the feedback loop of somebody disabling me and seeing my life, which is why you can't be disabled by people who are dead and not in your life. Seeing the way I lived it out, that corrected me on the very unhealthy thing that I was literally teaching and holding other people accountable, which I actually think is way worse than even like what you're posting on Facebook.

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You know, that's that scary thing that you post on Facebook. I think teaching people that God only likes you if you're doing and working hard, like that's way more destructive to somebody's soul. But yeah, so it was being disciple that actually made me the correct vision of how I was disciple. Well, and it's interesting too, when I talk to like really driven people, they're like, it's like the engineer or the doctor who just is coming to church, you know, for the first few times, the hardest thing for them to get because they've always been high producing earners, is that Grace does not have to be earned.

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Right. And I'm still working on that. I know, right? It's tough. It's super tough. Yeah. So I'm thinking. Noy Are you thinking, No, you're good. Well, let's go. Why don't we head to our final segment of the day? Yeah, the final point. Jessie, I'm going to ask you the question I started with. I'm a pastor and I said, I don't know if the people are qualified or ready to lead the disciple.

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What do you say to those millions of pastors listening right now? What's your final point? I think my final point is that actually you're probably not as ready as you think you are or you were when you started. So we have to lean into trust of the Holy Spirit. We have to pray harder. I mean, like, I just I just performance pray harder.

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You just pray for them and then and then follow up, right? Have the feedback loop, be as short as it needs to be for where the person's at. So if you're walking alongside and you're just observing them, that's a very short feedback loop. If they're leading something weekly and then you check in with them weekly, that's a longer wait.

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If you if they do like a whole class for a semester and you're checking them with them, that's a longer feedback loop. So so support them as is appropriate for where they are and understand that no one should be Disciple Lane without being also disciple. And that includes you. Because when we realize, God, I am a person of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, then we need we actually learn how to trust the Holy Spirit more because we see how the Holy Spirit has been supporting us, even in our in our fallibility and our incompleteness.

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And we can trust and maybe the Holy Spirit could support us. The Holy Spirit might be able to actually help the other person accomplish the discipleship as well. Wonderfully said. All right, guys, if you like this episode, please go to iTunes wherever you listen to the podcast and like subscribe and tell a friend so we can get some more people to listen to this podcast.

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We thank you so much for listening today on the Ordinary Discipleship podcast with Jesse. God bless. Good night. Have a. Have a great day.