00;00;00;00 - 00;00;08;18

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Ordinary Discipleship with Jessie Cruickshank. My name is Chris Johnson, and I'm here also with Julia Schmaltz.

00;00;08;18 - 00;00;26;09

Right, I nailed it. Nice. Yeah. Schmaltz. Easy. All right, let's go. we are so excited to be able to talk to you today about ordinary discipleship. But first, Jessie, you were talking before this podcast about the importance of story.

00;00;26;09 - 00;00;52;13

Everybody has one. some are really, really intriguing. But talk to me. Tell everybody out here, about the importance of story when it comes to discipleship. Well, I love the way God made us. So one of my passions is biology. Neuroscience. Like the fearfully and wonderfully made aspect of us, because I actually think God is really smart and I actually think God knows what he's doing, I hope so.

00;00;52;18 - 00;01;16;25

I mean, it's a leap of faith sometimes, but when I look at how God created us, I see that story is super important in our creation. It's how God created our brains to learn. It's how God created our brains to change. Like stories are easy to remember. They're hard to forget. They get imprinted on us. They get imprinted on our souls, on our actual like physical bodies.

00;01;16;25 - 00;01;42;29

Because our body stores our story in the whole of our body. Like that's crazy. And so for me, story is the way God created us to, like, receive what he's trying to tell us. So then if I look at how God's communicating to us, not just how we receive it and remember it, but if I look at Scripture and how much of Scripture is story, the story of creation, the story of the flood, the story of the people of Israel, the story of Jesus.

00;01;43;01 - 00;02;13;26

And then Paul even says that you are a story written to other people, like your life is a letter and a story written to others, like, well then obviously God thinks it's really important. And so because I'm just a human, I think if God thinks it's important, maybe I should pay attention, right? Maybe I should also think that it's important and study it so, you know, there are very few new ideas, but there are 8 billion unique stories that just remind.

00;02;13;26 - 00;02;35;20

You think that's amazing? That reminds me of something like, we just got done with family coming in for, you know, Chris, but not to date this, but, you know, one of my favorite parts is gathering around, like, playing cards and like, you always have the uncle that's got the amazing story. I remember that when I was like six years old, my Uncle Connie, who had the, you know, he was a sheriff out in Portland, Oregon.

00;02;35;28 - 00;02;55;20

But every fall he went and hunted rattlesnake. And I know that's crazy, but he would come and tell this elaborate story about his rattlesnake hunts. And even back when I was six years old, like, I still remember that story, even though he's passed. It's like part of our legacy too, is our is our story. Right? Right. So stories are how we're actually formed.

00;02;55;24 - 00;03;16;03

We are formed in story. And I think that that is part of our discipleship. Right. Can we tell stories that actually help us form one another? Because that's how the Bible was written. That's how they did it. Yeah. So, and I think that it's really that important to think about the difference then between what is a story and then what is a narrative.

00;03;16;04 - 00;03;33;10

So wait a second. There's a difference between a story and a narrative. There is. Yeah. So a story just has, you know, a plot, a character, a scene, but a you make it sound so simple, right? Right. but a narrative. And this is what I absolutely love. So I was taking an Old Testament survey class last year.

00;03;33;10 - 00;03;53;13

I was finishing up my master's, and, I read Gordon and his book, How to Read a Bible for All It's Worth, and they defined narrative as the purposeful retelling of a story. And when they did that, I was forever changed because I kept going back. I started going through spending some time in Genesis, going through all of these incredible stories.

00;03;53;16 - 00;04;17;21

And when you begin to execute Scripture based upon the purposeful narrative of God speaking and communicating to us through His Word, you begin to say, okay, God is purposefully writing and authoring my story. God is not just giving me a story, he is actually purposely giving me a narrative and rewriting my story in light of his narrative, in light of his purpose for my life.

00;04;17;29 - 00;04;44;23

And how does that then change and shape me? I mean, even how Jessie and I met just a few years ago. I mean, I was studying marketing and and the Hero's Journey, which we'll get into in future podcasts and things. And I'm studying the power of story and actually how it changes people. And what's so exciting about how it changes people is that it is literally the the way that our brain is wired and that that is actually how people change.

00;04;44;29 - 00;05;01;18

So I saw it from a communication standpoint in the power of narrative. Then we see it from a biblical standpoint in the power of narrative, and Jessie knows it from a biological standpoint and the power of narrative. And you go, wow, God is at work in doing something. And he always has been. But there's something that's bringing it to the surface.

00;05;01;18 - 00;05;03;26

Again, I believe in the discipleship space.

00;05;03;26 - 00;05;27;00

So you said that narrative is the purposeful retelling of a story. Help me, I can't. What's why is that different than a story, though? Why is it it's different than a story? Because like, I mean, you look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, okay? You know, in, in Genesis and you look at it from the structure, from the classic structure of how what is God trying to communicate?

00;05;27;02 - 00;05;51;17

Is he saying, you need to go sacrifice your son? Yes, yes. Yeah, I know that's I was wrong. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. When you look at it in the story of Abraham from Genesis chapter 12, all the way into, you know, into the Genesis 22, I believe it was when he does that, you're seeing how God has been purposefully working through Abraham's life over the course of 25 years, showing him that you can trust me as your God.

00;05;51;18 - 00;06;09;14

He it says, this is one of the things I love I started doing in my Bible is going and just underlining the Lord said, the Lord said in the book of Genesis, when you get to Genesis chapter 12, he says, the Lord said, and he literally, you know, that is how Abraham knew this God, because he was the God who speaks to him.

00;06;09;16 - 00;06;20;20

And when he spoke to him, he called him out. And he called Abraham out to be the father of nations. And then he doesn't have any children. And so you see this story that is unfolding,

00;06;20;20 - 00;06;23;23

had a professor in my bachelor's degree who said a,

00;06;23;23 - 00;06;43;05

text taken out of context becomes the pretext for heresy. And he always used to say, like, you can't take just one piece of text. So when I began to look at it through that, that lens and saw the story of, of Scripture, the narrative of Scripture, you see how God is at work in people's lives and he is showing them how he is good.

00;06;43;05 - 00;06;53;21

He is showing them how he is trustworthy. He is showing them how he is their God. He is with us. He will not forsake us. He is showing us all of these things of kingdom and covenant throughout Scripture.

00;06;53;21 - 00;06;59;09

And those are the narratives. That's what God is doing in the world, and that is what God is doing in our lives.

00;06;59;11 - 00;07;26;27

Okay, so, so to be a purposeful retelling requires interpretation. It requires perspective, right? Because you can be in it and just experiencing it and not actually understand what it's for, right? Right. So to retell it with a purpose means that there's some interpretation and some intentionality. There. So it's not just happening to us. Yeah. And so it'd be a lot easier if there was just a burning bush every morning when you walked outside.

00;07;26;27 - 00;07;49;00

That's what it was I think. So I think that my, my land, my lawn would get tired of that. Right, right. And even Moses saw the burning bush. And what did he say? Like God send somebody else, right? You know. Oh, unless he had a stutter or something, I don't know. That's crazy. so why does all of this even matter now, today, Jessie, what is what is narrative?

00;07;49;00 - 00;08;10;26

What a story when it comes to discipleship, why does any of that matter? Well, we care about it because we actually believe that it's an important part of the formation process. It's a formation process that, transitions culture, like every culture has stories, and it stories that shape us, stories that we learn from, and we have a lot of different types of micro cultures, you know.

00;08;10;26 - 00;08;35;16

So how do I even talk to you? Well, we're going to talk about a story that we can share. We need to have an experience that we share. And it is a critical way that's universal to our formation. And we care about highlighting that again. it was the ancient way. It's also like a new way because we've been doing discipleship and formation and, that kind of thing apart from narrative, apart from story for, for quite a while.

00;08;35;17 - 00;09;12;09

Do you mean by that? So there are different theologies streams that still have, you know, some narrative in it, some experience in it, but for the most part, we've just gotten really heady. And as a person who understands the brain as much as like, anybody kind of can, I mean, I'm overstating that. But as a neuroscientist, I just don't think there's much value in being heady because your brain isn't designed to be changed that way through study and through, you know, memorizing a bunch of things that are disconnected from an experience, you actually forget that really, really quickly.

00;09;12;11 - 00;09;34;04

Your brain's not designed to carry it, but we are designed to carry story. So we want to bring narrative back into the conversation of discipleship. And so we want to look at what does disciple making look like through a narrative based formation, through me sharing what God's done in my life with you, we call it testimony. You know what is revelation as heaven taught me?

00;09;34;10 - 00;10;02;26

And disconnecting that then from the leadership discipleship loop that a lot of our practices seem to be stuck in, where I'm a disciple until I get discipled into being a leader, and then once I'm a leader, I can be a disciple maker. But we've made leader everything. And so we end up in this, this feedback loop that really misses some very important things that I think that are, critical to our formation.

00;10;02;26 - 00;10;22;09

So you bring up a really good point. When you look back at the example of Jesus, right? He didn't go, the same way that they picked priest or Pharisees, like he went to the fishermen, he went to the tax collectors, people with no experience whatsoever. And he simply said, follow me, just follow me. I'm going to tell you story, venture with you.

00;10;22;09 - 00;10;42;18

Yeah, it's going to be awesome, you know? And so, you know, fishermen are rough dudes, probably, with some coarse language, you know, and and he's like, no, follow me. I picked you. So when did that switch from just, like, follow me to. Oh, boy, you need, we've identified you as a potential person. That it could be a leader in the church.

00;10;42;21 - 00;11;11;25

Or now we're going to send you through a program. And, I mean, it seems totally counter, to what Jesus was doing. Yeah. I mean, for I think that we have five critical mission drifts in disciple making that we've kind of taken throughout history. The first one is that Constantine professionally used it. And instead of discipleship being done by a community through apprenticeship for the purpose of a greater union with God, now they're political actors.

00;11;11;25 - 00;11;39;18

They're government approved in order to facilitate a ceremony. And then so Constantine professionalized it. The enlightenment, rationalized it, and made it all about the mind in the mind of men. Specifically. Then the Reformation sermon, I said it, and the Reformation was like, now the only way that these professionals who are pulled out of and trained separately in high academia now, then they the only way that they can make disciples is by preaching.

00;11;39;18 - 00;12;06;18

Yeah. And so we sermonizing it. Then the Industrial Revolution systematized it. So now we're going to have men who are pulled apart, who are politically or government sanctioned or approved, who are highly academically trained, who speak well. And now we're going to send everyone through a process that treats everybody the same, like school. Yeah. And then the I think the evangelical movement individualized it.

00;12;06;18 - 00;12;31;14

So now it's about me and my Bible in my prayer closet. And we are five major mission drifts away from apprenticeship by a community for the purpose of a greater union with God. Yeah. So that whole you brought up leadership versus discipleship. And I think even with my own church like experience, there was training programs for someone to even be a small group leader.

00;12;31;17 - 00;12;55;13

Like, it wasn't like, hey, you're really good with people. Why don't you just bring some people along? It was like, no, you got to go through this six weeks. We got to make sure that you're ready to go. can you talk a little bit more about the problem between leadership and discipleship? Right. When we say that only the leaders that we've trained and approved of can be disciple makers, then we've created a very narrow funnel for that.

00;12;55;13 - 00;13;14;26

And, you know, I actually believe that every person is called to make a disciple, even if it's just one for your if it takes your whole life to make to help one person be changed by Jesus, then that's a worthy endeavor. But not everybody is called into a leadership role in an organization for a specific season like that doesn't even make any sense, right?

00;13;14;27 - 00;13;38;01

Like numbers wise. Right? So we're all called to be disciple makers. Leadership is something different than that. But yet we create this pathway, the discipleship leadership pathway, and we just try to put people through that. And so we end up with leaders who actually don't necessarily know how to make disciples. Or maybe we focus on management, which is important.

00;13;38;01 - 00;13;59;17

Right? But if I'm managing a group of people and my discipling them, and those are actually two different assignments, but we've made them the same. And because of that, we've missed some very important things. we've missed the role of community. We've missed the purpose of maturity. So we actually believe that there's a greater calling for all of us than leadership.

00;13;59;21 - 00;14;31;14

And that's spiritual maturity, because everyone should be moving toward spiritual maturity. And not everybody needs a leadership role. And then we also have this greater desire for depth of community with one another, because it's in community that we're actually formed, not individual in our prayer closet alone with our Bible. That's not actually how God created us. So when we just have this disciple making leader loop and we're stuck there, we miss these other aspects because we haven't opened the doors to them.

00;14;31;21 - 00;14;58;10

Yeah. So it's interesting because you, as a pastor, a lot of times people say, well, the pastor does the discipleship, which is such a flawed system. Right. Like, I love your point of saying everybody, even if you spend the rest of your life working on one person and moving them from, you know, with the help of the Holy Spirit, moving them from, you know, no belief to, you know, maybe Jesus was somebody that I should look into.

00;14;58;14 - 00;15;26;24

But you talk about the importance of community. and, and you talk about the importance of spiritual maturity, what makes somebody spiritually mature? Well, spiritual maturity is, it really is about following Jesus. You know, one of the things that I loved first of the thing, I, when we Jessie and I first met, she taught me to to actually define discipleship.

00;15;26;24 - 00;15;41;15

And she and I actually spent quite a bit of time saying, what does it mean to be a disciple? And we wrestled through that. You know, we wrestled through the definition, and she and she would say for anybody listening like, have you define even the word, what does it mean to be a disciple? So what did you would you come up with?

00;15;41;15 - 00;15;59;24

Well, we landed on was that a disciple is someone who chooses to be changed by Jesus. And the reason we landed on that was because we are constantly being formed in the people that we follow, if we choose to follow. Jesus said, you said it, follow me. So if we choose to follow Jesus, we choose to be more like him.

00;15;59;24 - 00;16;16;01

Right? We are choosing to be. What did he do? He modeled what it meant to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So we are continuing to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to be changed by the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, that it leads to identity formation, and that eventually leads to authority, and it gives glory to God.

00;16;16;01 - 00;16;36;24

That's how Jesus, what Jesus walked. He knew who he was. He had a firm identity and who he was. Obviously as the Son of God, as our the Savior of the world. But he also walked in an authority that this world had never seen or ever known. And so when we talk about maturity, we're talking about that. We're talking about walking in the fullness of who God has created us to be.

00;16;36;27 - 00;17;08;15

As you've got what what is Dallas Willard say that we would be? It's not that we would be like Jesus is, but that we would be like who Jesus would be if he lived our life. Oh wow. That's cool. Yeah. Who said that? Dallas Willard. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. And so that that's I mean, that's our identity. But then just also our authority, you know, that we as we mature, we become more and more, capable of just, you know, holding space as Jessie would talk about, you know, as we we aren't just maturing spiritually.

00;17;08;15 - 00;17;26;21

I mean, you know, if you look at what Pete Bizzaro has done with emotionally healthy spirituality, like you're only as spiritually mature as you are emotionally mature. So it's a holistic type of maturity, right? And Jessie would tell you, based upon faith development and other things, that she is way smarter than I. I can tell you all about it, but what is that?

00;17;26;23 - 00;17;49;10

At different points of our faith development, if we are emotionally haven't developed in that area, if we psychologically if we, you know, if there's all these different areas of development that we can be hindered in our spiritual maturity. And so we see it as a very holistic type of approach that can't be done apart from community. And I feel like that's one of the biggest things that's been missing.

00;17;49;10 - 00;18;08;13

I know I'm a I'm a Gen Xer, right? So I'm dating myself, but when I so I grew up in the individualistic culture. Yeah. So I am a really great Christian in my prayer closet I have I love Jesus with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. But as soon as you put me with other people, apparently the holiness doesn't always translate.

00;18;08;16 - 00;18;25;04

And that's and that's what I think it is. You know, like we've been trying to do it on our own. But even Jesus, when he sent out the disciples, he did it two by two. before they ever were even felt ready, like we would say. Was Peter spiritually mature when he went out? You know, when they were, you know, did he get his seminary degree?

00;18;25;04 - 00;18;54;06

Yeah. Because he qualified. Wouldn't it? Would Peter, because he wrote lead your small group. Right. He wrote two theses. He just said, finish it. Right, right. I think but he was changed by Jesus. He was, he was. And so that simple you talk a lot about. So you got leadership kind of in battle and a loop with discipleship, but also spiritual maturity and community and the people, like I always, my grandpa always said this, show me your friends and I'll show you what kind of person you're going to be like.

00;18;54;10 - 00;19;17;20

And that's from a young age, he told me. That community is really, really important, especially when it comes to discipleship as well. But what holds all these things together, like what holds it all together? Well, that's where we get back to narrative, right? Because a good narrative has a person on a journey to, with, with others right there in a community with others.

00;19;17;20 - 00;19;50;14

And that journey is to take them somewhere. It's to form something in them. It's it's some aspect of change. And narrative is able to hold all of those together. While different types of formation, whether it's spiritual disciplines or or study, aren't actually big enough to hold all of that together, we end up parsing it out. So if we want to have a holistic picture of what it means to be a follower of Jesus without necessarily having to change our personality, without having to change your job, without having to go to seminary and find a different calling.

00;19;50;14 - 00;20;13;29

Because somehow the one God gave you is inadequate, then maybe we need just a little bigger of a picture so that we can have the right conversations. Yeah. So one of the things that that Jessie and I mapped out as well was the hero's Journey of discipleship. There was a guy by the name of Joseph Campbell who was an English professor, and he studied the mythic stories of all of cultures all around the world.

00;20;13;29 - 00;20;37;19

And what he discovered was every culture had essentially a death and resurrection story. They had, he calls it the hero's adventure. And so we say, and this is how Jessie wrote in her book, Ordinary Discipleship really what it means to be a disciple who's changed by Jesus is that a ordinary person answers the call. And by the way, they always answered no the first time when we talked about Moses earlier, you know, Peter says, no, everybody says no.

00;20;37;19 - 00;20;52;27

Everybody says no. Yeah. But eventually they say yes. And they answer the call. I mean, we've it's gone solo. Exactly. Exactly right. Yeah. Every here like, you know, like Luke Skywalker, you know. Yeah. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I've got to go back to my family. I got to go back to tattooing at the farm.

00;20;52;27 - 00;21;10;25

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Everybody says no first, but they eventually they answer the call. Something compels them. They have to say yes. And when they do, they team with others. God always puts them with a group of people. And when they do that, then they learn new things. You think of Luke Skywalker, he becomes the Jedi, you know, and he's been trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi, right?

00;21;10;27 - 00;21;29;25

Teams with. So you're a nerd, too. Oh, I'm a I. Good good good good good good good good good. But they team with others and then they feel the struggle. Because at some point. Yet when you're learning something new and this is part of the biological process, in order to learn something new, you have to unlearn something that you've known.

00;21;29;27 - 00;21;46;12

And so that means the way that you've seen that you know, what you think you know of. The world is now different, and you have to embrace that new thing, which is a beautiful process. That's why deconstruction is not a is not a scary thing. It's actually what we're supposed to do. The problem is we've tried to do it on our own instead of in community.

00;21;46;12 - 00;22;14;25

And that's when we struggle. Okay, so you two have both said something that I think maybe, a layperson might not pick up on. Can you help me real quick? Define what you mean by reconstruction ism. Yeah. So in any time that you go to learn something, you have to unlearn something. And that unlearning process means that literally, the neurons in your brain have to, like, disconnect from the ways that they're currently wired and that we can call deconstruction or unlearning.

00;22;15;02 - 00;22;37;14

Those are the same thing as a developmental psychologist. But then they need to form the new pathways. And that is the new learning is the reconstruction of that new way of understanding. Okay. And any time you learn something new, you actually have to go through that process. So let's say you knew how to write a sentence. but now you have to figure out how to write a paragraph.

00;22;37;18 - 00;22;58;15

So now you have to unlearn that the sentences complete by itself and say, oh, the sentence is part of something bigger. And so, you know, my first sentence needs to look like this. And then my next three sentences, you know, need to be supporting that and illustrating that. And then my last sentence needs to kind of conclude that, like that's going from just the single sentence to the paragraph structure isn't deconstructive.

00;22;58;15 - 00;23;26;22

Reconstruct a process, okay. An unlearning relearning. We go through that anytime we learn new math, anytime we learn a new idea, anytime we or when we learn a new paradigm, it's like huge, right? when we learn how to be, you know, going from being an individual to, to like, oh, I actually have to, like, be in community and connect to other people, which means my boundaries now actually have to be, you know, formed in relationship with other people, not just by myself.

00;23;26;24 - 00;23;37;21

We go through that process every time the Lord takes us into a new space. Okay. So that that that makes sense. I mean, we're constantly doing it and we're not even aware that it's hard. Absolutely. Yeah.

00;23;37;21 - 00;23;57;05

is there anything else that Jessie, or Julia that you'd like to bring up besides the fact that what we've learned today is that narrative is a purposeful retelling of, our story and that God uses narrative and story in discipleship all the time.

00;23;57;07 - 00;24;20;20

I think it's just I think what's important to me that we all remember is that it has to be way simpler than we've made it. God didn't actually make it complicated. God didn't set us up for failure in transformation, or in being a disciple, or in getting closer to him and having, you know, greater union with him. He actually created us in a way to respond to who he is.

00;24;20;22 - 00;24;46;26

And we've just made it really complicated. We've put in a lot of barriers, we've put in a lot of requirements. We've put in all of these these things to actually continue separation and isolation when Jesus died for the exact opposite of that. And so whatever it is that we're taking apart, you know, the walls that we're tearing down between us and God or even what we think, exist between us and God?

00;24;46;26 - 00;25;11;10
I think the simple answer is probably the most likely follow me because God set us up to be successful. Yeah, now that's really good. And I think we have made it complicated. I think everybody's from the beginning of time. People have tried to make this more complicated. You know, I'm just thinking even of the The Ten Commandments and then, you know, the thousand laws that surrounded not even the get close to breaking in, I think.

00;25;11;10 - 00;25;27;02
Right. It is. Yeah. So I want to thank both you guys, today, really good discussion and we look forward to seeing you next time on the ordinary Discipleship podcast, guys. We'll see you next week.