Chris Johnson (00:02.265)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Ordinary Discipleship Podcast. My name is Chris. I'm here with Jacob and the one of two, Jessie, right over there. She's one of two. And we talked about that last episode or maybe the episode in the future. It doesn't matter. But here's what we're talking about today. Sometimes relationships are messy. They are messy. They're one of the toughest things we have to navigate in this world. And everyone wants to do it right when it comes to

relationships when it comes to discipleship. But you know what? Community forums and hard conversations. And if you're one of those folks at home that avoids those hard conversations, maybe this is the talk for you. Maybe this is it. Because Jake put in the notes, life grows in the fertilizer. Wow, Jakey.

Jessie Cruickshank (00:54.225)
hahahahah

Jacob (00:55.126)
Well, I'll actually say I typed it into the notes, but Jesse said it.

Chris Johnson (00:59.693)
Jessie said life grows in fertilizer. I mean, that is so crass.

Jacob (01:01.496)
I don't use that sort of crass analogy.

Jessie Cruickshank (01:05.694)
I mean, I don't know if I use the word fertilizer, guys. That might have been shades of, you know, sanitizing.

Chris Johnson (01:08.091)
You did it! right here! Look at my notes! Fertilizer!

Jacob (01:10.264)
Yeah, but she was even more crass than that. I was sanitizing it for her.

Chris Johnson (01:16.667)
I see what you're saying. So what you did was what it got us kicked off this network. Okay. Thanks Jake for saving our podcast careers Yeah, no I get it

Jessie Cruickshank (01:25.334)
But Jake edits me when I do speech to text, Google edits me. It's okay. It's, you know what? It's part of that community aspect that helps me be a better person.

Chris Johnson (01:37.335)
If Jacob Hoyer wasn't on planet Earth, there's no way I get through seminary. That's all I'm saying. This man helped me through most of my four years. okay. Yeah, together. I think I gave you one hint in four years. okay. So life grows in community. Sometimes conflict is necessary. Jake loves himself a good conflict, a healthy conflict. I know this about Jake.

Jacob (01:45.678)
We're made to do it together, you know?

Jacob (01:51.288)
Hahaha

Chris Johnson (02:06.595)
Jesse, I'm not so sure about you, but, wait.

Jessie Cruickshank (02:10.006)
I played roller derby and trained MMA. What do you think?

Chris Johnson (02:13.743)
Jesse loves a good conflict. Wait, is, let's just pause for a second. Is roller Derby like the WWE is that like scripted out?

Jessie Cruickshank (02:26.118)
no, no. And when I did it, like you did have like face paint, names, maybe a little bit of dressing up and they have since eroded that expression of your soul out of the game. And now it's like professional and stuff, which is really sad because it's nice to have an alter ego for a little while, especially while you're hitting people. It's just kind of fun.

Chris Johnson (02:27.93)
it's not.

Chris Johnson (02:33.051)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson (02:42.619)
Uh-huh.

Chris Johnson (02:48.111)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. OK.

Chris Johnson (02:54.779)
I like that this isn't a video podcast, but as soon as I asked that question, Jacob's face was so disgusted. Like I was asking if the NFL was like fake, you know, like he was like, no, it's not fake. Like he's like, were you a roller derby coach at some point or something? I'm sorry to offend you.

Jacob (03:12.462)
Listen, man, just, I'm, the rules are fascinating. The rules of roller roller to be a pretty fascinating. It's just about how many times you can lap the other team. It'd be really hard to script it. That's all.

Chris Johnson (03:24.677)
I just remember watching roller derby on WGN and it seemed like the WWE, like it seemed like there was really big fake elbows. anyway, we're getting off track and we're already three, three minutes in. Okay. Jesse, you want to take this? Do you want to talk about conflict? You want to talk about discipleship? Do you want to talk about messiness? You want to talk about this stuff?

Jessie Cruickshank (03:47.722)
What if your faith community was a roller derby team? Like, let's unpack that storyline. You know what being in action sports taught me was that the conflict is not a bad thing. And it taught me how to handle that, like how to be resilient enough to say, actually the drills that we do where we hit each other in practice,

Chris Johnson (03:51.469)
Okay, like that.

Chris Johnson (04:10.651)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (04:17.68)
make us better out on the field, out playing out when you have a bout. And I think about all the ways that we have aversion to conflict and then how in that environment, in a roller derby team, conflict, hitting each other is good and it's helpful. And then I did that while I was on staff at a church at the same time, right? So I was like the roller derby pastor.

Chris Johnson (04:36.421)
Mm-hmm.

Jessie Cruickshank (04:47.318)
And then I would go to the church environment and conflict is so bad. Cause I was the senior pastor that I was under was like, he wasn't just conflict diverse. Like I'm pretty sure if conflict happened, he would go into immediate like hives, freeze. He was, he was epically allergic to it. And, and it was just the two different environments were so, were such a contrast. And I was like, well, how, how do we help?

the faith community embrace conflict in a healthy way, not in a smash your face in or hit each other while you're on roller skates kind of way, but like a healthy way that leads to life and not this avoiding of conflict, which actually leads to death. It leads to people leaving, it leads to harm, all these things go unaddressed and minor things can happen to really bad things can happen. So I...

Chris Johnson (05:44.195)
It's interesting that you say that, my roommate in college. sorry.

Jessie Cruickshank (05:46.09)
me to think about conflict.

Chris Johnson (05:50.555)
I it's it's interesting you say that when I was a freshman at the University of Iowa my roommate Was an amateur boxer and became a pro boxer moved out to California Was like the next great Irish hype and he was like 4-0 and then he moves out there and he gets knocked out in like 15 seconds and they dropped him but the the crazy thing was like when he was training one time in Iowa City I was his manager because he didn't have any money. So I just was like

the little guy in the corner, like rooting for him. And he keeps getting punched in the face, punched in the face, punched in the face. I'm like, this crazy. I can't believe he's taking this. And he goes, the key thing about a boxer is when you get punched in the face is not to go into fight or flight, like to control your emotions at the time where you are at the most vulnerable. And I always remembered that. Like I never really gotten into any fights, but

Jessie Cruickshank (06:39.84)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Chris Johnson (06:50.555)
I kind of read.

Jessie Cruickshank (06:50.73)
I did, I tried MMA. was, I was gonna, I was gonna, I've, I fought, but no, I was going to do a formal fight, but I got into grad school instead. So, but I trained.

Chris Johnson (06:54.981)
Did you fly in the arpeggio?

Should I go should I fight MMA UCF or go to Harvard? What should I do? Yeah

Jessie Cruickshank (07:12.098)
But he's right. Like how you handle that moment of impact, of powerlessness, of something happened to me that I didn't like, and like how you handle that moment is extremely shaping.

Chris Johnson (07:23.611)
Mm.

Chris Johnson (07:28.923)
Yeah, I think Jake's got a story for us here.

Jacob (07:33.216)
Well, actually what I was thinking of was like one of the books I recommend the most is, it's called death by meeting. and it's about how to, how to run good meetings and Patrick Lanzoni is the author. And the point he makes in the book is he's like, you know, the average staff meeting in a business or a church lasts a couple of hours and most people dread a couple hour meeting.

Jessie Cruickshank (07:40.896)
Mm-hmm. It's a great one.

Jacob (07:58.542)
He's like, but we'll go voluntarily sit through a movie that's 90 minutes to two hours and enjoy ourselves. He's like, well, what's the difference? The difference is that the difference is, well, this is why meetings suck. The difference is that the film is anchored around an organized, is organized around an anchoring conflict. Whereas the meeting usually has none. And so we're bored to tears because there's no, there's no, there's no thread to follow.

Chris Johnson (08:04.505)
true.

meetings suck

Jacob (08:28.29)
But in the film, you've got a thread that's anchored in the conflict.

Jessie Cruickshank (08:32.078)
Wait a minute, Jacob, are you saying that in my next church staff meeting, I need to create conflict in order to have a hero's journey for myself so I'm not bored to death?

Chris Johnson (08:33.114)
Yup. Yup. 100%. That's exactly what he's saying.

Jacob (08:42.104)
So not create conflict, but mine out the conflict that's already there. So as it's appropriate to the meeting's context. So in Death by Meeting, he ends up talking about different kinds of meetings. Some are more like an episodic television episode. Others are like a film, right? But that's to the point of like the productivity comes through the wrestling.

Chris Johnson (08:47.759)
Mmm.

Jacob (09:08.492)
And that's the story I was telling earlier is like, in our church right now, we're undergoing some change. We're exploring a denominational shift. And so like among our leadership team, we're having some conversations around like some doctrinal questions that are causing some hesitations for people. And there's one person I've been able to talk with a couple of times offline and she's had some, like we've processed through her struggles.

Then I saw her recently and she was saying, Hey, I just wanted you to know I'm in a peaceful place. Now I'm at peace with where, where, where I'm at and where the church is at and everything's good. So I'm so sorry that it took me so long. And I said to her, don't apologize. I feel like us having those conversations is community at work. Like us being people who trust each other, who can have a conversation that feels risky so that we each can grow into what's next. That's what community is for.

And like, so just like a productive meeting has conflict at its center, a productive community is able to engage and move through conflict.

Chris Johnson (10:11.035)
I still like, I'm sorry, that was really good. I still want to pay my worship director 20 bucks to be the heel in the next meeting and then maybe take a steel chair to him. then everybody's like, what's going on? All right, I'm done. I'm done. Exactly. I'll see myself out.

Jessie Cruickshank (10:23.574)
turn it to a WWE. You know what? Unfortunately, Chris, there are probably some church environments that are actually like that, and it's probably not amazing.

Chris Johnson (10:32.239)
Yeah, I heard that's how Driscoll runs a meeting. I'm just, Driscoll runs a meeting like that. I'm kidding, I'm joking. All right, we can cut that out. We can cut that out. Anyway. Flag it. I got my first flag.

Jacob (10:43.406)
flag it, just flag it real quick.

Jessie Cruickshank (10:55.53)
because he might hunt us down. Send us. I don't know. I don't know. man. So when it comes to these conversations about conflict, what I think that I like to remember is that we often think that all conflict comes from sin, right? All conflict is a part of the fall and that.

Chris Johnson (11:00.005)
With his bow and arrow?

Chris Johnson (11:04.827)
I

Sorry.

Jessie Cruickshank (11:22.294)
You know, so it means that somebody's done something wrong. And so we even spend a lot of time in the conflict looking for who to blame. You know, you did this wrong. You need to change. This is what you need to be different. like we, we think it arises because somebody screwed up. And what I like to remember is that we don't need sin to have conflict. All we need are two different humans having two different experiences.

Chris Johnson (11:29.819)
Hmm.

Chris Johnson (11:40.475)
Mmm.

Jessie Cruickshank (11:51.638)
So you can have a culture difference and have conflict. You can have a marriage and have miscommunication and have conflict. I know you guys probably never experienced that, but I do because my husband isn't a very clear communicator sometimes. so he... So we don't actually have to have done something nefarious, have ill intent in our heart.

Chris Johnson (12:02.745)
Mm-mm.

Chris Johnson (12:07.259)
flag it.

Jessie Cruickshank (12:20.99)
We can just be living our life in a different body.

Jessie Cruickshank (12:27.496)
and we will have conflict. So that to me says that conflict isn't a result of the fall because I mean, look, do you think Adam and Eve agreed on everything they named those animals? Don't you think that there was some conversation there? Like pronghorn, honey, pronghorn. you get, so you just have it, which means to me it's part of the design.

Chris Johnson (12:29.893)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson (12:40.475)
Ha

Jessie Cruickshank (12:57.076)
there is messiness in the design and God said it was good. So then my question is, wait, what? Why? Why is that God's good and perfect will that we would have this messiness?

Chris Johnson (13:11.515)
So, okay, I have a question. So conflict is necessary and it's gonna happen, right? But then how do you do it well so you don't end up like hating each other and walking away and being like, forget that guy, I'm not gonna talk to him ever again.

Jessie Cruickshank (13:33.024)
But how do you do it in your marriage? Well, okay, so I've been married 21 years. I'm the oldest one in here for that, right? Okay, well then you go, you go. How do you guys figure it out?

Chris Johnson (13:36.123)
I don't. No, I've been married 21 years too. I've been married 21 years.

No, it's a work in progress. me, the turning point for me was not trying to win arguments. I think for the first 10 years, I was trying to win every argument. I think I was trying to prove my case, like I was in a court of law and laying out the case and doing that. And now it's not so much about winning, it's about being respectful and trying to come to a resolution. That's the best I can say it.

I think.

Jessie Cruickshank (14:16.958)
No, that's super good, right? Cause I like you. I was a debater and I wanted to win because I was right. And wasn't the resolution that we agreed with me because I was right. Like, dude, well God bless my husband. He's so patient. And, and so our, what we do now in, when we realize we're miscommunicating, we don't have kids. So all we have is communication. So we've been working on communication intentionally for a long, long, long time. And

Chris Johnson (14:20.666)
Yes.

Chris Johnson (14:29.787)
Yeah.

Jessie Cruickshank (14:46.886)
what we do now and when we realize we're miscommunicating is we stop. We go, wait, wait, you, you reacted in a way that is not what I thought you would to what I just said. So I'm going to guess we just miscommunicated. What did you think I just expressed? And then we, you know, say that and like, okay, not what I either literally not what I said. Those were not the words that came out of my mouth or

Chris Johnson (15:04.943)
Mmm.

Jessie Cruickshank (15:13.234)
That was not my intent because, by the way, we're getting older and now hearing issues start to come into like the whole play. Like, I just don't see how we figure this out. So we like get over it. The better we get at it, the more deaf and like absent minded we get. It's going to be amazing, you guys. So we stop, check the words, check the intent so that we can get into the same page about what really happened. And then we can talk about that. So if the intent was not so amazing because I was in

He was in a mood, I was in a mood, you said a thing in a tone. And then we can check that and be like, okay, yeah, I said it grumpily. Yes, I'm in a bad mood. Or I was thinking about this other thing, right? We get on the same page and we clarify. So then the messiness actually helps bring clarity because we're partnering together to get on the same page. And to me, that's like the unity thing that Jesus prays in John.

Chris Johnson (16:17.275)
Gotcha.

Jacob (16:18.784)
Yeah. And I think like the thing that you both were talking about was about how in a conflict situation to remember that the other person is not the enemy, but is the teammate. And so it's like, how do we end up standing shoulder to shoulder instead of head to head? And like in the way that Jesse described that even you can hear that, that requires a change of posture on, on let's say my part in, and what's happening there is, and it, and it requires a change of heart.

Chris Johnson (16:28.729)
Right?

Jacob (16:48.204)
And so that's actually, that starts to get at what we're saying kind of as the thesis here, which is it's that process, that chain, like it's that process of saying, where is my perspective off? Where is, where is my posture off that allows me to be changed? And that's discipleship being changed by Jesus is discipleship. And so when I approach a relational issue and I have to change to stay on the same team as the other person,

Chris Johnson (17:07.323)
Hmm.

Jacob (17:17.026)
That's discipleship. And so that's where we're saying like messiness is in the design. We're designed to rub up against each other in a, difficult way. We're designed to, to knock on each other in a difficult way. And that creates the kind of change that God can work in our

Chris Johnson (17:18.267)
Hmm.

Jessie Cruickshank (17:33.834)
Like, me give you a biblical example. This is one of my favorites. So in Ephesians 4, in Ephesians 4.12, it lists a five-fold ministry, right? So it's apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. And I've done a lot of work in here and co-authored books on this and build a company around this. like, I love this stuff. And what's crazy about it is that there is conflict in the design. So let me give you an example.

Chris Johnson (17:36.986)
No.

Jessie Cruickshank (18:03.228)
If people, you know, maybe you're more apostolically leaning and that the heart of an apostle, the motivation of that is to send people out and to multiply and to create these networks in like, you know, it's this amazing architectural pioneering kind of impulse. And on the other end of the spectrum of that, not in one way is the shepherding impulse. And the shepherding impulse is to gather all everyone together because the shepherd wants all the sheepies in the pen.

And so the apostolic is like, we got to send everybody out. And the shepherd's like, we got to keep all the sheep in the pen. How do I know they're OK if I'm not watching over them? And it's it's terribly distressing to send them on a subway ride all by themselves through New York. Right. So these and yet in Ephesians four, it says that they're supposed to work together. And so God puts these inherent conflicting values into the design of the gifts that Jesus gives the church.

for the sake of maturity. And it's the conflict. So there's conflict between the evangelist and the prophet, or the shepherd and the prophet, the evangelist and the prophet, the evangelist and the teacher, the teacher and the apostle. Like there is conflict between all of these.

together. That is how we get full and complete and lacking nothing. And the way we get to that is by figuring out how to work together with the inherent conflict that's there. So we're not mature just because I'm self-actualized. We get to maturity because I figure out how to work with you when I don't agree with you.

Jacob (19:42.958)
Yeah, I have like a, like a specific example about that fivefold conflict because in my early twenties, I was on a mission team and, I feel like I've told this story in a past episode in a previous season. So if you're like somebody who's like a ordinary discipleship podcast fan person and you, and I'm redundant, I apologize. but,

We were in Slovakia as a mission team. This was during a trip where we were in 11 countries in 11 months. So we'd spent about three weeks in a country. So we would partner with a local missionary and serve their ministry. Well, one time we were in Slovakia. Our team of seven was out just like for a day off and we were in a train station and we saw a poster for a Marilyn Manson concert that was happening in Bratislava, Slovakia. And at the time in my life, I was high shepherding.

Chris Johnson (20:28.922)
Ha!

Jacob (20:37.42)
So like I was really about peace and harmony on the team. That was like my motivator as a high shepherding gift. And there was another person on our team who was high, like prophetic apostolic. And, and so she sees this Marilyn Manson poster and goes, we should go to that concert and pray for people outside the stadium. And I was like, in my mind, I'm like, what does that, like, where did that idea come from? Why would we do that?

This doesn't seem like a good idea. We're just going to make people angry. And it created a conflict in our team because she was adamant. This is what we had to do. And I was like, I was so confused because I thought this is only going to just create like unease and difficulty. And, and so, we worked through it as a team and what happened was like four, five of the people went to the thing to pray for people outside the concert. Two or three of us stayed back to intercede in prayer.

which is not even my thing, but at least I could say I was being supportive. so, but in that year where I was high shepherding and I was with this teammate who was high apostolic prophetic, there were lots of things like that where she was just moving really fast, operating on intuition, and I wanted it to make sense and to bring harmony. in figuring out how to work together, we both had to grow and change.

Chris Johnson (22:04.207)
I thought Jake was going to say that he put on his black leather and got all goth out and was singing the chorus of beautiful people. I didn't know. I lead the league in flags here. Wow.

Jacob (22:07.646)
No. No.

No, uh-uh.

Jessie Cruickshank (22:15.292)
You're gonna get another flag Chris, you're gonna get another flag!

Jessie Cruickshank (22:21.814)
No, but it's that's I mean, this is the real life stuff, right? So we're we're a real talk podcast. We're real talk people. And and that's because I just love I just love that when you talk about the messiness, these kinds of stories come up because that is the substance of life. That is a substance of following God with one another. And I don't know, maybe it's that part of me that really enjoyed.

roller derby and hitting people. Like I like to see a little bit of the stirring of the pot because I want to see people grow. I don't want to people get hurt. you know, I wanted to have like, like I was a rock climber be roped up, right? Take risk, but also tie into the rope so nobody gets hurt. And I like to see communities being brave enough to engage in that. And if we can change the narrative that conflict isn't a bad sign, it's a good sign if we know how to handle it and we can shepherd it well.

Chris Johnson (22:50.587)
you

Jessie Cruickshank (23:17.78)
and we can help each other work all the way to the end, which is getting back on the same page, then we can actually have an environment where people can follow Jesus, grow and learn and thrive.

Chris Johnson (23:30.501)
look at us. Look at us. The end of this episode. What we've discovered today is that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. We can have a little conflict if we do it the right way. So Jesse, Jacob, thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast, we would love it if you would subscribe, if you would like, if you would share and rate us and review us so other people can hear about how to fight cleanly and how to win in roller derby.

and how to almost start your MMA career. Jesse, Jesse, if they want to learn more about what you and Jacob are doing for the kingdom of God, how can they learn that?

Jessie Cruickshank (24:03.754)
Life lessons here.

Jessie Cruickshank (24:13.12)
can always go to whoology.co. That's W-H-O-O-L-O-G-Y.co. We do webinars. We got a discipleship class you can use in your small group. And it'll just help provide some of the skills so we can do this all together.

Chris Johnson (24:28.449)
Awesome! That is fantastic, guys. Thanks so much for joining us. We will see you on the next episode of Ordinary Discipleship Podcast. God bless. See ya!