Theology in the Raw - 748: #748 - Life in (and Out of) the Church Industrial Complex: A Conversation with Dan White Jr.

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

On episode #747 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Dan White Jr. Preston and Dan talk about Dan’s journey from being a leader in the “church industrial complex” to coaching pastors are how to plant a minimalist church that focuses on discipleship and mission. https://www.loveoverfearproject.com/author http://thev3movement.org Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you enjoy this podcast, have been blessed by this podcast, or have been challenged by this podcast, or if you hate this podcast, but you just can't stop listening to it, and you still, for whatever reason, want to support the podcast, we would appreciate your support so much. You can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. It's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. It's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and support the show for as little as five bucks a month. This is a listener supported podcast, and I cannot thank you supporters enough.

There's over 250 of you who are supporting the podcast. Can't thank you enough for your ongoing encouragement and support. And if you support the show, you get access to a theology in the rock community where we have dialogues, conversations, you get to ask questions that I sometimes address on the podcast and you get access to other premium content like once a month, Patreon only blogs or once a month, Patreon only podcasts.

I actually have two different tiers of support where you get access to either one or two Patreon only podcasts where we discuss many, many juicy topics, even juicier than the ones that come up on the public free podcast. If you don't have any money or don't want to support or you just love free stuff, then thanks for listening. And don't stop listening. This is a volunteer listener supported podcast. And if you can't afford it, then that's awesome. Just please be a generous person and make sure you're giving to the poor on some level. My guest on the show today is a guy who I have, I can't believe it's taken me this long to get to know Dan White Jr. I don't know if you know the name Dan White. He's written three books, The Church as Movement, Subterranean, and the recently released Love Over Fear. Love Over Fear is about, it is such a relevant book.

I'm so bummed that we only talked about this book at the tail end of the podcast. Make sure you listen to the whole thing to get a little, you know, back and forth dialogue about the actual book, Love Over Fear. But Love Over Fear is a book that addresses the outrage culture that is saturating our society today and is saturating the church. Specifically, the political left and the political right seem to more and more absolutely hate each other. And that hatred has spilled over into the church. And Dan White is, as you will see, the right kind of guy to address that problem. So love over fear. Dan White Jr., he co-planted

Axiom Church in Syracuse, New York, and more recently has transitioned to be a full-time church planning coach with the V3 movement. And you can see a link to the V3 movement in the show notes, I hope. Hopefully I'll put those in there. And we talked for most of the podcast, we just talked about church ecclesiology, his specific kind of approach to church and church planning. And I knew this would happen. I mean, he is a brother from another mother. This guy just, I just resonate so much, so much on so many levels with how Dan White Jr. is thinking about church, Jesus, the kingdom, God, the gospel, the Holy Spirit, and so on and so forth. So please welcome to the show for the first time, but hopefully not for the last time, the Dan White Jr. All right.

I'm here with my new friend. I'm going to say a friend that I've known and respected through social media, even though we've never met or talked in person or on the phone. I think we've corresponded a little bit on Twitter. I'm sure we have. person or on the phone. I think we've corresponded a little bit on Twitter. I'm sure we have, but I've always appreciated Dan's thoughts on church, on enemy love, on just what it means to be a Christian, really. I know it's so cliched and broad, but I just, I so resonate with the way Dan thinks about the church and Christianity. It's shocking that this is the first time we've actually spoken in person.

So Dan White, thanks so much for being on Theology in the Raw. Oh, thanks Preston. It's a joy. So you've been a church planter, a coach, and now you are a full-time coach for, is it the V3 movement or V3? Yes. Yep. The V3 Movement is an ecumenical church plant training, coaching organization, helping church planters start a discipleship core, a group of six to ten people, who enter into a rule and rhythm of life together, and then are physically present in a specific neighborhood for the sake of mission and the witness of love,

and then building that discipleship core to a mid-sized community, a group of 20 to 50 people, that is a porous community that allows those to belong before they believe and observe the witness of the discipleship core. And then when it gets to about 40, 50, it multiplies rather than building higher and it multiplies into a new neighborhood or network. And so that's the training we do. And that's what I've been doing for the last six, seven years. And specifically the last year full time.

Can you give us a maybe narrative on your journey in, well, your ecclesiological journey? I mean, just in the two minutes you described your church, it's like, wow, that's kind of a different way of thinking about church. Although it seems like there's more and more people, you know, kind of rethinking the fundamental structure of what it means to do and be church. But can you give us your, from a narrative perspective, your ecclesiology? Yeah, Preston, I had a meltdown around, it's been around 12 years ago. I was pastoring at a booming megachurch. This is not going to be an anti-megachurch rant, but I had a meltdown in that environment, anti-mega church rant, but I had a meltdown in that environment, realizing how divorced from community and from spiritual formation and from embodiment with real people in a real place, I was

just running a lot of systems and was acknowledged and affirmed for my skill set of preaching and communication, but I wasn't really living an incarnate life. And that started to have an erosion on me, and I ended up turning down a teaching pastoral role in that environment, and that got me – it sent me out into the wilderness when I said no to that. And so I started to rethink what it meant to be the church. And instead of ripping and tearing and getting rid of the church, I actually found myself being more passionate about minimalism.

Although that first year I was outside of specifically a church environment, I was in the wilderness. I was licking my wounds. I was depressed. I thought there was nothing left for me. If I couldn't lead in that environment, I couldn't lead anywhere. All my training, all my preaching, all my seminary education was about how to lead in that environment. And so as I started to explore the New Testament, I realized that I was actually in love with the church, but a minimalistic version of it. but a minimalistic version of it. And so 10 years ago, I set out with a group of friends to start an intentional faith community in an under-resourced neighborhood in Syracuse and didn't really know how to do it or what we were doing. There's probably a lot of idealism that had to be stripped off of us, honestly, but there

were some major commitments, four commitments, actually. Tight-knit community. We wanted to share life together. Life-forming discipleship. We wanted our lives to be present outside of our presence to the way of Christ outside of to our meeting. And then Locally Rooted Presence. We wanted to be in tune and connected and listening to the beauty and brokenness in the neighborhood. And so those four things really anchored us. And over that whole thing was just really a submission to the Lordship of Christ. And so there's a lot of experimentation, a lot of trying. But that was my journey coming out of the Christian industrial complex into a more

into more movemental way of being the church. What do you mean? What do you mean by, can you unpack a minimalistic? You've said that word twice and I think I know what you mean, but just for the sake of clarity. So minimalism I pick up my imagination on minimalism from art and, and specifically minimalism in the artistic world. And that was a strong movement to simplify the palettes of painting so that beauty can actually be seen.

And so in minimalism and being the church, it's realizing that so much excess and extra in, and the machinery of ministry just clutters up the simplicity of following Jesus on mission with others. So for me, it's about paring back our need for ministry machinery, and that could be as much as like, I'll just give you what it looks like a little bit. Like, I don't love stages, specifically an actual stage. I think that can clutter up teaching and preaching. And so, no, I wouldn't be legalistic about that. But we make decisions based upon our value of not allowing anything to try to get in the way of Jesus

and the table of Christ and following Jesus. And so anyhow, that's a bit of the minimalistic kind of move. Tell me about the financial structure. Do you have like paid pastor, no paid pastor, mortgage for the building, no mortgage? Or is it flexible? Yeah, so these are all contextual decisions that people make. But in the movement I'm part of, and then even my local Christian community, we've decided not to ever pay a pastor full time.

We pay part time so that our leaders still have a foot um in in the world although um you know that i wouldn't say the world's not in the church i mean the sacred secular divide is is it i don't think exists um but we found that if we can cap the pastor's salary at part-time that allows them to stay present vocationally in their neighborhood or in their city rather than just 40 to 50 hours a week of running church programs for people who like church stuff. So every time we need to hire someone, it's always around a 20-hour week. We live in polycentric leadership, so the leadership structure is mutual. There's no head at the table. It's oriented around strengths and gifts, specifically a five-fold, which is Ephesians 4,

apostle, prophet, shepherd, teacher, evangelist. And so there is power, there is leadership, but it's shared amongst a group, which makes sense why we only pay part-time instead of just having one person having all the authority. Financially, when it comes to stewardship and how we run our, you know, own a space, we own a building, and we see this a lot in our movement, we own a building that's primarily known in the community as a neighborhood space. So ours is a coffee shop. It has some nonprofits on the second floor.

It's not exclusively for church activities. It's a space for – it's a pathway. It's a corridor. It's creating an entry point for those who are not Jesus followers and Jesus followers to collide with each other in the same space. So we have purposely leased out parts of the building for people doing social good, may be a Jesus follower, may not be a Jesus follower. And so therefore, none of the church's ties or gifts are going towards the maintenance of the building. It's self-sustaining.

And this is back to minimalism. It keeps it nimble and flexible so that it's, you know, our church budget isn't bloated trying to carry the weight of all these church necessities. So it's not perfect. It's still messy. So it's not perfect. It's still messy. But it just gets us closer to the fire of mission and to actual people living in our neighborhood. And so I don't know if that helps to bet. before we hit record, you know, what are some movements or maybe even church planning gurus,

people, whatever that would seem to, that your ecclesiology would resonate with? I mean, when you talk, it sounds kind of like, like an Alan Hirsch or even though Francis Chan's doing in San Francisco or, oh, I'm blanking on his name. Oh, gosh. Hugh, is it Hugh Halter? Yep, yep. Hugh's actually a part of our team. Oh, he is? Yes. Okay. So I've never talked with Hugh, met Hugh, or read anything by Hugh.

But whenever I talk about kind of like, you know, people ask me, what's your ecclesia? What do you think church should look like? And I start describing it, you know, and people say, oh, so you must know Hugh. I'm like, I've never met or read anything, but apparently my ecclesiology is similar to Hugh Halter. So he's part of the V3 then, is that? Yeah, he's a coach. Yep. Wow. Okay. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. We're certainly influenced. There's two significant influences because V3 is not, we're not inventing this, right?

Right. There's, we haven't stumbled upon some, some new secret sauce. But the, you know, the missional movement Leslie Newbegin. And then those who've kind of worked off his work, Alan Hirsch thinking about the movement of the church is a major influence on us. Alan specifically the church, is a major influence on us. Alan specifically is a mentor for the V3 movement. And then Anabaptism, which is probably the second arm, which is the valuing of shared life and community and a nonviolent approach to following Jesus.

And Anabaptist's pretty intense passion around discipleship. Okay. And, and then also understanding that the church is a politic in and of itself. It is the visible witness of a new way of being in the world. And so those two things kind of come together and create attention and a space there. So those are in process.

Can you give me a, one of the biggest challenges? You even mentioned that you came in with maybe a lot of idealism and, and you know, like you said, it's not perfect. What are, what's maybe the biggest or some of the biggest challenges that you've experienced last 10 years? And then I want to ask you, what's been the biggest blessing, you know, the thing that has been just the most beautiful about this way of doing church? I mean, the biggest challenge is consumerism.

Okay. I mean, that is in the water. It's so saturated in everything that we do. I'm a consumer. Everything I interact with is about whether I like it or don't like it. It's quality. My individual perception of it's good for me or not for me. Very passive relationship, but highly consumptive. And in doing church this way, you are slamming up against that false God.

I mean, you're just, when people go to church, they still expect church to produce and create an experience that meets their felt needs and makes them have a good experience, which means all mess needs to be eliminated, all clunkiness, all error, everything has to be excellent, everything has to meet affinity needs, needs for moms, needs for toddlers, needs for men, needs for young adults, needs for 55 and older, needs for people who are into skateboarding, needs for people who are in, you know, it just goes on and on and on, affinity-based, which is a very consumptive way of viewing the church.

And so being the church this way, that's what you're ramming up against. And it can be a really easy temptation to slowly surrender that ground because that's what makes people happy and content in coming or participating in your church. And within no time, coming or participating in your church. And within no time, you find yourself maintaining a buffet of things just to meet people's needs. And you're saying, my assumption would be that the kinds of people that would come to the type of church you're describing would not be, well, not be consciously consumeristic, but you're

saying it's just so ingrained into this, even though you're attracting people who are wanting something different, it just constantly falls back into that. Preston, whether someone has experience in the church or not, whether evangelical or their mainline, is is just in their bones and so they people come to our church who want who are often in it wouldn't be three movement who are kind of burned from yeah the church industrial complex or have no experience in in church and still within a few months they're asking hey when are're asking, hey, when are you

going to start this? Or when are you going to do this? And because our six-day-a-week life is based upon excellence. I mean, I get pretty ornery if my Amazon shipment doesn't come to me within two days, right? And so quick return, all those things are still just a part. It's not just a Christian cultural or evangelical seeker-sensitive challenge. It's just the way – so it's an issue of discipleship. So we find that most people's journey has to actually break that idol, be discipled out of those demands. I mean, Dietrich Bonhoeffer does great with this when he talks about this in Life Together, you know, his classic work there, is that we actually do damage to the Christian community with our idealism. And that's what consumerism is.

It's an idealism around how it should meet my needs. So I'm curious. So I lived in the UK for three years. I just got back from spending a month in Europe. And I'm constantly I mean, even though Europe and the UK is still Western. Yeah, the level, the intensity of consumerism is way down. Yes. And I noticed this when I go out to eat, like in most European, well, the UK, certainly in France, when you go out to eat, it is highly offensive for the waiter to bring you the check.

If you don't ask for the check, you can sit there for five, six, seven hours and they will never, they will never even say, would you like your check? Cause that's like, it's just not rushed. And they're not concerned about flipping tables because they don't make, you don't tip in Europe. And so they're just making an hourly wage. They may take a half hour to come to your table. They may take your drinks, your drink order, and then come back an hour later. Everything is just so slow. And that kind of like restaurant experience, which I was reminded of last month, and how it takes a while for me to detox, you know, for them, a meal is so much more than just boom, boom, boom, you know, consume and go, consume and go. And that kind of reflects the culture as a whole. One of the most beautiful

things about living in Scotland was how people just didn't, you know, really important high profile professors had like way outdated carpet, small homes, no furniture, one car, if that, you know, and it just wasn't, uh, and I really enjoyed not being in sort of the rat race of, um, of consumerism as intensely, certainly they have it, but not as intensely. Anyway, that's all background to, I wonder if this model of church, does it work better? Have you experienced in non, like does the American brand of consumerism

intensify everything you're talking about? Preston, I mean, you're right on. The traction we, I mean, we see traction in the U.S., but, I mean, the serious traction that we see is actually outside of the U.S. Okay. And I think it's because they don't have some of the cultural hurdles or the memory of bigger, better, faster that we have. of bigger, better, faster that we have.

And so there's a unique sin in the U.S. around productivity. I mean, that's why people come to the U.S. in some good ways because you can make a name for yourself here and you can, in some sense sense be successful on our shores here. But when you baptize that into Christian community, you've got a monster you're dealing with. And so I do think it's harder here in the U.S. But that actually makes me buckle down even harder into faithfulness and realize that this is a peculiar way that has to be piloted. It's slower. It's not the fast track to growth. So anybody looking at being the church this way can misinterpret the word multiplication and think,

oh, that's just fast addition over and over and over again. It is not. It's a hard slug, but to me, it's a more rewarding and more fulfilling way of being the church, but it is slow, and it takes a long view rather than a short view. and it takes a long view rather than a short view. Oh, wow. So the blessing. Okay, so we've been kind of like, it can become frustrating butting up against consumerism.

But what's been the greatest blessing or blessings in the last 10 years in your church experience? That, so for as post-Christian as we are, Syracuse, the city I'm in is exceptionally post-Christian. Three and a half percent of the population attend church on a regular basis, if those stats are correct. But, you know, there's very few people within the city limits that are attending church regularly. It's not even part of their active life. So the question is, why? Is it because there's not a part of their active life. So the question is, is why? Is it because there's not a lot of good options for church? No. I mean, our suburbs, we have some really fruitful, successful churches. I really do think that the rub has been the MO of the church.

The rub has been the MO of the church. The characterization of the church has not been good here. That being said, the blessing has been that when people are given space to re-explore the person of Christ away from the industrial complex and the personality-driven approaches. And there actually is a resaving that I'm seeing. I'm seeing people find Jesus as real for the first time. And it's because I don't think many people have actually looked at the words, works, and ways of Christ closely. So the blessing for me is that I think the future of the church is actually quite hopeful if we allow people

and move our discipleship to the actual person of Jesus. So I've seen just a lot of lights go on. I've seen people actively choosing the way of Christ. I see people healed from really destructive forms of Christianity. I've seen them move out of environments where they were raised in maybe highly liberal environments where there's no order and there's no orientation. There's no safety of like, who am I? And what are the boundaries that when they find Jesus and they find the authority of Christ to be not coercive and not controlling, but highly invitational, they actually find a path to walk on.

So there's a lot of hope for me in that. That's been the blessing the last 10 years. That's awesome, man. somebody who would, myself being somebody who battles with de-churched tendencies, you know, I tend to gravitate towards other de-churched people. And I even a couple of years ago planted and then closed down a church plant that was very much similar to what you're talking about. And a lot of de-churched people were at that church. So I'm around a lot of de-church people. And sometimes de-church people, again, speaking as one, can be really fussy and opinionated about. And so how have you navigated those challenges? Because I imagine you kind of made past your reference. You get people that

have been burned by the church that, you know, have opinions about what church should and shouldn't be, and maybe they're initially attracted to your model, but then I can imagine that presents its own, you know, could present its own challenges. How do you navigate that with wisdom and grace? Yes. Well, you put your finger on the elephant in the room. I mean, this is the, the, the, the, the reputation for churches like mine and like those in the V3 movement, the reputation is at least is that they're toxic and they don't, they're not sustainable. Because when you get wounded people around, Because when you get wounded people around, if they don't name and seek healing, they will just leak toxicity on each other. And so you can't rally around the kingdom of God when you're centering your wounds. the kingdom of God when you're centering your wounds. And out of that naturally comes a really bloated opinion about how things should and shouldn't be done because they didn't do it right.

The church as we know it is off and we're on. And so then you're just rallying around antagonism. And that just is not sustainable. So for me, my experience in this is that this is not a way of being church because the church sucks. This is a path of repentance and healing and mission. And both of those, all of those are active engagement. It's actually kenosis. It's self-emptying. It's moving away from and towards rather than just sitting around a bonfire and stoking our anger. So, um, you have to have an intentional discipleship

around healing. Um, all of us are wounded. I mean, if you were raised in a family, whether it's, uh, uh, both parents intact or single, your parents wounded you unintentionally, not purposely. And this is just the cycle of life. We think our parents didn't do it the right way and hurt us in some ways. And this is the same cycle as the parents of the church. And when we move into new forms of church, we're going to find we have to have some existential humility. We're going to wound people just like in ways that we didn't want to be wounded because humans hurt humans. And so you can't get away from that. And so if you don't call people,

invite people and disciple people specifically in how to heal and let go and forgive and, and live in a space of grace for how flawed we are, then they'll be rallying against this enemy for the rest of their lives. And that's not nourishing. So I don't know if that helps a little. No, that does. In my own journey, I've found I'm the healthiest when I can, first of all, love the church in its New Testament sense. You know, if it ever spills into not, it's one thing to be discouraged or not even enjoy modern day church structures.

Okay. But you don't want that to spill over into actually not caring about the actual church of the New Testament, the people of God. But even beyond that, my healthiest moments are when I can have a particular vision of what I think church can be, should be, what I would like it to be. Even there, is that consumerism or is that, you know, holy discontent? Or is that, you know, a holy discontent? While still affirming other models that I personally would not necessarily think are the most productive or might in my, you know, private moments might be critical of, but I can still genuinely say that pastor is doing a wonderful job. That structure has pros and cons like any structure and God is working that. And genuinely say that, not just give platitudes. And I feel like it's really been more just recently where I can hold to my kind of idealistic ecclesiology, you know, but also say, you know what, this megachurch pastor, this person, they're, you know, I mean, I think they're doing good work,

you know. Yeah, I'm impressed. And there's a lot of emotional maturity to embrace that tension because when you are, uh, when you have a really passion and opinion about how church should be, it's easy to just demonize everything else. And so even in my experience in the mega church I was in, God moved, God did significant things there. experience in the megachurch I was in, God moved. God did significant things there. I cannot throw that baby out with the bathwater, although that's not the environment that I think is the most conducive for gardening. But it's okay, and I can live and be co-laborers actually for the common good with pastors and leaders in that environment. And my, and also confess, honestly, that this, this movement, the way of the being, the church is not for everyone and it's

okay. Right. Right. So if my ego is attached to my form of church, that's when it turns into the same thing that I found distasteful in the other environment. So, I mean, that's just emotional maturity is being able to live into that tension. Have you experienced, I imagine you roll with a lot of different pastors. Do you experience that pastors are maybe more in a traditional setting that feel threatened by what you're doing? Or do you get along with, you can hang out with a pastor at a megachurch or whatever, a traditional church, and you can talk about your ecclesiology and they're like, oh man, that's awesome.

Or is there a kind of an underlying rub? Because leaders can become so, our identities can be wrapped up into the very thing we've created and invested our life in doing. So it's kind of like I've seen this with missionaries. You know, there's always, you know, there's been, I think, a healthy overhaul in how we do missions over the last 30, 40 years. And some old school missionaries might feel threatened, like, you know, gosh, it's this new way of doing missions. What, you know, the last 40 years of what I've been doing, you know, is that just not worth anything, you know? And hopefully that's not our intention to do that. But we still do need to be rethinking paradigms and trying to get back to the New Testament vision of how God wants to live. That's a long question.

That's great. Yeah, I do. Well, I see a few things. I'm just being as explicit as I can. I mean, for some pastors that, uh, and I, I, you know, I get to coach all over the country, just modeling a different way is, is a thorn in the side of, of some pastors because their ego is completely wrapped up in what they're,

uh, what they're doing and what they're trying to lead their congregation into. And, um, what they're doing and what they're trying to lead their congregation into. And so in those environments, I'm actually less prophetic. And I just want to be wise like a serpent and as gentle as a dove, you know, and trying to find kind ways to connect with them. Because, you know, we're all going to get, the kingdom is going to come in its fullest and we're all going to be humbled by how little we knew about how to be the church, even me. And so I don't want to, you know, live, be in that environment as a, and actually if you're, if you're too harsh of a prophet, you, you're going to,

you're not going to be at the table any longer and you won't even actually have a conversation. Yeah. And so finding ways to be winsome is really important in those environments. The other pastors, here's the, here's the explicit part is there are, I, I, I probably have four or five handfuls of pastors leading traditional booming churches who privately and quietly in their office tell me if they could do it another way, they would. But the industrial complex has gotten so big that they can't – there's no way out. way out. Okay, so now I have to live in an either they have to live in this tension about what they want. And around what, you know what they've created. In my experience, I don't have a

statistic for this, like a wealth, you know, studied, but that I think that's at least a growing number, a sizable minority, if not the majority of people I know, and maybe I'm in certain circles that, you know, I don't know, but I'm shocked, but no longer shocked at how many people deep down, Christians, thought leaders, leaders, pastors, actually, you know, hear you talk about the church and say that that is a beautiful thing. I would love to be in that kind of environment. Have you sensed that? I mean, it just seems like there's a growing number of people that are just tired of the complex. It's, I mean, it's,

it's exhaustion that is making your average pastor leader think, can I keep this up? Yeah. Can we keep this up? And, and the, and, and, and I mean, the writing is in the wall and that there's just so much discontent with what we're even producing, even the sexiest churches in the block are the, there's just a lot of discontent. And so when you're working so hard as a pastor leader, and there's just not a lot of love for what you're doing, you find yourself exhausted and burnt out.

And so I think, too, pastors, and in giving them the benefit of the doubt, they read their Bibles. So if you just read the New Testament, you start seeing a form of the church, and you often preach that from the pulpit, but you don't practice that in your ecclesiology. And so, I mean, I hear pastors who are leading churches that I wouldn't enjoy preach the same things that we're talking about now,

but they just haven't landed in their practice. They're more, you know, share life and community, love your neighbor, you know, we need to live on mission. But they haven't restructured their ecclesiology so that people can actually live into that or at least give a chance to live into that. I think that the longing and the want and the exhaustion is there, but I just, I mean, we're just having to, we just got to keep the machine running. having to, we just got to keep the machine running. So.

In your experience, in your church model, have you seen a much higher degree of authentic discipling relationships happening? Because the, the, the assumption is if you do a small church or something like what you're doing, then, you know, authentic, natural, solid,, solid, open relationships are going to naturally happen. Have you experienced that, or is that always a challenge, no matter the size? Yeah, I think discipleship is uphill, no matter what environment you're in. It might be just a little easier when you strip away all the excess, because they don't have the option to just

feast on the buffet of Christian offerings. But it is always counterintuitive to, for people to warm up to the apprentice. You know, the apostle Paul says, come follow me as I follow Christ. That creates an automatic rub. And so for his, and I find this, that in my experience the last 10 years, people want, this is why coaching is so big and self-help books. People want betterment. They want change.

They want to transform. But they don't want the actual interpersonal rub. And so because it's easier to say I've changed my mind or I'm a different person because I read five books or because I listen to these podcasts every week or I got coaching via an hour on a coaching group, but when it comes to localized, embodied, physically committed discipleship, it rubs our human nature wrong. You know, when my discipler, his name is Dr. Snyder, told me at one point, we were meeting together, told me at one point that, We were meeting together, told me at one point that, he said, Dan, I just need you to hear this. You are, you're a bit of a know-it-all. So when you're hearing that across the table in Friendly's, is Friendly's still open? I don't even know what that is. Oh, it's a diner. It's a classic diner.

Maybe it's just a Northeast thing. So Friendly's is a diner, you know, you go to go there and me and discipling me. But at one point you just said, Dan, you're, you're a bit of a know-it-all. That hurt hard. It's much different than just reading, you know, a Henry Nowen book that says people can tend to be know-it-alls right that there's a there's a there's a there is a rub there and so I still find it's deeply challenging and to get people who want transformation to actually enter into an apprentice relationship where they are learning how to follow Christ in the way of mission under the Lordship of Jesus. So that's a difficult – it's still there. And that's why the home church movement, and not to throw them under the bus,

but even the home church movement has a tendency not to be a discipling environment and more just a space of belonging and not a space of becoming. So we all want to belong to, to people. And that's why, you know, I actually attended a home church in that one year I had my wilderness and I belong to those people cause we all had shared wounds, but becoming, which is the step of transformation and repentance and reflection and, and seeing yourself in, in the good and the bad. We didn't move in that space because that actually would,

we really didn't want to hear that. We just wanted to belong to each other, not become. Is that how you would distinguish your movement from the typical home church movement? And of course, this is a generalization, there's overlap, but the becoming and belonging? I don't want to be unfair there, because I've visited 50 or 60 home churches over the last few years, and there are people taking discipleship seriously in those environments. But I think the home church movement historically did react against the industrial complex

and all forms, all structure, all intentional tensionalities just dissipated because of the deconstructive nature of the home church movement. And it didn't reconstruct. of the deconstructive nature of the home church movement. And it didn't reconstruct it. But so I think that the V3 movement and, and what we're trying to do, it does take some of the beauty of the home church movement, which is, which I think the home church movement helped recover the table.

Yeah. As a way of gathering, we gather around the, you know, the love feast, the agape together that was lost, I think in the industrial complex and recovered in the home church movement. I think the next step is, is concrete discipleship and training people for mission in, in a local particular place. So Francis Chan's home church thing in San Francisco sounds more like what you're doing because they're so intentional on training leaders,

raising up leaders, and intentionally multiplying community. Like there's a forward kingdom movement happening. It's not just a reaction against the industrial complex. The end, you know, it is very much has a specific mission and direction. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I have to look more into Chan.

I haven't explored him in a few years. But I mean, I, when I, when, when, if someone loves the scriptures, you know, they love, and especially they love the life of the new Testament and what God, what broke into time and space, it moves you into intentionality. And so if that's what Francis is doing is just like, we, we, that, you know, that's the, that's the minimalism of the movement of the church. So what you do, I mean, as a coach, you fly around the country and meet with people who are wanting to start one of these communities?

What does the A to Z look like in terms of you going and helping another community like this start? Yeah, so the primary way – i'm part of a whole team so it's not you know i'm not the it's not a solo operation right um there's a team of coaches and we people sign up for a nine month regiment um okay and every single week they get on a coaching call and are trained in a succession of the ways of discipleship, boundary crossing mission, tight-knit community, locally rooted presence. And they work through that for nine months. On the front end, we have an intensive. We get together in Philadelphia.

There's about 200 of us, and we'll come together and do a live training. And then my role is I fly and visit, and I'm like a doctor. So I come in and troubleshoot and nurture because this way of planting is hard, and it exposes your own, your own ego and, and in your own sin and your own temper tantrum with things not working the way you want them to work. Yeah.

And so, you know, my, that's my role is kind of onsite coaching coaching and care, kind of these visits around. The primary thing that I see fall apart in this movement is around leadership relationships. Okay. If a core of leaders can't – see, because this really exposes our emotional immaturity. In the other environment, our personality drives things, our vision drives things,

our communication skills drives things. Our vision drives things. Our communication skills drives things. And if we hold the seat of lead pastor, then our way drives things. Now, we would never say that overtly, but that's kind of the culture. That's how culture forms over time. When you move into this more movemental way, you can't make people do things. You're not centering your personality. Preaching is not the primary orienting phenomenon that people are coming for any longer. And your emotional immaturity starts to come to the surface because you have angst and anger that it's not growing fast enough. People aren't doing what you want them to do. They aren't responding the way you want them to respond.

And so you either move towards coercion and violence and control. And we see this both in men and women, probably more in men, but all of us have been uh what's the word have been this have been kind of uh malformed into a way of leading so when you're in a flatter environment i wouldn't say it's completely flat there you're just your your tendencies to force things or demand things is exposed. And so people's – yeah, so I don't know if that helps a little bit. No, it does. That's where we see this environment presses. That's the point of pressure.

So if somebody is listening and they're intrigued and maybe even interested in exploring what it could look like to be coached by either you or one of your team what would that what's the first step that somebody would take the the best place to go is the v3movement.org and just apply there's an application on there and it's a short application and that that kind of sparks the we call you we start to explore where you're at and when you're what your vision for planting is what your history is and then you would enter into a um if you got accepted well you know we'll have about 100 applicants and we only accept about 50 or 60 oh wow um because uh because preston not everybody's ready for the journey, and we have a few prerequisites. We want you to be on site of where you're planting. We want you to have a core of people, at least four people that are with you because this isn't about a solo journey.

And some people are still in a place of antagonism and anger, and you can't really plant out of that. You're going to just gather more angry and antagonistic people. Totally. of antagonism and anger and you can't really plant out of that right um you're gonna just gather more angry and antagonistic people and so totally um so that's that's the journey is application and then there's a bit of an interview process um and then hit september for nine months you're in a you're in a weekly uh accountable training relationship. That's awesome, man. We're going to wrap things up, man. But I want to make sure I mention, I'll mention this. Well, I have mentioned this in the pre-recorded intro that I haven't actually recorded yet.

But if you're listening, you've already heard it or however that works. Anyway, your most recent book, Love Over Fear, is it out yet, coming out? Where are you at with that? Right. We were supposed to talk about that. It's all good, man. Listen, this is, it's, it's, it's, it's all kingdom. It came out about a month and a half ago. Okay. And what's it about? What's the gist of the book? Who should read it? Why should they read it? Where are they going to get out of it? Yeah, it's a blue collar. I was just, I told you earlier, Preston, I tried to write it in an eighth grade reading level. It's addressing the fear that the left and the right have, progressive conservative have towards each other and how that's creating a massive void of anger and hatred and excessive rhetoric about each other and how this creates a

monster. We see each other as monsters. And the only way to kind of break open space or bring down that stronghold between each other is to move towards enemy love. Wow. So it's really birthed out of my local practice. And being an Anabaptist church, we have people who would identify all along that continuum. But during the Obama and Romney election, believe it or not, 2011, we had a major disruption where people just avoid way that we engage with people who have different beliefs than us.

And so the book is not really about ideology. There's a lot of people writing about ideology. ideology, I really wanted to write as simple as I could about this real emotional, practical feeling of fearing and hating someone who you repelled by. And how do you practice perfect love casting out fear? The kind of outrage culture, right? That seems to be, it seems in my, and I'm not old enough to know if all he's been here or it's a new thing or it's just been escalated. But it seems in the last couple of years, maybe leading up to Trump and Trump magnifying that there's not just Trump, but like the Trump era, the wake of what he's created. Because I see it on both the far right and far left.

Oh, yeah. Equally, almost identically. Oh, I'm with, where the rhetoric and everything is very similar. So have you seen an escalation in that kind of the intensity of the outrage that seems to be tethered to not just political systems, but the whole ideology, the ideologies that are sort of wrapped up in the maybe those systems? Has it been more intense intense last couple of years? Yeah, I think we're, I mean, it's on steroids right now. Preston,

there's always, I mean, for the last 2000 years, I mean, even since Genesis, you know, three in the fall, there's always been this either or polarization conflict. First, you know, first move towards a violence towards each other, whether it's verbal violence or physical violence. I mean, that's the sin of all time in the face of the other. But now, because of technology, it is viral. It is viral, and it is part of our life all day long, especially if we're connected into Twitter, Facebook, and cable news. It's just constantly in our grill. The Barna – no, it was actually Gallup just put out in 2016 that –, you know, that research is always a little, a little funky, but if conservatives,

78% of conservatives only have conservative friends, 72% of progressives only have progressive friends, which is pretty much the same stat, right? We have further moved away from each other to the point where very few of us have people that vote differently than us that are deep friends. Right this is the this is the result of polarization and i i think i really think this is um always been there but it's it's it's at you know the fire is yeah is moved out of the bonfire and is now burning up the forests in California. It's just off the chain. And so if discipleship, if teaching people how to follow Jesus doesn't call them into how to love

their enemies beyond sentimentalism, beyond esoteric ideas into practical affection for people they hate. It's not the way of Christ. And that's what we see in the, in the gospels is Jesus is inviting his disciples into these hot spaces where typically they would not go and they would not be. And even the makeup of the discipleship group itself, did a lot of research on that. It's fascinating, the political polarization in the first 12 disciples. And Pharisees, Essenes, the Saqqari party, the Sadducees, the Zealots were all represented actually in the first 12. Jesus is busting up polarization even in his very first selection of his disciples. So I just think it's a lost message because it's – no one wants to love their enemies.

We want to hate our enemies. It's natural. Do you have – personally, do you have a political identity affiliation leaning or do you try to – I would imagine you're probably a centrist, whatever that means. But I don't know. Do you have – You know, that's a good question. I don't typically like to answer that. I don't even know how I would answer that, quite honestly.

Here's the thing. I've never voted, Preston, once. And more out of conviction than apathy. As an Anabaptist, I have some specific reasons for that. And I don't push that on everybody. And I actually don't think that it's doctrine or theology or even right or wrong. It's the way I extrapolate from the text. So I hold that lightly. But personally, I do think it's given me a vantage point of seeing how fundamentalism within the conservative and progressive spaces operates. And I say fundamentalism in the way that we hold our beliefs, not what we believe. And so I've always thought the Anabaptists, if people are familiar with their history 500 years ago,

have always found some unique vantage point from seeing how violence works from both sides. And so in some places I kind of, someone could interpret me as leaning conservative and in other places, people interpret me as leaning progressive. But for the most part, uh, I try to be a peacemaker, um, and, and, uh, a prophetic disruptor to call people out of those entrenched, you know,

locations they're in. Dan, thanks so much for being on Theology and Rod. Again, the book is Love Over Fear. And my goodness, having heard you unpack that, I can't think of a more relevant book to check out. You also have two other books, Subterranean and the award-winning book you co-authored, The Church as Movement. So the website, loveoverfearproject.com. That's loveoverfearproject.com. And also once again, what's the, the V3, if somebody's interested in your church plan, the church planning side of you, um,

that's, uh, the V3 project. What's, what's like the V3 movement.org, the V3 movement.org. Dan, thanks so much for being on the show.

I really appreciate it, man. Oh, thanks friend. Thank you.