Theology in the Raw - 789: Church in a Post-Covid-19 World: Hugh Halter

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Of all of Preston's favorite church planters, Hugh is definitely at the top of his list. In this podcast, Preston and Hugh talk about simplifying church in a post-Covid-19 world and exploring other ways of integrating discipleship into the marketplace, community, and natural rhythms of life. They also discuss the pros and cons of church services and their effectiveness for helping people live the Christian life. Hugh Halter has been a leading missiologist and thought-leader within the contemporary missional church movement. He has authored 8 books, and speaks extensively around the world helping the church be less churchy. He just moved his family to the St Louis area and has started a Neo-trappist marketplace mission as an incubator for good works and uses this story to help Christians rethink calling and kingdom contribution. Follow Hugh on Twitter. 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. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month. There's over 200 Patreon supporters. And if you support the show, you become part of the Patreon community and you get access to lots of goodies, including once a month podcasts, once a month blogs, and just conversations that we have on that platform. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. I have on the show today, my friend from a distance we've never met in person. Isn't that so like 2020? I feel kindred spirits with Hugh Halter. He is a church planner. He's an author.

He's become kind of a guru in the evangelical, I don't want to say evangelical, just the Christian conversation about exploring different ways to do church. And Hugh Halter is not just a preacher of different ways of doing church. He is a practitioner. He puts his money where his mouth is. Actually, no, he doesn't put his money anywhere in church. As you'll see, he's a big fan of simplifying church so that the church is not dependent upon financial, it's not dependent on finances. Like we don't need to like spend lots of money in order to break bread, engage in discipleship and live on mission together. He started this really cool, what is it? It's called Post Commons. It's a building, it's a brunch center, it's a coffee shop, it's a place where they have like whiskey gatherings, it's a brunch center. It's a coffee shop. It's a place where they have like

whiskey gatherings. They, it's an event center and it's, it's just really cool. You got to go to postcommons.com, uh, and check out what that is all about. And, uh, anyway, in this episode, we, uh, Hugh and I, we just kind of explore what it means, what it will mean to be a Christian doing church in a post COVID-19 world? What should we learn from the massive disruption that has come our way, which has canceled church services across the country almost overnight? Like that's pretty crazy. And what are some things we can do differently in how we go about doing church in a post-COVID world? If this thing ever lifts, life will be different. So should the church be different? Anyway, we explore those questions and we have a great conversation.

So please welcome back to the show for the second time, the one and only Hugh Halter. All right, I'm back with my friend Hugh Halter. Hugh, how are things going out in your world in the midst of this pandemic that we're going through? Pandemic? Is there really a pandemic? Nothing's going on out here. It's normal out in St. Louis area. No, it's terribly awesome.

Free time, but a lot of sadness over what's going on with the world. In your world, what would you say is the main sadness? Oh, it's, well, man, it's hard to say, you know, I'm now in the service business community. So, you know, I talked a lot to our local business people, restauranteurs, and, you know, everybody's had to lay off all their staff. So, you know, as we did, so there's a lot of sadness just related to the people that we've worked with. I think we'll be able to bring everybody back and so far everybody's fine.

But you know, if this thing goes two or three months, I think we're going to lose a lot of businesses. And so that's a bummer. Obviously all the sickness and death going on is no picnic,, you know, I tell people apart from the true sadness, I think there's some really amazing things changing for all of us if we can kind of keep our ears to the pavement of what the Lord's doing. So I'm enjoying some of the benefits of rest and relationship and getting some projects done. So, yeah.

Yeah. Well, I want to come back to that really quick, kind of your thoughts on what church is going to look like on the other side of this thing, if there isn't another side, but real quick, just for our audience, you know, I had you on about eight months ago, nine months ago. Just give us a quick update on who, you know, you're a church planner by trade traditionally, but what you're, what you've been

up to the last several years has been um kind of written more different much more innovative so just give us an overview what the post commons is and what kind of if i could even say church plant you're involved in yeah i mean most of what i do now is and always have been for the last 25 years training church planters and non-traditional forms of church. So we've done two of them ourselves, more networks of missionary communities and neighborhoods. But what we're doing right now in Alton, Illinois, just north of St. Louis, is more of a, we call it kind of a Trappist work, a business for mission. We created an apostolic hub that is really an all-day brunch cafe, coffee shop, and event center that sort of forms our sustainability, but also our missionary kind of emphasis in the city, sort of sets up everything. So I do a lot of work kind of coaching leaders in what we would actually, I don't know if I told you this last time, but we're going to start a network called the Free Market Church, which is going to be designed to help reframe church without all the need for money.

And then use our money to create sustainable ventures in the marketplace, you know, for all the benefits that it gives. So obviously, when you're doing free market church, you know, and then the market completely falls out, you know, it hurts us too. So it's not a foolproof plan, but I think it might be the wave of the future and it is allowing us to make it. So, I mean, we're many, many church leaders will not make it right now. We're able to sustain because we have not tied any money to mission at this point. So everything that we would call church functioning, we think you can do that for no money at all. Like it's completely free. So yeah, that's a, so for the audience, so, uh, postcommons.com,

if you go to postcommons.com, you can see an overview of what, uh, this, what, what, what he was talking about. Um, it's a brunch kitchen, coffee shop, event center. Um, uh. Is there a whiskey tasting? Of course, Preston, there's whiskey everywhere. You can't have church without whiskey. Full bar supports the events and you know, you can get a pour during the day as well, but it's mostly to service the events that we do in there.

And what, so somebody might say, well, okay, so this guy owns a coffee shop and he's a Christian, but what, I mean, how is this church or is there like a gathering or something that happens at this place or what kind of church gathering, if we even want to use that phrase, is intertwined? You will find though, like as you're watching Facebook and you're noticing all the, I guess, articles being written about church right now, most people are still, I don't know why we still keep seeing church in these ways, but all we're talking about is the gathered stuff, like how are churches live streaming their sermons to whatever it is. And I think we're missing the substantial undercurrents of a massively different way of thinking about church. So, yeah, we have a coffee shop. We run business.

But all that is what we call an apostolic hub. we call an apostolic hub. It's a convergent space that allows us to connect with the same people every day and link our missionary team in with that. So it's a very integrated environment. And so, yeah, we do church stuff all the time. We've got neighborhood communities. We do have gatherings right now, like everybody else are on Zoom. So there's nothing different about that. But our gatherings are not to deliver a sermon. Our gatherings are more like missionary training times. We teach our people that they have to be responsible for their own spiritual formation inside their community.

So when we gather via Zoom or when this is over and we gather normally, we're more like a cloistered order, if you will. Like we're talking about the mission and we're talking about our lives together. We're not just trying to deliver a teaching and then try to get people through the week and do it again. So I think most churches right now, that's where most of the conversation is. How do we just keep the sermons getting out to our people? And we're missing, you know, the reality of what God might be opening up for us as far as, you know, we talk about more incarnational life or incarnational church where all that means is it's less programmatic or may not have hardly any program. It's individual people that learn how to give leadership to

their own street and their own neighborhood. And again, I still, I'm not saying anybody talked about that. You know, churches are going, yeah, we're doing some cool stuff now because we've got some free time. But my fear is that when this is over, they will go right back to where they were and they will just go to listen to sermons. And I'm just like, what? Like, I don't know. Is God behind this? I don't think so. Is God using it? Could he have stopped it? Yeah. Why isn't he? Maybe he's saying, look, I am really tired of you guys focusing on your church gathering so much. So I want to, I want to, let's linger here for a second. Cause I've got some kind of,

I don't know, um, untested, just thinking out loud thoughts that I've been, been mulling over for the last few weeks. I'd love to bounce them off you. Have you bounced your ideas off me? I just, I, I, I hear from, I probably hear from a good number of people that church isn't a building, that church isn't a service. You know, I do see even people that are in a more traditional environment, at least I hear people say, you know, church is so much more than just the gathering, so much more than the service, you know. And yeah, it does feel like practically though, the service, and I've got nothing wrong intrinsically with services when they're in their place in the process of discipleship. But I still, I don't know, I feel

like through this whole COVID thing, it's kind of exposed from my vantage point. I could be completely off you and please spank me if I am I am, it just seems like, cause like you said, people are focusing so hard on simply replicating this church service again. So, which makes me think, I don't know, like, I don't, I don't know if we really believe practically that church is much more than a large gathering, much more than a sermon, much more than a service. Cause it seems like that's still the one thing that I see churches, you know, frantically trying to preserve. Do you have, I mean, am I,

do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, obviously a ton of thoughts, you know, this morning, Todd Wilson, who helps facilitate the exponential church plant conference, which is really the largest church plant conference in the world. He made a post today basically asking, okay, guys on the missional side, all of you missional guys, are you really doing anything different than the more traditional attractional guys? And, you know, I'm kind of watching the threads today. Um, but the way the, the, the question

was framed, it still is like, yeah, you guys are doing Zoom meetings. So are the big boys. So what's the difference? And what I was trying to point out is that there are some systemic things way past the, whether or not you gather people to look at each other and talk via Zoom. Yes, we are doing that too. But, you know, I just pointed out some things that are unique to the missional movements that

I see. And what we're doing is that we're, like I said, we don't, we don't have to try to keep, uh, the community together through this means, especially in order to collect funds, because no money exchanges hands in our network. Um, a hundred percent of the monies that we have, we find things to do with it that directly serve people. So there's, and that's, I think a huge difference. There's zero pressure for us to gather people on a Zoom or face-to-face to kind of deliver something to them, if you will. So all the functions of shepherding, pastoring, teaching, evangelism, discipleship, crisis management, you name all the major functions of what we do in church, we don't tie any of those functions to money. And somebody has to start talking about that.

Like if, let's say this writer virus goes 10 times what it was doing now if we have another great depression numbers are that were already there you know as far as unemployment but let's just say we don't get bailed out and this thing really goes down um i know that most all of those functions of ministry, which Ephesians 4 would say are the works of ministry, right, that are given to all the saints to do. I know that all of those functions will happen. It's just right now people are trying to almost like circle the wagons and go, hey, let's just ride this out. We can get back to normal. I don't think we want to get back to normal.

I don't think we want to get back to normal. The other thing that, you know, I highlighted for Todd this morning is that again, where most churches just open up a zoom meeting, anybody can kind of sit back, grab a coffee and they can actually go look, I think I'll do 15 minutes of Steven Furtick and then I'll go over and dip on in to Tim Keller for see what he's got going. And you know, they, they can literally become more of a consumer in this new environment. Mike Frost posted an article today about how this might put us back 30 years

if we just, but like in our setting, not only do we not tie any money to it, we don't let anybody find our Zoom meeting unless they're a part of our community. That's why we say we're more like an order. You could only have been invited to our Zoom meeting if you're literally somebody that's a pre-believer or you're already a part of our community. So we did. We invited 20 folks that are not believers to our Easter time. But we do life with those people, and they're all asking us stuff about God. We would never have put out a post that said, hey, Altonians or people in the St. Louis area, jump on in with us. So, and I think, you know, if you really ask the question, well, why would you close off

the community to people? Those are some of the questions I think we need to be asking. Is like for us, we don't want anybody to consume. It actually would take energy and spirit away from what we're doing. We literally want to form communities that are very local and have very shared missions together and literally integrate it all. And I think this will be the kind of the second wave of the missional world is us trying to help people move from that consumer safety orientation to, uh, I'm going to get back out there and I'm actually not going to wait for my pastor to teach me. I'm actually going to read the scripture myself and see if I can translate this to some of my friends that are open, you know? So it's, it's personal responsibility for

the mission I think is going to be, you know, what we have to try to help transition the existing church to. A couple of things just in response. I've been a big, I guess, fan, proponent or someone who wants to explore what would it look like to make, I don't want to say church gathering, let's just say church not dependent upon money. You know, like how much does it cost to break bread, learn the apostles teaching, the fellowship and the pray? Now, it's kind of a, I don't know, tongue in cheek question because the right answer, there is a right answer. The right answer should be, well, it doesn't cost anything, right? question because the right answer, there is a right answer. The right answer should be, well, it doesn't cost anything, right? Actually, it's incredibly expensive in as much as we create churches. It can be. It can either be

millions of dollars needed on a weekend for some churches, or it can be completely free like they have in the underground church in Iran or underground church of China or underground church in St. Louis. It's free. Here's my one. I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan of simplifying church, even, even to the extreme may make it almost,

and this might be to a fault on my part, almost make it non-attractional. Like I've been, you know, I know Francis Chan and his crew out in San Francisco, or at least, you know, he's gone now, but they almost go out of their way to put like really boring teachers, you know, I know Francis Chan and his crew out in San Francisco, or at least, you know, he's gone now, but they almost go out of their way to put like really boring

teachers, you know, sharing in a living room, you know, just so people don't come because there's some dynamic teacher. And Francis Chan never, rarely does he even teach in that context because they're just, they want to go out of their way to make it non-attractional so that people are attracted to the dirtiness of the gospel. Here's my one concern though. And you, you even made a comment in passing about, you know, people reading the scriptures on their own. I guess I'm, I'm, I'm,

I'm a little nervous about that. Like I do think that I'm, I've seen, I mean, that's how many cults have started, right? Just some charismatic leader interpreting the Bible on his own without some sort of communal accountability or guidance or even authority that actually knows the scriptures well. So how do we balance having qualified teachers, not just to give sermons, I just, gosh, I want to get out of that straitjacket, but people that can, for lack of better terms, you know, disciple people in a Christian vision for life or however you want to reword things to help people understand a Christian worldview, to help them understand what it means to follow Jesus, to even, I mean, I think there is a place to, you know, exposing and addressing false doctrine or whatever. and addressing false doctrine or whatever.

It's hard to do that when you're working 50 hours a week in another job. Like, how do you even go to get educated? Do you need to get educated? Is there a place for releasing some leaders to oversee the kind of discipleship process? Does that make sense? I get this question all the time. But here's like, and I'm not just trying to be a turkey with this response, but when, because what we're really asking is how do we make sure there's good grounded teaching, right? But if we look at the evangelical church, which has been the best, I think, at teaching and preaching, and then we look at the last 50 years of all that collective preaching, and that preaching did not release the saints in the ministry.

That teaching did not ever change the laity clergy divide. In my evangelical upbringing, nobody ever taught me about the kingdom of God as actually here and something I need to participate in. I also was taught the Holy Spirit doesn't really do what he used to do in scripture anymore. And that was what was called grounded biblical teaching. So I think we want to at least raise a hand in the back of the classroom and go, hey, teacher, are you sure that you've been teaching the full counsel of God? leadership around a pest in Ephesians four, and we've propped up the single leader, Hugh Halter is my pastor. Then I would say we've actually been doing really unbiblical teaching this whole time.

We just never wanted to call a spade a spade. So I, I go, Hey, I think at this point it's time to take a risk and release the saints to be able to read the scriptures and figure it out. I think most of the narratives in the New Testament, especially, are at a third grade reading level. You know, if you just read it to kids, they're going to generally pick up 90% of the big things. And I think right now, with what our culture's dealing with, they are not looking for deep theological nuances. They are looking for, how do I do life on Monday with my spouse? And how do I become a better dad? What do I do with my money? So I just, I think we got to stop going. We've been doing great teaching. I actually think we've been doing really marginal teaching at best when we have

framed church around the church service and around the single leader, the idea that we need somebody that's that much better than us to somehow orate, um, again, some nuances that hold our attention. Are you kidding me? Like, so like in our, just take our little community, we're 50 people. We're not big. Um, I'd say 40 of our people would be very appropriate to just share the word. And that's what we do. And it's always great. It doesn't matter who shares it. And I think most churches probably would have 80% of their people that know enough. I mean,

they used to tell us that if you grew up in church to the fifth grade, you had more Bible knowledge than most pastors in Africa. So I think we got to really realize our sheep have plenty. They are full to the brim with basic biblicalism, and they can get it done. Can I push back on that a little bit. I want to, I want to, I want to a hundred. So I, I a hundred percent agree that simply teaching the way we've always done is inadequate. And I would not equate that with good teaching. And I would even say like,

we need to release people simply to teach well or preach certain, like I'm not at all saying I'm saying um i would i don't know i would say very few christians actually do have a strong christian worldview that is not just orthodoxy but orthopraxy or even i you know i look at um i don't know like like the problem of evil like this average person this is a pressing you, my two-year-old just died. Not me, but I mean, my two-year-old just died. I thought God was good. Did God kill my baby?

Like, is the average person prepared to actually address a problem, a question like that that has really prevented people? Or science and creation or even the hell or sexuality? I mean, this is the world I live in. People don't have a clue what sex is. Why did God create sex? What is sex for? What's marriage for? Does God prohibit same sex relations that are consensual and loving and why? What's wrong? Like these are,

I don't think the average person can really address these real basic pressing questions. I agree with you, but I go, but we don't have to meet that need through a sermon. We write books, right? Oh, I agree. If like I'm 53, a week ago, I actually watched two hours of CNN. And by the end of it, I actually thought I was probably going to die and I start to freak out. And so I literally go to my, because I know there's an NT write book on heaven on my,

so I can go find the information I need on the deeper things. But when we say that we need the Sunday sermon to deliver all that, I think we're missing an opportunity. We can deliver teaching. We're really talking about the teaching gift of the ministry of church, right? But we can disseminate in all sorts of ways is all I'm saying. I just don't know. We used to try to get it all done in the sermon. Therefore, yeah, of course, we need Sunday to come around so we can get all this deep teaching. People always go, I'm looking for deep, you know, deep meat, so to speak. We forget now, and we're learning this, even our own parishioners right now if they're if they need information on something they know where to go they can google it they can grab a commentary online they don't

need us to do that function as much anymore maybe not at all so you know where we used to pay a teaching pastor 90 grand a year i go you don't need that anymore. You actually can decentralize most of the teaching to the people. And then on the nuanced, difficult issues, you just send them to resources or to good books or to a good podcast or a webinar or something like that. Yeah. So I, in no way, I mean, I, when I look at that sermon, a monological sermon, you know, that, that works, it's debated, but it worked fairly well between the Reformation and the pre-internet world. I think, you know, there's a lot of good

that came out of it. I was shaped by listening to Piper sermons, whatever. And I, you know, my posture as a Christian in my life has been shaped for good by some element of monological teaching. Now that world doesn't exist anymore. So, I mean, it worked well, but pre-internet, between Reformation when you had a lot of people literate and oration was kind of a thing that people did for date night on Saturday night.

They go listen to three hour oration. Like that world, it did exist. My fear is that we're trying to maintain a brand of church in a world that doesn't exist anymore. And I wonder if the one-two punch of the internet and now COVID is or should disrupt some of that, to wean us off the breast of this world that doesn't exist anymore. breast of this world that doesn't exist anymore. But I still, so what if, I am still concerned with Christians not being able to listen to sermons, but not being, I'm being really careful with my words. You know, let's just say discipled or educated or trained, or maybe it's one-on-one, one-on-two, maybe it's a conversation, but somebody who actually is much, much more

knowledgeable to even point them what to Google or what sources to read and what, which one's not to read. Cause you and I both know, you know, just cause there's a commentator online. It doesn't mean that's going to help them. I mean, gosh, I mean, there's several online that I'd be like, yeah, that's going to push you away from the actual Jesus. So could there be a place for a, maybe he's called a pastoral theologian or a pastoral disciple or somebody within the community that can kind of be the go-to person or persons to help guide people in some of the really complicated aspects of Christian faith. I just think that's what the concept of overseer was, or an elder. It was the older, wiser people that you go to, to essentially broker you to what you need. And I think that leadership gifting and function is still needed inside the church,

even when it's decentralized and even when it's very simple. inside the church, even when it's decentralized and even when it's very simple, but you may not need an elder or an overseer to be the primary teacher in a setting. They might just say, hey, what you're asking me, I just heard a great podcast by Keller on that. Go check it out or assist you on sexuality, get ahold of Sprinkles thing on this, you know. But yeah, we are overseeing. What I have found in our community, though, is that there's lots of people that have the teaching gift in our community. And they will, sometimes they'll read a book, and they send a note to everybody in our community, hey, I just read this great deal. Check it out if you're interested in this. So you'll find that

people kind of naturally kind of guide each other towards deeper concepts and the resources where you can get that stuff. And a lot of times I just sit back and go, yeah, I've read that. It's great. I definitely recommend it. And then people go deep on that stuff. So I just think it's easier and more natural than we think. Again, even on the discipleship end, again, it just happens naturally. Once you begin to form that community, the one-on-ones, like you said, the one-on-two, two-on-twos, you know, we'll get three or four couples together, you know, pretty consistently. And we'll trade that up. And we just have three-hour chats over a nice glass of wine or whatever. And it always goes really deep at the real discipleship conversation

level. So I just know that those things don't generally, at least from what I hear and how I have coached so many churches, they don't seem to happen on a Sunday and they rarely happen in a typical small group. So I think we've got to move the conversation from small groupy stuff to actual intentional missionary communities. Most of what we're concerned about will take care of itself. Well, that's good, man. That's good. As you look forward, let's just say, you know, the intensity of COVID-19 lasts, let's just say three months. Maybe it takes another three months to kind of get back on our feet. I mean, that's pretty optimistic. We don't know what's going to happen, but let's just say in six months, things are more or less back to normal.

What would you like to see the church do differently on the other side of that? Assuming that they're not all going to do exactly what you're doing, but maybe they would maintain a loose traditional structure. But what would you love to see within maybe that, broadly speaking, traditional structure? What would you love to see churches revisit in the wake of COVID? Yeah, I mean, again, it really depends on the type of church that you went into the COVID scenario as.

Neil Cole had a great little, and Neil's been essentially prophetically preparing the church for 40 years on this thing. And it's been fairly quiet. But he just did a very simple little Facebook the other day about the three types of churches. And the first are the, those small traditional 70 to 120 people type of church, single leader, you know, good. They just love each other. But he said, though, that third is probably not going to make, make it three to six months financially. And so there really will be, and this I'm really sad about because most of those churches are pastored by middle-aged guys like me that opted out of social security back, you know, in the 70s and 80s when we could in our early 20s. So we don't even have governmental funding options. There's no

Medicaid, Medicare. And so if you figure a third of our churches may not make it, you have a lot of older leaders that don't, they, you know, they haven't developed a skill in the world. And by the way, there's not a lot of jobs right now. So those, I think it's just, it's going to be very painful. It's going to be a natural carnage of what we're seeing happen. But he said, you know, that first type of church, don't lament it too bad because you're nimble enough that you can get to the third style of church a lot quicker. And third, I think he would refer more to what we're doing, churches that are already not centered on money. So, you know, basically,

if you can figure out your own income, you can go right to a natural, simple style of church that you don't have to live this pressure anymore. The ones, you know, the second type of church you said are more of the ones that right now are working frantically to try to hang on and keep sort of the show afloat. And he said some of those will probably make it, but they're going to be leveraged. You know, they're going to take on more debt. Some of them may even merge with other churches to try to survive. And I think Neil was trying to say that if you're just going to try to survive, you might make it another five, seven, 10 years, but this is the way the puck is going to slide to, you know,

from here on out, there will be more of these global pandemics. I just think we're set up for it now. So, you know, I always try to encourage folks just, you know, when you see the puck start to slide to that corner of the rink, just start moving your way that direction somehow. So churches, if you can downsize your facility, if you can sell your, your land, you know, you always thought you were going to keep building and growing and probably

not. So sell the land. You know, you always thought you were going to keep building and growing. You're probably not. So sell the land. Think of ways to maybe fund your missionary leaders for a two-year, three-year runway to give them the ability to reenter the workforce. But to me, those would be appropriate ways to begin to move in the right direction. Just simplify. Simplify.

You know, you are going to have to lay off staff. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially for missionary leaders. It might actually be what releases people to take on the life that, you know, they'll actually maybe even prefer two or three years from now, you know, it might feel painful right now, but if you've got 30 people on staff at your church, you probably need to figure out how to do it with 10. And, uh, so that's where I,

you said Neil, who's the Neil Cole. Neil wrote a book, really one of the seminal books called organic church back in the, I guess that probably was the eighties. Um, and I would And I would go back and read that. It's what started, in many ways, the organic house church movement. And, you know, the house church movement had its difficulties, too. It can be as closed in and as non-missional as megachurches. So we're not really talking about the form.

The form is not that big a deal. And I've seen very large megachurches be highly missional. But what we are talking about are simple structures where most of the ideas of ministry or the ways of ministry can happen without any money. And I think that would be the way to keep thinking, okay, how can I do this without money? How can I deliver this without money? How can we form our people in ways that don't cost? So very simply, if somebody wants to get help, maybe jot this down. We're going to open up a website probably within about four weeks called freemarketchurch.com. And that,

that site will be there to resource people and how to do church for free. And so, you know, it's not ready yet, but we're just beginning to load up some stuff on that. So maybe stay in touch with that. But I think that, you know, again, all over the world, church is not based on money. We never, none of us, not even somebody like me that writes about it, I never really ever thought it would get this bad this fast. In literally one week's time, March 15, we had less than 10% of our churches gathered in America. So if we don't see the depth of what just happened, I think we are lying to ourselves. We are not going to, and by the way, even if this goes away

and Trump opens up the country, in five, six months from now, you can be at cafes having some nice tapas again, recognize a good chunk of your church people will also, they will not have got new jobs yet, or they'll still be recovering. It might take them five years to recover financially from what they lost. So the giving is going to go down significantly, even if you can reboot a gathered church. So somehow you as a leader have to disconnect money from mission. That's the only thing I would say systemically, you just have to make the disconnect. And leaders, I think you're going to have to go down with the ship. You're going to have to say as leaders, we'll cut our salary in half. We'll figure out how to make it like everybody else to stem the tide and to

model this. We can't just maintain our salaries while our congregants aren't. And I just, you know, that's a hard thing to say, but we all need to start to hustle. I just took on two different paint jobs the other day. I'm 53. My back is out. I don't out. I don't need this anymore. I don't want this, but I realized, okay, Halter, you got to start hustling again and do what you used to do. And hopefully God will give us strength. We're already talking about downsizing a house again. Are we talking about downsizing a house again? It's like the downwardly mobile journey is going to be what saves you and your church at this point.

And I think it could be a really beautiful, healthy, enjoyable downward journey that might set you up. You know, like when I lived in Denver five years ago, I needed, you know, 10 grand a month to live in that culture culture. Right now we're trying to figure out how to live off four grand a month. That that's been a healthy thing for Cheryl and I. And it allows us to literally just be available for our community. And I just don't need to make as much. And when I, when I can't pay the bills, they're not as big a bills. I can, I can get back at them later. You know, maybe a little, You wrote a guide, Bivo, some sort of guide for how to become a bivocational leader.

Can you speak into bivocational pastoring? Are you a big fan of that? Do you think every pastor should be bivo? No, I'm not a fan of any of it. I think somebody that's a millionaire should just give us all money so we can do stuff. But if that's not the case in your life, then yeah, the bivocational subtitle is learning to leverage all of life into one calling. kind of get people ready to realize church can be a lot of fun if you do it as a team of people that are all bivocational. You know, now when we talk about marketplace leadership, that's a different, you know, Bible is when you're trying to work at Starbucks so you can preach on the weekends. A good buddy, Brad Briscoe, wrote a book called Covo, which I would get, and he frames

co-vocational is when you intentionally are choosing to work in the marketplace because you feel like it actually sets up ministry better. And then third would be a marketplace, which is more like what we're doing. that not only sustains leadership, but actually continues to do, I guess, larger ventures in a town where you can employ people and that type of thing. So maybe those three different levels, but for sure, entry level would be BIBO, where you're actually having to split life so you can still give leadership to a congregation of friends. I just love what you're doing, man. I mean, I think I shared this with you last time. I know my audience has heard it a few times, but I just kind of dream of having some kind of space where it's like a coffee shop by day, a brewery at night. You have legitimate businesses that can be run by Christians, non-Christians, Muslims, doesn't matter. You maybe give them a cheaper rent because they're actually sharing space.

And then you could also use that space for, if you want to have a church gathering, let's make sure we understand what I mean by church here, but just you want to have believers gathered together to break bread, drink wine, talk about the scriptures, encourage each other, pray. You can have space for that. And the building is just being used, you know, around, but it's generating its own income so that it doesn't cost anything to do church. And you're developing skills of people learning how to be a barista,

how to be a brewer or whatever. You're in a public space so that you don't have this weird church building, you know, that you're trying to drag people to. And that's just kind of doesn't, again, that worked in a pre-internet world. It's just not much of a thing as much anymore. What's wrong with this plan? It's been a blast, honestly. And I'm saying that, I mean, obviously it's hard work when you run a business, but everything's hard work.

So I go, you know, pick your pain. I'd much rather have the pain of integrating business and mission and life than just taking a paycheck and trying to keep parishioners happy. I've lived that world too, and I did not like the way that felt. That was a very hard pain for me to bear. I'd rather work 80 hours a week doing what I'm doing now. So, you know, there's a lot of hope, Preston. I hope people are not depressed by this conversation. I hope that they start to really lift their head and go, God's always been the head of the church. He knows what he's doing.

He's lamenting with us. I think he weeps with us. I think he sees the death. Maybe he looks at us like Lazarus. He knows he's going to rise us up, right. He knows he's going to rise us up, right? He knows he's going to bring resurrection, but he still is sad. He sees how hard this is, but man, this is the time and the opportunities to be courageous and joyful and create,

you know, like really go, Lord, help me think this through. We're not going to be able to get the rock out of the river anymore. We've got to figure out new ways to get around the rock. And God will help us with that. And I think it's going to be a fantastic future for the church if we just fight the urge to go back to normal. Yeah, no, that's good. My prayer and hope is that churches will use this time to open up fresh horizons and explore creative ways to continue to disciple people in the ways of Christ so that we can all be on mission together. Discipleship and mission are the twin pillars, right, of why we're here. right, and why we're here. And again, there's just so many unexplored ways in which we can do that better, I think, in a post-internet, post-COVID kind of world. And I do see a hunger,

maybe even a growing hunger for the actual Jesus and the actual kind of community that Jesus sought to establish. I see that itch in 9 out of 10 just humans I talk to. They're longing for an authentic community. They're, you know, the idea of Jesus, the actual Jesus in Scripture, not the way we've kind of presented him in some context, but the actual Jesus is a really compelling person to follow more than ever today, right? As we say, the fields are, as he said, the fields are ripe under harvest, right? Right now.

And I, Preston, I wouldn't say right now is the time to just assume everybody wants to hear about Jesus. But it's ripe for us to model the way of the kingdom. It's ripe under harvest for us to create community where people who are lonely and isolated can find friends. There's a lot of ripeness. Realize, though, it might be a year or two. It might be some struggle. Let's also be sensitive out there. Let's just not go, oh, I guess everybody's desperate now.

We should jump on them again. No, it's not the time to do that. It's time to be with them. Emmanuel God with us. Let's just do that Emmanuel stuff for a while and really integrate with real people in real struggle. And in due time, we will get to proclaim the greatness of our God. I fully believe that. So that's good. Hugh, I know, I know you got a really important, um, Aaron. Yeah, I'm at Trader Joe's party right now. And there's a line, everybody's got a mask on. It's like it's 12 people deep. I'm going to get in there because there's a really nice bourbon that's only $6. I'm trying to, you know, assuming this is going to get worse. I just want to make sure I have all the essentials.

assuming this is going to get worse, I just want to make sure I have all the essentials. Got a great cheese that pairs well with it. I've given up on toilet paper. I've yet to find toilet paper. I had to order a bunch online. It took a month to get here, but it finally came in. I never thought about that. That's quite wise. I will send you uh 10 rolls of toilet paper for your six dollar because it's still 25 30 bucks hey thanks for letting me uh ramble on here with you preston and blessings to you out in boise

at least you're quarantined and just a great spot in our country. It's a cool spot. Lots of outdoor space. Yeah, we're getting out. It's it's yeah, it could be worse for us, but you get a good website, Hugh halter.com. I looked on your events page, which is blank, but you got loads of books, loads of books, a flesh Bible, sacrilege, the tangible kingdom is kind of, I think that's the one you're probably most known for. Um, would that be,

I mean, I don't know. That's right now though. If somebody wants to like read about decentralizing the church, you might even go to, um, some book called and the gathered and scattered church. They get a lot of,

Oh, right. Kind of functional help and decentralizing and even how that affects money. So we check that out as well. I looked on Amazon and your audio version of the book Flesh is on sale for $662 plus $34 in tax, but there's free shipping. My work is getting what it's worth. Finally. That's funny.

That's a used copy, actually. Some seller is selling a used copy of your audiobook on a CD for $600. No wonder I never get a royalty check anymore. Yeah. Hey, Hugh, thanks for taking your time to hang out with us, and we'll have to

have you on again. All right, buddy. you