Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1006: #1006 - Micro Churches and the Tampa Underground: Jeremy Stephens

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Jeremy Stephens is one of the founding leaders of Tampa Underground, a gospel-centered ecclesiological network that’s home to over 100 microchurches (small missional communities) in the Tampa Bay area and 15 city-wide sister movements across the world. Currently, Jeremy is the director of the Underground's International Department. He previously has been a missionary with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Associate Director for the Underground in Tampa. Jeremy resides in the inner-city of Tampa with 4 kids and one wife. In this conversation, Jeremy and I talk about all things church-related. What’s his model? How does it work? What’s his advice for the border Christian church in America? And many more things.  –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/theology –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Jeremy Stevens. Jeremy is one of the founders of the Tampa Underground, a really interesting community of microchurches. And we talk a lot about what the Tampa Underground is, so I don't need to say any more here. Jeremy is a super sharp, wise guy who is also very humble. And I really appreciated his thoughts on the church, how to rethink kind of what we mean as we say we do church or go to church or are there church or whatever. He spent a lot of time just rethinking these categories through a biblical lens. And he'll be the first one to say their model is not the only model, but I found it incredibly

interesting, especially for those of us who might be a little disenchanted with some more traditional forms with how we go about doing church. You will really enjoy this conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Jeremy Stevens. All right. Hey, friends. I'm here with a brand new friend, Jeremy Stevens, who we met through a friend of a friend just online. And I... Jeremy, first of all, thank you for coming on Theology on Raw. I'm actually... Not actually. I'm actually looking forward to it. But I've been a fan from a distance from what you guys are doing out there at Tampa Underground. I've been wanting to have one of you guys on the podcast for a while. So thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, man. Appreciate the invite.

I also... Do you know the Hershes, right? Yeah. I think they... Over the last five years, every time I turn around, somebody's like, Oh, you guys, you got to talk to the Tampa Underground people. Like they're just doing really neat work out there. So let's start with who you are as a person quickly and then would love to have you unpack what Tampa Underground is. And I'm sure that'll open up loads of questions. Yeah, yeah. So I've been just following Jesus since really 19 years old. Grew up in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, so had kind of some high apply it, actually tried to like build a community and love one another. And it was in those formative years that there was this sense of like, we're really trying to be the book of Acts. Like we're not

trying to play games, you know, there was, because it was InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in its parachurch, it felt very untethered in the sense it didn't have other traditions it had to follow, like do this because that's what we do. It was more like, no, we're doing this because the Bible says so. And because of that, even in our simplistic understandings and kind of young faith, there's, oh, it seems like Jesus cares for the poor. It seems like he cares about topics like maybe racial reconciliation and redistribution of wealth. So we're influenced by John Perkins. And then a pocket of us moved into the city, kind of the worst part of Tampa.

So we're doing college ministry, sharing the gospel, proclaiming good news, kind of cross-resurrection kind of stuff. proclaiming good news, kind of cross-resurrection kind of stuff, but then also going overseas and learning from the poorest of the poor and saying, you know, teach us the ways of Jesus, but then also moving into the city and doing tutoring programs, but also learning from our neighbors. What does it mean to, like, follow Jesus? So, our posture has been very—we are just trying to be disciples. We're trying to be this thing that we see in the scripture. But that also takes us to all these crazy places, cracks and crevices in our city. And it's more than just the college student ministry. It began there, but it very quickly just spills out. You just go, but God's concerns are like everywhere. He's concerned about so many things, and he's inviting us into that.

From that place, we just said, man, my journey as one of the original founders is just closely tied. So it's kind of like my story and the Underground story, kind of it's all in parallel. I just remember going, there's got to be more, right? You go on the Sunday morning thing and you go, okay, this is a good Barney sing-along time. And sometimes like, I feel it. But then sometimes I'm going, hey, I studied the Bible too. And that's not what this passage is talking about. And have you worked with any poor people? Because what the heck is this budget? And, you know, we're doing missions in

making disciples, but none of that's validated because we're not volunteering underneath the banner of this church or denomination or something. And so all that seemed like very disconnected from what we were experiencing as missionaries in the streets and on the campus. And that began the process of going is there something more to this thing called church or ecclesia and it was that journey that really started the underground and you know so lived in the city for now since 97 me and my wife got married we raised our kids here you know we've just kind of planted ourselves long obedience same direction you know planted many micro churcheschurches now that we use that term.

Back in 2001, we didn't use that term. We're just like, okay, these things, I guess they're a house church, but it just seemed right for us to meet and love our neighbors and worship Jesus and love one another. It was very messy from the first kind of 2000, 2005. Then we started getting some language like, okay, microchurch. I think that's a word we can use to describe what's evolving. So not house church. You don't own the label house church, even if some people might describe what you're doing that way. It's microchurch. And how would you unpack the differences there? Why microchurch and not house church? Yeah, well, we read Wolfgang Simpson. We said,

oh, thank you. That's very helpful. So we were like, okay, I guess what we're doing is house churches. But very quickly, we recognized there's these things that seem to be church to us, that seem to be the body of Christ, that seem to be ecclesia, that don't mean in a house, that don't have proximity to a home, that maybe aren't even planted in a neighborhood. So that just forced us to go. There's more. There's like a larger label here. I think biblically it would be ecclesia, would be church, would be the largest label. But unfortunately in our context, if you use that word alone, it just seems to mean something else,

like some kind of authority structure or some type of particular steeple or preacher or pulpit or something like that. So we said we've got to get away from that somehow. What if we add the prefix micro to it? Because we wanted to honor the small, I mean, most churches in history are small throughout all of Christian history, which oftentimes go uncounted because they are so small. But if there's small groups of believers everywhere throughout history doing stuff in the name of Jesus. And so we just said, man, we want to really elevate that and say we just want to be the church in all its forms. And is there a way to honor all of that?

So microchurch would be maybe the largest label. And then we'd say, hey, if that looks like a house church, great. And you could call it a house church. You don't have to call it a microchurch. If you want to call it a small group, that's great. We don't care. And so for us, microchurch is defined worship, community, mission. That would be our ecclesial minimum.

It has to have those three things for it to be recognizable. Worship, community, and mission. So those three things, which a lot of folks have something similar to that. But we just really believe that seems to be the church. And out of that minimum can grow something more complicated. It could have paid staff, or it could have insurance or boards. It could be a nonprofit looking thing, or it could just stay in a living room, reaching neighbors, loving the lost in our missional spheres. So, it gives, that term microchurch in the ecclesial minimum allows for

what we call expansive ecclesiology. So, you could have ecclesia forms in many different ways. It'd still be the church, but if you lose one of those minimums, then we're not saying it's evil. We're just saying it might not be what the Bible's referring to as church. Then we could have a conversation about that. Like, it's great. You should have a worshiping community. Like, get together and play songs and love each other. That's awesome.

That's not bad. It's just maybe not what the Bible's inviting us into when it says ecclesia. Can you give me a real concrete picture? Like, if somebody went out there and spent a month in the day-to-day rhythm of Tampa Underground, like what would that look like? Or maybe a week, so just so you don't have 30 days to kind of spell out. And I'm really looking for like, what are the kind of maybe more unique features that somebody might experience? Like, oh, this feels different than what I grew up experiencing

in church, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So there's two aspects to that. So there's the life in the microchurches, which are decentralized from any kind of central authority power structure. So the forms are going to look really different. You could go hang out with Mom Africana, which is mentoring black middle school girls, and they have rhythms

and practices to be worship community mission that fit that context and fit that those leaders who are called to that to be the church in that way you come hang out with my microchurch which is what we would call a distributive microchurch so it's it's exists as a worshiping community but it has missional spheres that are outside that are different from one another. So one guy is a 911 call center guy. So he's trying to bring the kingdom and cultivate Eden in that context. One guy is a firefighter. We have three teachers that are part of my microchurch. My wife is a doula.

So she's working with kind of vulnerable mothers who are in the birthing process and kind of that thin space of giving birth. So you can hang out with us and, you know, dinner and Bible study and some stuff looks very ordinary, very like, oh, common to Christian experience. But it would take like a month or a couple months and you would go, this seems very simple, very what's so special about this. But I guarantee you over the course of six months as we walk through marriages, as we are walking with the lost and with the poor, you would go, oh, wait, this is the power of God. So it really is that mustard seed principle, like something small can actually be quite powerful.

You can hang out with Stacey Hester and Solo Moms. These are single mothers, and she's got clothing closets all over the city that she's kind of set up. And she has a pet raccoon. She's wild, man. Didn't see that coming. Does she have a leash? Yeah, she's – Walks it around.

Yeah, no, man. I mean she like lets it crawl all over, man. She's wild. Those things got claws. Is it declawed? I mean they'll'll mix it up man raccoons no stacy hester's like she's a boss like she just tells that raccoon what to do and it listens i like we'll have a zoom call sometimes it's like especially when kovis first started out and there was like a raccoon in the background just crawling around her head she was sitting on the couch and we're trying to talk about Jesus. And I'm like, wait,

timeout. Is there a record? Like, is that, do you know there's an animal like behind you? Like, watch out Stacy. And she,

she was like, no, that's my pet. Like, you're, you're even crazy. She told a story one time, man, she was,

she was kind of giving a testimony at one of our gatherings. And she just said, man, you know, God is so good. And she's just talking about these clothing drop-in things that she was setting up and all these moms she's working with and some of the trials that she's having with her landlord. And, you know, cause all this ministry stuff's happening and the landlord's not entirely happy with all this activity. And then, and then she just kind of very quickly, just like, I, you know, and 32 people started following Jesus this activity. And then she just kind of very quickly just like, you know, and 32 people started following Jesus this year. And all of us kind of like stopped her, like interrupted her.

Stacey, did you just say 32? And she said, well, it could have been more, but it's hard to count. And we were just, and she just didn't even think it was special. She was just like, just testifying to all that Jesus was doing in her life and through the ministry. So you hang out with her and you might see somebody get saved. Who knows, right? Like someone coming to a faith in Jesus is starting to follow Jesus. So that's on the microchurch side. If you hang out with essential kind of gatherings, then you have these moments of like infrastructure and staff and like saying, hey, we're trying to design products and services to serve microchurch leaders.

So this weekend we're going to have a leadership summit for microchurch leaders to come together and plan and get some external input because sometimes you need to stimulate theological expertise, share those theological expertise. Someone with a pet raccoon may not have read as many books as I have. So it's like, I'll share that knowledge and she could share with me how to tame raccoons or something. So we can have a mutual kind of submission there. So there is a central gathering. How often do you meet? Where do you meet? Do you have a building? Yeah, there's some central gatherings. So that's part of the, we're trying to create like a restaurant menu. Like here's a menu. And then we hand that to a microchurch leader and say, hey, you need to be the church you're called to be. Worship community mission. You've agreed to that.

That's how you're a part of the underground network. So there's kind of a basic understanding of what we're talking about here. And now we hand you this menu and say, you tell us what would help you be the church you're called to be. We have a leadership summit coming up next weekend. We have this prayer gathering on Sunday. We have this coaching platform. Like you could get coaching and strategic help in developing your microchurch.

We have financial services. So if you need to fundraise for your microchurch, don't keep it in a piggy bank or cookie jar. Why don't you let us house your money and we'll do expense accounting for you so you stay out of jail. So those type of things. So we're trying to create a restaurant menu. So we do have a facility so people could get kind of a co-working facility or they could reserve it to run their own events. So most of the events that are run out of our hub, especially pre-COVID, most of the events, I think it was 65% or 75% of the events were run by microchurches. So sometimes that was just a meeting.

Sometimes they needed like a planning session. Sometimes they'd run full-on worship gatherings and outreaches out of our facility. And that facility is designed explicitly for them to use. The infrastructure would still use some things like, hey, we're having a conference for microchurch leaders. If that serves you, why don't you come? How big is that? How many does it hold? I'm just trying to, again, picture when you do have some kind of central gathering. Is it 100 people? Is it 2,000, somewhere in between? We can't get everybody to show up anywhere, man. It's a decentralized network. It's impossible.

This is a really good restaurant menu. And they're like, yeah, I'm busy doing what God's called me to do. So they're like, oh, always confused. But so right now, kind of post-COVID, there's still like a, I guess this weekend will probably be a little bit larger. So it might be like 100 to 150 people. So we have 80 microchurches in the network. Okay. But many of the people in. Each one of those are like 10 to 30 people on the micro side? Yeah, about 14 to 15 people on average.

So some are larger, some are smaller. Some are just getting started. So it's like three or four people, right? Some are getting ready to multiply. Right now, no one's really ready to multiply kind of post-COVID. No one's at that threshold level of 30 or 40 people currently. But I think we're on the edge of a wave of growth. So next year, we may see a number of microchurches ready to multiply in that type of way. So those gatherings are still

pretty small. If we do a big conference, we might get hundreds of people, but then we'll just rent a facility because our current hub, what we call a hub, uh, headquarters, I mean, it could only hold, I mean, you could get, maybe you could squeeze 200. Okay. Okay. Yeah. How would, what you're doing differ? I think I might know the answer to this, but I would love for you to unpack it. Like, you know, um, every traditional, traditionally structured church I know would not make most, most traditionally structured churches I know would, would really promote like small groups, you know, and Hey, it's not just a service and you need to get plugged in. And here's a menu of small groups you can belong to. How would you

describe what you're doing is different if it is different than that? Yeah, I think some of that comes down to just what do you actually define as church? So those kind of more traditional or prevailing models of the church would say that centralized thing is the church, and it has a particular hierarchy or authority structure. Whatever their governance structure is, it's still centered on that entity. And we would say, we actually don't think our infrastructure is the church at all. It doesn't contain worship community mission. So the underground officially registered with the state of Florida, we see as a missions agency to serve the churches. So we might say,

in the prevailing model, we would look at the small groups and go, oh, that's actually the church in operation. This other thing, I don't know why you at the small groups and go, oh, that's actually the church in operation. This other thing, I don't know why you use the word church for it. So that would be the main distinction. And it really has to do with agency and calling and what you actually define as church because who wins the argument? If there's a conflict between microchurch scheduling and the infrastructure scheduling something, who wins? Well, the church should win. The church should have the agency to say, hey, we are called to be the church. We're going to go do X, Y, and Z. We had a leader, we had a leadership summit a few years ago. This

leader was like, man, I really want to be there. But, you know, I've scheduled this thing with 30 non-Christians to go down a river and just do tubing down a river, you know? And, you know, my whole microchurch is going. We would love to participate in this thing that the underground is doing. And he was in conflict. He was kind of like, I don't know what to do, because he wanted to honor kind of like the good stuff that was happening. But we had to say back to him, hey, Nishu, you have to be the church you're called to be. Like you're the one that has to make this choice. You have the agency to choose to bring your whole group to this leadership summit or take them down a river with 30 non-Christians.

And of course in the middle of our leadership summit, a bunch of our phones started blowing up. He was taking pictures on the river and being like, God is so good. He's doing all this stuff, you know? And it's like, so he could come to a leadership summit to plan, make plans to be the church for the fall semester. Or he could be busy being the church he's called to be, you know, reaching Southeast Asian folks in Tampa, right? So he had all these like Southeast Asian folks, Hindus, non-Christians, Buddhists floating down this river in the name of Jesus. You know, just that's the type of stuff where I go, we don't allow ourselves to tell Nishu what to do as an infrastructure. The authority

rests on him to make those decisions, right? So that would be a major kind of point of a divergence. So it's all like the it's a inversion of emphasis in a sense where somebody's church identity is in their micro church. And whatever central thing they want to be a part of is kind of how a normal church would view the small groups like, you know, church is Sunday morning and that's a service. And if you miss that, the language we would use is you missed church. That's right. And then the small group attendance, it is still – in most churches, even if it's emphasized, you would still say – like if somebody was going to church on Sunday and not part of the small group, they say, oh, yeah, he goes to church, but he's not part of a small group. They wouldn't say, yeah, he doesn't go to our church. He just attends on Sunday.

Yeah, that's right. It is an inversion. church. He just attends on Sunday. Yeah, that's right. It is an inversion. And oftentimes, you know, if you're lucky, you would get 80% of those people to participate in a small group program. Well, we'd be lucky to get 80% of the people to participate in our centralized infrastructure, right? Like we would be over the moon. We'd be like, wow, that's really amazing. You know, right now it's like, man, if we get 40% of people in microchurches to participate in our centralized infrastructure, what people recognize as the underground, that's more normal for us. There's just a ton of people that are in the microchurches that are participating in the

life of the church that are being discipled or being reached out to or being included into the kind of the environments into the kind of the environments where the aroma of Christ is present that don't even know the underground exists. The microchurch is a part of the underground, but the people in the microchurch sometimes don't even know that the underground exists. All they know is this expression of the people of Jesus, you know? And when you say underground, that is the term for the

the centralized component of it okay yeah yeah so in the added benefit of it is if there's ever any persecution or we get sued and we lose the infrastructure all the we we think if that were to happen 80 of the microchurches would survive a catastrophic event to the infrastructure because they are the church, because we've set it up to where, no, you are the body of Christ. They would continue as being that thing in the world. Of course, they still need help. We're not against centralized things, so we're not completely decentralized. We see the need for shared theological expertise, shared resources, right? So that type of stuff. Also, we do believe in governance. So we're not like, do whatever you want, Nishu. It's like, no, you can't exploit your people. You can't steal money. You can't sleep with the women. It's not cool, bro. And there is a governance structure for that that we've thought through quite extensively that still allows them to have agency as microchurches, but they are in submission to a governing structure. But that governance is actually separated from the infrastructure.

So the infrastructure functions as a nonprofit missions agency to serve microchurches and microchurch leaders. And that governance is separated from the theological controversy or church discipline, which again keeps those power lines separate. So now you don't have people tripping, being like, why didn't you come listen to my crappy sermon and being mad at folks for that. listen to my crappy sermon, you know, and being mad at folks for that. It's like, no, no, let's do church discipline. Let's do theological kind of controversies and like making those decisions separate from what the budget is and the seminars that we're going to run and that type of stuff. So you, so you have, I'm hearing kind of almost three entities.

You have the micro churches with their leadership or people, then you have the infrastructure that just kind of empowers them to do that. But then you also do have a, a broader, um, governance. That's not part of the, the interest. It's not part of the infrastructure. It's a, it's a collect. It's part of the church. Okay. And who is that? Is that you and Lucas and, uh, governing elders. I did serve as a governing elder, um, for a little bit, but it bit, but it's just basically a board of governing elders, 8 to 14 people that act as like a supreme court. Like if there's a controversy that gets kicked up to them, they would make a ruling.

And then the churches, the microchurches that have agreed to be in submission, that's a part of how they're operating in our ecosystem is they've agreed. They've come in and said, yes, I like all this. I agree type of thing. Then they have to either be in submission to what the governing elders are saying or they are welcome to leave at that point. And you guys, it sounds like you're not at all

micromanaging the nuts and bolts of the gathering. But if one spun off into some cult and they all started flying down to Mexico, you know, drink some potion. Like you would you have the authority to kind of keep them in check on just a really big, broad, you know. Yes. Heretical type possibilities, cultish type, whatever. Yeah. Somebody says, hey, we want to start studying theagavad gita in order to obtain truth okay you know like life truth and salvation towards the father we'd be like that's that might be an issue because we're exclusive claims of jesus yeah kind of folks and

you agreed to that up front you knew that up front and now you've deviated from that let's have a conversation the benefit of the governing elder is not having to worry about the staffing or the budgets or the facilities or anything like that, they get focused on the people. They get focused in on like, man, like, let's have a conversation. We have one brother that was, we've had several elders have affairs, you know, like step out on their marriages. And so it's like, now you have to go to them and you have to, you know, the governing elders go to those leaders of the microchurches and say, man, let's talk about discipline. Let's talk about restoration.

Let's get both sides of the story, you know, that type of stuff and just kind of do an investigation into those matters. But we're going to give you a restoration process, a discipline and restoration, kind of a modern epistle. We're going to write this letter to you, and this is kind of our decision as a collective group. But at the end of the day, it's caring for people still. It's not just trying to enforce some dogma or policy or something like that. It's a board of people saying, we want to love these people as best we can. And the only authority that the governing elders really has is the authority that's given to them by the people, right? So they have no exercise, you know, they can't exercise any other authority other than, hey man, we're recommending that you do this. And you can either

listen to us or not. But if you don't listen to us, then you're no longer a part of the underground network. So that would be the only last straw. We've only ever had to remove, I always round up six because I can't remember six. I can only remember three microchurches. So we've helped over 500 microchurches be planted in the Tampa Bay area. Five microchurches? Yeah. I thought you said something like 30 or something earlier, but was that- Well, 80 currently exist. Yeah. They have life said something like 30 or something earlier, but was that— Well, 80 currently exist.

Yeah, they have life cycles, right? So some have spent off and they move or, you know, you know how it is. People move around in transient. I mean, we've been doing it for 15 years. So, you know, people—or they're still going, but their social fabric is really connected to another faith community, like a First Methodist down the road. And so they really take what we helped incubate and plant, and then they basically live that out over there with the First Baptists or something. And we're just happy for that. So they're no longer part of our network, but they're still being the church.

But then also some microchurches come in and out of life, right? There's life cycles to it. But then also some microchurches come in and out of life, right? There's life cycles to it. So something starts and then, you know, two years later, it passes away. And that's okay, too, for us. We also, during the past five years, had a pretty major division. So that's pretty fun. Like many groups in the United States.

So we've had to navigate those waters. Are you able to talk about that publicly or is it probably not, right? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that the public doesn't need to know about that or, and I'm not, I'm not looking, I'm not looking to dig. I'm not looking for gossip on my plate. We'll always be discreet. I'm just curious how you handled that. Yeah. I cried a lot. Yeah, it was great. We think it's an inherent vulnerability to decentralized networks that there is that tension of schism, that tension of – it's easier to keep people in line or alignment when there's one hierarchy, one voice, one building, one meeting. But now you've just diversified everything. one building, one meeting, but now you've just diversified everything. And as you diversify things, ethnic, political, economic class, educational, you know, it's, so all of our microchurches are very different. You know, we got people that didn't graduate high school,

they're major drug runners in the panhandle. They're leading a microchurch now, you know, and they're awesome. And they're incredible leaders. And it's an incredible microchurch. But that dude's very different than the lawyer who served in the military, has multiple advanced degrees, and plants a church in a double-gated community. It's like not just one gate, but two gates. There's a gate to keep the gated people out, right? A double-gated community. So, those dudes are like polar opposites, right? So, now they're sitting in this ecosystem playing together, being the church. How do they not fight, right? So, this is the inherent vulnerability of a decentralized network there's every reason to separate you know way way more than the what music style or something like that

like found you know methodology so we have microchurches reaching you know lgbtq communities but they disagree on the methods by which they're reaching them, right? So even it's like, oh, we're reaching the same demographic. What are you doing over there? You know, now they're fighting. So there's this massive temptation to fight at every level. And so we saw that, you know, with all the polarization, all the catastrophization, all the kind of social anxiety folks went through, um, kind of the social anxiety folks went through. We saw some of that happen to us. You know, people just kind of adopted that anxiety and just said, Hey, I don't want to be with people who are different from me anymore.

So it really was the polarization in the last couple of years. You guys felt that too. I mean, that's, I don't, I haven't talked to a pastor yet that hasn't had these major visions happen. So you guys weren't immune to that either. No, no. Yeah. We weren't, we weren't immune to it. And, um, I think we would deal with it differently. I think we, it's like, oh, okay. We can see the signs, uh, probably a little bit better, a little bit more wise. But I also think, man, in the moment, you're just trying to love people, trying to listen to people, trying to suffer alongside people. And we probably made a lot of mistakes or it was very clunky. But I think the heart ultimately and the way that we walked with folks as they were leaving, you know, they didn't know they were leaving at first, but eventually it became the trajectory was leaving. We just tried to be as gracious and loving and just be like, bless them.

There's folks we gave money to to start new things. And these were like divisionists, people like actively recruiting people to cause division, you know, alter narratives, alter history kind of stuff. And we were just like, man, we just bless you. You know, it sounds like what you're doing. Can we give $5,000 to that? We just want to bless you as you leave. And so we, we tried our best, not perfectly, but that was our posture towards it. And, um, at the end of it though, I think we came back to a sense of we got to be who God's calling us to be, which is an ecosystem that plants microchurches that are called by God to do things that he's doing in the world. Do you think if you did have more of a central gathering, some of this could have been prevented or at least addressed? I'm just I'm thinking out loud i'm just thinking like if you had a somewhat of an authoritative uh spiritual voice they can get 90 of the people in one room say hey look here's what's going on

here's where we're at you know but you're relying on just dozens of individual leaders to try to like shepherd their people. I'm just wondering, but then, I mean, my pushback to myself on that even question is like, well, loads of churches that have a central gathering went through the same stuff. Yeah. No, the only thing that we could maybe have done is powered up on the microchurches. Basically say, you're no longer the church. Come to this thing. You have to listen to

this voice this thing this message you know and and get in line type of thing so there's lots of kind ways to do that but that's typically the playbook of saying alignment you must align to me you know usually it's one central voice or one central figure right i think also that would have actually destroyed the underground that would just just, you know, my metaphor is like, we're just building a sandbox for missionaries to play in. And that would have just taken like a drum of oil and dumped it into the sandbox and just said, you know, here you go, play with this. Because it's all about them hearing from Jesus, them being the church they're called to be, us coming as like servants of the church. And now we're flipping that.

And I think that would have been – that would have had natural consequences that would have been actually destroyed the underground versus this, which is – this is catastrophic. This is hurtful. But there's post-traumatic growth that can come out of it, right? Because we kept to our convictions. Hey, man. To the point, though, any of our central gatherings was like gasoline to the fire. So as we did centralized gatherings, I got up one time and I just – on the microphone, I just prayed the scriptures, right? And Lucas, who's the executive director of the infrastructure, he got emails about how dare we have a white dude power up and like take the microphone from – and it was like I didn't take the microphone. None of that. I just prayed the Bible. And it was just like anything that was ever done that was ever seen as different than

whatever I was, my ideas or my, my political views or whatever, you know, we were advocating for a black conference, you know, a bunch of black leaders of black leaders, and get up and basically say, hey, man, black leaders, here's a kind of a conference designed for you, run by you, just for you type of thing. It's a black-only space type of thing. And had a major donor just livid coming up to me, just like, how dare you? This is racism type of stuff. And, you know, we lost that dude, you know. So it was like anything. And that was at a main gathering.

So it's like you think the main gathering would potentially be a solution, but it was like anything we did at a main gathering in this time period became like this lightning rod of just like see how evil they are see how evil the underground is and it's like okay come next week it'll be different you know so so did a lot of this i'm hearing a lot of this had to do with kind of the politicized racial conversation um that was happening that was just one expression one yeah it was just one expression yeah it is a big one because it is a big one in our country. But we're very multi-ethnic. I mean, I'm a white dude that looks like a cop. So I get that there's a lot of barriers, you know, just visually with me. But yeah, we've been, since the late 90s, we've been like really pursuing racial reconciliation. Our governing elders, our board, at every level, not just representation, but actually like really getting into the deeper levels of racial reconciliation beyond just having voices at a table, which I think is like, you know, that's more like a basic understanding,

Which I think is like – that's more like a basic understanding. But some of the deeper kind of like, no, let's actually reconcile and create something that is multicultural, not just some version of assimilation or looking to colonize or convert people to me or convert people to you. But actually somehow in the middle of it become multi-ethnic. So you have more, uh, diversity at the leadership level. Oh yeah. That's, that's, it's hard to be genuinely multi-ethnic if, if a bunch of, yeah, if the leadership is mono-ethnic, right. I mean, that's, yeah, that's great.

Where did that come from? Is that, you said it was, it's always kind of been that way, but something had to have sparked that. Most churches don't naturally form that way. in through and around the differences in culture and ethnicity. And they have a history before it was popular to make radical choices for reconciliation and integration back in the 50s, 60s. I mean, they've just lost millions and millions of dollars. It's just taken a lot of flack because they've just made choices that are righteous based on Ephesians, based on Romans, just saying, hey, no, this is the scripture. And Anivarsity is very Bible nerdish. But because it's Bible nerdish, it finds its way into these other conversations. So that was the beginning of it. And we just said, hey, we're committed to this.

C.T. Vivian was an influence on Brian. He's a civil rights leader and activist. He's passed away now. So in the late 90s, that was true. And then studying good forms of liberation theology and black liberation theology. So theological influence is there. So from an intellectual standpoint, there's this draw, this influence. So from an intellectual standpoint, there's this draw, this influence, but then also practically on campus working with black students and Latino students and Asian students and just, again, not knowing how to do it perfectly but saying, hey, something about the kingdom here. Let's move into this way.

in a black and brown neighborhood for since 97, you know, John Perkins, you know, CCDA, but, but just more like the three R's racial reconciliation, redistribution of wealth and relocation, uh, for the sake of the gospel. Uh, so those things are like, that's the late nineties. And then just what happens if you do that for 20 years, you know, you're really looking at your systems. You're really looking at your relationships. And part of the thing is, how do I help Evie Sikajipo or Cece do Mom Africana? I'm a white dude that looks like a cop. They want to mentor black male school girls. How do we set up a system?

Not just like I encourage them and then I teach them how to make disciples who look like me. But how do I help them not just feel like validated in that calling to be black women mentoring black girls, but how do I systemically get behind them in a way where I don't force my form of discipleship on them? And the underground ecosystem does that. That's, again, why we're committed to saying be the church you're called to be, worship community mission. Now you have to figure out who are you going to reach? How are you going to reach them? What discipleship plan are you going to design? Like, we coach you, but at the end of the day, we can't tell you, right? So we could give you resources.

We could do a seminar. But I don't know if you should come to this seminar, because what if it has nothing to do with discipling black girls? So you have to make that decision, that choice. You have to have that agency. So that keeps, you know, guys like me kind of in a box to say, hey, I can't overstep my authority, my boundaries, which undermines a lot of the colonization that we see or the, you know, me just being me, you know? And that's, I'm not the worst thing in the world, but I also probably shouldn't tell CC how to disciple black girls.

Like I've discipled lots of people, but it would be inappropriate for me to be like, let me tell you how to do this CC. Right. And so even systemically, we've really wrestled with that at very deep levels, uh pay structures, redistribution of wealth through pay structures and fundraising policies and stuff like that. So it's not perfect. It's just we're very committed to it. Well, I mean, it's super messy and complicated. The fact that you guys have been pursuing that for a while, I mean, that's pretty profound. guys have been pursuing that for a while. I mean, that's pretty profound. I mean,

you've made it kind of like before it was kind of popular, because I feel like there's definitely a growing number of churches leaning into some kind of ethnic reconciliation as part of their ecclesiology. But that, you know, prior to 20 years ago, I think it was the book Divided by Faith that really kicked off a lot. I think that was kind of an eye-opener to a lot of people. That's encouraging, actually. So you know the guys at We Are Church, Francis Chan, Kevin, those guys. Is what you're doing very similar to them? Or what would be some overlap and what would be some differences? Not that the differences are right or wrong.

If somebody went to your Tampa Underground and hung out with them, what would they see? Yeah, we're definitely unique. But, man, we just really love those guys. I think the biggest difference would they would be more homogeneous in the way they set up their house churches or their microchurches. Okay. And we're more heterogeneous. microchurches. And we're more heterogeneous. So we really embrace what we might call biodiversity within our ecosystem, our missional ecosystem, because we say, hey, worship community mission. That's the church. You have a calling to be this thing. Man, how can we help you?

So that's the beginning of the conversation for us. We're going to try we help you? So like, that's the beginning of the conversation for us. We're going to try to help you. So even someone who's very immature, but they have a sense like, I feel like God's calling me to be the church in this way and worship community mission. Well, we might say, well, you know, what do you think about incubating that in someone else's microchurch? Because it seems like you don't really meet the qualifications of an elder. Like you're living with your girlfriend. This was an actual case, right? It's like, you're living with your girlfriend.

You don't really meet the qualifications of an elder, which would be one of our base kind of conversations with a microchurch leader. Like, you should meet this qualification. But we're not going to tell you no. We're going to say, yes, you should do the thing that God is asking you to do. we're going to say, yes, you should do the thing that God is asking you to do, but maybe incubate that in another microchurch until you're ready. So we have these workarounds for stuff like that, but at the most part, we just go,

if you have the craziest ideas to be the church, hula hoop jesus or the solo mom things with a raccoon and squirrels or whatever you know you know and even the ideas the plans for it might not even be that great you know like if you came here i'd be like oh preston don't look at these microchips they're kind of scrappy you know but they're so beautiful we are church from my understanding they're they're so beautiful. We are church, from my understanding. They're much more homogeneous. They look very similar. The way they go about mission, the way they build community is very similar. The vetting process for the leadership is much more extended, where ours is very small. So we would borderline on laying hands on too quickly. I don't think we do, but we would borderline on that.

We would make a lot of people uncomfortable at how fast we just give permission to people. So we bias towards yes. And I would say they bias towards let's see type of thing. Let's see, be faithful, go through this pipeline, go through this training type of stuff. So then you don't see their biodiversity. Their microchurches look very similar to one another, and they're designed to reach who they're reaching. But if they want to reach—and this is the conversation I've had with them—if you want to reach people that you're not currently reaching, then you have to gain

biodiversity. The microchurches I lead cannot disciple black middle school girls in the school system. It's not designed for that. We need a different type of microchurch to do that, which means it probably can't be led by me or look like me. It probably is going to have a different discipleship pathway than me. And we have to – so how do we make sense of that or allow for it? And, and those are the conversations I usually have, have with them. And Francis tried to break it. He was, he was just like very humbly and intriguingly disturbed by our, our, our Kleesel

minimum. It was kind of like, man, you know, he's trying to work it out in his head. Like, okay, is that the, he was like, yeah, that in a minimum way, that is the man, you know, he's trying to work it out in his head. Like, okay, is that the church? He was like, yeah, that in a minimum way, that is the church, you know? So I think that's been a really great conversation with them. When you said you would err on the side of laying hands too quickly, obviously you're not like trying to do that, but that would be where you might. But what's the, why not screen leaders a little more ferociously for lack of better terms like what would be the hesitancy of not laying i think you know what i'm just releasing releasing people too too quickly yeah like like why why not err on

the other side is it because you wouldn't achieve i think i hear you saying like in order to achieve this biodiversity um we have to take some risks in empowering people that from my white middle class background might be like oh i don't know if this you know is leader qualified but i think they are but let's let's take a chance um is that to achieve the biodiversity and diversity of different missional outlets is that why you would err on the side of laying hands too quickly? Yeah. Yeah. It's just a natural consequence. The more that you require, you constrict missional possibility. It's a natural consequence. It'll just happen. The more that you give permission, then you'll increase missional

possibility. So we still constrict it. So we only let people who are Christians. Luzanne Covenant's our faith kind of document. We have manifest of values. You have to agree to all these values. There's 18 of them. They don't fit on a t-shirt. It's just, there's quite a few values. So you could say, I love 15, but these three I don't love. I'll say, well, that's great. You should do what you're called to do. We only know how to help microchurches who value these things. That's the only microchurches we know how to help. So we're sorry. We can't help you. And that's how that conversation would go. Again, if you add more requirements or like a year-long process of vetting or testing systems, you usually get people that look like the originals of that system,

or you just massively constrict what possibilities. We're not opposed to that. We're just saying we've chosen this path of saying, hey, let's have mission, let's have freedom, let's bias towards yes, and really go for it and build a system that's actually designed for that. of saying, Hey, let's have mission. Let's have freedom. Let's bias towards yes. And, and really go for it and build a system that's actually designed for that. And then we'll deal with the handful of problems. And it, I can't emphasize this enough, Preston. It's really just a handful. Really? That's my next question. Like how many leaders due to their immaturity have kind of botched or you know gotten off the rails with

certain things and had lives affected by that you're saying that actually while you've erred on the side of maybe being a little more risky that the fallout has not been massive no no because if they're playing games god doesn't give them people to shepherd so that that's one like the microchurch actually never forms we say man you should do what God's calling you to do. And they're like, oh, okay. And they try to like lead a microchurch, but they have no authority. God's not actually calling them to do it, right? So people actually never join this microchurch.

If they get funky, because we don't assign people to microchurches, they have to go find those people, right? They have to gather those people. They have to go find those people, right? They have to gather those people. They have to go reach people. But if they get weird, because they chose to join that group, they don't stay in that group, right? They'll leave that group. They're like, this is getting weird, man. I'm leaving. And so that group dies. So God kills those things quite quickly. It could turn into a cult though, right? That's right. That's right. You haven't had that happen yet though. I'm hearing. No, no, not yet. And I mean, maybe even some outsiders might look

in and say, well, they've tried. They've definitely, they've tried to create some cults. But we, you know, we have the Luzon, we have a front door of Luzon Covenant. So the edges of our sandbox are Luzon Covenant. So that's an evangelical global face statement. Our manifesto values, I mean, they're pretty deep. They're pretty comprehensive and profound. And we just tell people like, did your heart move when you read these? Because it's really a heart thing, not like an intellectual thing. There's a leadership covenant. This is where submission comes into play. So if you've already agreed to all this, you're probably not a cult leader. You're probably not just somebody playing around, playing some kind of games. So that's why already that weeds out quite a few people. We put that in front of folks and they'll, they'll fend up and say, yeah, that's

not really me or I'm not so sure about this type of stuff. And so they never get in the sandbox with us. And we found, again, most people that do get in, it's just a handful. And surprisingly, and we've seen this in the regular church world, the people that have passed all the tests, they've been around super long. They still go off the rails. Right, right. Totally. Yeah. They still go kind of. So, some of our best disciples that have done everything that, you know, for 15 years, they became some of the biggest divisionists in our ecosystem. So,

you know, have walked away from Jesus. Like, it's shocking. And they were theologically trained. Like it's shocking. And they were theologically trained. Like these were – they would have passed the assessments in other contexts. So for us, we've also been really wrong. People that would have failed some kind of assessment or vetting process, they end up being some of our best missionaries. But they have to be given time to develop. But there's so many reasons to say no up front just ah no or not yet well the classic the classic example i'm sure this is written somewhere in your documents

i mean is jesus in the 12 like he literally handpicked probably one of the worst on paper group of people to change the world you But there's like an intentionality there too. Like God will use the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong. And I think there is that kind of upside down kingdom built into the very way in which Jesus wants to operate and change the world. That doesn't mean you empower immoral people in the world, that doesn't mean you, you know, empower immoral people in the leadership, obviously, but, um, to, to take kind of unlikely candidates. Um, yeah, that, that, that excites me, you know, and one out of 12 is a Judas. So one out of 12 is a Judas. And I would say our percentages are better than that. So, you know, whatever, what does that mean?

You got one up on Jesus. Yeah. How rare is that? I'm just kidding. Please don't. Can we change? Don't email me about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we switch directions just a little bit?

So you've been talking about Tamper Underground, what you guys are doing. Have you thought about just the more, the broader church? Maybe it's the American church. Maybe you probably don't speak so broadly like the broader church maybe it's the american church maybe you probably not speak so broadly like the global church but like as you look at the church in america are there things you guys are doing and i'm i'm gonna put words in your mouth like you're probably gonna believe you know like we're not prescribing this is the model for everybody but like they're you know late at night i'm sure there's got to be some things where you look around at the broader church and like man i really feel like here's some things that we have seen that have

been really big wins for the gospel that I do think that other churches should kind of integrate into their models, if that makes sense. Like speak broadly to the post-COVID church that we're trying to figure out. Yeah. One of my main jobs right now is to speak with people inquiring about underground stuff or microchurches with kind of translocal folks. So that's my primary work with the underground. They've kind of outsourced it to me and said, you know, we want to focus on local stuff. You talk to people. So all around the world.

So I wouldn't propose that I know what I'm talking about. I just say, here's what I'm hearing from people from all over the world. That's resonating. The sense of calling to the everyday person, actually believing that these regular everyday people can be John 10 sheep. They can hear the good voice of the shepherd inviting them into his purposes. So that's like one of the keys, one of the keys that unlocks the stuff. The priesthood of believers is unlocked by the voice of Jesus, not by your strategies or your programs. It's like, man, get people to hear the voice of God and ask him, Lord, what part do I need to play in your purposes? So that's, again, one piece that seems to really resonate with a lot of folks

that they just don't integrate or normalize in their regular structures. It's like, no, I normalize it all the time. Like, God, I want to hear from you. I want to hear your voice. We study the Bible. I don't want to just hear from you. I want to hear your voice. We study the Bible. I don't want to just apply this Bible. I want to hear your voice through this word, you know, and then I want to respond to it in some kind of way. So that seems to be really big. The other is the, in every context, finding the version of saying, biasing towards yes. So in some contexts, that'll be much more restrictive than our context, right? We're more free with that. But in their context, and however that makes sense, they're pushing the

edge of saying yes to people. So, people here are calling, and however it makes sense, you are giving people permission to obey that sense from Jesus, right? So that seems to be—and then giving people framework or language to understand what that means. So it's some type of ecclesial minimum. Worship, community, mission. You can add more things to it. The more you add, the fewer you'll get or the less biodiversity you'll have. So if you add 21, don't cry about it. You'll just get the natural consequence of having 21 minimums is you'll have three microchurches or something.

And that might be all that God is asking you to do. So I'm not even saying you shouldn't do that. I'm just saying that's a natural consequence. Have the framework that helps people respond to Jesus, and you're giving them permission to do it, right? That seems like globally, I don't know, illuminate, unlock folks. I get it that there's complicated systems, denominations, historical practices, but I'm talking to Anglicans. I'm talking to like high up Anglicans. So I'm going, I mean, if they're thinking about it. I'm hearing you saying like churches should maybe explore more opportunities to empower their body to live more missionally, not just attend church, not just become an individual

faithful disciple, but God has given you gifts, desires, callings, like how can we come alongside you and empower you? Is that what churches should do? Yes, because if you do that, then you'll have problems to solve, right? So people start start saying yes and now they're hitting barriers or now you're like empowering people who are like a bit sketchy you know so you're going okay now we have a problem so now we could get into the governance now we could get into the training now we could get into like what products and services do we offer these people to help them what menu do we give folks oftentimes people have it reversed they want to design a menu to help empower people.

But I'm going, no, no, no. The empowerment comes from the Holy Spirit calling people, them listening, you giving permission to do what God is telling them to do. And some type of framework to make sense of it, some type of clarity around that. That will get people moving. And now from that place, people could go, oh, my gosh, what do we do with this now? There's people actually trying to obey Jesus. And it's messy and it's complicated and confusing to us. How do we make this fit our current systems, our budget, all that stuff?

But I'd rather people have an actual problem they have to deal with, which is people obeying Jesus to be his church. And then later figuring out, like, okay, now we have to figure out how which is people obeying Jesus to be his church. And then later figuring out like, okay, now we have to figure out how do we do a budget for this? Do you think that's actually possible with the current structure of most churches? And what I mean by that is, and this isn't, I'm not trying to say this negatively necessarily. It's just kind of, it is what it is. Like when churches are set up to so much time and energy and personnel is investing their time and energy and gifts into making the Sunday service happen, which I think, and there's data on this, I think, where it's like, if you add up the budget,

how much, how much percentage of your budget, your personnel, your time throughout the week is devoted to the Sunday morning service? There's little space for, I mean, to explore this whole other thing of, okay, how can we empower a thousand people under our care to live on mission with the gifts God's given them? I don't have time for that. You know, that's, I already got, you know, a sermon to prepare for. I've got like somebody to bury on Friday. I've got meetings all day Monday. My wife's going to leave me because I'm working too many hours. But that's a fundamental structural problem that if we open that up a little bit, it would open up more spaces.

Are you seeing that as a hurdle if somebody is so wrapped up in the service? Yeah, there's basically five major milestones for a pre-existing faith community to transition to what we would say is a parallel system where you do have kind of consumables, like you hold on to some of your historical legacy stuff. So the choir, maybe even the Sunday service or stuff like that. And it's designed for people just coming to consume that, right? But you also develop a parallel missional system. And of course, those things can overlap. You'd have like a Venn diagram. But there's probably at least five kind of milestones that have to be transitioned. One of the very first ones is, what's your conviction?

Like, what is God actually asking you to shift? Like, don't shift whatever He's not asking you to shift. Like don't shift whatever he's not asking you to shift. And I say that to mega churches and multi-sites. It's like, no, no, don't just copy me. Don't just change something because you read a book or because your thing isn't currently working. Change what has to change because King Jesus has invited you to make a change. And that might be a prayer and fasting process. That might be a year-long exploration process. But it's like, what is Jesus convicting you to change?

That's one of the very first milestones. And folks that just try to start changing stuff to be more effective or more trendy or get more, you know, they want to get back to the megachurch status. So they want to pivot to the microchurch method to get back to that status. And it's just like, no, no, no, no. Has Jesus asked you to do any of this? Right? Because what if it doesn't work?

Because some people obey Jesus and they get sawn in two and disemboweled. Like that's faith. So just because you make a shift doesn't mean it's actually going to be successful or work or whatever. in two and disemboweled. Like that's faith. So just because you make a shift doesn't mean it's actually going to be successful or work or whatever. It's, you know, no, Jesus has invited me to Golgotha. He's invited me to come die. And the thing that we lead currently may actually be on that path. But we should obey him anyways. So it is a bit of a

disruptive moment. I mean, I hope that's not true, but it's just one of those moments where you go, but what if it is, what if, what if it's not successful, but it is purely obedient? Then great. You should do that. So I was, um, and I think, I think this is all fairly public, but like I was part of, I arrived at Cornerstone Church where Francis used to pastor literally the same week when they completely inverted the entire system. So they tried to decentralize everything. And Simi Valley where we were at, it's a six mile by four mile grid. Everything's just a big grid. So they literally divided the entire city into like, okay, this neighborhood, this square half a mile is your new community. And you're going to hang out and do mission with

the believers in that community and in that space. And if you live here, that's your church. If you live here, we're still going to do the central gathering. But I think they canceled like all the men's stuff, women's stuff pretty much overnight because that's what church you live here we're still gonna do the central gathering but i think they canceled like all the men's stuff women's stuff pretty much overnight because that's what francis does he's just like yeah hey let's do that bam it's done you know let's make a change yeah and i on paper it looked amazing practically i don't i wouldn't and i think this is where i i think the the leaders there would have publicly said, man, we made some bad decisions. I think there's a few things that they wish they did differently. Maybe not change things so quickly.

Maybe prepare people ahead of time. And maybe have done a slower transition to where you're preparing leaders ahead of time. So it wasn't just this radical thing where people are like, what are we doing now? What happened? How come I don't have men's Bible study next week or whatever? And so I think people just, it was just a little shock to the system. Yeah. So all that to say, like that I do as much as some of these more radical revisiting the

structures, like really good on paper. And I personally, I'm having an iconoclastic kind of like tendency. So I'm like, yeah, let's do that. But man, seeing it on the ground from a congregant, I'm like, oh, I could, and you talk to people in here and it's like, oh man, it's trying to wean people off of maybe unhealthy or less effective rhythms of church. That's complicated, you know?

And not all the reasons for wanting a church service are bad, you know? No, they're not all bad. And these are people God has given you to care for. So even if you're making big changes, there still has to be this concern for the entire community. You may not retain the entire community, but you should be concerned for the entire community. That's why we've identified those, those kind of five, five thresholds. That seems in line with kind of what we, our church kind of does a little bit more, which is

they're assigning people, like Francis was so concerned. I've only had one conversation with him, so I don't really know. But Mr. Chan, he was so concerned about the quality of the groups because they, at that point, they're at at least they're basically assigning people to the group you know okay which is something i would never take responsibility for the quality of a microchurch because i don't give people to it like those those are grown folks they could go to that thing or not if that thing is terrible don't go to it you know like i don't it doesn't have to be good for us. We're okay with a lot of failure or mediocrity as people are learning. So as you assign people, if you're telling people, hey, we're all pivoting to this missional system overnight, this decentralized structure overnight, but there's no sense of calling. There's no sense of like – they don't have agency in it.

Again, this is where it's like, oh, you're still undermining the priesthood of believers unintentionally like with good intentions it's still kind of happening and i would just say man that's why it's probably a bit of a process and that's why i would say at the end you're probably going to end up with a dual operating system if you have a pre-existing faith community you'll probably end up with a dual operating system with certain percentages of like you're still – you still have an operating system that looks very similar to the consumable kind of system that preexisted, right? But it's based – but the people that you're going to have in the missional system are there because they're called to be there because they want to be there. Like they've made the move to the other thing. That takes time and it takes people hearing from Jesus to participate in it. And then,

of course, you have the problem of like, okay, what do we do to support those people? And that's where that other half the system starts being built. I don't know if that makes sense. I have a diagram that works for it. Yeah, it does. It does. So I got to formulate my question. It has to do with belonging. It seems to me in my anecdotal experience that one of the primary things people are longing for and not getting in their traditional churches that they're in is this deep, genuine sense of belonging. I mean, I can't tell you how many people I hear from that they might even like their church or the preaching is good. The worship's good. I'm like, okay, are you loved? And do you love, are you known? And are you, do you know, like if you're really

going through a struggle with your marriage, your kids, like, do you have a immediate authentic community to walk with you in this? And I get deer in the headlights like, well, no, like I just, I wouldn't get that at church, you know, like, you know, have you found that your model has, your model, the Tampa underground, does foster a genuine sense of belonging? Like, do people feel like they are known and know and they're missed when they don't, you know, they're in deep relationships with other believers. Because I just feel, there's so many lonely church-going Christians out there that they're going through all kinds of stuff, you know? I mean, I could keep going on, but yeah, I just, I'm really burdened. I don't care what your model is.

All I know is if believers are going to your church over and over and over and they're missed, they're not missed, they're not known, nobody known nobody really knows them to me that's a primary thing that we need to foster whatever your model is i don't give you have a billion people come in on sunday morning that's fine whatever but like yeah are people known and are they knowing others um well in the microchurch i mean you're talking about average 14 15 people you know for for our historical ecosystem. So yeah, man, the one couple doesn't show up and it's like, oh, there's like a chunk of us missing and we miss them. And we also know, hey, what's going on with this marriage? Like it seems like you guys are – it's impossible not to notice.

That's what I found. It's impossible not to notice. That's what I found. Now, microchurches can be at different phases of development and phases of maturity. So it is possible that it just still misses something, misses a person, makes some mistakes as far as how to care for those people. So you might find the occasional person and be like, yeah, I just still feel like I'm not really known in this. Well, which microchurch is that? Oh, yeah, they're still really developing. I mean, the team is developing. It's fairly new. So yeah, that makes sense that they don't know exactly what to do with your complicated mental health issues. Right. know yeah yeah that makes sense you know

simply being in a room with a few people over and over doesn't i think that that the smaller gathering a rhythm of gathering um is more conducive for fostering organic relationships but it doesn't guarantee it i've been part of so i mean so like it's gonna sound bad i should probably say this offline but like like my wife and i we've been parts of you know lots of small groups through the years and we're just like we i can't i i'm you should join a community group i know i'm sorry i just i can't yeah i've been there so many times and i i just i just can't do it anymore i don't know like all i'll have to do all i have to do to shut down a conversation is tell people what I do. Yeah.

Most people are like, I don't know what that means, but I'm going to go talk to this person. Oh, cool. Whatever. And I'm an introvert, so I don't mind that. But I know deep down it's not healthy. But I just, I don't know. I've never really been part of a traditional small group that they feel awkward. They feel forced.

Christians turn into Christian mode and like, like okay when do we sing and pray you know like when i just hang out with people it's amazing and my my most fruitful small group my most fruitful small community feel happens when i invite a bunch of people over for drinks and snacks or whatever i you know um hey come over an hour you guys free yeah sure okay let's come over and usually those more organic things turn into something more fruitful but when it's kind of a pre-planned community group it just feels from my experience it's always been awkward i'm like i just don't have time for that yeah and and i to be honest there's going to be some microchurches that'll be at that they're that place of development

depending on where the person what they've been exposed to in the church world they are very churchy you know so they're trying to run a a churchy small group but the thing that cleans a lot of that up over time i think i think i could say this is the microchurch having purpose, like mission, like the microchurch has to have mission. Like this only makes sense if either we all are about the same mission, same purpose, or we're all covenanting to be about his mission in our own spaces. Right. And if that's actually happening, if like obedience is happening in that way, they don't even have to be good at it, but they're trying to do it. A lot of the – it becomes sober. Like the microchurch itself becomes less mask-like.

Because if you're really out there trying to reach people, if you're really working with broken people, if you're really trying to pray with other teachers, when you come back together, a lot of the mask and the proving your Christianity, the distance, it's like you actually need each other at a level. Like, I need other Christians. And just the stuff that we thought was important and the conversations we thought were important actually aren't important because I'm working with broken people over here. And all of a sudden, it just rearranges our sense of what is important and what the need is for each other. That happens over time. Any mature microchurch, like I would say a phase three microchurch for us, is you would walk in and you'd be like, oh, yeah, that's what's happening here.

Like I could be Preston and I could say brilliant things or I could sit in the corner and it's all good. And we're not going to just pretend to know God at a level which we don't. Because even that, the Christian sense of, I know Jesus, is like, well, no, go work with some really messed up people and you realize how messed up you are. people and you realize how messed up you are. And you also recognize like how distant you are from actually knowing the God who loves you and loves them. So the common mission fosters more authentic, just community among each other. It cleans it up,

man. It cleans it up. A lot of stuff that we just think this is what it's all about. It just doesn't. And then, and then people want to have fake little meetings it just doesn't happen very long i mean people again people do it but i would say that's they're more in the immature or they're early in the development of that microchurch

it's just it's a little bit more we're still pretending together right and we're okay with that we're okay with a microchurch kind of coming together and still playing a lot of the little Christian games and inauthentic kind of stuff that would bother me. But we just say, y'all just keep at it, you know, worship community mission. The Lord will sort you, you guys out, trust us. And, and we're here to coach you when that happens. out. Trust us. And we're here to coach you when that happens. Well, and typically people, human beings, homo sapiens aren't going to make time for, they will make time for belonging. Where do you belong? Where do you feel like, you know, I don't want to miss this because it's so meaningful. If they don't, if it's not, it doesn't have that, it's typically not going to retain

attendance. You'll get to some Christians just like, Oh, I just need to be, you know, be part of this. Cause that's what Christians do. But most people kind of start to fade out. I think, I mean, when something more meaningful comes up,

they'll say they'll choose that over something that's not meaningful. Dude, it was so great getting to know you and let's stay in contact. And yeah, I love what you guys are doing out there. It's just intriguing. If anything, I know it's not perfect.

It's messy, but I, I love what you guys are doing out there. It's just intriguing, if anything. I know it's not perfect. It's messy. But I admire anybody who's just trying to explore just fresh ways of being the people of God. So thank you for what you're doing, man. Yeah, man. Yeah. Appreciate you guys. So you and Chris, keep at it.

Okay. Yeah, will do, man. If anybody wants to reach out, tampodaroundground.com, undergroundnetwork.org. Just reach out and say, hey, man, I need a conversation about this stuff. But if it's like hate mail, don't send that. You can send it to me. I got a whole inbox. Yeah, send it to Preston. All right, bro.

Take care, man. Yeah. God bless you. this show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.