Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1144: Practicing the Way of Jesus in Radical Community: John Mark Comer

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

For nearly two decades, John Mark pastored at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon. After leading Bridgetown through five years of spiritual formation initiatives and seeing the impact, he wanted to help other churches discover a similar path of apprenticing under Jesus. In 2021, with the blessing of the church, John Mark stepped away from his role as pastor to launch Practicing the Way, a nonprofit designed to create simple, beautiful formation resources for church communities around the world.  Today, John Mark is developing new practices, courses, and podcasts for Practicing the Way and serving as a teacher in residence at Vintage Church LA with his wife Tammy and their three kids: Jude, Moses, and Sunday.  This podcast conversation is all about John Mark’s vision for practicing the way.  Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

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of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is John Mark Homer, who is a speaker, author, former pastor of Bridgetown Church. He's the author of several books, including his most recent book, Practicing the Way, Be With Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did. And a lot of our conversation grows out of the content of that book. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only John Mark Homer. John, Mark, how in the world are you doing, man?

Well, first of all, you've got this amazing ability to be able to go dark and actually go dark, like canceling your email, canceling your social security card, throwing away your passport, whatever you do. But when you're dark, you're dark. But here you are. For the record, only one of those three statements was true. I did cancel my email and I did get rid of my phone, but I did not cancel my social security card or throw away my passport, just for the record. I bet you that has crossed your mind though, or at least throwing away your cell phone where you're like, I'm going totally cell phone-less. Has that crossed your mind? Has that ever been a thought? Yeah. I mean, I did the light phone for a while, but it's all about simplicity for me. So it's like for a while, we were a one car family for

a long time and I would ride my bike everywhere. But then we kind of moved up this really tall hill and I had to take the bus and Portland doesn't have a great bus system. And so then it was a nightmare. And it's like, I'm getting to the bus and waiting there for 30 minutes in the pouring rain and winter and late for everything. And I realized my attempt to interpret monasticism for the domestic modern era and simplify my life is actually more complexity and

stress. It's making me less like Jesus, not more like Jesus. So that was my experience with, you know, attempting to not have any smartphone at all. So I went dumb. But yes, there are a lot of people that struggle to disconnect. And I used to be like that. And now my struggle is the opposite. I just so enjoy those times out in the quiet and the wild that I never really want to come back. Would you say you were ever addicted or heavily inundated or just really tied to your email, your phone, social media? Like, was that ever a struggle for you?

Or was it always kind of a love-hate relationship where it was kind of easy to get rid of? Yeah. I mean, all of that. Yes. Yes yes to all of the above and now it's just not because i yeah i i don't know what i go through seasons i don't know if you remember last time i had you on the podcast i literally deleted twitter in the middle of our conversation because of you put it back on a couple months later but actually you don't have it on now so it's been kind of like every few months i'll put it back on and every few months i'll delete it again so twitter doesn't even exist anymore so you can't do it anymore gone yeah i feel like it's kind of like it's like the elimination diet thing you know and i'm not a diet kind of guy but pull 30 or whatever where people go through these kind

of radical cleanses yeah and then one of the reasons you do it is to realize what foods you're allergic to that are actually causing low energy, lack of health, you know, all sorts of other immune system issues. And then when you attempt to add them back in, often you'll get exhausted or your skin will break out in a rash or you'll feel weird all over. And it's your body saying to you, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't, this is not good for you. This is not working well with your body's, you know, chemistry. And now with that cleanse, you kind of have a more heightened awareness of what it does

to you. Like I don't eat all that healthy, but I'm pretty good about not eating sugar. And so now when I do eat sugar, I just, I just feel like I just had poison. I'm just have a headache. I'm exhausted because I'm more in touch with my body and it's built a new normal. So I think like the, you know, the digital cleanse thing is really important. I think to do that month, you know, annually, at least if you could do 30 days or something without much of anything, I think that kind of a practice is a really good annual practice because your nervous system and your soul even, I think kind of recalibrates and you begin to realize how, you know, toxic a lot of this stuff is. And then when

you add it back in what you used to crave, now you're like, oh man, I don't, I don't want that. I don't want that in my life. It's not, for me, it's not really hard anymore for me. Like I would love to just take a sledgehammer to my email account and never answer another email again. To me, I just feel like I get this rat race of just, I could literally spend all day in my inbox probably. And the more you email people, the more you generate more emails, you know? I could make a full-time job out of doing email no problem did you read newport's a world without email no but you got me on to him

with his yeah the hyperactive hive mind that exactly what you just said the more you email the more you email and you know you come back from a long vacation and you often expect i'm gonna have to do email for three days and often like two or three hours and you're at inbox zero because so many things just kind of got solved without you or there wasn't that back and forth and that chatter. But the expectation now that people would work by always being connected to email and then your work becomes reactive and you're working on somebody else's timetable on somebody else's project somebody else's due date which is a terrible way to live so some jobs require that um but my there's that line uh who was this mathematician i read who said who completely gave up email and he said you know email is great if you want to stay on top of things, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of things.

I like that. Well, Newport's Deep Workbook, which I found because of your email pingback saying, because I believe in deep work, I'm not going to answer email for seven months. Not quite. At that time, I think every Monday afternoon is when you email. So if I email you Tuesday morning, I know I'm not going to get a response. And I get it. I was like, oh, okay. People who work with me hate it.

I just feel so bad for them. But then I, you know what? I'm doing what I'm doing. Here's the problem is my boss is my wife. So if I'm not, I'm like, oh, I'm not going to check my email. She's like, you're just creating more work for me because I'm the one having to scramble. Okay, you got to wait until Monday and on the phone with people and stuff. So yeah, I am one of those guys that given the various hats that I wear,

I do have to be on some of these things, but I could definitely, what I've been doing is just cause I, my main job is deep work, right? I like, I try to spend three or four hours a day in, in deep thinking, study research, writing writing you know i mean you and i have pretty similar jobs now we didn't last time i chatted but pretty similar i would imagine so i do in my mornings i typically leave my phone well see i like to listen to i'm into the uh these uh lo-fi beats um have you you know lo-fi beats are it's like no words it's just like it's like kind of like kind of like hip-hoppy a little jazzy it's really great to study too so when you sing can you sing that for me i feel like you should okay actually let me let me okay

here from my audience i gotta play this is so seriously this has changed my life i gotta i gotta here i got my uh i'll put my speaker on my mom my mom my wife got me this uh portable speaker so i actually have some kind of like base here. This is a moment right here. It's a podcast. Oh shoot. I'm an airplane mode. What am I doing? I'm wasting everybody's time. We tune into the podcast. I'm talking about lo-fi beats. Uh, forget it. Well, if this hooks up, I'll do it. But anyway, um, I, I, but I try to like be vigilant about when I'm in deep work. Sometimes I put these headphones on that just block out sound. And I'll put on lo-fi beats because if my family's doing stuff. It's serious.

Oh, yeah. But I understand you have to be vigilant, aggressive about blocking everything out. Or sometimes I'll leave my phone up on my – just leave it in the bedroom. I'll leave my phone up on my, just leave in the bedroom. But my point is actually it's not hard. It's like, it's become to where it's like hard for me to check my email. Like, oh gosh, I don't want to open this up and I'll go in and get sucked in. But for some people though, it's, it's, it's maybe more of a draw for me. It's like, I guess I have to do some of this stuff.

But yeah, the only other, only time I ever, I mean, I detest email, but the only time it's ever a draw is when I'm tired. It is easier than deep work, you know, because deep work requires discipline, initiative, creativity, fighting off distraction, whereas a lot of the digital stuff, you're just reacting and just responding. Somebody asked for this, and I'm going to say this back. Yeah, totally.

I just feel like it's such a time waste. I do love getting stuff done. And I know that deep work takes, I think Cal Newport talked about this, it could take an hour or two of no distraction until you get into some kind of flow or some kind of like, oh, you're, you are in the material. You're, you're at your optimum point of thinking through things. And for the things I'm thinking through, like I, I, I don't choose light topics as you do either, you know? So it's not an option, but, um, and I love it. I just thrive. Oh, the energy of like, I'm such a nerd. Right. But I mean, I, I just love getting so deep into something to where you just feel like you're swimming in it. I don't know. It's hard to describe, but yeah. Can you give us an update from when you, uh, what's the word step down left, got fired from, uh, your church job. I know it's

like I got fired from, but like, so, um, last time we talked to you were a pastor. You're not anymore. What do you, can you give us the last couple of years of your life? What's been going on? Yeah. No, I was not fired, thankfully. Not yet. Yeah, I was a pastor in Portland, Oregon for just short of 20 years at the same church that we were a part of the planting team on and we're there for a very long time.

And long story short, we did this kind of five-year-long initiative at the church that kind of built up to actually right when COVID broke out called Practicing the Way. That was our attempt. I was kind of wrecked about 10 or 15 years ago, and we can come back to that if we want, but I had not a crisis of faith as much as a crisis of discipleship, both in my personal life where, you know, Barton has this line, I had come to the end of what the traditional evangelical discipleship models had to offer. And I kind of came to that moment where the kind of template for discipleship that I had grown up in that had worked well for the early stages in my spiritual journey was no longer working well, if at all. And I was stuck in some ways that if I did not get unstuck, we're going to reap consequences long-term in my marriage and family and emotional way of being.

And then on a pastoral level, a crisis as well, where I realized our church was not designed, like most, I think, quasi-evangelical churches, whatever that word means anymore, it was not designed for high levels of spiritual maturity and growth and depth. It was designed for other things, not bad things, but not for that. So I had this crisis and was introduced to the whole world of spiritual formation. Dallas Willard was kind of my gateway drug. And through him, that's a metaphor, by the way, I am in California. I have to clarify that. I do not mean that literally. But through him, he was kind of my portal to a whole new world that combined everything from the best learnings from the social sciences and the modern world to the best writings

of the ancient church and the contemplative tradition east and west for the last 2,000 years. And it honestly was like a second conversion or something. It was like transformative for my personal life with God and pastoral life. All that to say, we spent a number of years kind of redesigning our church around a working theory of change, as we called it, and then basically took our church through this five-year discipleship journey, formation journey that we call practicing the way. And at the end of it,

COVID broke out right as we were kind of nearing the end. And so that was just crisis mode. And I realized, you know, the church post COVID was going to require a lot of hard work, a lot of leadership, a lot of really hands-on pastoral presence in the city and all good things. But I realized, man, I'm in my early 40s now. I started pretty young and I really want to give the second half of my life to formation and the growth of the soul and what does that look like in local communities, not necessarily to the leadership of a local church, which is an honor and a privilege and is an all-consuming task. And so step down with the full blessing of our elders. I mean, it was very tearful. We had a really strong, healthy leadership community. So we spent

a season in discernment together. And at the end, you know, every, you reach the end of your tenure. I was there almost 20 years, you know, and you read, you come to a point where you have, you know, you've, you've played your part in the chapter and the story and the story goes on, you know, without you or with you in a more minor role or a side role. And, uh, there were many years where I wanted to step down because I'm more introverted and prefer, you know, writing and spiritual direction and teaching to leadership. And there were many years where I wanted to step down because I'm more introverted and prefer writing and spiritual direction and teaching to leadership. But I felt like to step down would have been disobedience.

And that just turned in my heart where I felt like to stay would have been disobedience. So we stepped down and decided to take this kind of five-year initiative, practicing the way that we'd done at our church, which a lot of other churches were beginning to use, and kind of turn it into its own nonprofit and spin it up and kind of redo it all and offer it back to the church at large. So I'm about a year into that three-year project right now. So you're running or helping run a nonprofit practice in the way that is helping churches do what you guys did, spent five years doing.

Is that basically a good introduction? Yeah, we're creating, yeah, we're in the process of creating about a dozen resources for the church that'll take us about three or four years to put together of nine practices, two different courses that are all kind of designed for community practice-based community discipleship that we offer the church at large for totally for free. So yeah, that's what I'm doing. That's really, are you, how would you describe your last year then in doing this? Is it exactly what you expected? Is it more? Are there some like hard things about not being a pastor? I'm sure there's at least some, maybe. Oh yeah. I mean, there's, yes, absolutely. I mean, it was certainly a bit of a freely chosen

midlife crisis of, you know, identity at some level. And it's the first time I've not been on staff at a church since I was 19 years old. So, I mean, it's been very disorienting, you know, so part of it, I love, it's the first time I've ever had a job that is a good fit for my personality preferences of introversion, you know, thinking and reading and writing. And there are other parts of, I really miss, you know, serving a community in that way and getting to work toward, you know, enfleshing convictions that are deep in your heart in the life of a community. I miss that a lot. So yeah, mixed bag, but I'm not, I don't regret the decision at all, So yeah, mixed bag, but I'm not, I don't regret the decision at all, but I don't, I'm still a bit in transition. I think it takes a while to kind of, you know, move into a new season of life.

How's it been for your family? teenagers and we were so rooted in community Portland and, um, you know, such deep, meaningful relationships. And it's not like those relationships are gone, but when you move, you know,

to another part of the world, there's this, they're not there in the same way. So some of it's been great for my family. I'm way more present as a dad. Um, you know, it's really, it's really hard to lead well, teach well, and be an emotionally healthy, you know, husband and father, you know,

and there's, um, it's just really hard to nail that trifecta. So I'm way more present to my kids in this season and And that's good. The family's doing well. But man, moving with three teenagers after 20 years of place, it's no joke. Wait, you're in SoCal, right? Or are you allowed to say? Sorry, I just doxed you. Well, not really.

It was a big part of the world. I'm not going to give you my address for the three creepers listening but well yeah we um we live in topanga canyon kind of just in the north north coastal side of la yeah why you're not you're probably 10 miles from where dallas willard used to live i don't know if you know where absolutely his wife's coming over for dinner next week shut up really no way i know a good friend of mine, uh, when I was living in Simi Valley around the corner from you,

um, good friend of mine owned a construction business and he actually poured, I think, uh, Dallas's driveway. Didn't even, he knew Dallas Willard was, but then didn't know that's who he was doing.

And so he kind of told me what the house was. Yeah. Um, yeah, it is hilarious. I mean, Willard is very much my intellectual father and uh to just live kind of over the hill from where he spent his most of his

life you know it's fascinating just that's not why i'm here but it's just a fascinating fascinating turn of events why did you choose there if i can ask and if there's anything personal i asked just say i don't want to say that on the air or whatever. Yeah. I mean, that's such a simple question with a long, complex answer. Discernment is sometimes really clear and sometimes really not clear. And we were in a very long, slow process of discernment with our community and some mentors in our life. And there were just a number of things from a crazy prophetic dream I had five years ago about moving to this kind of little neighborhood street right around the corner that I'd never heard of. kind of little neighborhood street right around the corner that I'd never heard of. I had to Google it because I had never heard of it in my life. And some opportunities, I will be serving as a teacher in residence at a church in West LA and working with them on a course for new

Christians. So there's one course that we want to make that we didn't do at Bridgetown. And it's really important to us that we road us the heck out of everything. So I need a spot to kind of work on it for about two years. Just, you know, me and 20 people in a church basement kind of thing. And of course for people that are new to the way of Jesus, new to following Jesus. And there's a church here that has a lot of new Christians. So I'll be working with them on a project.

My sister's in the area. I'm from California and always had intended to come back to California for the second half of my life, if possible. So lots of different reasons. The school here for our kids is kind of a bunch of different. It's hard to describe. It's a long conversation. To pick a candidate. The short version is we prayed a whole lot and felt like this is what Jesus was asking of us.

Yeah. That's the short version. The cliched but very honest answer. Topanga Canyon. I used to surf out there. You're probably, gosh, 15 minutes from Malibu. Yep. Absolutely.

Love that area. It's really good. It's at the bottom of the canyon. So, yeah. absolutely love that area really good it's at the bottom of the canyon so yeah by the way there's if you haven't been there yet there's a great um little french pub blanking on the name now right off of um is it off topanga it's just up the 101 from where you're at um ladyface ladyface you've been to ladyface yet no oh i'm gonna go right now you're what you and your wife it's first it's just it's it's classy but not not uh snooty um they they it's up to the valley yeah it's coming up oh yeah yeah it's right there great food great little patio great beer um

create a just really cool vibe but I, it's, I miss that place a lot. All right. And it looks like I can get there up through the mountains without having to go to the freeway. We, we were pretty high up in the Santa Monica mountains and it's pretty special. Yeah. We love, man. I love that area. Gosh. Yeah. We were just over in Simi Valley, but just 20 minutes from you. We used to hike around there all the time. And, um, man, it'd make me jealous. Can you say what church you're at?

Or you can tell me offline if you don't want to say publicly, a bunch of people flock into your church. Yeah. The church we're working on the course with is called vintage church. Oh yeah. In Santa. Who's the pastor there? Gary Jones.

He's a Brit from HTB in London. Great dude. He's an old friend. Is he part of a Chris Venon's network? Is that, was he one of those? No, he's technically in that Anglican,

you know, Todd Bishop kind of Anglican crew. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's great. He's a British Anglican, which means he's not really Anglican.

It's all the Americans that like Anglicanism in my experience. All the Anglican Brits I know are like, this thing's the worst. He's real Anglican. But the Brits like it. I'm sorry, the Americans love it. Yeah. I'm curious how, are you okay if we jump around a little bit? I'm just going to ask questions.

No, this is your podcast. I'm sitting in my office, delighted to see you, happy to talk about whatever. Okay. So I found my, hold on a second before we go any further. Here's what I'm talking about right here. Oh, dude. Change your life, dude. Oh, yeah, man. How about this? No words. Well, some words, I guess.

Dude, that is my basement. I actually light, I've got incense down here. Modern gender theory listening to the podcast. Oh, dude, dude. I got my light, but my basement is totally dark, except I have like five lamps just on my standup desk. I got my beats going, my incense, and my family has to drag me out of my basement. I got my beats going, my incense, and it's, it's, uh, my family

has to drag me out of my basement. I love it. Anyway, answer your email. Um, so when, when you did the five years of practicing the way your church, my, so when I hear that, I'm like, Ooh, pushing people to follow Jesus and the nitty gritty, actually taking their individual spiritual lives to another level. I could see that as not being very popular. I mean, we say we want it, but do we really want, like, how did that go? Was it well-received? Like actually well-received? Was it hard? Did you lose people? Did you gain people? What did that five years look like? Yeah. I mean, all of the above. The strength of our model or how we did it, I mean, all of the above. You know, the strength of our model or how we did it just meaning, so we faced a pretty significant decision. Do we just keep Sundays going like a traditional kind of church and then do this on the side on like Wednesday night for, you know, much smaller subgroup of people? for, you know, much smaller subgroup of people? Or do we try to do it with the whole church?

And, you know, the standard wisdom would be, do not do it with the whole church, do it off to the side, for all sorts of reasons. And I think I would actually agree with the standard wisdom. But we were just facing the limitations of, you know, we're a young urban church, we didn't have the money to go hire like a separate staff to go run a midweek thing or some kind of church within a church kind of thing. And I really wanted to give my time to it. I wanted to personally, you know, give everything to this. So it was either, you know, do it with the whole church or not do it at all. And so we chose to do with the whole church. And the strength of our model was we took our entire church on a five-year intentional spiritual formation journey. The weakness of our model was we took our entire

church on a five-year intentional spiritual formation journey. And it turns out there's a lot of people at church that aren't really at the spot where that's the desire of their heart or where they are, that's not the next step for, that's not the next step they want to take. So, you know, the downside to our model or the upside, and it's all based on success, where we had to change the social contract with our community. And that's very difficult to do. So, you know, by social contract, I just mean there is a kind of mostly unspoken agreement between every member of a community or a church and the leadership of that church that you could call a social contract. That's a sense of, you know, you as the leaders of the church do this, and we as the community members do this.

And so, you know, a cynical, and which is not really that helpful, but read on a lot of traditional churches would be, all right, we'll come, we'll give our presence, we'll give some money, we'll maybe volunteer a little, you give us a sermon and a weekly church service and some activities for us to make new friends and something to kind of uplift our heart with Jesus. That's the social contract. And so what we had to do was change that social contract because the social contract normally doesn't require anyone to live by what the early Christians would have called a rule of life. It doesn't require any commitment to basic life architecture of discipleship or life in community around a table in smaller contexts, which for us were kind of non-starters. They were just so

non-negotiable to the way of Jesus. So we had to change that. And that was really hard. At first, the church did get smaller and it was like a pruning. And that pruning period is, at least for us, was very much followed by the most fruitful and New Testament language season of church we've ever had. I mean, those last couple of years before COVID, I mean, COVID was brutal, but those last couple of years before COVID were just the absolute peak and honor and delight of, you know, 20 something years in ministry. They were such a joy and hard and messy and all of that, but a delight. But even in the best years, you know, you had lots of people that were in all the way, lots of people that were on the fence,

lots of people that were actually resistant, you know, and a bit of a burr in the side. But overall, over those five and by the end, it became, you know, kind of six, seven years with COVID. And it's not even over yet. The rule of life rolls out in this coming January. Probably about when the podcast comes out is when that kind of the culmination of that journey will come to its peak. You know, it profoundly reshaped the cultural architecture of the church in some really beautiful ways,

you know? Can you give us a really concrete example, just of one, maybe one of the spiritual disciplines or one of the things that you integrated into the, can I say, mandatory rhythm of the church? Like, if you're going to call this church your home, this is what our spiritual journey together is going to look like. Can you give us like a concrete example of what that looked like, even all the way from how you communicated it, what it looked like on Sunday morning, what were people kind of required to do throughout the week? Is that even the right question? I mean, is that?

Yeah. I mean, mandatory is not the word I would use because everything we do is invitational, but we are trying, you know, Tyler Staton, who's my successor as the leader of the church, you know, has a lovely line where he just tells people the kind of welcome to church class, like we have an agenda for your life. And I just want to be really clear. We want to increasingly radicalize you to discipleship to Jesus. And so if you're not into following Jesus or you're not into serious apprenticeship to him, you are so welcome on our Sunday gatherings. We'd love to have you here wherever you're at exploring faith. We just need you to know that eventually this place will become uncomfortable for you unless if you decide to seriously follow Jesus, because we have

intentionally built the social cues in such a way. So mandatory is not the word I would use, but one easy example that was one of the ones we spent the most time with would just be our entire church was broken down into neighborhood based table communities where you would share a meal every single week with, you know, 10, 15, 20 people in your neighborhood. And they were meal based, neighborhood based, not preference based. They didn't pick based on affinity or, you know, a jogging group or whatever. based. So you didn't pick based on affinity or, you know, a jogging group or whatever. And they were practice based. So there was a mix of just family life together, a mix of, you know, serving the poor or whatever on a monthly basis, and then kind of experimentation in practices like, you know, from fasting to Sabbath or whatever. So, and that was driven so

deep into the life of the community that um, that, you know, could you attend on a Sunday and not do life in a home community? Yeah, you could. It wasn't, we don't have a way to force that on people, nor would we. Coercion is not a fruit of the spirit, but the, that was the cultural architecture. So if you didn't want to do life around a table with a much smaller group of people that is emotionally vulnerable and practice-based, it would have been a not super pleasant place to be, you know?

How did you, because that sounds almost identical to what Cornerstone in Simi Valley did 15 years ago, where they basically inverted the entire rhythm of church. They, I mean, kind of overnight, which we'll come back to that, canceled like women's groups, men's groups, Bible studies. They said, we are going to still gather on Sunday, but your primary church identity is in your neighborhood community. And they segmented Simi Valley's six miles by four miles, and they gridded it and said, all right, here's your square mile. Here's your home group. Here's the house you're going to meet at. Here's the leader, whatever. Um, I, I've got my

own thoughts on that, but, um, I guess my question for how did that go? Like what was, what was, uh, looking back? Was that the right move? Was it obviously it was messy. Obviously people were didn't like it. Obviously I'm sure I could probably, I could probably like write in my head some of the emails you got. Um, but was that effective? Maybe is what I'm, what I'm asking. Like, was that a good move or looking back hindsight, would you have done exactly the same or almost the same? Yeah. By the end it was really effective early on. It wasn't when it was just like kind of angry sermonizing from the pulpit about how bad people are for just wanting to come to church. In my younger fiery days, that was mostly ineffective, didn't really work, mostly just made me mad. And, you know, I think any utopian attempts,

you know, Bonhoeffer has his great stuff in life together after his experience of intentional community about, you know, the wish dream and how dangerous ID, he calls it the wish dream of community, how dangerous idealism is when it comes to the church community. And so, you know, his whole line about how you become the destroyer of the community, you know, once you have this utopian vision in mind, I remember, I know he's a controversial character. I just find him interesting, agree or disagree, but Jordan Peterson saying there's a whole room in his house decorated with Soviet art and people walk in and just think it's like the creepiest room they've ever been. It's like all these communist posters and paintings and he bought it all up forever ago and he said

it's there to remind him in the danger of what happens when humans become utopian idealists that you know you if you hear an early communist intellectual and and now it's fascinating to see it coming back if you hear a leftist intellectual talk about the vision of communism, I mean, it's like, it sounds incredible. It sounds so beautiful. You're like, yes, this is amazing. And in reality, it was the greatest genocide in human history. It was absolutely demonic and violent and evil because it was an attempt to basically humanly engineer a utopian society without God and without sin and without space for human freedom and brokenness. So I think, you know, that's a crazy extreme example, but often pastors, especially passionate ones, are idealists. And that's part of what makes you a visionary leader. You know, you can't be a visionary leader without an ideal in your mind that you want to aspire to. But the danger to that is you can ramroad people, you can force people, you can coerce people. And Jesus did not do that. He didn't play ball. He didn't like give

his energies to holding up a system that he didn't believe in, but he would just invite people. And if they said yes, they could follow. And if they said no, he'd walk away. And, you know, he's Jesus. He gets to take some liberties that a local pastor doesn't get to take. But I think there's something to that. So in answer to your question, by the end, it was remarkably effective. And we had 95% of the Sunday, you know, of 95% of people that called our church home were in a home community, which is extraordinary. I mean, for non-pastors, I mean, it's really rare for a church to get over 50% of people involved in their home communities

or small groups or whatever their model is. And it was really hard at the first part because you were changing the social contract. So if people were just in the church and coming on Sunday and didn't want to be in a home community, or if people were already in some kind of a community setting where they were finding great life and joy, and now we're forcing them to be with three random people on their street that they don't even like or have chemistry with, that was really hard. But once the social contract was changed, once the architecture was built out, and ours was very slow, we had some pastors, We put a lot of resources into it, leadership. We had some amazing pastors overseeing it and an incredibly, I think,

intentional, thoughtful, well-organized model of coaching, pastoring the community leaders, training them, giving them heads up, treating them as the core of our church that took us many years of trial and error to develop. But I think I'm really proud of, because I didn't do that work personally, I'm really proud of some of the work that the pastors on our team did and our staff did. And yeah, by the end, that was just the fabric of the church. You came in and that was what it was for and people wanted it or they opted out, self-selected out. And it's not, you know, all of those things. You can't control chemistry and relationship.

And, you know, sometimes you end up in a living room with people that become your family until you die. And sometimes it's just really awkward and just doesn't work socially. And I just think there has to be room for that. We can't moralize it or sermonize it. We have to have some humility and honesty about how difficult relationships can be. But yes, I would say early on, total failure, middle, hard work, and incredibly healthy and beautiful. I'm curious, what are the pastors? Did you go to your neighborhood group or whatever and lead it or just follow? Or what was your involvement and other pastors?

One of the best pieces of advice we got early, early on, actually not for somebody in the formation world, from somebody that was kind of back in the day doing missional communities really well. And it was Jeff Vanderstelt up in Tacoma, Washington at the time. And he gave us the best piece of advice. He said, people that attempt to kind of rebuild or re-architect their churches, not around Sundays, but around, not around the stage, but around the table. He said, they generally fail for two reasons. And he said, generally fail for two reasons. And he said, one, they treat it like a sub department in the church rather than like the actual driving center of the church. And they don't resource it. They don't

emphasize it. They don't architect around it as the center point. And two, he said, it doesn't show up in the lives of the highest levels of leaders. So the lead pastor will say like my elders or my small group or, you know, like, you know, some nonsense when people, when you can fire people or they can fire you, that's probably not like the most ideal setting for, you know, table-based community, you know? So we took that really seriously to heart. And that was just,

I think I'm really grateful that that word of wisdom came into our life. So yes, you could not be an elder pastor, a staff member, if you were not actively, you know, living in, you didn't have to lead it yourself, though most or many of them did, but yes, all of us were a hundred percent all in, you know, our budget reflected it, our resourcing reflected it. It was, it was not just a like PR thing when we would say, you know, your home communities, your primary experience of church, Sunday, secondary, that, um, that is, that is genuinely my ecclesiological kind of position. Like many of you, I love feeling energetic and healthy and clear headed. So this is why I've been taking AG1 consistently for over a year and a half now, and I could truly notice the difference. I have more sustained energy throughout the day, more mental clarity and focus, and I can live with the peace of mind that my overall health is being improved because I'm giving my body all the nutrition that it needs. So AG1 is a foundational nutrition supplement that supports your body's universal needs like gut health, stress management, and

immune support, among many other things. Since 2010, AG1 has led the future of foundational nutrition by continuously refining their formula to create a smarter, better way to elevate your baseline health. And even though I try to eat as healthy as I can, you know, unless I'm at the movie theater, in which case I eat way too much popcorn with an insane amount of butter. In any case, I mean, even for healthy eaters like myself, it's very difficult to give your body all the nutrition that it needs without adding some kind of nutritional supplement to your daily routine. I used to take all kinds of pills and vitamins and green powders and all that stuff. But now with AG1, I no longer need a multivitamin or other pills because AG1 is a complete and extremely

potent nutritional supplement. So if you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Just go to drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R. That's drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R. Check it out. I think people might be able to gather the difference, but just, I would love to hear you say it like for maybe Christian leaders, pastors, or just people going to churches like, oh yeah, we have small groups too. Yeah. We have a main service in small groups and it looks like you do too. And yeah, we, we were doing that. Like how, how would what you're talking about be different than every other big church that also has small groups? Is it the geographical, um, kind of concentration where you're going to a small group within your

vicinity? Or is it that just the idea of your identity at church has just been completely inverted to where your Sunday service attendance is almost secondary to your missional neighborhood gathering as primary? Or I'll let you, how would you articulate the difference between just having a small group? Well, it's hard to answer that because small groups is a broad category that means different things to different people, you know? So if the kind of very stand, you know, I would say a couple of difference would be one in most churches. I know small groups are like an optional offering for people that are into it, but the main event is very much Sunday and not all churches, but the, I think churches, it's an option like, Hey, if you want to get into a small group here, you know, but I, the senior pastor is probably not in one.

They're probably, you know, would be shocked if more than 30 or 40% of the church is in a small group. Secondly, they're often just kind of built around, um, discussing the sermon together and, you know, praying or whatever, beautiful things. It's wonderful. So another difference for us would be ours, we're all meal-based, so it's always a meal because we believe so deeply in eating together. So I am probably an outlier. I don't know that I could speak for Bridgetown. I'm just speaking for myself here.

My personal conviction has become that the Lord's, I'm the opposite of Anglican when it comes to the Eucharist, that the Lord's supper was originally intended to be a full meal around a table and that it was not a cracker and juice. Um, it was certainly, you know, Ben Witherton's book on how the meal became the mass and how the love feast of the early church turned into the middle medieval kind of somber introspective you know uh cracker and juice just been you know dispensed by the priest where you confess how that that historical kind of change from what you're reading about in corinthians where you have people getting drunk and, you know,

people doing like, whatever's happening there, that's not a cracker of juice, you know, it's a meal. That imprinted so deeply on me. And I deeply believe, like for me, I am sacramental in the sense of like, I believe something happens in the drinking of the wine and the eating of the bread and that Christ is present in that meal in a special way. But I personally believe that Jesus' intention was for us to be around literal tables with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine and a meal and life together with the community that you know and are known by. Confession of sin being audible, verbal to one another, not introspective and privatized, and the spirit being celebratory and grateful, as you see in the Didache and other kind of early writings around the love feast and the Lord's Supper. So that's a big, so eating a meal together in the name of Jesus with a community of people, that's your family in Christ. That for me is like crazy high up

in the hierarchy of spiritual disciplines. And I guess you would say, you know, in my spirituality, and I mean that in the more academic sense of kind set of practices and values and postures that mark how I follow the way of Jesus with my personality and my day and my age and my place in the Christian spirituality. a Lutheran spirituality in the 16th century and a Jesuit spirituality in Spain and a Desert Fathers and Mothers spirituality. It's all the way of Jesus, but expressed in different ways, in different times, in different places. I think in my spirituality, this is of utmost importance, doing life together around a table. I can tell you've been hanging out with Chris Venon. around a table, you know? I could tell you've been hanging out with Chris Venon. Yeah, I love Chris.

Well, we spent, we did a gap year while we were in discernment over where we want to put down roots. So we spent nine months with them and we're in a beautiful table community with Chris and I'm part of their church. And their church is built around Dunbar's principle, which is, you know, the law of 150 is what sociologists call it.

So they don't let it get bigger than 150 people. Um, some really, really beautiful things there that I'm a big fan. Oh man, that's awesome. Yeah. He, uh, for those of you who are listening and wondering, I keep bringing up Chris Venon. Um, I did a podcast, I think it was during 2022 or 2020 with Chris Venon spelled with the W dude from South Africa, amazing guy. And I think it's titled like church around the table or something like that. Anyway, that's his, his, that was his fundamental, like, yeah, everything grows out from, from the table.

Like that is the centerpiece, the meal together, community, looking at each other, hanging out, eating, drinking and everything. The rest of church kind of grows from that, you know, but that's not like a periphery thing. Yeah. Paul has that. I remember teaching through Corinthians forever ago and being so messed up by this little line from Paul when he just said, when you come together to eat and I just, and he's talking about their weekly gathering and he didn't, when you come together to eat. And I just, and he's talking about their weekly gathering.

And he didn't say when you come together to worship or when you come together to hear a sermon or when you come together to pray. I mean, all things that I think would have, you know, found some place in a Pauline house church. But his one word summary was when you come together to eat. And I just, man, that messed me up because at the time I was leading a 10,000 person megachurch and I'm like, we're not coming together to eat. We're coming together for other things that are not bad. But wow, is that what Paul had in mind? One of the powerful things for me when I read about the Lord's Supper in the New Testament is that it was a social class equalizer. There's

so much of the gospel, so much of the New Testament that is- It's an act of social justice, thousand percent. Yes. It is such a huge part of that meal was there's no rich coming early and eating all the good foods and then the poor coming later because you have to work 10 hours a day or whatever. This is the social equalizer. You are all high class, low class, slave, free, whatever, male, female, coming together around this common meal. It was a social class equalizer, which was such a sharp edge to the gospel in the New Testament.

It's everywhere. I mean, it's all throughout the Corinthian letters, but it's lingering behind so much of Paul's concern. throughout the Corinthian letters, but it's lingering behind so much of Paul's concern. And I would love, I mean, that's, I wonder how to get back to that. We live in different times now, right? I mean, you know, he lived in a time when 1% owned 90% of the wealth. There wasn't a middle class, 90% of the people were at or below the poverty line. So any neighborhood would have mostly poor people. The house they're gathering at was a wealthy person with a couple of wealthy friends. And we live in a different time now, but I think we still have, not to the same extent, but we still have our own social classes that need to be equalized.

Anyway, sorry. No, I was just saying yes, yes, absolutely. But that doesn't negate the principle. And so I think the question becomes not do we do that, but how do we do that in our day and age? The automobile in particular has messed that up because now we're all so, and cost of living is so insane, especially in a place like California, that we're all so segregated based on where we live.

And so there are real challenges, but that doesn't mean roll over and play dead. It's not, do we do it? It's how do we do it? And, you know, and again, that's where utopian thinking is only helpful to get you started, to get you inspired, and not helpful once you're actually trying

to do Jesus stuff in community, you know? That's where you have to just grace. I mean, community is a gift. It's not something that we go out and engineer or architect. It's a gift that we receive, even if sometimes it's not the gift we want. So, confession, whenever I bring you on, I feel like I need to confess to my Protestant priest. What is this about me? I'm so sorry. I trust you, man.

I love that I can be honest with you and I respect your wisdom as a pastor. And yeah, there's a few people I would say, no, not a few people. There are a lot of people that have that, but I feel like we're very like-minded. And so I have had a, not a bad time with small groups. And maybe this is so that here I'm going to go on a whole model that you're like, yeah, we're not doing that kind of thing. But I, my richest spiritual community times in my life have been completely organic. Just the other day, we just had a random Saturday night. We had

10 people over, two were musicians, and we ended up singing a few Coldplay songs, and we sang several worship songs. The guy playing the piano was just so into it, and another guy was singing. Also, we were just sitting there in the living room, just singing really loud.

It was worshipful. We had a meal. None of this was planned. My wife just like invited a bunch of people. I was like, Hey, just come over, you know, um, random people, like just random, you know? And, but that's, that's pretty good. Like in our house, we, we,

we have random people over here and there. And I feel like I've had more rich spiritual slash discipleship times in my life when it hasn't been part of some kind of prepackaged small group. Now, I have been to many different kinds of small groups and most of them, this is nothing against the people, the church or anything. It's just kind of like, it gets to the point to when, you know, you get that phone call saying, Hey, we've got to cancel small group tonight. And I'm like, Oh good. You know, part of it is like, you know, I don't know what,

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's me. It's probably me. It's probably me. I can't put my finger on what it is, but they just haven't been either. There's been, again, not that there's been moments. There's been some that for a season, you know, that was good. That was, that was good for my spiritual walk and for other people's spiritual walk that we were modeling some kind of new Testament community, you know? So there has been, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want to whitewash the whole thing, but in general, the way small groups, like I'm just not eager to jump into another small group with a,

with a, I, again, part of it is if I want to shut down a conversation, I just tell them what I do for a living. That's the, during the meet and greet time at church. I love it.

I actually hate it, but I, you know, I, I love, you know, please ask me what I do. Cause I'm going to tell them,

they're just going to look at me like, you know, like, and then look the other way. And yeah, I want to, I need to get out of this conversation, you know?

And so I, I just feel like when, when, when there's like a, a-packaged Christian thing to it, people just get all weird sometimes. I don't know. They have to put on their Christian hat and when are we going to do the two songs up front and who's doing the Bible study? And I don't know. Like, I just, I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. I love, love, love, love. I thrive, even as an introvert, thrive in that rich, I love, love, love, love. I thrive, even as an introvert, thrive in that rich, challenging Christian community.

I experience God more in community than by myself. Like alone, sometimes it's hard, this, but when I'm around other people, I see the image of God in other people. And I just, I love that. In my anecdotal experience, the sweetest times have been completely organic and not pre-planned. So what's wrong with me, John Mark? Well, lots of things are wrong with you. It's like lots of things are wrong with me. I mean, one thing I appreciate about you, Preston, is I'm a firm believer in what I kind of lovingly call spiritual realism.

Like I think there's a profound lack of honesty in the American church, in particular in preaching and teaching. And wherever there's a pride position, that then creates a shame position. So if all you offer to the world is this kind of rose-colored view of life together in community and people get into community and experience it to be very hard, then you create this whole shadow position out of which everything from deconstruction to guilt and shame to sin can all thrive in the shadows, you know? And so I, I honor and affirm your spiritual realism, your honesty. I think it's important to name when whatever your expression of community is does not seem to be accomplishing what Jesus means for it to accomplish. And sometimes we can't tell, right? Because sometimes we think it's not actually forming us, but it really is,

because it's forming us through, you know, others come to us, what did I read the other day, as the troubling grace of God, you know, as people kind of iron sharpens iron. But I think part of that is I would have to ask more questions. So when you say, you know, non-organic, programmed, if you mean the kind of traditional evangelical small group, in all honesty, yeah, I wouldn't say they're a waste of time because we're deeply relational and we need relationships but the lack of depth is just staggering and there's a weird group psychology in traditional small groups where they devolve to the lowest level of spiritual maturity and commitment so it's very different than the group psychology

in something like crossfit where you can come and you can be 400 pounds and asthmatic and you're welcome there, but you know, you're joining a community that is coming together to literally like get so sore. They can barely walk home afterwards. And if you give up or you don't put your heart into it, people are going to love you and accept you, but they're going to be yelling at you and give me 10 more. Like, because it's, I mean, you come together for this express purpose of athletic training. The problem with a lot of small groups is people come together for the express purpose of meetings to new people and not for the express purpose of spiritual athleticism or spiritual formation or whatever you want to call that.

So I think there's some kind of group psychology issues that often get accidentally, with no malformed intent, built into a lot of traditional church small groups that don't make them bad, but mean they need significant, I think, kind of repositioning to work. But my only pushback to you, organic, meaningful, sporadic times with special people that we have chemistry with, of course, all of us enjoy those times so much more. They're so beautiful and they're so wonderful. And they can do some really special things where they come in and they enliven our heart and they open us up. But there's a couple of things that they can't do or that they do really badly. One, they don't do commitment and consistency and intimacy only resides in the safety of commitment. So in my mind, one of the main markers of what makes a community a place that eventually becomes long-term,

a transformative relational environment is the level of commitment. And sometimes it's basic things like people showing up every single week, bringing food, helping clean the dishes afterwards, texting you back, praying for you, asking follow-up questions when you're going through hard stuff, that kind of just basic relational community commitment is the foundation that communities in some way, like, or you can't, you have to have that to travel together. The other thing that's harder to do long-term is have people lovingly speak into your blind spots. So, you know, this is like, like I get really nervous when I get around other fame, you know, not other, when I get around famous Christians and their community or all other famous Christians and other cities that they see at cool events.

And they talk a lot about their community. And I just want to say, that's not your community. Those are special friends that are in a weird vein of the church like you. And that's cool. That's great. It can be helpful to have people that know a little bit what your life is like. But those people don't see how you're treating your teenagers when you're exhausted. They don't see how you're spending your money. They don't see if you over drink wine on your nights off.

You know what I mean? They're not close enough to you. And you're, and you're on your best behavior. If I, when I see, I have friends that I love, I'll see some of them next week. I'm getting together with five pastor buddies. I haven't seen them since May. We'll spend three, four hours together at my house. It'll be wonderful. And for those three and four hours, they're probably not going to see the worst part of me. They're probably not going to see me snap at my wife. They're probably not going to see me, you know, do stuff I shouldn't do because I'm, I'm, I'm going to be excited to see them. And I'm going to be in a different emotional space than if we spent

every single Wednesday night together. And we did multiple things together and they were looking at my budget and look at my finances and deep into each other's lives, they'd see whole other dimensions of my life that they could then lovingly speak into, you know, and name. And so, um, I think the organic quote, and by the way, I have a little bit of an emotional allergy to that word organic. I don't like it. So that's I don't, I don't need it. I don't need, I don't know. Yeah. Um, but I just think, you know, I don ever in. But it needs to be a group of people that you're in commitment with, that you're in community with. You live by them, you're seeing them, you're doing life together. And there needs to be both confession of sin where you're voluntarily offering up your brokenness. And there needs to be iron sharpening iron

where you are involuntarily offering up your brokenness and they get the chance to speak into it and help you see your blind spots and help you grow in self-awareness. So I think it's beautiful you had that experience there. And that's amazing. I would just say, why not do it every week? And it'll lose the pizzazz.

It'll lose the emotional high. There'll be weeks when you'd rather just, you know, stay home and watch only murders in the building or whatever. But there is, there is the problem. The problem is, you know, then people go through a crisis and if they haven't done all that non-glamorous, ordinary, boring work of being with other people in community, then all of a sudden they don't have a community around them, you know? And so often we don't realize how much we need community until push comes to shove, you know? What? No, that, I, I've got no pushback. That's, and yeah,

the word again, I don't know. I'm so biased Preston and I'm just bleeding. I'm allergic to buzzwords too. And I don't, I'm not at all tied to that word, but yeah. Um, no, that's super helpful. What, what about, so I'm just going to say, um, what if I'm skeptical or, or highly selective with who I want speaking into my life? Cause if I open up my life for everybody to speak into,

at least in my environment here, I'm going to have people tell me who to vote for. I'm going to have, you know, um, why we should own guns or, or on the other side, whatever, like there's just be all kinds of, it's like, I don't know. You can't speak to my life or weird views on this or that stuff. That was like, I like, I love you. I will, I will hang out with you, whatever. But like, I don't want your spiritual direction. Cause I don't trust it and believe in it. I don't know. Is that so arrogant? I could describe some kinds of people that would speak in my life if I said, hey, whoever is around, just come on over speed. Hey, we live in the same neighborhood. Speak into my life. I'm like, hmm, I don't know.

Be hard. Be hard. Well. Maybe it'd be good. Maybe I do need to vote for Trump or whoever, Biden. I'm certainly not on this podcast to tell you what to do with your life. Okay, I am not in cry. I'm doing really good.

I wasn't even thinking about talking about this. I, I, I, I'm, I guess I'm speaking, I'm thinking back like my last five, 10 years and like church small groups in general and stuff. I feel like I've got a good, fairly good network of, of genuine relationships and ongoing community. I'm not in an organized church small group. I haven't been for several years. But again, the types of groups I have not been in are not really the types of groups you're describing. So it's not like I'm saying, no, John, I don't want to be part of what you're doing. Yeah. It sounds like your experience with small groups or house churches, which are just many church services for some people,

is pretty different than I'm talking about, like a community by rule of life, doing a weekly meal together, confessing their sins to each other, doing high accountability with each other, find it, you know, like we did our fine.

I did up my budget with two of the guys every year and any purchase over a thousand dollars, we got approval from each other for, we're like trying to do the stuff, man, practicing together. And we'd put our phones together in a box and try to turn our phones off once a week and you know we're just trying to do the stuff and imperfectly and messily but you know it was we're really trying

to do it you know the budget what if you have people have very different views that i could see that just imploding again if there's certain people certain people, I would say, oh, no, I think we have a very same, you know, like, I could give examples, maybe offline. But there's things that I choose to spend my money on that somebody else wouldn't and other things that I don't. Like, I've never, I'm almost 50 years old. My wife and I, in my entire lives, have never had a car payment, ever. I drive an 89 Suburban that is destroying the ozone, but that and I, in my entire lives have never had a car payment ever. I drive an 89 Suburban that is destroying the ozone, but that's what, you know, I, you know, but then we'll, we'll, I like to travel and I like to, and a lot of that gets paid for because I get sky miles and stuff.

But like, there's things that I, so if I had somebody that said, Hey, do you think you should take that trip to France? I'm like, well, you're also driving a 2022 with a carpet, you know, like, I don't know if I want you to like, I don't know. That'd be weird for me, dude. Seriously, that'd be challenging to have somebody speaking. There's certain people I would totally trust with that. I can think them off the top of my head. But then many people I'm saying, I don't know if I would agree with you the way you spend

your money, man. Get off my back. Yeah, I think maybe you and I just think about it very differently. I mean, all of this stuff is high risk, high reward. So the deeper you go in vulnerability with people, whether that's confession of sin, talking about emotional challenges in your marriage or family life, opening your budget and financial decisions to people, the deeper you go in vulnerability, the more risk there is for hurt, for mess, for pain, and the more power there is for transformation. So, you know, the deeper those vulnerability layers go, the more selective and discriminating

I am about, I mean, not in the positive sense of the word, the old sense of that word, like about who I would open myself to. And I think there's wisdom to that, being wise as serpents like Jesus said about who you open your vulnerabilities to. Jesus did not certainly open all of his inner life to the whole world,

but to the three had a special relationship to him that even the 12 did not have, and certainly not 70 or the 120. But I think the driving question, you know, is do you, and I know the answer for you is yes, but do you want to be deeply formed over time to become pervaded by the love and the character of Jesus? In which case, if the answer is yes, then that's not going to happen through just listening to cool podcasts like this and reading or writing good books and going to occasional large church services. That is going to require a deeply relational way of being where there are at least a couple of people that are deep into your shadow and your life and you are and so you know

i didn't do my budget with matt and whatever each year and because, I'm just trying to follow some rule. I wanted somebody to like, not let me buy a piece of furniture I wanted. I did it because I just realized that I live in a gross age of materialism and the older I get, the more money I'm making. And I could see it destroy my heart and numb my spirit. And I want somebody to actually push me. Most people as they age, they settle. And so spiritual passion and radicalism that often people feel in their twenties just gets kind of that, that impulse of the spirit gets kind of deadened and numbed over time. And they kind of settle into just a respectable nominal Christian life. I want to be, there's something about my heart soars when I'm around certain godly people who are nonjudgmental, but who are just holier than I am.

And something about, or at least in some area, they are living, whether it's prayer or money or relationship to the poor or trans, they're just living in ways that are more radical than me. My heart soars being around people like that. And I want to find those people because I want them to increasingly radicalize me to Jesus. And when I'm 60, I don't want to be more nominal and boring and American in the adjectival sense. I want to be, you know, I want to be becoming, I want theosis, man, in old church language.

You know, I want to be beautiful. I want Jesus in me and permeating me. And I'm so far from that right now. And so I just don't want to waste my life on superficial relationships. I want to find people that are godlier than me, that will lovingly, just if nothing else, by proximity and way of example, will expose my shadow, help me face my sin, be a confessor to love me and forgive me when I do sin and deepen my radicalization to Jesus, you know? Yeah.

And I just, that, you know, that just requires the mundane, unglamorous work of doing life with other people. I want to, I almost said I agree with all that. Let me back up and say, I mean, I hope I would want to say all of that. I hope anybody claims to be a Christian listening would say, yes, I either desire that or should desire it. And the aspects I don't desire are on me. I guess I, to translate that into, I'm sorry,

just keep getting hung up on the finance thing. To say, okay, all the believers that go to my home church here in Boise within a square mile, those are the people that are going to help me do my budget. That's where I'm like. Well, I'm not saying within a square mile. That's the utopian thing. But isn't that the the you gathered together in

small groups i can't do that i live up in the santa monica mountains now in la nobody lives within a square mile everybody's like an hour away so you know so it's all i'll give and take here's a paradigm that i find helpful so i mentioned dunbar's principle earlier is a sociologist evolutionary psychologist from oxford University who studied human groupings. And his theory, which is a theory is still widely accepted and respected. There's a bunch of other ones that kind of land very similar. So he basically argues that we have relationships in four layers based on group size. So the smallest kind of inner circle or inner ring would be what he calls your intimate. So this is one to five people max that you can be his language, not mine, but intimate with. And he doesn't mean

sexually, but just emotionally. That's handpicked, right? No, he doesn't say that. He's just saying, you can, I mean, for most of us it would be, but it could be, could be not hand. I mean, it could be a parent. It could be a family member. Those aren't handpicked, you know, but yes, I guess who we expose our vulnerabilities to is a volitional decision. You have a choice in deciding who those five are. Yeah, sure. Yes, yes. Yes, that's not my point.

My point is just there are the different layers. So this would be for most people, it would be like their spouse if they're married, their best friend, maybe one sibling if they're close, maybe a therapist or mentor or spiritual director, you know, or just a couple like really close friends that have been together for a long time or something like that. So one to five people, that's the max amount of people that can completely know you at the deepest level, know your shadow that you can have deep empathy for. Like if they get fired, you experience it as if practically as if you got fired almost, you know, um, or whatever, because you're so tight. The next layer would be your friends, which would be, there are differing theories. Uh, I think Dunbar says 12 to 15. Some people want to push that

number as high as 30. This would be in my, in my paradigm, this is your table community. These are the people that you do life with. You eat meals together. You do the one another's in the new Testament with you're in each other's lives. You're helping each other, raise your kids. You're dropping food off for each other. When, you know, you're in the hospital or sick or have a baby, you're there in a crisis for each other. You're helping each other make decisions when people need sounding boards and help with discernment, which is a big part, I think, of community is discernment together. And then your third layer is what he's famous for,

150, which he says is the max number of people that we can be in relationship with. Now that's a median number. So some people might have a much smaller capacity than that. Some people might have more. So maybe the range is 120 to 180, but around 150 people is really the max that any one person can have a relationship with. So, and he also argues it's the optimal organizing side for human organ, for dynamics so if you look at the average village size in much of the indigenous world much of the developing world today through kind of medieval villages in europe it was all right around 150 people you look at military units the world over ancient modern eastern western they all have this kind of unit size. It's kind of

the optimal organizing side for communities, which is why Chris has built his whole on Dunbar's principle. We won't let the church get larger than this number for optimal, for optimization. And then the fourth layer would be like, you can call it whatever you want, but it would be like your tribe. So for, you know, a lot of larger churches, like the Sunday experience is this fourth layer, or it might be the church of Jesus, or it might be the democratic party or the Republican party or your sports team or your sexual identity and where you are in the flag or whatever. It could be anything, but some kind of larger group of people that you don't actually even know, or you barely know them at all, but you develop a sense of identity and purpose from this larger group,

a sense of vision and call, a sense to give your life away to something larger. The implications of this kind of four-part theory or these four rings of relationship, I think for discipleship are really profound because we need relationships at all four levels. profound and because we need relationships at all four levels, but the greatest, when it comes to formation, like if you really want to be spiritually formed to be more like Jesus, almost all of our deepest change, growth, healing, transformation happens in the first two layers. You're one to five intimates and you're 15 or so friends. Like that's where, that's where most of the deepest relation, you know, the relational context where most deep change and healing and growth occurs. And so those are two layers, whether it's through a small group at

your church, or you just start having people over to your house, you know, or you're doing meals together, or you're living by a rule of life together, you're practicing Sabbath together, or you're serving the poor together, or all of the above, or whatever. Those layers, I think, for many people are the missing layers in their experience of church. And because they're the hardest for a church to architect. So a church like Bridgetown can work really hard to try to create spaces for this to happen. But they're really, really hard to socially engineer from the outside. They're much more organic in your language. But organic doesn't mean, in my mind, non-committal, non-regular.

It can still mean committed, regular, mundane, but these two kind of more intimate layers are just really hard to have a church organized for you. But they're really essential, I think, to all spiritual formation. Just my opinion, my thoughts, how I view the world. That's super helpful. And yeah, and I got to let you go. I mean, I'm taking you over an hour. Instead of organic, what I want to say is, and again, this could be debunked in five seconds because I haven't argued for it. It's just kind of where my mind goes. Non-prefabricated, meaning rather than saying at seven to nine on Thursday nights, we're going to do this, this, we're going to meet at this time, we're going to do this, and everything's kind when it's just completely inverted. You, you hang out with the people and then you kind of build whatever things and rhythms and stuff around the relationships that are already naturally, uh, developing. Yeah. And that's not, that's not even, again,

that's not, I just, I just feel like when the thing is already kind of pre-planned Christians just get into Christianese mode and they fall into Bible study mode. And, uh, I don't know, it's just, it's hard for authentic relationships to happen in my anecdotal experience. But again, that, that part of that's too leadership too. I mean, you get the right, you get a weird, awkward leader that doesn't know how to cultivate. What's the plan? Yeah. If the plan is like, we're going to eat together, we're going to confess our sins. We're going to have deep conversation. We're going to, you know, maybe the issue isn't something being pre-planned. I don't share the American hyper, I think really unhealthy allergy to organizing structure.

I don't think that spontaneous and free flowing is better than planned and committed. I'm more interested in depth than I am in spontaneity versus structure you know I don't think I yeah no it's good that's good I don't think I'm necessarily saying the structures yeah I don't know what I'm saying I think you're right through good things if you hear nothing I I'm not trying to be directive at all with you, my dear friend. As your friend, I would say it sounds like you had a really amazing experience very recently with some meaningful people that you love. Well, that's two or three days a week with a very similar pool of people. So yeah,

there is a lot of ongoing... Sometimes we'll just go play volleyball in the backyard. Sometimes we have, you know, whatever, we'll just eat a meal. Other times, there's one time when we just did this full on, gosh, we had like probably 30 people and we did the most beautiful communion with real bread, real wine. And we did communion. I remember it was a little awkward for people because they didn't sign, they didn't plan on it. I just said, Hey, we're all believers. We're having a meal. Let's remember the Lord's death. And it did. It was awesome.

What's your Myers-Briggs type? If you don't mind me asking on live internet, whatever. I don't know what I am. I'm an Enneagram. I'm either a 5'1", or a 9", or salted with a little bit of 3", but not too much anymore. I don't know. I'm thinking more through the theory of myers-briggs you know robert mcholland and others have written beautifully about how our personality preferences are preferences they're not okay you know biological

set in stone and much of spiritual maturity looks like moving beyond our preferences to places of greater balance, uh, health, maturity, flexibility. So, or like in the Myers Briggs theory,

like you strike me as a high P, which means you're, are you more spontaneous, more free flowing, like to kind of keep your options open a little bit more. Maybe. Yeah. Uh, high J I'm a, I'm a super high J is like very strong. more free flowing like to kind of keep your options open a little bit more maybe yeah uh hi jay i'm a super high jay is like very structured planned organized like if i have a day off before the day off comes i like to plan out the day off you know um like this how i want to spend this

block of time then i want to do this whereas my wife will just wake up on her day off and experience the day as it comes she's super super high P. So there's no conflict. I'm somewhere in between. My individual identity is so wrapped up in my family. And because I'm pretty flexible guy to me, it's like whatever the needs are of the day. If my wife just needs a day at home, totally fine being at home. If she needs adventure, yeah, let's go on a big hike and kill a bear or something, you know? And, um, yeah's stuff you say when you live in idaho that's amazing uh no is that no way you gotta meet my wife yeah sure um my point there is breston is you know the the growth curve for me is i'm an introvert so it's toward other people and i'm a highlyvert, so it's toward other people. And I'm a highly structured person,

so it's toward being more free-flowing, spontaneous, accepting interruptions, rolling with the punches, not going according to my plan and being okay with that. Whereas the growth for other people is toward more structure, more commitment, more mundanity, you know? And so we all have our own path to follow toward maturity and that's why i bring that up sometimes move move toward the less comfortable and not yeah toward yeah yeah introverted don't move toward introversion move toward people yeah or both i

mean you can move toward both but yeah i just think it's a helpful lens to think about. The problem is when we only think about our spirituality, our way of following Jesus through the lens of preference, then we can often just deepen our narcissism rather than be more freed of it over time. So, you know, there's, there's a, there's deep desires of our heart for union with God for transformation that, you know, are below our personality preference desires. Those are the desires we have to get in touch with because often, not always, but often they are intention or conflict with our personality preferences. And so that's where we just need to be very, I think, in tune with our deepest desires, which are relational. They're desires for love, desire to be in relationship with God and deep relationships with other people, to become people pervaded by goodness, to become like Jesus.

For most Christians, those are genuinely the deepest desires. like Jesus, like for most Christians, like those are genuinely the deepest desires. But often our life architecture is not intentionally chosen for those deepest desires to become reality. It's chosen more for us to just live a standard American way of life. Absolutely. And I love the older you get, the more of a challenge that is. Just get tired and comfortable and exhausted spiritually, mentally, physically. So I love, man, thank you. No idea what you're talking about. No idea.

Thank you, John Mark. So I'm going to let you go. The book is Practicing the Way, Be with Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did. A lot of our conversation is somehow related, growing out of intersecting with that book. So I encourage people to check it out, Practicing the Way with John Mark Comer. Thanks so much, brother. Love you so much. Respect. I love you, man. I'm so grateful for your work. Recommended one of your books just a couple of

days ago. I'm just so grateful for you and love chatting to you. this show is part of the converge podcast network