Jawbones 4 U

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. This is behind the message. In this podcast. We take you behind what we teach here at Westside. I'm Ben Fleming. That's Lindsey Parnell, and that's Evan Earwicker. Hi, Ben, all the way over there. How are you? How are you guys? Status check. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Doing good. Feeling Summer's here. [00:00:27] Speaker A: Status check. [00:00:28] Speaker C: Status check. Yeah. Summer is here. It's changing my life. [00:00:31] Speaker A: Really? [00:00:32] Speaker C: Yeah. I feel like a new human being. [00:00:33] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Okay, good. [00:00:35] Speaker C: Why? He's not for the worst. [00:00:36] Speaker B: Changing my life. [00:00:37] Speaker C: Everything's terrible. [00:00:39] Speaker A: No, I mean, my first thought is, like, all right, we got to figure out how to occupy the kids. We got to get them in the right spot. There's, like, a little extra stress out of the routine. So that was my reaction. But you're talking, like, boats and 80 [00:00:50] Speaker C: degrees sun and shorts. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Yes. I'm in between those two things. Those two summer things. The weather's perfect. We have this window before it gets smoky. Love it. Outdoor in the yard. Everything is great. And there's this pressure to figure out the summer routine and keep the kids from losing their minds. Jack has been dealing with LEGO anxiety. [00:01:20] Speaker A: Lego anxiety. [00:01:20] Speaker B: What does that tell me about LEGO anxiety? So I think he envisioned the summer being all about Legos. He's really into Legos, and so he was going to sell this one LEGO set on ebay to buy the LEGO set he now wants. And when we went to post it and realized how little it would get on ebay, it set his whole summer off. Now, as this summer is not what I was hoping for. So we're dealing with the emotional fallout of, you know, the open market on ebay, Lego pricing on the second hand. [00:01:52] Speaker A: But how much was it gonna fetch? Like 20 bucks? [00:01:55] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's like a big set. It costs over 100, and he was trying to get, like, 90 out of it. Okay, and it's like, 40. Yeah, when you're 8 years old. I mean, $50 is. It's a big deal. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Oh, it's a huge deal. [00:02:07] Speaker B: As he once told me when I bet him $100 on a chess game because I knew I would win. After he lost, he started crying. I felt terrible. This is a bad dad moment. He started crying, and he said, this is probably when he's six. And he said, to you, $100 is nothing, but to me, it's everything. Through the tears, I felt terrible. I felt terrible. I might as well have been like, I'll give you ten thousand. I felt even worse when I took [00:02:34] Speaker A: this hundred dollars but, you know, no, [00:02:37] Speaker B: I didn't take it from him. I just didn't give it to him. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Oh, I see. [00:02:40] Speaker B: That would be horrible. That was a part of the bet. He didn't have any. He had no money on the line. Just crying and shaking. [00:02:51] Speaker A: No, no, no. [00:02:52] Speaker B: He just didn't get the money. That would be a terrible dad moment. [00:02:56] Speaker C: Okay, I'll put you on a payment plan, son. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Get to those chores. Get to Those chores, kid. 2% interest rate. Oh, my goodness. [00:03:06] Speaker A: To have your summer dismantled, though, so quickly. [00:03:10] Speaker C: I know that happened. [00:03:12] Speaker B: That's what we're trying to learn through this is not everything deserves, you know, derailing your whole whole day, your whole week, that kind of thing. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Do you guys have a good feel about what you need to do in order to make sure a lesson is learned with your kids? And the. To find the line between that and. I'm so tired, and I don't want to deal with this right now. [00:03:33] Speaker B: It's. Don't rescue him for me. It's. Don't rescue him. That's the main thing I gotta not do. Because I always want to be like, oh, I'll pitch in the extra 50 and make you stop crying right now, obviously. No, this is good. This is growing up. [00:03:46] Speaker C: $50 is nothing. [00:03:48] Speaker B: But to him, it's everything. [00:03:51] Speaker A: Because I would be like, ebay. Ugh. Sounds exhausting. I'm not doing. I'm not shipping this to somebody. Here's $100. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Exactly. No, these are the things where, as a parent, you just. You just want to skip through it because you're like, this is not a big deal. Just be done with it, and then we're happy again. [00:04:14] Speaker A: And. [00:04:15] Speaker B: But then you skip over the important parts. [00:04:18] Speaker C: Sure do. [00:04:19] Speaker B: I hate it. [00:04:19] Speaker A: I don't want to. I hate troubleshooting. Jovi's got a 3D printer, which is so fun. There's plenty of troubleshooting. Like, the tray's not heated up enough, and so this one didn't work, and you got to start over again and how to get the stuff in and out of it. I just. All the time, I. I hear that thing running, and then I hear it stop, and I'm filled with anxiety. Like, great, I gotta go figure out how to fix this stupid 3D printer for another. Another trinket that my kids don't really want, but they like the idea of it for 20 minutes, and then it takes two hours to make unless it breaks down, and then it takes six hours, and you go, oh, my gosh. Drives me nuts. But Joby's learning to troubleshoot. [00:04:56] Speaker C: That's great. [00:04:56] Speaker A: I think she senses my irritation. Joel senses my irritation. He's like, we can work through this. Dad's. Dad's in a vulnerable spot right now. Take advantage of him. Jovi is like, I sense your irritation, and I'm gonna leave you alone, and I'm gonna try to figure this. So once I did find her, I heard the thing stop. I didn't see Jovi for like another hour and a half. And I came in her room, and she's just crying because she's trying to [00:05:20] Speaker B: figure it out, and she can't figure [00:05:22] Speaker A: it out, and she wanted to leave me alone, which is why she's my favorite child. You know, [00:05:30] Speaker B: the troubleshooting thing is real. I think often, like, anytime we go to hire somebody, you know, on the staff, I'm always in the back of my mind thinking, like, can this person troubleshoot? Because any job doesn't matter if you're in a technical thing or, you know, it's very non technical, creative. Like, troubleshooting is like the whole thing. And anybody that, you know, any kid that doesn't learn that, I think they're at a huge disadvantage. So it's good to maybe not be so angry that they have to troubleshoot. [00:06:00] Speaker A: But your job is the biggest that Lindsay with worship stuff, the troubleshooting, the schedule, people bailing at the last second. [00:06:07] Speaker C: That's true. [00:06:07] Speaker A: The larger church probably doesn't understand this dynamic. There is something about being a worship pastor, and I haven't experienced this in a decade. Saturday afternoon rolls around, and you're waiting for that text message from your drummer or your bassist. That's like, I'm sick. I can't make it. I forgot that I was on. I didn't know. And then Sundays themselves, the troubleshooting of sound stuff and monitors and, you know, [00:06:31] Speaker C: well, I'm thankful for my team because I. The technical side of things has always been my Achilles heel. Like, I. I don't do well with that. So that's why Justin's on my team. Evan is. Gets roped back onto my team often, so. So, yeah, there is that side of things, but there's. Yeah, the scheduling, the schedule's just a giant puzzle piece you have to figure out every month. But whenever I would wake up and I would see I had a text message, because I'd wake up early on Sundays and I would see a text message, my stomach would sink, and I would just know, someone's bailing. It's gonna be an acoustic morning. [00:07:12] Speaker A: Yeah, acoustic. You Gotta change the set list. You gotta take out a song that was really heavy with. Oh, my gosh, I do not miss that. [00:07:19] Speaker B: I remember the. Probably. Probably where I personally bottomed out in ministry. And maybe the church bottomed out. It was January 2021. We'd just been through Covid year. Things were still wacky and rough. And remember Omicron, a variant of. And everybody got sick. So, like, most of the staff was out with COVID I know this Sunday, most of the staff, but the worship team just failed. They were all sick. And so it ended up being me and a. So I'm an acoustic guitar. You remember this? [00:07:52] Speaker A: Remember that? Yes. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Me and a bass player. And so I should have. [00:07:58] Speaker A: I should. [00:07:59] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:08:00] Speaker C: You. [00:08:00] Speaker B: Were you preaching that day? I think you were preaching. Yeah, but I should have just told the bass player, like, I'll just do this acoustic. [00:08:06] Speaker C: Yes. [00:08:07] Speaker B: Instead, we tried to fake like we had a team. So we used tracks. [00:08:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:10] Speaker B: The bass player and me. And even during. I'm like, this is just sad. Like, if I walked in here for the first time, I would. I would feel bad for me, you know, that's never what you want as you're leading the church. It's like, is it this pathetic? It was rough. It was rough. So people. [00:08:30] Speaker A: People were in that service. Yeah, right. [00:08:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:32] Speaker B: It was a live service. It was not a good service, but it was a live service. [00:08:36] Speaker C: Wow. [00:08:37] Speaker A: I had. I had forgotten about that. But I can feel the air. [00:08:41] Speaker B: That might have been. That might have been one of the last times I led worship, actually. I know why. I guess Lindsay kicked you off. [00:08:48] Speaker A: That was it. [00:08:48] Speaker C: No, Evan was like, I'm done. I can never do that again. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, we. I think we stepped into the senior pastor shared leadership, like, in April of that year. So it was very soon after. [00:08:59] Speaker A: Months later. There were a few moments like that. Man, I remember you and I doing, like, three teachings in a row to an empty room. I think we were putting them in the can for over the holidays or something like that because everything was closed. And, like, I preached and you preached and I preached, and it was just. We were just preaching to each other. [00:09:18] Speaker B: It was rough. [00:09:18] Speaker A: And every once in a while, I look over and Evan would, like, nod his head or like. Yeah. And it was almost worse when you were, like, encouraging me. It was so nice of you. But to hear, like, this single, solitary, you know, Evan from behind the camera real quick. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Good job. We all know, like, this is not good. This is not good. Content. Oh, and it was terrible. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah. The exhaustion and sadness. [00:09:48] Speaker C: Those days Were terrible. [00:09:49] Speaker A: It was hard. [00:09:50] Speaker C: Yeah, they were terrible. [00:09:51] Speaker A: The empty rooms just got. I remember the first day, it felt new or weird, novel or whatever. Yeah, yeah. There's like eight of us in the room, but, man, that was hard. [00:10:02] Speaker B: Hardest teaching ever makes you grateful. Even on the days when the 8:15 now is a little sleepy or a little smaller than normal. Yeah. We're grateful for every single soul that's in that room. [00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah. There's Nothing even the 11 o' clock can make you earn it for sure. [00:10:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:10:22] Speaker A: They look at you like. I like to think the 11 o' clock looks at me sometimes. It's like, I dare you. I dare you to make this interesting. [00:10:30] Speaker B: What is that dynamic? I think at 9:30 everyone feels like we're in this together. And sometimes the 11 o' clock feels like how I would feel if I was watching from backstage at an event where you're like, you're paying attention, but you don't feel any obligation to participate in the energy of the room, you know, that's what I feel like everyone does sometimes at the 11. Not everybody, but the energy is very different from our middle service to our last service. Very, like every week. You can plan on it. Right. [00:11:00] Speaker A: I just went and preached in Klamath falls. They have two services, the 9 and 11. Same thing. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Tons of energy. And the guy even came to me before he said, hey, man, this 11, I gotta tell you, it's really rough. And it was rough. Same dynamic, though. Same dynamic. [00:11:17] Speaker B: Maybe it's a late service thing. People are like, just bringing a different energy. If you're coming to a late service On Sunday morning, 8:15 is like a [00:11:25] Speaker A: smile and nod group. Like, they're with you. They're not loud, but they're like, oh, this is great. Yeah. You know, 9:30 is into it. Eleven is just like, yeah, we'll see, man. [00:11:35] Speaker C: Jury's still out. [00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So yesterday, our friends Mark and Celeste Strelczyk were sitting right behind us and they own goodies, which is like a longtime central Oregon ice cream shop. And so one of my anecdotes in the sermon was already about ice cream. So I pivoted to the 11, which they were into, to their ice cream shop. And then they had given me a little like, free ice cream cone card. And so I was like, oh, I'm gonna give that out. So with the 11, it was a little quiet. And I grabbed the card and I tried to throw it so the middle rows. And it couldn't have dropped more straight down if I was aiming for my [00:12:17] Speaker A: feet almost went backwards. [00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really bad. But I do think it warmed up the crowd a little bit. [00:12:23] Speaker A: It totally did. [00:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it worked. [00:12:25] Speaker A: And that was. My dorky brain was, you did that and you got this like pop of laughter. And I was like, genius. [00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should. I should fail at physical attempts more often. Just to get the 11 o'. [00:12:39] Speaker C: Clock. [00:12:39] Speaker A: You gotta one up it and you [00:12:41] Speaker B: gotta like, yeah, we won't try that. [00:12:42] Speaker A: It won't work. The 11 will become disinterested in that. [00:12:45] Speaker C: Eventually I'll be like the Three Stooges. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Do you feel the same when you're leading music? [00:12:51] Speaker C: I do up there. I do. The dynamics change from week to week and I don't know what decides it. Part of me wonders if it's the mix in the room. I think that actually goes a really long way. Volume dynamics. If something's a little bit off, it's harder for people to engage. They're distracted. I had a gentleman come up to me after service on Sunday and say, hey, can you just tilt your guitar a different way when you set it down? Because the lights are bouncing off of it and directing into my eyes. And I was like, oh my gosh, yes, of course. But I know that dude was being [00:13:26] Speaker B: blinded the whole service. Yeah. [00:13:29] Speaker C: So I moved it, you guys. And I sat in the 11 and it was doing it to me because I moved it. I'm going to have to take it [00:13:35] Speaker B: off of the stage, I guess. Hey, you could. [00:13:36] Speaker C: I just have to take it with me. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Not have it on the stage. [00:13:39] Speaker C: But stuff that we don't think about. Seats. Sure, sure. [00:13:44] Speaker B: It's a bank of empty seats. You're like, no, this. I always sit in this one. [00:13:48] Speaker C: He. Where did he go? I think he was at the. The 9:30, so it's probably fuller. But all that to say there's so many factors that we. That have nothing to do with us. Right. Like, oh, yeah, we show up. Yeah. It's, you know, the light. The guitar was blinking. [00:14:02] Speaker B: I'll give you that in worship. I think when people are not into it and Ben and I are preaching it has everything to do. [00:14:08] Speaker A: It's just as a bear. [00:14:10] Speaker C: Fair enough. [00:14:11] Speaker A: I'm gonna blame it on the air conditioning. [00:14:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The temp in the room, A loud person next to. Yeah. I don't know. I think there's more factors than just. [00:14:20] Speaker A: It's a living organism. Like a room with all these people with the content. Yeah. The sound mixing, like. And it's never exactly the same over and over and over again, and look no further than a worship practice on a Sunday morning, where you go, I set everything up. It was all in the right places, and now things have physically moved. Something's wrong with the soundboard. That's some kind of magic frustration. You know, it's. It's funny. Yeah. And people show up with different things, and we human beings kind of feed off of that energy together somehow, which, honestly, I kind of enjoy. I enjoy the 11 o' clock more than I ever have, because I. I just see it for what it is, and it feels like a challenge now. And there's something nice about, like, if I get you to laugh or I get you to engage or get you to whatever. I earned that one. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Like, you're not in here. It's true. No one's giving you a freebie. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. You're not giving it away. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And it puts, I think, more emphasis on that moment between worship and preaching, with the hosting and kind of welcoming the crowd. I think that's probably actually one of the most important roles of the day. [00:15:22] Speaker C: Sure. [00:15:23] Speaker B: Because you're setting the energy tone for the. The. The final 30 minutes, maybe more so than in worship, because it's kind of dark, and people can kind of just do their own thing during worship. But in that hosting moment, like, you're. You're asking them for engagement, you know, with you, face to face, and. I don't know. [00:15:45] Speaker A: And there's something about our jobs where it's a lot of the same people. Right. Because we're. We're connected. We're church people, are consistent. I went to the Jim Gaffigan show last week in the. In the amphitheater, and it's so fun to feel the anticipation of a crowd. They are showing up. They're there to see Jim Gaffigan, and he gets a massive head start because they're like, we're excited to be here, and we want you to be funny so bad. You know? And he kind of. You almost kind of have to break that as a comic or an act when people are so excited to, you know, they see us all the time. No, it's not. We're not a big show coming in from out of town or whatever. We're there with the same crowd. I don't know other performers, you know, musicians or whatever that show up with as much consistency to perform to the [00:16:34] Speaker B: same crowd 50 times a year. [00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah. The same group. [00:16:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:37] Speaker A: Nobody does that. No comic plays the same city 50 times a year. Like, it doesn't happen. So there's a very specific dynamic. Maybe it's a little bit closer to like teaching 8th grade or something than it is stand up comedians or musicians. [00:16:50] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and we're not comics. We're not, you know, performers. [00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we're not performers. [00:16:57] Speaker B: And for a comic, you know, they're, they're working on their set, their material, the same jokes for a year before they go on tour. Or they release a special. [00:17:07] Speaker A: A special. [00:17:08] Speaker B: Do a special. So they have one hour of content after working, shopping that in front of crowds for a year. We get one shot, you know, to tell an anecdote or make a point that's memorable and then say, and now we gotta go on to the next one. Throw that one out. You know, it's over. And I'm not complaining. It's just we, we shouldn't ever think of it like, oh, we're just like comics or we're just like performers. Like, no, no, no, no. Preaching is not that. [00:17:33] Speaker A: And there's benefits to it too. The relational thing. You can have a little bit of a shorthand in some areas. Maybe there's some trust that people will have with you because of that long term relationship. That's actually a fun thing to teach with. Yeah, it's just different. [00:17:48] Speaker C: It's. [00:17:49] Speaker A: It's a different kind of job. Yeah. Maybe a teacher teaching. You teach history in high school or something like that. Maybe that's the closest thing that's every day. Maybe that's even harder. I don't want to take any of the teachers class away. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I would. Don't mess with the teachers, man. We can't do life without them. So you don't want to make them mad, that's for sure. God bless our teachers. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Oh, you had a teacher with you this weekend? [00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah, brought Brant up on stage. So we did a recording in this room talking about the effect of AI on isolation and kind of the dehumanizing effect that, you know, shifting our relational interaction to AI and platforms and what effect that has. And so we recorded a conversation that showed a clip of that at the A15. And as we're watching it, I'm sitting on the front row with Brandt. We're watching me and Brandt talk and I'm like, I suppose we could probably talk in person since we're here. And so the next few services did that on stage and I thought it was, it went really well. And I think people enjoyed just shaking up, you know, the format a little bit. We always do monologue preaching, which is great, but yeah, to have that conversation with somebody who has credentials, not just educational, but he's involved in AI work. He's developed this pilot platform for. Called Bible Reflect. It's a Bible study tool that uses. I'll get it wrong. Uses Socratic method, as in Socrates. Right. I'm looking at Justin. He's nodding. Okay. But it helps you. It asks good questions as you're studying the Bible. And actually he's now funded by a grant from the American Bible Society, which they own all the translations in English, which is crazy anyway. But they're partnering with him to launch this tool that I think he's piloted with his university students. But I think helping. Giving people a sense of like he knows what he's talking about. Let's talk about the effect of this. [00:19:54] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:19:55] Speaker B: I think it carried some authority and it was good. [00:19:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:19:59] Speaker A: More authority than Lindsey or I would bring to the conversation, I think. [00:20:02] Speaker C: Not on AI. [00:20:04] Speaker A: You don't have a lot of big thoughts about AI. [00:20:06] Speaker C: I don't. I probably should have bigger ones, but I don't. I'll leave that to Brandt. To Dr. Brandt. Yeah. Also, our church loves Brandt. Love pulling him up on the stage with you. That's never gonna be. It's always gonna be a win. [00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:20:19] Speaker A: His. Was it a Q score? His Q score around here? His. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:23] Speaker A: His lovability is way higher than any of the rest of us. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah. He's an easy guy to love. Yeah. [00:20:28] Speaker A: And just the breadth of knowledge that he has. I mean, everything from. He kind of came on staff as the Bonhoeffer scholar, and then when he told us about this AI project he was working on, I was like, what are you doing? How do you. How do you keep going from what feels to me like all these different camps, but then when you talk to [00:20:43] Speaker B: him a little more. [00:20:44] Speaker A: It's not necessarily different camps. There's this expertise, this love for scripture that he brings to the table, and I just appreciate the level of clarity he even brought to that. Both of you brought to the story of the Tower of Babel, a story that can feel so weird to me. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Sure. [00:21:02] Speaker A: I've taught it a couple times with a level of discomfort, listen to people teach about it. And I'm always left feeling like I don't. I don't know, guys. I don't know if this is what this means. Can we just call it a weird story and maybe just leave it alone? But you talking about tribalism making a lot less about. Let's. This. This discussion about how we got all the different languages in the world or something like that. And more of a. A conversation about isolation, about building something that tricks ourselves into believing that we are gods into ourselves. You got into that conversation really fast. And I think that made. Made the story more than just palatable. It was interesting and Christ centered. [00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And last year when we did this kind of Old Testament story by story, we were really looking for the lens of how we see Jesus in the story. This year it's a little bit of a pivot. Not that we're not looking for Jesus, but the pivot is to more of a theological. Like, what is the theological lesson that tells us something about God and something about us? Like you shared in the first week, I think that's really helpful when you get to a Babel story where in the narrative In Genesis 11, God is speaking and he's having a conversation. It's a Trinitarian conversation, because he's like, let us go down. But the conversation is strange because he's saying, like, we can't stop them. If we let them build this tower, they'll get to heaven and we need to stop this. And so it's a little weird. Like, what does that mean? Is God scared of that? And that somehow these people are going to get into heaven through height of a tower? Like, weird stuff, right. So yesterday I wasn't going to make it about the mechanics of the tower building or any of that. It was more about what is the dynamic between humanity and God, where we always want to do our own thing and it always leads to these pitfalls. And yesterday I focused on exclusion and isolation as some. Some elements that we see in the Tower of Babel story that God is against because he has a different vision for humanity. And the humanity, the eternal vision, is what I pointed to yesterday, which is, you know, this, the image of heaven, where it's every tribe and tongue and language worshiping together, not isolated, connected to one another, connected to God. And I think you're going to talk about it in a couple weeks in the Adam and Eve story about free of shame, free of concealment, in this perfect relationship restored with God. And we are always building towers to try to get away from it. [00:23:38] Speaker A: And those stories are connected in that way. [00:23:39] Speaker C: Right? [00:23:39] Speaker A: Because the idea is, no, if you eat from this fruit, you'll be like God. And it's the same temptation in the Tower of Babel to seek after something that we were never meant to achieve in the first place. You know, and we've learned now through science that you can keep going upward. You know, we've launched space shuttles, we've done the whole thing and still haven't quite figured out a way to get our way into heaven through such feats, which leads us to believe, like a lot of other things do, maybe we weren't intended to be gods anyway, and maybe there's something better for us in our connectivity to the God. Yeah. What a beautiful. That story just. It just works so well in that way. I think we talk about a lot kind of church difficulty or interpretation of scripture that we found frustrating. And I think anytime we come to some of these stories, I'm just. I feel myself being exhausted. Like, ah, tower Bible, here we go again with some more of this stuff that is just such a pure grounding, foundational understanding of how to read scripture and how to interpret that particular portion. And hopefully a relief. I think all of us are tempted to be gods unto ourselves. So the moral is relieving to me. [00:24:54] Speaker B: Yeah. It reminds me of the story that when the Soviets sent the first man to space, Yuri Gorgon. Justin, you should know. Gregarin. Yeah, gregarious. When Yuri went into space and then he came back and people were like, did you see heaven? Like, did you see God? You know, people don't know. Great question at this time, like, yeah, is heaven just right above the atmosphere and basically towing the Soviet line? For sure. Was like, no, there's nothing. It's emptiness. And then C.S. lewis responds, and this is because this is what 1950s space race. And C.S. lewis responds, it's not as though God is in the apartment above us. And if you can just get high enough, you can see him. And then he uses this famous anecdote of if Shakespeare wants to be known by one of his characters, by Hamlet, there's only one way he can do that. He has to write himself into the story. Hamlet has no other way to access the author or the playwright. And what a beautiful picture of incarnation. How we get to see God is not by building towers of achievement and accomplishment. If we can get high enough and get powerful enough, we can see God and be like God. And this was kind of the landing point of yesterday's message was God's done the work to reveal himself, and it's downward. He wrote himself into the play. He showed up as a humble, vulnerable, limited child. And that's how we get to see God. No other way. And, you know, this kind of incarnational theology, like, it's the best. It's just the best. It preaches well, it reminds us why we're all here. Um, it cuts against this, like, up into the right prosperity gospel thing when you realize, like, no, God meets us in the low spots of our lives and our failures and our limitations. That's where grace is expressed. I do think that's what we crave, especially in an age where, you know, limits are getting disposable. Like, you can just opt out of your limits if you want, you know, and that's never been the way get to get close to God. [00:27:13] Speaker C: You know, it also does something like the desire to be God. Then you'll be like God. You know, we hear that in the garden, the Babel story. That's really interesting to me because what is it in us? Because you're saying, really, we flourish and thrive as humans when we acknowledge this limitation that we are not God, that we are fallible, finite, weak, et cetera. But then there's something in us. It's like, nah, I. I could be God, you know, and that juxtaposition is really fascinating. And there's something in us that, though it is the most helpful to acknowledge limitations in doing so. We have to be vulnerable and admit that we, in fact, are not God. But there's something in us that fights against that. I don't know. It's probably in our current context, what does that look like, the desire to be God and probably just autonomy, control and that, you know, those kinds of things. And really to flip the script and say, well, actually it's embracing our vulnerability and acknowledging our limitations that, that you can flourish because then God, there's space, there's room, you can see God and know God in that way. That's such a fascinating contrast there. [00:28:28] Speaker B: It's original sin. It's be like God, like you're saying. I think it's pride. Right. That's the root, is it now? And Henry Nouwen that talks about that every, every sin really is rooted in pride. And I think it's true. Like, it's this desire, whether it's Babel, where they say, let's make a name for ourselves, or as Adam and Eve in the garden, saying, we'll be. We'll have the knowledge and we'll be like God. So much where we go wrong is just rooted in this. If I just do this, actually I'll be better than. Than this limited person I am now. And yeah, yeah. I think that the whole gospel story is about laying that down and taking up something else. [00:29:10] Speaker A: It kind of comes in that package of exceptionalism, which is, I think, why we fall for it. No matter how many generations we are now refer the stories, the fairy tales exist to warn us of these prides that we have. And saying, no, you can't actually go there, but most people can't. But I can. I bet if I build it tall [00:29:30] Speaker B: enough and I climb high enough, and [00:29:31] Speaker A: I do enough, enough, you give me all the money. Let me show you what I would do instead of, you know. And these stories tell us over and over and over again. No, this is how people fall every single time. And we don't want to listen to that because we have to believe for whatever reason, that we are built a little bit different. But there's a greater mystery at hand that we need to understand and our simple achievement in order getting us higher and higher to reach the apartment above us. Did you guys see Neil DeGrasse Tyson had a video that went out there. He's a physicist, right? He's. And he was just talking about. It was mostly just funny. He just says, it's just funny how we always point to God, you know, our heaven, as if this ball isn't moving and spinning. And then, you know, and what if I'm in Australia and I point up and, you know, he's got up there or down there, depending on what time of day it is and where at in the galaxy. I was like, yeah, that's great. That's so funny. And just a simple reminder of just these little things that we think about as, as truths that God is up there in the heavens somewhere. These are all just kind of. It's like a baby talk version of how God's actually interacting and being with us. This is just kind of the best we could do. Best we could do is build a tower, an AI model, shoot ourselves into space. And there's so much more. [00:30:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think we're always going to have to have ways that we can visualize or put words to things that are invisible and indescribable, you know, and so that is. And maybe that is the job of anyone who is ever called to preach is to help put words to indescribable things and help give people things to latch onto where they can say, you know, that's not it. But that reminds me of it. You know, it's these. Not to over quote Louis, but it's like these memories of a land we've never been to, and there's something that echoes in the soul. And I think this is why story is so powerful, right? Because it awakens in us those things that remind us that we weren't made for this we weren't made for here. Even that concept is like really we were all born here. Like, what do you mean? We're not. But it's this deeply, you know, spiritual, rooted in scripture value that there's eternity written on our hearts and that, that he has made us for eternity and made him for. Made us for himself. And it's all really, really abstract. And so it's our job, right, to like help people make it less abstract. [00:32:09] Speaker A: Maybe you're describing imagination, right? [00:32:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:12] Speaker A: And maybe Brandt covered all this in his class, you know, the Christian imagination with CS Lewis stuff. It creates such a high value on how well can we imagine and how much work are we actually going to put into the art of such a thing? And makes me sad that there was and maybe for some people still is this huge era of time in the church where such imaginations were sinful. You know, this very like puritanical idea of how we're supposed to behave and think in faith. When the Lewis's Tolkiens of the world are trying to tell us of wizards and witches and then this isn't evil, but it reminds me of evil, you know, and this isn't God, but it reminds me of a piece of a thing that I've heard of, a rumor about who God, you know, like. And we're trying to tell these stories so that we might have a passing glance at what is really a truth that we won't understand until someday in the future. [00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And like with the Narnia books, I think much is made of the Christian allegory, which is pretty on the nose, you know, like Aslan dies to save Edmund, you know, like, it's very clear cut and that's great. That has explained redemption and the cross, I think, to generations of kids growing up for sure. But when I read those books even now as an adult and you get to even the Last Battle and the description of going through the door into the same place, but it's different and it's bigger. I'm like, that's where Lewis is like just genius is in trying to express heaven in a way that's completely unlike anything you would just, you know, even in scripture, the city and all that is obviously the root of it. But to capture the imagination in story like Lewis does, talking about that is something that is just, it's next level so much better than allegory to me because of how it makes you feel and it awakens something even, you know. And you walk outside here and you're like, you can imagine what it would be like to pass through a door and be in the same place, but it's bigger and it's. It's more expansive on the inside than it on the out and all that. I think it's just. It's the brilliance of storytelling that is deeply spiritual, I would say. [00:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And he does it in, like, a meta way in the silver chair. Right. Are you a Narnia person? [00:34:40] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. [00:34:42] Speaker A: I just want to make sure we weren't nerding out over here. [00:34:43] Speaker B: She's like, I've never heard of them. What are you talking about? [00:34:45] Speaker C: Playing solitaire. [00:34:49] Speaker A: You're sitting too close to us now. What were you gonna say? [00:34:52] Speaker C: Oh, Zond, I just started a book of his. He just came out with it. I don't remember the name, but he talks a lot about wonder, and he actually is quoting a lot of the CS Lewis references that you're talking about, Evan. About how wonder is actually a necessity for human beings because we were not meant for this place. And when you lose wonder, you lose an integral part of our faith and our human existence. And thinking of ways through. Through our preaching or storytelling or whatnot to inspire wonder again, I think is a huge, maybe invitation for us and reminder for us, like, oh, man, wonder is a really big piece. And things that come with wonder is relinquishing the need for control or certainty or explaining the Tower of Babel. Like, there just has to be a sense of wonder when we talk about these things. It's a part of how we were made and a necessary component of our faith and how we experience it. [00:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And over the years, I've heard people come out against, like, preachers attacking other preachers for using stories or telling stories and personal stories. And I always. I've just never bought it, but now I think when I hear those kind of things, it makes me mad because you are actually taking. You're basically deflating the gift of preaching and proclaiming by stealing from it the very mechanism that Jesus himself used all the time. If you don't capture people's imagination, and that's some point of pride in your own preaching or your own life. I think you've missed the point of what it is to invite people into the story of God, you know? So it makes me mad now. I'm not just like, oh, maybe they're wrong. I'm like, no, I hope they never preach again, you know, or whatever. But really, I'm going to die on the hill of storytelling is a necessity in preaching. [00:36:51] Speaker A: Right. It's Absolutely a necessity. And I'm somebody that loves stories. I love telling stories which people have heard when I preach, I love hearing stories. And that's what's always kind of kept me in that because I, you know, through self examination, like, oh, am I trying to be too funny or too whatever and this is too much. And you know, that's a worthy conversation. But where I come back to the comfort of continuing to bring story into teaching is that that's what I want to hear so bad. Anytime you guys are up there, hear from somebody else, like, tell me a story. There's vulnerability and humor. There's connectivity that happens inside of those things that really cements the point of what you're trying to make. But not even that. It cements like this greater truth that the Lewis's of the world do so well through something that almost how Christians talk about it, it can sound like scripture and how we relate to the Narnia books or Perilandria or whatever. Like it can really connect to us in that way because it's through this magnificent storytelling, the wonder that's created from it that absolutely matters. We have to keep doing that. Cultures since forever have been telling stories in order to not just teach lessons, but to help us understand who we are. [00:38:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:10] Speaker A: Oh, it's central. [00:38:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that. [00:38:11] Speaker A: I'm so glad you said that because I hear people say that it always comes off. Maybe it's because I feel like I'm being personally attacked. Like, very snooty to me. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Shut up. [00:38:20] Speaker A: Don't tell me I want to hear stories. [00:38:22] Speaker B: That's literally all I want. [00:38:23] Speaker A: Like, I remember laying underneath the grand piano in our living room as a kid and listening to like my aunts and uncles and my dad tell stories and laugh at the card table. Like, it's just cemented into my brain the value of those moments. And that's, I think when the church is at its best, it's a version of that. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Because the alternative is like, oh, no, we only, you know, walk through the Greek and the original language and okay, that's, that's fine. But there's so many people that are going to get captured and brought in and see themselves as part of it when you capture his imagination. And so not that it's only story. And we never exegete anything. We never examine anything. We never. No, of course not. But it's both. And I will give you this, there are plenty of preachers, and I've been one of them, that tell bad stories or irrelevant stories or draw the Wrong point. You know, like, I got you. Yeah, don't do that. Stupid stories need not apply or whatever, but. But yeah, stories have to be part of it. [00:39:30] Speaker A: I was talking about with you guys the other day about helping my kids with this. You know, sometimes jovial, like, go to tell a story, and she'll just kind of shoot over here, and I'll be like, hey, hey, hey, hey. You only got my attention for so long here. You got to get better at this. You got to get to the punchline. These three details didn't actually matter, you know? And also, they weren't funny little rabbit trails. Like, you got to get to. Have you guys ever done that? Am I the only one mean to my kids? You gotta shore this thing up. [00:39:57] Speaker C: I haven't done that yet. I might get there, though, cuz Luca really likes to tell us her dreams. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's tedious. [00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah, but that girl can talk for 15 minutes about her dreams and, like, oh, I can't remember, maybe. And I am just like, oh, my God, I might get there, Ben. I'm not there yet, but I might get there. Get to the point. [00:40:18] Speaker B: I appreciate that you're. Once the kids start droning on that you're actually still listening enough to say you're not making a point. Yeah, like, if Jack will start chattering, I'll probably tune out. I don't even know if he's made a point or not. Again, I feel like this is parent therapy for me today. [00:40:37] Speaker A: It matters to me probably a little too much when they do that. I look at them and I don't want to laugh at something that's not fun funny that they say, you know. And when something is funny, I want to pay that off for them. True. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Very true. Peace. [00:40:51] Speaker A: And again, it's probably just something for me. I've found so much value in how I fit into different groups, with how well I can tell a story or make a group laugh. And when I see my kids just, like, flailing at it, I'm like, you got to figure this out. You're never going to have any friends. [00:41:08] Speaker B: I showed. I showed Jack the. That clip I sent you guys from Arrested Development with Baby, you got a stew going. Carl Weathers as himself telling Tobias how to scrap together. Stew with the. Anyway, so I showed that clip, and Jack thought it was the funniest thing. And then so he quoted it, and I laughed really hard. And I'm like, jack, that'll never not be funny. So now he pulls it out all the time. It's a little Less funny now. But I appreciate. He knows, like, okay, that's the line. So he goes, baby, you got a stew going. Yeah, it's great. You know, and you want to reward. You really want to reward the. The meta humor. Not just eight, eight year old stuff. So that's great. Maybe you got a stew going. [00:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great when they really attach themselves to it. I've shown Joel a few Key and Peele sketches. So one with the substitute teacher enunciating everybody's names improperly. You know what I'm talking about? [00:42:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:06] Speaker A: He's calling out roll and he's like balak instead of Blake. And. [00:42:11] Speaker B: And hey, Aaron. [00:42:12] Speaker A: Aaron. That's the famous one. [00:42:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:14] Speaker A: You up a Ron. And Joel will do that one. You done messed up a Ron. No, like in a practice feel, someone laugh and laugh. [00:42:23] Speaker B: It's great. They pick up on everything. [00:42:25] Speaker A: Monty Python and the Holy Grail's got to be next, I think. I haven't watched that in forever, but yeah, I kind of want to show Joel that maybe I should rewatch and [00:42:33] Speaker B: make sure we made the mistake. When we were kids, I think it was my oldest brother wanted to watch it on Christmas day with my grandmother. [00:42:43] Speaker A: Oh, good. [00:42:45] Speaker B: And, you know, there's just a lot of stuff in there. It's not wild. Inappropriate. It's definitely inappropriate. On Christmas morning with your grandma. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Look back through it. [00:42:53] Speaker B: Yeah, Grandma. Yeah, with grandma. [00:42:56] Speaker A: It's not a Christmas movie. [00:42:57] Speaker B: No, no. [00:42:59] Speaker A: And there's some of this. Probably a little over the head, though. The. The peasants just like raking up the muck that are talking about governmental systems and. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:08] Speaker A: You know, you don't. You don't elect kings and all this stuff that it's just. I laugh so hard. Come see the violence inherent in the system. But Joel will love the French guy on top of the. The castle. [00:43:23] Speaker C: Yeah, well, who doesn't love that? [00:43:25] Speaker A: So fantastic. [00:43:26] Speaker C: Hilarious. [00:43:26] Speaker B: Gosh. Yeah. It's okay. Next couple weeks, you're on Ben and talk through a couple more Samson Adam stories. [00:43:34] Speaker C: Yep. [00:43:35] Speaker A: Samson. Another one that was taught when. [00:43:38] Speaker B: This is the idea of the whole series, though. [00:43:41] Speaker A: It's like, I remember hearing it taught. And even as a kid being like, these are weird lessons. I'm not sure or what this. The text is actually after. I might not have said that, but yeah. Samson, Adam and Eve. How we see ourselves in the creation story, I think maybe more on the nose than others. Tells us the nature of God in the nature of ourselves. It's very spot on. So it's exciting to preach. [00:44:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I love. I love being able to tell these as theological storytelling. You know, I think that really frees us to not have to, you know, when you're speaking this week on Samson, to be like, okay, what kind of. What kind of violence and bloodshed to actually kill that number of Philistines or that was. Doesn't he kill a bunch of Philistines? [00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah, the jawbone. [00:44:30] Speaker B: Yeah, the jawbone, Right. Like to not have to go into the mechanics of that, but to realize, like, why was this story told? [00:44:37] Speaker A: Why. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Why did they need a hero? And then what do we learn about his missteps and mistakes and what happened? You know, So I. I just love being able to go for the point of the stories without having to get bogged down, maybe in defending the mechanics of the episodes within the story. [00:44:56] Speaker A: You know, Donkey's jawbone hold up. [00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:58] Speaker A: Over that amount of time, over hundreds of murders. [00:45:02] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a lot of bludgeoning with a single jawbone. [00:45:07] Speaker A: You know, that's how it was taught a lot. [00:45:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:09] Speaker A: Maybe not specifically that, but there was this. How amazing how many people he killed. Or, you know, you're teaching with Babel. You probably could have gone to. Straight to NASA, you know, and talked about the height of the structure and atmospheric, you know, whatever. And just to skip all that is such a really. I'm glad we're that kind of church, I guess to be self congratulatory again. That's for you, Alyssa. I'm just glad we can skip that stuff. [00:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's good. All right, well, happy summer, everybody. Thanks, Justin, for quietly switching every week already. It's too hot. [00:45:46] Speaker A: I need sweets sweeter. [00:45:47] Speaker B: I talked to your dad on Sunday, Ben, and he was like, yeah, we're just really hoping the air conditioning works in. In our house. I. I like to sleep cool. That's where he gets it. [00:45:57] Speaker C: What is that? Why is he worried it won't? [00:45:59] Speaker A: I don't know. It works. We didn't turn it on, so this is. Yeah, I mean, same battle we have here in the office. My wife is like, you just got to take a monumental day to turn location. Nope. [00:46:12] Speaker B: That's why we bought it every day. Anyway, he just reminded me of you. You know, I was talking about keeping it cool in the summer. [00:46:20] Speaker A: Sleep cool. Put that on my tombstone. [00:46:26] Speaker B: Like to sleep cool. All right, thanks, guys. Right on. [00:46:31] Speaker A: We're not done talking. [00:46:33] Speaker C: What should we name the podcast? Let's decide. What's the title? Yeah. [00:46:42] Speaker B: Jawbones for you. So dumb.