Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: From Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. This is behind the message.
In this podcast. We take behind what we teach here at Westside. I'm Ben Fleming. That's Lindsey Parnell, and that is Evan Earwicker.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I like the pause.
[00:00:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Isn't that great? Oh, it feels so good.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Great.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Lindsay, you're headed to London, like.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: What, tonight?
[00:00:30] Speaker C: I am.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Oh, you're just acting like it's tonight.
My brain checked out all day.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: Yeah. My sister visited last week. I'm leaving the country this week. I'm having a real hard time staying present.
Very difficult time.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: What is this trip for my 40th birthday.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Let's go, big four zero four zero.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Yes. I don't turn 40 till the 23rd. But we booked the trip when we could.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: What are we doing? Are we doing shows?
[00:00:56] Speaker C: We're doing shows. We're eating yummy food. We're gonna go to Oxford, all the museums. I'm gonna shop till I drop. It's gonna be great. Yeah.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Is there a shopping mecca? I mean, I'm sure there's probably a Good question. Is there, like, a famous spot?
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Not that I'm aware of, but I'm gonna find it. Gosh darn it.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Rodeo Drive.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Well, can't afford that, but yeah.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: It's very expensive, isn't it?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: It's Rodeo Drive on Stratford, actually, is what?
[00:01:24] Speaker A: That's what it is.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: What is that? That was. Was that traditionally, like, when it was near a river or a lake or something on, you know.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah. On the thing.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Towns that have. Have the name attached.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. It's always funny where the islands make sense to me. Whenever you say we were. You say on Oahu or whatever. We weren't at Oahu, but then Pullman, you know, like the Palouse in eastern Washington. You don't say we were in the Palouse. You say we were on the Palouse.
Why?
Why? I do not know.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: So Palouse itself isn't like a body of water, right?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Paloosa River. I know. I have no idea.
[00:02:02] Speaker C: I didn't know that was a place till you just said.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: It's Washington State University.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: It's only like 20,000 people. So anyway, we went from London to Pullman really, really quick. That was amazing. What shows you seeing.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: We're seeing.
What is it called? Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, which is, like, one of the oldest running shows.
Alyssa told me it's.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: So we got through.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Slept through the whole.
[00:02:25] Speaker C: Evan and Alyssa slept through it. So. So happy. We bought our tickets already, didn't they?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Tell you that before. I'm curious how you'll like it after.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: Well, Alyssa told me they were very jet lagged and it was like a warm, cozy theater.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: So it was the night we got in and we were there. We got in in the morning and they were trying to stay up until you go to sleep. So we. We booked a show and just go to go to sleep at that point?
[00:02:48] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Did you know they slept through it
[00:02:50] Speaker C: before you booked a show? No, we had no clue. So we just saw it's like one of the longest running and it's very like quintessential English, you know, murder mystery, Agatha Christie. So like, we gotta do it.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: So cool. The theater is the tightest seating I've ever been in any.
[00:03:04] Speaker C: That freaks me out a little bit.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: I don't like that. I mean, your knees are like, not just touchy, but pressed against. Eric's gonna be very uncomfortable. It's amazing.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: There's a couple like that in New York on Broadway. We went to, I think it was where Phantom of the Opera was, which is one of the older.
What is that, the Pantages or something? Anyway, but yeah, like knees firmly into the top of the seats in front of me the whole time.
And I couldn't. Like my body was self destructing by the end of it.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: You know, think smaller people 150 years ago.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: You know, like, that's fascinating.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. But yeah, we. Our first. Our first day schedule when we arrived in London the last time we went over there, about the worst choices because we went underground into Churchill's war rooms, which are a bunker under Parliament.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Very sleepy in Churchill.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: And it's just like stuffy and hot and dark. It's like, why would you. Why is that your choice when you're fighting jet lag? Let's go underground.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Shepherd's pie and underground bunkers that are humid and hot. Yeah.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: We ended up. Is it Hyde park there? Right by Buckingham Palace.
We were walking through that. I'm like, I have to lay down. So I just. I just laid back on my back in the grass and slept and Melissa watched me.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: So tired. Incredible. Couldn't sleep.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: You guys will do much better.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: I'm worried. I don't know. It's eight hours ahead, so we're literally sweating for night. Morning. We get there. So we fly all night. We get there in the morning.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Can you sleep on planes?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: I will 100% sleep on the plane.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Well, that's. That makes the difference if you can't sleep on the plane.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: I can't.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: There's not any good options.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Did you grow up with the Agatha Christie murder mystery? Do you have one of those moms? Because I do. It was like Law and Order, Forensic Files.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Now that's me.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Haiku.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Poirot.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: I have a game on my switch.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: Poirotry. Yeah.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Hook you.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: I don't know how to say it. I don't even try because I just sound like you.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: I'm almost saying it.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: I think I'm close.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: Yeah. The.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: The newer movies that they've done the last few years are pretty good. With her kill.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Poirot.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: I know it's Poirot.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Absolutely ridiculous.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Poirot.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Poirot. Yeah. But all those murder mysteries were just. That was the loop. It was like true crime or Agatha Christie, Murder, She Wrote.
All that kind of stuff was really, really big in the house. And now that my parents live with me, sometimes I'll go out in the evening to water the garden or something like that. And I can see through their window and there's Mom, Forensic Files. Just like old times.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Some things never change.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
For me, it was always watching my grandmother watch Matlock. Matlock and Diagnosis Murder.
Just knew the kind of guy she had crushes on. It was Andy Griffiths, Perry Mason and Dick Van Dyke. Yeah, Annie agreed with that. Perry Mason.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Too old.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: A little too old for her. Too old for.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: That was an era. Man. They just cranked those out non stop. Everything was like cozy murder.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: I was gonna say it's the cozy vibes.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: I mean, the 90s did cozy really well.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Agreed.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: The rom coms were cozy, the murder was cozy, the crime was cozy.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: It was all very. And they were solving a crime every episode. It wasn't this seasons long kind of thing that you're trying to figure out, which I am a little nostalgic for. There's a few shows that I've been watching recently where I'm like, it'd be cool if you guys just kind of wrapped something up every time. Cause this really, really long whodunit, trying to figure this out thing, I'm kind of over it. 12 episodes in.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: If I remember back when the show 24 came out, that was one of the first, like thrillers that broke the week by week, it all wraps up, then you start over. And it was like, it's a single story over the whole season. No way is this.
And of course now, you know, everything is prestige shows and, you know, and
[00:07:10] Speaker A: by and large, they found a sweet spot. It's not 24 episodes anymore.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: That Was.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: That was a lot.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: That's crazy. 24 hours of TV in a season. Yeah.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Nuts. And we ate that up.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: And the quality suffered by the end. Right.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: You guys miss watching things that everyone's watching. It seems like it's. I feel like we're kind of back to that rare. The Odyssey has been talking about this.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: Or all those Apple TV shows. Severance.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Severance.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: You know, there's just those shows that everyone's like, oh, man, everyone's watching. I do love that.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Isn't Lost, though.
Like that.
Like everyone.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Like tuning in every Thursday night kind of a thing. And then you talk about it.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Seinfeld, the last, like three seasons, you know?
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: It's not like that. Yeah, we're getting closer.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: I think when you don't have the.
The broadcast where you have to watch it at the time, it just loses some of that community.
You know, everyone's talking about the next day, as opposed to. Everyone told me I should watch this show and I'm gonna get to it. But then no one's in sync on how much they've seen, except for the die hard fans. But, yeah, yeah, Lost was maybe one of the last shows like that before streaming really took off and became such a thing. That was in our.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: How we watched Finish up and then was one of the first things on Netflix. That was back when. I remember when Netflix started streaming.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: And I remember it was like that in Prison Break. And I remember looking at Netflix and the library and I was like, I think I could watch everything on Netflix, like, you know, over time because there was only maybe like 30 shows or something like that. It wasn't crazy. Now, that's certainly impossible.
But yeah, it's. It's toward the end and all those. The sitcoms had a huge era of that. The Friend Seinfeld kind of era.
What are. Some of the.24 was a big, big, big deal. Trying to remember some of the other things.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah. As far as the. Is it serialized?
Whatever. When it's one story.
Yeah. But do you remember when Netflix split off their company into two companies? One was for DVDs and one was for streaming.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: No, I don't remember that.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: And I think Netflix split it. They kept the DVD portion was netfl. And then it was starting with a Q quibble.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Didn't they roll it back real quick?
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Everyone was like, you guys are insane. What are you doing? I think they were just trying to get two subscription fees out of everybody, but.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Oh, I see.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: And I was on that Lost thing. Cause I didn't watch it in real time, but I remember everybody talking about it. And then once I discovered I could do the whole thing at my own pace anytime I wanted it straight. Yeah, it was. I was staying up till 2, 3 in the morning sometimes just like, well, I gotta know what happens now.
They gotta tell me in the first 10 minutes of the next one. Right. I gotta watch that.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: So they get you. Yeah, it's pretty great.
Yeah. And you remember that Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix for like, yeah, $5 million or something crazy low. And they laughed. They laughed at the offer because we're Blockbuster, we will always be on top.
But now we go down a Blockbuster and reminisce the last one, right? Yeah. Still a thing. Do you think it'll last here in Bent?
[00:10:28] Speaker A: I think so. I think Oregon does that nostalgia thing.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Maybe better than in most other places. Right. We've got like the Goonies house that's still going strong in Astoria, and little niche things like that. And it pops up on my Instagram all the time. People don't even follow that are influencers or celebrities or whatever. They came into town, stopped the last Blockbuster. It seems like a thing. There's enough sustainability to it. I don't know where they're making their money.
Is it in rentals? I still haven't gone and rented anything.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Probably merch online, I would think.
There's no way you're surviving on actual DVD rentals anymore.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: I don't think so.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Even.
Even if you don't have to pay much in rent or what, I don't know. Who knows.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: And I have some friends that do it for fun. They go down and rent the DVD itself just for kicks. But how many people are doing that?
[00:11:16] Speaker B: I don't know, man. It seems.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: It seems impossible.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know.
So this week we talked about relationships and kind of that. That weird flip where used to be, I think by and large people had to exist in. In relationships because that was how life worked.
And now we exist in a world where in the name of removing friction from our lives and inconvenience, we've isolated ourselves and created this gaping loneliness.
Because when given the option to avoid messiness, I think very naturally we choose the path of least resistance. Right.
And talking yesterday about how the way of Jesus actually compels us back into the messiness and the friction of relationships, because that's where life is.
Do you guys feel that tension? Maybe when you think about our kids growing up in this, you know, like everything's an App. Everything's on demand. Everything can be done in isolation. And the effect of that and how healthy or not healthy our souls are.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: Very much so, very much so. I can't remember what was happening. We were camping and the girls were jumping on these logs or outside, you know, getting dirty, et cetera. And they're jumping and I'm like, careful, careful. And my sister's like, no, high risk, unsupervised play is so important. She's a fourth grade teacher or in fourth, fifth grade. And I was like, these children are the most supervised of all the children.
But like, it's that tension where it's like, oh, they'd be so much safer tucked away in their little dark bedroom on their iPads. I'd know exactly where they were. I know, you know, and they'd have fun. They want it, they want screens, et cetera. And so it's that tension of like socializing your kids, getting them out there in nature with other people, with other kids, you know, go scrape your knee, get into trouble for goodness sake, you know, that kind of stuff. That's a tension I feel very much because I see it in them pulling away from that and wanting the path of least resistance. Already they're 9 and 6, so yeah, it's a very real tension that everyone faces.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: I'm so afraid of that for my kids. I, I, it gives me anxiety to think about them being on a screen or, or just kind of stuck. Not as social as I'd like. This summer I've noticed like my whole demeanor kind of lifting and a lot of it's because my 11 year old son disappears this morning.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: He did it again.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: He left at 7 in the morning to go to the skate park. And then most every single day since baseball ended this summer, he's texting me after dark, telling me where to pick him up. And I'm, well, I'm fishing at Discovery park across town. Can you come get me? And I'm kind of hungry, can you bring a snack on the way? And it's been, I've been so pleased and there's something about it that I want him to have that experience. I want him to get lost and I want him to get nervous and I want him to, to do all these things that I think it would be very easy. Like you're saying it just is to be like, okay, just take the iPad and, and there are some moments still every day where I'm like, I need a little bit of peace.
So here you go, grab the tablets and I'll see you guys later. Please don't talk to me kind of a thing, you know, But I am so scared on the other side that in probably an unhealthy way that I kind of push the kids to. And, you know, Rebecca will be like, well, we need a plan. I'm like, how dare you ask them for a plan. Just run away.
Come back tonight sometime. It's so stupid.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: I mean, at 11, that probably feels like too much for me. I'm imagining, like, I wouldn't just send Jack at 8 years old, obviously. Yeah. Loose generations, two generations ago, I'm sure it would have been like, we'll see you tomorrow maybe. 8 year old, 11 feels a little young for me too. I'm just getting there with my 14 year old now.
Even her. We dropped her off at a movie with friends this past week with no plan. No. Agreed on, like, be home by this time.
And then by about 10:30, we hadn't heard from her and her phone had been dead. But then she got it charged back up a little bit. She wasn't responding, but we can see where her phone's at. And we're watching her. And she was with a group of friends, but as they walked down to the river and then it shows that she's in the river. And then she came home about 11 o', clock, soaking wet. She's like, we got in the river. We know. And I'm like, okay, this is a good, you know, this is a good exercise for dad to know, like, what. What communication do we need or not need or.
Cause. Yeah, I don't know.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: So did your mind go? Because this is where my mind goes. I go. There was like a social, a social ritual that just happened. And I'm so pleased. Yes. That's where my mind goes almost immediately. Yeah.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And I wasn't. And she got home and we're like, we're not mad. This is great. We want you to have friends and do stuff that feels so outside of, like, safe, supervised.
And also just let us know, like, hey, I'm going to be in the river until 11.
Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: I don't know. Can you. Can you imagine, Luca?
[00:16:33] Speaker C: No.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: At 11, 14, what's the age where you're like, okay, I could. I could not know exactly what your plan is.
[00:16:41] Speaker C: The beauty of parenting is you grow into these things.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: So you're ahead of me because you have a 14 year old. You're ahead of me. You have an 11 year old. I will say boys are very different. Than girls. Like, if you had a 14 year old boy, your thought process would have been a little different. Like, I haven't heard from him. It's 11, you know, I don't know. I just think girls are just.
I think of them differently as a girl myself. So I look forward to growing into being more comfortable with that. But right now I'm like, absolutely not. I will have air tags on all of your belongings. I will know where you are at all times.
If I didn't hear from her. Grounded rest of the summer. You're inside on an iPad for the rest of the summer.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: I think it was rage bait, but I saw a video of a mom showing how she gets her kid ready every morning on a cruise. They were on a cruise. And she had an airtag in the shoe, an airtag in a band aid that she stuck to the kids.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: That's rage bait.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: That's good. And then a tag on the back of the neck that she wrote a phone number on. That is. So the tag on the back, the. The tag on the back of the neck, that has to be rage bait.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: No parents, dog on the band aid.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: And I'm also joking, but I'm not there yet with my children. I would never, you know, I. That the thought of that makes me very uncomfortable. But at the same time, it's like, no, that is the way to go. Be with other people, to put yourself out there.
It's not about being safe and secure in our, you know, our little bubble all the time, because that is the path of least resistance. And all that fosters in us is the need for comfort and safety, security, control.
And so I do think I see the good in it, but my skin crawls a little bit at the thought of it with my kids.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And I.
I mean, I would say I get it. I don't.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: I find it much.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: I find it much easier. I happen to be married to someone that is. Is firmly in your camp.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: We always feel this tension.
I gosh, I want them to have the stories, you know, and I think we talked about this in San Antonio. We went because Kim, who we work with, was talking about how they went on vacation with their kids, and then all these stories came out about things that happened that Kim and Mike didn't know about. And I was like, oh, that's the dream. Like, that's what I want to hear about down the road. I want to have that talk around the fire. I want the stories to happen and I want to not be involved and I want to not Know where you were for, like, that stuff mattered to me. I think a lot when I was a kid that I was. There was this kind of coming of age, like, figuring things out with within certain boundaries and a handful of guardrails.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: The.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Statistically, kids are safer than they've ever been. And in Bend, Oregon, I think kids are maybe the safest of all time.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: And so I do even just look at the numbers and go, if I'm not gonna let my kids do it here, then, like, would I ever do it? Like, let's go explore the world and make friends and do stuff.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: I remember, you know, driving with my friends. We were, like, playing music and went to some event in Canada, and so drove. I had friends that lived over in the valley, so, like, drove my car at 16 years old, picked them up in Salem and Eugene, and then we drove to Alberta, Canada, to, like, play music. And I'm thinking, like, in two years, would I let Clara personally drive her friends to Canada? Oh, no, I wouldn't. And yet, good on my parents. They sent my brother at 13, flew him to Michigan to, like, hang out with his girlfriend that he had met on a mission trip for, like, a week.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: What?
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: I wouldn't do that.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: I mean, that's crazy. That is crazy.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Thirteen.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Thirteen.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Yeah. No. So somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere in the extremes of my parents to Lindsay. We gotta find where the.
I'm letting my kid fish in a
[00:20:42] Speaker A: pond on the other side of town without me around. I haven't sent him to Michigan just yet.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: For a girl.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Yeah. The ERA cruiser. Sticking you on a plane saying, have fun.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: I think what I'm getting at, and I think what you got at this last Sunday is we want these experiences for our church like we do, and so we can talk about our kids and they're 11 or whatever to draw the comparisons. I do think all three of us agree that we want our church to have grown up in the next couple years or whatever it is, and have these stories of, I met someone, I got to know someone.
This relationship was hard, and then I got vulnerable within it. And something grew like, that is what we want. Because there is the church that sits down in the dark room with an iPad and views the world through that. And that's how it functions.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Right. And.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: And I would say just like parenting with our kids, we can all move the church in that direction pretty quick. It is the path of least resistance. It's tribalism. It's us four no more. We believe in this. And then we're just gonna Keep it close right here with just us, man, we just. I, that does. I do. I almost, I have like the same kind of anxiety of talking about. I don't want that to be how my kids end up. I don't want our church to end up like that.
And it's one thing to talk about it and say we're going to go interface with these groups. That's only a piece of it.
It's another thing to say we're going to be vulnerable in our own interpersonal relationships and we're actually going to dig deeper than we are right now.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and that was a distinction I wanted to make yesterday, was we will always keep in the top core values of the church, how we love outsiders and those that we don't know.
We can't forsake the people we do know. Otherwise we become that church that like we avoid each other and we're isolated even within the community. But man, we love the outsider. And Jesus just, he starts with, he starts with your, your neighbor that's closest to you or your family member. And that's where it begins. And that is the, the proof of that this is real and that we actually have something to offer. And the love that we extend outward, it actually works in the real world. And so super important.
And what a terrible trade we've made as a society when we say, well, for the sake of safety we're going to keep our kids from experiencing life, or for the sake of convenience, we're going to actually isolate ourselves. That is a bad trade.
And we are seeing the effect of that in loneliness, anxiety, depression, isolation. And to your point, Ben, what is the trade when the church decides is actually better to wall off and be a city on a hill that actually keeps the gate shut?
What is that trade off? I think it's just as bad of a trade.
And so yeah, let's push the church into never being that God forbid we become the community alone in the dark room with our iPads, hoping that the big bad world doesn't break in.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: You talked about something this morning in a meeting. I think it was in reference to mental health. And I still am not sure if we were reading the same article or not, but it sounded similar.
And, and what was it that you said is sometimes it's not that we're mentally unwell or something like sometimes just life is hard or what?
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the article talked about how Gen Z is self diagnosing based on Instagram, mental health, Instagram, not Instagram, social media, TikTok, Instagram, whatever.
And there is this just like proliferation of people seeing like, oh, this is what an anxiety disorder looks like. Oh, I must have that.
Here's a self assessment to tell if you're bipolar. Oh, I must be that, you know, or fill in the blank of real mental health issues that people have. And not to, you know, diminish that at all, but the over self diagnosis of these things, when oftentimes it's not an anxiety disorder. Life is hard and you're trying to figure out how to live in it, but we slap on ourselves. And the article is just saying we've got to stop this because we start living in this world where everything is pathological, everything has a diagnosis, everything needs a medical intervention or a psychological intervention. And sometimes you know what? Life just isn't friction free and easy. And we have to actually grow into that to be fully functioning, healthy adults. And this wasn't, you know, this is just the news, it wasn't spiritual. From the spiritual side, as far as following Jesus, we actually believe that we have a companion in the difficulty and the trouble of life that to lean into that sometimes should actually have us lean away from self diagnosing and just making everything a mental health crisis. Right.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: And that's in reference to what we're talking about with the church and relationships and things. I want people have to know that when we get into this, the water is going to get a little murky sometimes. It's going to get tough, it's going to get cold, it's going to. And it's actually part of the process. It's a bug, it's not a problem. It's not an indicator that something is wrong or that you need to be diagnosed again. It is the nature of relationship and kindness and generosity and getting burned and then offering grace again.
And it just takes time is, that's always the thing. The older I get, more I feel like I come back to that as like, you just have to give this bit a little bit of time. Joel had a disagreement on the playground with a friend for the first time in kind of a big way this last school year. Like something happened and like deleted him off of his watch. This whole thing. And this is a kid in the neighborhood. They, they're hanging out today. That's who he's with. And you know, Rebecca was like, we should probably talk to that kid's mom and figure out what's going on. And I was like, you just let it sit for two days like, and then let's see what happens. And of course, best Friends again. And, and those are actually things that kind of forge relationships. And that's going to keep happening with us in church and families.
And it's just tough because you never want it. And we can't shy away from that. And that's in relationship to our city, to our spouses, to our kids. It's going to get muddy and hard and that's part of the gig.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I think just even saying that is helpful because I think our culture, everything is contributing to the fact that it should be easy, it should be friction free. And if it's not, then it's bad or wrong and you should find something different. And so we find, you know, I hear stories all the time of kids going no contact with their parents or cutting off members of their, their family or whatever.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: More, more and more.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Well, it's kind of a thing to do. I think people are just making it common, like verbiage, like, oh, no, I'm no contact.
And it's because there's friction or disagreement or different viewpoints. And so the thought is, well, no, if it's not perfectly aligned and we see eye to eye and all that, it's bad and not for me, and so I'm out of here. It doesn't serve me or it's not whatever. And to just say like, no, this is actually totally normal. It's a part of relationships with other human beings. It gives you permission to stay and to wait it out or endure or consistently show up, like you talked about yesterday, to try to find commonality and things like that, where it's like, no, normalize that relationships are hard and times are gonna get hard with your spouse and that doesn't mean you leave. It doesn't give you permission to walk away. Like, this is part of the gig and it's messy and it's hard. And we can talk about it and say, yeah, like, yeah, that's normal. And you endure and you stick it out. And I think it's important.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
And this is kind of the one size doesn't fit all.
And I think that's where the danger comes is because some parents need to be cut off because they're abusive or really evil in a relationship. And so you can look at a situation like that and be like, oh yeah, that person absolutely should cut off that relationship. And then I say, well, I can think of a time when my mom gas lit me, so I better cut off that relationship. It's just like, we take on the extremes that might be very legit for some relationships. And Some situations. But then all of a sudden everybody has toxic dynamics with their parents. So everyone should cut off their parent. Everyone should. And where is that going to lead? We're all going to be so selfish because we've cut off anyone that makes us feel uncomfortable or offers any kind of tension or friction at all. And it's like, well, that's. That's how we learn to. To grow up and live in this life.
So anyway, a little scary that it
[00:29:24] Speaker A: could be a trend that we can follow too. Yeah, I'll try this out. Whoa. This isn't something we play around with. And I'm with you. It's always hard to talk about this in the context of a series and from a platform with a limited amount of time. I always want to run around the fence 10 times and be like, yeah, we can't just cut people off like this. Well, there certainly are exceptions. And yeah, you should take care of yourself. And this is abusive, but you do. And we could do that over and over and over again. Of course there is nuance. There's situations for all these things. My thing is that I pretty naturally isolate anyway. And now our culture is heading in a direction where it's incredibly easy for me to do.
[00:30:02] Speaker C: So.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: Like, what is in place in my life that requires me. Our assistant Stephanie, I think, sent all three of us an Instagram post that kind of summed this up really well, that we're basically getting out of this entire area era of humanity, that it didn't just recommend community time, it required it. You had to raise barns together, you had to cook meals and harvest food together. Like, and if you didn't, you died. And now we just don't have to do it like that. And so when left to our own devices, I know my own human nature is like, who? I look at my schedule every day and I found myself subconsciously being like, oh, I might be by myself a
[00:30:40] Speaker B: little bit right there.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: That'll be nice. And, oh, that's like a two hour gap where the kids are at practice. Rebecca's not home from work yet.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: This is great.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Hang out.
What do we do now that maybe a lot of us lean naturally that way and it's just getting easier.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yes. And I know my wife would tell me and does tell me, like, when I choose the path of least resistance, that's actually a reflection of my own lack of maturity or, you know, So I think for a lot of human history, the path of least resistance was the wise choice. Like, don't make it harder than it has to Be if the food is, you know, available there. And that's easier than going up on that mountain. Mountain to get it go there.
And we've got to kind of undo that now because we have this just crazy abundance and convenience of everything. And so we have to build that in. We just have to build that in. Otherwise we become really, really unhealthy. And I think we talk about healthy emotion or emotional health in relationships.
Maybe that's kind of the core of it is how do we avoid the path of least resistance.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: I'm curious if there's something that's going to come out and maybe it's already has. After the production of the Odyssey with Christopher Nolan, like handmaking everything. Right. I think we talked about this a little bit, that the ship was real. I just learned that Cyclops is a puppet.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw, I saw behind the scenes of them wiring up how tall? 25, 30 foot puppet of the cyclops. So not CGI wild. I mean, wild to build that and then get it out there to the cave and like all on location or whatever. It's crazy.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: And one example, because I'm. I'm seeing especially stuff with AI, you know, there's this kind of resistance movements coming out. It's like, no, write because it's good for you. And yes, AI can do it maybe almost as good as you or as good as you because you're not a great writer or whatever. And it's so fat. But you need to do it for your brain and your body and your soul. And Christopher Nolan did that on a massive scale. Like, of course, he could have very easily done Cyclops with computer graphics and whatever to make the conscious decision to stay. I'm going to spend a lot more money and we're going to spend a lot more time and we're going to suffer a lot more inconvenience in order to do this a different way. I wonder if he's reaping the rewards of that as an artist on the other side, what that looks like.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: I think dollars wise. Yeah, I think I would say he is because it resonates right now. Right?
[00:33:10] Speaker A: But Christopher Nolan could have made something full of CG because he is Christopher Nolan. It would have crushed at the box office.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: I don't know. 10 bombed pretty hard.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: But that's true.
Yeah, that's true.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: I don't know. I think there's something. Yeah, there's something really compelling these days when you can opt out and do it easy to do it hard.
And I think it's really compelling. I've even, you know, in prepping for sermons, because there are. There are ways that AI really helps surface research and speeds the process of getting to the right author, the right content in prep. So I've actually even in how I think about preparing to preach or to teach is to think of it as writing as opposed to prep. I always have. I need to prep for that sermon, prep my notes for.
And that all of a sudden, the mechanics of that start to feel like, well, if I'm just prepping, I can just ask AI to find me this and skip over. And so I've been trying to think of it like, I need to spend time writing today as opposed to I need to get that done. I need to prep for that sermon and get it done. And I think some of those things, even internally, can help us in how we think about those pieces that deserve more than just checking the box or preparing that report, because AI can actually do all that really effectively and efficiently. So what is left on the human side, you know, I think that's important. Yeah.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Willingly walking into the muddiness and the messiness of all of it when there is definitely a more least resistant path. You know, we're not in small communities anymore. We go, man, I'm really disagreeing with Butcher, the Blacksmith or whatever. Kind of have to have that guy in my life. You know, I just have to. There's not a choice. And so you're going to go back and you're going to mend fences, you're going to fix the things that need fixing. And it's just so easy to be like, I'm going to go to the guy on the other side of town. And so maybe that'll be the challenge for the church in the middle of all this is actually, can you locate those places of difficulty? Can you do the Christopher Nolan and make it a puppet instead of a computer graphic?
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Are you willing to do that? Because that's probably what love requires.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book Life Together about how we don't actually have the option to just up and change churches or just up and choose a different group of fellow believers to be with that. God calls you to certain churches and expressions of faith intentionally, and that's where you're supposed to be. And I think there's a lot of different, you know, schools of thought on that or whatever. I'm not saying he's right, but. But I do think looking at it that way, like, well, actually, this is where God has called me to be. And so I don't have the option to go to the guy down the street. This is my blacksmith. This is my butcher.
I need to figure out how to do life with these people because this is the community God has called me to be in. And I'm not looking for my out. I'm looking, how do I. How do we grow through this? How do we learn from this? How do I learn to love you better in the midst of this? And maybe that's a switch from prepping to writing. You know, maybe we make that switch in our brains. Like, nah, this is where I am until Jesus says otherwise. If he does. And so we're gonna stick this out, we're gonna make it work. And yeah, there might be something to that.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah, always something better. And that isn't true. Now more than ever, right? We have options. We have options for churches, we have options for relationships. Like, just the world has opened up to us. That for most of human history is like, you had your village. I think that was that post that Steph sent us was like, that was.
I'm not gonna go to another village. Like, I don't. My horse won't make it. So I guess I'm here for the rest of my life.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: And for all the amazing world opening things that have been so good in that, it also just always gives us the opportunity to be like, oh, you're not doing it for me. So I'm gonna find a better marriage, I'm gonna find a better community, I'm gonna find a better church.
And sometimes that's right and good and appropriate. And oftentimes it's just us always existing in discontent that causes us to say what's better out there and what a terrible way to spend our lives.
Always looking to see what my next level up is, when maybe actually this is. There's some sweetness here. And life to be lived right where God has placed me in the imperfections of these relationships.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah, there's that phrase that if you quit now, you'll be a quitter for the rest of your life kind of a thing.
Again, there's nuance to that whole thing. We should quit something sometimes. But I think I get the heart behind it. That's like, once you start this habit and it just becomes so easy to leave and find the other option, you're probably going to keep looking for that for the rest of your life.
It just becomes a rut that we find ourselves in. And the church. The church can't get there, man. Like, it can't. And I think it's wants to so often not necessarily our church, but I think that's the human nature of church leadership in churches. We just can't do it. We'll lose the gospel in that rut.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think we've. We've tried to push against the temptation, even in how we gather as a church, to, like, every week we're going to one up ourselves, and it's going to be funnier or it's going to be more entertaining, or, you know, the video is going to be more dynamic or the worship is going to be better.
We've tried to kind of break the cycle of, like, what's the stage design? This series that's going to be even cooler than the last, and just kind of throwing that out and be like, no, that's actually not what we're created for. And I think that extends, actually.
If it's true in our services, I think it should also be true in our relationships and how we engage. You know, it's like, I can't one up my relationship with Alyssa this week and the next week, the next week. So I better find something sustaining in how we exist and love each other.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: That's.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: That's not just, you know, what are you going to do to thrill me today?
I think that's just true in all our relationships.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: You know, it's highlighted in our communion liturgy, too.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: We.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: When we probably highlight it once or twice a year, maybe we're due for it again.
We've talked about in leadership, team discussions, stuff like, can we make community a little more efficient? It's like, maybe this isn't supposed to be one of the most efficient things that we do.
Maybe we don't want to add more tables because we kind of want people to have to wait for the other person to get out of their aisle before they can do it. And they wonder why they're waiting so long to go. And that person should see the left side of the table. Where is everybody going on the right side? Like, this is part of the thing. It literally is like a very tiny version of the inconvenience of community while participating in what is the miracle of our faith that happens in the inside of that practice.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And I wonder, you know, we've probably lost people who've left the church because they don't like taking communion every week. You know, sometimes I think about, what are the reasons. There's the obvious reasons why people leave church. They don't like the preaching. They don't like what we think about whatever their kids like youth group across town, whatever. That's always going to happen. But I do wonder about the intentional things that we're like, no, this is actually what we're going to do.
And maybe how that loses some people.
And I'm not saying like that. And that's a good trade. We don't want to lose people. But I would say, actually, yeah, if you can't come along for the clunkiness of waiting in line and rubbing shoulders and that just feels too inconvenient, man, you're going to hate where we're going to lead you in other ways, too, you know? So I don't mind, like you're saying, I don't mind those certain things that. Yeah. That aren't quote, unquote, seeker sensitive enough. They aren't friction free enough in that marketing sense to where it's the easiest on ramp. Yeah, we're going to create some easy on ramps and then we're going to create some friction because that's the life that discipleship is. I don't know.
It's good.
So you're on this week, Ben.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: Talking about vulnerability. Yep.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. I'm excited about it. Yeah, I like talking about that stuff. Generally feel like we do a pretty good job of being vulnerable, so it doesn't feel like too big of a be. You know, I got to figure out where my son is today. That's the first thing pretty. Take him down the other side of town. Who you been hanging out with?
[00:41:41] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:41:42] Speaker C: I can pull mine up on the screen.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Is he in Michigan on a flight? Yeah.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Pull him up.
[00:41:47] Speaker C: Is he on Michigan or in Michigan?
[00:41:49] Speaker B: In Michigan. Yeah.
Did my dad buy him a plane ticket?
Molly Traver was her name.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Amazing. Whoa.
[00:41:56] Speaker C: Which brother?
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Brent. Whoa.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: That was how his mission towards him.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: Oh, that's funny.
