Chris: Hey everybody, welcome to the ordinary discipleship
podcast. My name is Chris, here with Jacob and, of course,
Jesse. And today we're talking about how people sometimes they
feel insecure about connecting with God, and sometimes, as
leaders, we try to force the way that we connect with God into
the way that they should connect with God, and then when they
don't connect with God the same way we connect with God,
sometimes that can develop shame. So how, as a
discipleship, mentor, as a leader, as a pastor, how do we
not create pathways to shame, but pathways to God,
Jacob: the like, unspoken part of what you're getting at that,
I think we're trying to get out in this episode, is there's so
many people who are like, I don't know how to connect with
God. You just tell me Pastor exactly, and then pastor says,
uh, cool, yeah, I'll just tell you how I connect with God and
make that normative, right, right? Everybody look like me,
right? That's the easiest thing, but that's not really equipping
people to connect with God. That's just making little and,
yeah. And so the way that we actually, in my congregation, we
use a tool, like a like a batch of content I got years ago, and
I keep always trying to look for who to attribute this to. I
heard it from a guy named Ron walborn, but I know he didn't
come up with it. He got it from somebody else, but it's, it's
called,
Jessie Cruickshank: you know who this comes from? Please email us
and let us know. Yes,
Chris: Justin got so close to the mic on that it was
terrifying.
Jacob: It's six spiritual pathways. So it's six different
instincts for how people connect with God, and so they are, the
esthetic instinct, where people connect through beauty and
order, the experiential instinct, where people connect
through experience and emotion. The activist instinct, people
who connect with God through through doing things and feeling
like they're serving God, the contemplative instinct, where
people connect with God through listening and the interior. The
student instinct, where people connect with God through truth
and study, and the relational instinct, where people connect
through relationship and love. They connect with God when
they're with other people. And so one of the first things we do
is we orient people to this content, to say, hey, there's
not only one way to connect with God, and maybe. And the first
thing we point out when we when we do this teaching, is like you
may have been in communities before, where they said there
was one way to connect with God, or they promoted one way to
connect with God. And that can do a couple of things. One, it
can cause you to question yourself and say, What's wrong
with me? That God's not connecting with me? Or it can
cause you to question God and say, maybe God has gone silent.
This is why, this is one of the first things we do as we're
starting to walk with people on a journey of discipleship, is
say, hey, let's help you reflect on what's what's the easiest way
for you to connect with God, and how can we equip you to do that?
So what are you I would say that I tend toward the contemplative
instinct and maybe the student instinct. I mean, look at all
those. Because I like understanding, but I'm not like
a big, quiet time guy. That's not what. So that's what you
would think like, not like a big discipline guy, but unlocking
he's looking at me funny, like, I don't wake up every morning at
5am and read my Bible. That's not what I do. Wait, wait, what?
Yeah, that's right. See, that's not God, bad things. Bad things.
Yeah.
Chris: Jesse, what are you on this list? What do you think you
are,
Jessie Cruickshank: I would be esthetic and experiential. So I
when the world gets noisy and the voices in my head get loud,
and I cannot tell the difference between my soul the enemy and
God, because, because it just happens sometimes and I get
swirly, I need to go out in nature and let the the truth of
nature, because scripture says that nature is God's first
message to us. It's his first it's they call it first
revelation. And so I can go out there and just breathe and let
God find me and calm me down and recalibrate me. And I talk to
God while I'm gardening. I talk to God while I'm hiking. I can
hear him most clearly in those in those places, because, for
whatever reason, maybe it's my ADD, but it calms the rest of
the noise down, and his voices, or his presence is what remains
for me. So, and then the experiential I love joy. I love
encountering silliness. I think God is super silly. I think
there's, like, I don't think the enemy can be silly. I don't
think the enemy's got a sense of humor and can't tell a joke. So,
like, okay, so. Joy is also one of those pure things for me, so
probably those two. So
Chris: when Jake's dad started the church, the amazing Paul
Hoyer started the church in Lake Mary. He had a group of guys
that are not your typical, like church people. It reminded me of
like when Jesus came down and he got to his disciples, and he
went to the fishermen, and then he went to the tax collectors.
And it's like, if I had my dream team, it probably wouldn't be
fishermen and tax collectors. And you could pick anybody on
planet Earth, and you pick these guys. I mean, they probably had
salty language, they probably had a few beers, and
Jessie Cruickshank: they had not been they weren't following
another rabbi, so they hadn't been accepted into a
discipleship program exactly.
Chris: And he came down, and he's like, this is your dream
team. This is who's gonna spread Christianity to the entire
world, okay? And that's kind of what his dad did. Like his dad
was 100% activist, and he would just like, go find widows that
needed a new roof. And then he would get all these blue collar
guys together and say, Hey, you want to go build a roof for this
lady is about to be evicted. And they would all do it. And it was
like the pied piper leading all these people and, and, and like,
20 years later, they're still at the church, even after, uh,
Jake's dad passed away because of the legacy and the activist
mentality that Paul built in that place, and so let's say
you're the you're the activist, or you're the contemplative, or
you're the student. You can get those people that are like
minded, and you can evangelize them pretty quickly. But Is it
tough for somebody who, let's say, is an activist to disciple
somebody who's in another category?
Jessie Cruickshank: That is a great question. Thank you. I
think if you're going to disciple somebody, it's likely
that they're different than you, and you need to understand that
the goal isn't that they connect to God the way that you do, but
that you're encouraging them to connect to God, gotcha like and
find that. Find that right, just like you know, as a parent you
are, you don't necessarily want your kid to do the same job that
you do, but you want them to do the job that they find
fulfilling, that they the vocation that they are
interested in. Maybe that's the same as you but maybe it's
something totally different. And I think the worst thing we can
do as a disciple maker is that if we don't understand, and we
can't actually resonate with how they connect with God, like the
thing you don't do is shut that down, right? Shut them down.
Tell them, Oh no, that's not legitimate, because you may not
understand, and you can say that, like, wow, I don't
actually connect with God that way. Tell me more about that.
Oh, and learn from them what that's like. And then you can,
like, share, oh, this is how it feels for me. This is the
thoughts that go through my head. These are the feels that I
have. Here's what my experience is like. Tell me about your
experience, and you can learn from them, theirs and like,
like, that's a beautiful thing. You're both shaping each other
and learning from each other in that. Because maybe as I look at
this list, I kind of have different seasons. Yeah, there
are times where God has moved and I need to go find him in a
new way. And so contemplative is way more part of my life than it
used to be and, and I'm like, Oh, wait, I can actually sit
still and abide, Oh, that's good. That's nice. I couldn't do
that for decades. Oh, that's good. And if I hadn't hung out
with people who connected with God that way, and they, and I,
like, learned from them, I would, I would think either I'd
done something wrong or I wouldn't know how to do that,
like we go through seasons. So I would hope that at some point I
would, I would have an experience of God in each one of
those, even if it's not my primary, even it's not my
default, even if it just happened by miracle one time,
but I don't know, appreciation for the the way God meets us is
is an important aspect of being a disciple maker.
Chris: So Jacob, not everybody is like aware of what they are.
How do you you said in your church, you actually use this
program to help them to figure out how they connect with God.
Like, can you talk a little bit about that process? What do you
do? Ask questions. How do you how do you help somebody figure
out, like, where they're
Jacob: at? So we just use this in a workbook in our like,
opening course. And we, we actually, you can kind of think
of it like, if you're if you're familiar with the popular
paradigm of love languages, you just reflect on your past
experience and say, I'll also ask people like, when has there
been a mountaintop moment in your life, like, when's the time
you felt most connected to God? What was happening, and was
there any Was there ever a time in your life when you felt like
a spiritual misfit, where. You felt like you were the turtle in
the punch bowl of the faith community, you know? And so that
allows people to reflect on it. And what I even get from people
more than oh my gosh, I have a I know clearly who I am in this
schematic, what I hear them say is like they're just encouraged
to know that there are different ways and that there's not just
one way in this class, this opening class, we do. I've
gotten run it twice in the last 12 months because we've had a
lot of new people showing up. And there was a guy recently in
one of the classes who said, you know, I've been through a lot of
these, like new member classes in churches. And he said,
usually they're about trying to figure out how I plug into the
church. He's like, what I like about this is it's actually
about helping me figure out how I'm gonna live my life shaped by
Jesus. And that's like, I think, to your question of like, can
you disciple somebody who's different than you? I think you
can, if you understand that discipleship is helping them
become themselves, if you think discipleship is making them look
like what discipleship means to you? Well then, yeah, it's going
to be tough.
Chris: No, that's a great point, and it's about helping them to
discover who they are and how they connect with Jesus and and
not fitting them into some cookie cutter program.
Jessie Cruickshank: So Chris, can I? Can I jump on one of my
little soap boxes right now? I would love it like
Chris: because let's pour out the soapbox for a second. Jesse,
all season has not jumped on it yet, and so it's a nice soapbox.
And let's go. Here we go. Here it is. It's set up.
Jessie Cruickshank: So one of the things that can make me
crazy and upset is when I hear someone either a discipleship
per a disciple maker or a mentor, someone tell another
person you can't trust your heart in it. And that comes up,
right? So, so somebody hears, oh, they feel this way. Or, you
know, hey, my, my, my heart told me to do this. My heart told me
to be here. My heart told me to say something to that person, or
give them money to the the person on the street, like,
like, they they their heart told them something, and they
responded to it, and someone else says to them, oh, you can't
trust your heart. Like, like, boom, force field, your heart is
I was raised in a church. They said your heart is deceptive.
They would quote, your heart is wicked above all things, you
know, and that's a that's a verse in Old Testament, and and
that stuff makes me crazy, because here's here's the other
part of that, like whole paradigm. Truth is that God
loves your heart. God made your heart. God thinks your heart is
great, and he wants to restore it where it's broken. He wants
to heal it where it's wounded. He wants to refine it where it
believes a lie. But that doesn't mean your heart is bad. And I
remember like the season of my life, because I grew up in this
fundamentalist church that shut down all emotion and heart and
everything like they it was a Cessationist church. We got
kicked out. It didn't go well. We didn't we didn't abide with
that very well my whole family, and because I had had this
practice of, oh, my heart says that I can't listen to it, and I
would shove it in the corner. And we do this with our
emotions, right? We're like, oh, you can't trust your emotions.
They lie to you. And that's not that's equally untrue. What your
heart says and what your emotions say are information for
you. They're They're your they're yourself talking to you,
or God, talking to you. It just may be incomplete. It may not be
the whole picture, right? But it the answer to that is, is to
listen to it and bring it before the Lord. The answer to that
isn't to shove it in the corner and tell it to shut up, right?
That's how we end up in therapy, because that is not honoring
ourselves or honoring, you know, the way that that God made us,
and God's a lover of our soul. So when we tell people to shut
down their heart, we are we are severing a major line that God
can talk to them and they can receive from God. And if that's
their primary line, the way that God made them, then you just cut
them off from being able to hear God, and you put them in like
solitary confinement. So instead of doing that to one another, we
need to encourage them, have them voice. What is their heart
saying? Let's talk about that. Let's bring that into the light.
Let's see if there's anything else to like add to that to make
it more complete, more whole, more healed. But we need to
encourage people to listen to how God is talking to them, even
if it's in mixture, even if it's like, not totally accurate, you
know, even if it's not totally pure, we got to encourage that,
to make it healthier, not shut it down, because, you know,
there might be taintedness in it, like it's, oh, it's past the
expiration date. And so, you know, we got to throw out the
milk, because it might have some. Sourness in it, like,
like, that's not how we're supposed to treat our heart or
soul, because then we won't hear from God and it'll shut us down.
I just
Chris: had to do that this morning. My wife pulled the milk
out of the fridge, and it was two days past the expiration,
but I opened it up and it kind of still smelled good. And she
said, Do you really want to gamble for $4 I'm like, so I
poured it down the sink. Just poured it right down. No.
Jessie Cruickshank: See, here's the interesting thing. Is that
when milk is bad, it smells bad. That's what I thought. The date
doesn't make it bad
Chris: the culture, that's what I felt like. And if it's bad,
doesn't, it just
Unknown: so, doesn't. If it don't stink, it's okay.
Chris: And if it stinks, doesn't it just become cottage cheese
and you eat it. Is that not right? I don't know. All right,
okay, well, I think that's as good a place as any. To maybe
wrap this one up, we went a little long last time. Went a
little short this time. But here's the thing, this is a free
podcast, so you got your money's worth. I'll tell you that right
now. Thank you guys for joining us for the ordinary discipleship
podcast. It's been a joy and a pleasure. Make sure that if you
enjoyed this episode, that you like it, and you could review it
for us, and then other people will find it. And there's like,
I think they said there's like 22 million podcasts out there.
So help us rise to the top, please. And Jesse Jacob, if they
want to learn more about what you guys are doing for the
kingdom of God. How can somebody find that out? You can
Jessie Cruickshank: always find out what we're up to@hoology.co
that's W, H, O, o, l, o, G, y.co. We got trainings for teams
on how to deal with this stuff, how to encourage people to be a
disciple maker. We got disciple maker training as a Bible study
that you can watch a video series with a downloadable
workbook. You can get that from the website. So just different
things, we're here to help equip you.
Chris: Thanks guys, and thank you guys for joining us on the
ordinary discipleship podcast. God bless. We'll see you next
time bye, bye. You.