Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #248: Edison Churches with Jesse Middendorf, Megan Pardue, Greg Ar

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Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Well, I'm gonna kind of ask these questions today, and I'm gonna try to actually say your name specifically. I may be asking the same question to all of you at the same time, but I don't want you all to answer at the same time just for the sake of being on the same call together. So I'll try to say your name specifically before we get the question going., and we'll see where the conversation goes from there. But it is wonderful to have you all on the show today. It's great to be with fellow ministers in the Church of the Nazarene and to be able to have a conversation, hopefully about some very important things that will be a help to churches and to people who are listening today who are in ministry, even if they aren't in the Church of the Nazarene. So let me start with Josh Broward, because Josh, you and I had a conversation this past summer at the Nazarene Church General Assembly in Indianapolis, and you actually helped me carry my guitars back out to the car. I had such a load, and it was so good. And you started telling me a little bit about this book then, so I'm gonna ask you first, how did this book start in the beginning? Who assembled these, let's call them Nazarene Avengers, for this task today? Who was the one that assembled this mighty group?

Well, the idea for the book started in conversation with Bruce Knuffer at The Foundry. We were just talking about lots of different ideas for books, and we got to talking about how our church— at that time I worked at Doonlin Community Church of the Nazarene with Greg in Chesterton, Indiana. We talked about how our church was really trying to experiment and try new things and We were struggling forward in figuring out how to be a faithful church in the 21st century, how to do church in different ways, and we're learning just by trial and error, but we're— with each experiment and each— whether it was a success or a failure, we learned a little bit better, and Greg has this great line of, "We're getting really good at failing." And I— but that process was moving us. We were sort of honing our craft and learning how to reach out to our community in a way that would work and be sustainable. And Bruce said, "Well, that's really interesting. What if we did a book about that?" And I— so I got to thinking about that and thought, well, really it needs to be more than just our church, because there's lots of people trying new things and innovating. And I— so as we started digging into it, we started assembling a group, and I thought, well, this is getting bigger than I can handle on my own. And I really, as the project got bigger, I added— asked my friends to join in the project one by one with— as the project grew sort of step by step.

Well, that's wonderful. Now the next question I'm gonna point at Megan today, Megan Pardue, who is here with us, and I want to ask you, because I really don't know— when I read the book, I didn't know who authored which chapters. I'm only assuming that you didn't write the chapters about your own churches. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't, and maybe you want to keep that a secret. I'm not sure. But I want to ask you a question, Megan. How have your personal experiences in your ministry affected your writing in this book?

Well, first I'll say that we are open to sharing which chapters we wrote, and I did write the chapter about Refuge, actually, the church that I pastor, and Greg wrote the chapter about the church that he pastors. Let's see, how have my experiences in ministry shaped my writing? Is that your question?

Yes, yeah.

Well, I think I've had a variety of experiences in ministry, both in my training in college and in seminary, and being involved in different churches, and so I think I was able to bring those different experiences to the book. And certainly my own experience as the pastor of Refuge, which is this very non-traditional traditional church. By that I mean we meet in homes, which is often thought of as, you know, very non-traditional or innovative. And actually it's in many ways very traditional since that's where the early church was headed in its founding. So I think my own experience is I've just been able to see church differently. Often people, when I explain about the church that I pastor, it's maybe not seen as super legitimate because it's not in a brick and mortar space. And through some work with, in prayer and over time, I've just decided to reject that assumption because what we're doing is church. We're the body of people gathered together participating in communion, right, both in our dinner and in taking Holy Communion. So it is church, and even just the practice of that over the years has helped me to be really open to what church can be, and then look for that in the churches that I was able to interview and the stories that I was able to tell.

Well, that's wonderful to hear, and you know, I think about when you talk about a traditional/non-traditional setting and not being in a brick and mortar thing, In some ways, you know, you're sort of an innovator because even just by being a female in many ways, as you know better than any of us guys for sure who have tried to be in ministry, the Nazarene Church is very open to women in ministry, but it's also still kind of difficult to do that. And so it's wonderful to see women who are being the innovators, and it's so wonderful to see the different types of ministries that you've been starting in that sort of, as you said in your own words, this traditional non-traditional space. But I love how, you know, the community and the fellowship aspect of what you're doing there at that church. You seem so well equipped to do that. And as I read the pages of that chapter, which now that I know who wrote what, yeah, they're all very well written chapters. But I appreciate what you bring in, in the contribution to that as well. I'm gonna move on to Greg in the conversation today while we're still waiting on Dr. Middendorf to be a part of our conversation. And Greg, this is a question I'm gonna start asking with you, but then I'm gonna ask it to Megan and Josh as well. And this is one that— the book starts out talking about not being afraid to fail. And failure being something that we actually need to learn to embrace. And I'd love if you could share just a little bit with us. Do you have a failure that actually turned out to be a triumph? And again, this is going to be a question that I'm asking to all of you. A failure that maybe something that you tried, and it could be something you wrote about in the book, but share with us something about why it's important to embrace failure, and if you can, use your own life experience. Does that make sense to everyone?

We'll see by my answer.

Okay, all right, very good. Well, Greg, take it away then.

Um, I would say, just looking at the, the arc of my ministry, that, um, it's a continual story of the willingness to fail, um, and sort of just the willingness to to keep at what I feel called to do. That's probably the thing that's been most essential in ministry for me, has just been a resiliency to try to do what I think is right, even if I don't know how to do it yet, and to be willing to keep at that. And that's been part of my story even really from my calling. When I got— for a Nazarene minister, I'm fairly atypical. In that I didn't go to any Nazarene schools, and that was part of my calling story as God called me and sent me to First Wheaton College and then Denver Seminary. But as I went through sort of that path, I had to fight really hard to stay in the Nazarene world because Nazarenes who don't go to Nazarene schools, people just think are weird. And as I sat through, you know, ordination interviews and district interviews, it was always with this question of 'Are you sure you're really part of us?' But I knew that I was getting the training I needed for the Church of the Nazarene, because I needed to be outside and to get different ideas and to be shaped in some different ways to help come back and impact the church. And so there was a resiliency within that. And I think that as in all the places where I've ministered, especially at Duneland, which is in the book, that has been sort of the dominant theme of coming back over and over again to a willingness to fail, to not be good at something, but to remain committed to it because I know that it's what we're called to, and long-term it's, you know, what I need to do. And so here at Duneland, we have— I've been the pastor here for a little over 9 years now, and it's been 9 years of that story of over and over again saying, okay, we want to be a church that We want to be a church that equips people and sends them out missionally into the world to connect with people who otherwise wouldn't walk through the doors of our church. Great. How do we do that? Anybody have any ideas? And everyone else, they sort of stare at you going, "Well, you're the pastor. Aren't you supposed to know that?" And I said, "Well, you would think I would, but nobody actually trained me how to do that. So let's figure it out together." Exactly. And so yeah, we've had lots of failures. Josh and I were incredibly good at cooking up really brilliant strategies and ideas that we would then go and try to sell everybody on and they would follow us and they weren't the right ideas. They were the right concepts but they weren't the right moments. They weren't the right people. They weren't the right opportunities. Once you get through that once and the fact that it didn't work wasn't a sign that you're not supposed to do it. It's just a sign you hadn't found the right people or the right opportunity yet. Then you just say, "Well, let's try the next one, and let's try the next one." You just keep going back to that. Over time, that definitely creates a culture of resiliency for your church and your leaders as well, where every time we hit a wall or a speed bump or an issue, it's not a sign that we're doing the wrong thing. It's just we need to keep working until we hit the next— the right— the breakthrough in doing that.

Well, that makes a lot of sense. I want to pause for just a moment. And welcome Dr. Jesse Middendorf. It looks like you were able to join us, and so we're glad to have you here with us.

Thank you, it's good to be here. I apologize for being a bit late getting into this, but I'm enjoying listening to what is being said already. Greg, good, good comments.

Yeah, he's, he's doing a great job. All, all of them are, and, and it's okay. All of us are late great Nazarenes from time to time, so that's, that's quite okay. Well, we welcome you to the show. I was just asking each of them, and I think I want to change the direction of the question just a little bit. I had just asked Greg if he could share something of his failures that have led to innovation, or maybe innovation that have led to failures that have led to success. And I liked his answer on that, and I originally was going to ask everybody that similar question, but I think I want to change direction just a little bit since we actually have a new participant in the conversation now. And so I want to focus in on— I'm gonna just read a little bit of the book actually for a moment so our listeners can hear this. It's actually toward— I believe it's out of the preface of the book. I made some notes on it, but we started talking about the rate of technological change, and it says the rate of technological change is now accelerating so fast that it has risen above the average rate at which most people can absorb these these changes, many of us cannot keep pace anymore. Indeed, there is a mismatch between the change in the pace of change and our ability to develop the learning systems, training systems, management systems, social safety nets, and government regulations that would enable citizens to get the most out of these accelerations and cushion their worst impacts. Now that was according to Freeman. The reason I wanted to, to read that now and talk about accelerated change, um, those of us who are a little bit younger Nazarenes, even in our lifetime we have seen some drastic changes. Even I would just say in the last 10 years in the way that we socialize with one another. I wonder if you, Dr. Middendorf, because you've been at this longer than any of us have, can you maybe describe for us some of the challenges that some of these new technological advances have, have brought, maybe in your own ministry?

I'd be glad to. Part of the, part of the reason for my having an interest in this book project in the first place was the realization that many of our churches are paralyzed by good, godly people who are not able to process the rapidity of change. The, uh, we're seeing, and we've already discussed it in other settings, rapid discontinuous change. It's not that what is going on is changing, it is what is coming up is change of a kind we've never seen before. I discovered in my own ministry during the 28 years of pastoral ministry that things were changing rapidly. I was a district superintendent for 5 years. In the 5 years that I was out of pastoral ministry, I went from beginning with a level of acceptance just simply because I carried the role of pastor to— by the time I re-entered pastoral ministry in 1991, We had had Watergate, we'd had a number of very high visibility names in the evangelical world fail miserably, of a Jim Baker and a Jimmy Swaggart and all that kind of thing, names for most of us are decades past. But the change was so dramatic in the culture in reference to pastors that what I came back into pastoral ministry, I was invited to participate in a, a civic club in the Kansas City area, only to discover that because I was a minister, they preferred I not be given membership. The same civic club I'd been members of— a member of in several different places. What was going on in part was being fed by a public awareness of moral failure among key leading ministerial people to the extent that the culture was no longer comfortable with just accepting a minister. I think that's just a paradigm for what is going on in the minds of many of our people. All kinds of change are going on— public failures, public transformations in the way that we talk about, you know, they're talking about cars where there will be no driver. I'm, uh, fascinated by aviation, have been for all of my life, and I read an article yesterday about the first test of an autonomous flight vehicle that would transport people across large cities like New York City, etc. I'm sitting there thinking, you mean to tell me I would get into something like that a vehicle like that, it would pick me up and fly me someplace else and there'd be no pilot. I'm having a hard time processing that. That's the kind of thing our people are going through. That's the kind of thing our culture is going through. I think it is part of the— part of the, uh, basis on which, uh, the radical divide in politics right now is going on. There are people terrified by the changes they're seeing, and they don't know how to process it. So they're grasping at straws to try to make things stop changing. That is also affecting the way the church functions. And, um, I've gotten a little pushback the last day or two from a person who was reading our book, and they're just kind of turned off by the title of one of the churches.

And my Is it possibly the Scum of the Earth Church?

Oh, you might have thought that would be the one. Yeah. And, and they were saying, what, what's the value of that? And I'm saying to them, the value of that is we're in a setting where church as we've always known it and done it is simply not going to work in many places in the U.S. Now, I'm not talking about around the world right now, we're talking about in the U.S. itself, U.S. and Canada. And I believe that it's this rapid, discontinuous change that is occurring so pervasively for people that they're just— they're sitting around with their tongues out wondering what in the world is going to happen next. I'm glad we have this book because it puts in the hands of many of our our people the ability to begin to think differently about the church and begin to realize it's not like it was. This is not your grandfather's Oldsmobile. This is a different kind of world in which we live, and the church must approach this culture, this time, this world with some, some transforming realities that are far different than the settled certainties that many of our people grew up with, many of our older adults especially.

Well, I want to talk a little bit, and that was wonderful. Thank you for that explanation, because I, I feel that struggle all the time actually, because we have a pretty diverse congregation as far as ages in my church. I do feel like everyone is kind of hanging on for dear life as new technologies change and as the way we communicate change. Worship can really be something countercultural in many ways. I think a lot of people are feeling like sort of the "Who Moved My Cheese?" analogy in business is sort of like "Who Moved My Church?" I want to actually point point out— I don't remember which one of you actually— actually, I don't— it's not that I don't remember, I just don't know who wrote the chapter on the Trinity Church. But that's one that fascinates me, and I'd love to talk a little bit. And any of you, you certainly feel free to jump in on this, but I want to read the Trinity denomination, or the Trinity Church of the Nazarene. It's part of our Nazarene denomination. It's in San Gabriel, Gabriel Valley, California. It's about— I don't know if I wrote this statistic down. I think it was around maybe 300 people that are in that church, if I remember. But I did write down the makeup. It's 45% Asian, it's 35% Latin American, it's 19% Caucasian, it's 1% African American. And one thing that I found so interesting about this church, and I, I have thought this was a good idea for some time, and it's something that I think is needed, but I think a lot of churches are resistant to, is the hiring intentionally of staff people who are not all the same ethnicity. Would anybody like to just talk a little bit about that? Maybe whichever one of you happen to have written that chapter, I'd love to hear more about that idea, and maybe you could just express how that was embraced or not embraced at first at the time, but it seems like such a really good idea to me. Who would like to speak to that?

Yeah, Rick, I wrote the chapter on Trinity.

Awesome.

So Trinity, I hear your comment about maybe you said put— there's maybe pushback from churches about intentionally hiring people who are of different ethnicities. And in my understanding of Trinity, that was not the case, at least insofar as it is, it is a first a Chinese church. That's how it was started. Okay, so the original pastors of that church were Chinese immigrants as I understand it. And so, and that congregation was, you know, Mandarin speaking after it transformed from this Bible study into its own— from this, I'm sorry, Sunday school class into its own congregation. So, you know, there's a couple of changes that are happening then. You have both a change from this primarily being an immigrant congregation where everyone is speaking Mandarin, to a congregation of second and third generation immigrants where English is becoming not necessarily the dominant language spoken at home, although that is, you know, often the case, to where it makes sense for them to actually in their, you know, congregation transferred to being like a primarily English-speaking congregation that also has a Mandarin service, and then later a Spanish service, later a service from the Filipino community. So, so there's kind of all of this morphing going on, and it— and willingness to change and transition. Another thing that's really unique about the staff and the hiring of the staff is that there's, like for example, Albert and Christine Hung. Albert's the lead pastor of that church and now is splitting his time as the DS in Northern California. And Christine is the campus pastor. So it did make sense for, sorry, the pastor at one of the campuses. Yeah, it absolutely makes sense for them to hire intentionally people that represent the different ethnic groups of their congregation, and Johnny being the campus pastor in Monterey Park, a Hispanic American, it absolutely makes sense for them. I don't know if it really followed this kind of pushback that we might have in congregations that have traditionally been Anglo, as you're suggesting, but it was very intentional for them. Absolutely, and has kind of just followed the trends of their church, and really this faithfulness of who's in our church, who's in our neighborhood, then we're going to make sure that we're hiring staff of people that are able to minister in this way.

Well, that's wonderful, and I think it's something that's so needed. Dr. Mittendorf referred to a few minutes ago this sort of climate that especially politically is charged, and We're in a time where even people in our churches are embracing this really satanic nationalism that is, it's all about me and what I want and only people who look like me. And I think that one of the most, you know, countercultural things that I see, and maybe one of the most gospel-oriented things that I see about this ministry, is just the way that it's striving to embrace those who are around them. I actually have a friend here in town who runs a ministry to those who are disenfranchised, and he gave me a sign to put in my yard that has in 3 different languages, "No matter where you come from, we're glad that you're our neighbor." And it's something that, as you know, I see in a church like that that I love, and I think it helps us to see the cosmic approach of Jesus and the gospel. It's not just all supposed to be about one kind of people group, and I think that's really amazing.

I wonder— Hey, Rick, let me add one thing in about that story. I may have missed it, but Trinity Church start— so Megan mentioned it started out as a Chinese church, but it started in LA in sort of Chinatown, but the Chinese people moved from that area and they moved to the Monterey Park area 30 or 40 years ago. And so Trinity Church decided, well, we're a Chinese church and the Chinese people moved, so they moved out to Monterey Park. Well, then 10-ish years ago, the community started changing again and became much more heavily Latino, and the Chinese folks had moved to another area. And so then the church had the question, I mean, do we just keep moving or do we root where we are? And so that's part of the piece Megan talked about. They decided they really needed to be rooted in their community, and the fact that their community was changing was a key piece in the decision to hire Johnny, who's Mexican-American. And they decided they didn't want to keep following, they didn't want to be tied as much to their ethnicity as to their community. So I just wanted to throw that piece in.

Thanks, Josh.

I think a lot of our white churches have a similar story of, or predominantly white, they move where the people move instead of learning how to reshape where they are.

That's an excellent point, very good point to make, and I'm so glad that you interjected with that. Well, I want to— since we just heard from Josh there, I'm gonna direct another question at Greg right now because there's one of my favorite parts of this book when Greg is talking about being at Duneland, and this is a quote from the book. It says, Pastor Greg asked the catalyzing question: I'm so excited about this vision we have. I can give myself to this vision. The only problem is that I don't know how to lead us there. Do any of you know how to become this kind of church? If so, tell me what to do, and I will do it. The stunned silence that followed told the story. Although they had clarity on who they wanted to be, Dunlan had no map for how to get there. It was a brand new destination for all of them. They were willing to be pioneers, which is something— you talk about in the book a lot— but they would need some guides. So I want to say, first of all, Greg, that I, I just so much appreciate that kind of humility in your leadership, because I think it's something that is desperately needed among leaders, not just in the church but really everywhere. I think humility goes a long way, and just the way that you were able to approach your church and the leaders of your church and say, "I'm really excited about this. I don't know how to get there." And I'd love if you could maybe just talk a little bit because the ministry, the Brasier ministry is so unique at your church. And I think even that a lot of churches might look at and go, "What? A Brasier ministry?" But it really is something special and unique and life-giving in many ways. And could you talk a little bit to us about that and how that came about?

Sure, about Free the Girls specifically?

Yes, that would be great.

Sure. First, you have to get really comfortable with the word bra, because we never say brassiere. Oh.

Bra it is. Thanks for that, Greg. That was an important point.

First step if you're going to do anything.

Way more bras than you ever thought existed in the world. And from our little kids to our great-grandmothers, everybody just has to get over all of their squeamishness about the fact that these are undergarments.

Yes. Always the first step, be able to say the word bra. Yeah, so for our church, most of it, what has happened, has been accidental but completely intentional. The church, there was that moment you're describing, which was at my 2-year review from having come out to pastor the church. Was a moment of, okay, we had done the hard work of sort of saying, what do we want to become? And it was so clear, like, we want— we wanted to be a church that would still be thriving in 30 years because we had found a way to be a church for the next generation, and that we were going to connect with people who weren't going to relate to normal aspects of church. And then we just— we also were just willing to say Well, clearly none of us have ever been part of that church. And once I admitted that I had been through 7 years of excellent schooling and been in the church my whole life and I'd never been part of a church like that, then it just gave us the freedom to say, okay, well then we're going to have to make some stuff up until we figure out what we're doing. And the Free the Girls really was part of that in that I sort of describe it as missionally we started just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what stuck, you know? We just started trying to partner with all sorts of different organizations within the Nazarene Church locally, just to see what was going to build some traction with our people. And Free the Girls wasn't something that I even suggested we do. So Free the Girls was started by my best friend from college and seminary, Dave Terpstra. When Dave began Free the Girls, I was part of the process of helping him think through and dream it up really from inception, but just as a friend and a voice of help. When they formed a board for it, I had been serving already on a board for another nonprofit that was working with at-risk women and children, so I said, "Sure, I'd be helpful." formed the board for it. Um, and I just sort of shared the story with some of our people, and it was actually one of our lay people who saw a Facebook post from my wife about Free the Girls who said, hey, I think I could do something with that. And then, uh, Pam, who's our— who now works for Free the Girls, said she started leading that. And then, um, when Free the Girls, uh, actually called our church and said, hey, um, 'Our international shipper's in Chicago. Could we send all the bras to you instead of to Denver?' which is where they're being shipped at the time. I just sort of had to chuckle and say, 'Okay, well, let me, you know, yes, let me call Pam.' And so for me, the sort of the process that we had learned was all of our ministries are pretty much driven by, and the focal point of them all is having significant lay investment and lay leaders who were really the main missional leaders for them. And so the first step was, well, if we're going to do this, we unquestionably have to have lay people who will own this. And so Pam, who was the first one I called 30 seconds after I got the call asking if we would start being a church that warehoused, at this present moment, probably 85,000 brawls or something like that. That it was like, well, do we have the people who will buy into this? And that's what— that's where all the innovation has come out of it. It's been, um, even though I'm the president of the board for Free the Girls, I am so inconsequential to the actual day-to-day operations of our ministry in support of Free the Girls. It's entirely led by and driven by this incredible group of lay people. And, um, That's sort of what unlocked it for us, was we knew we were trying to do something, and this was something that our people immediately just responded to. So we followed them. They said, "Okay, this is where you guys want to go? All right, we're going to become the Braal church." I did not expect at that time that people would start calling me the Braal pastor, but it's just part of the journey. It's all part of the journey.

Well, and I want to focus in, and unfortunately we're starting to run out of time with our conversation. But you had mentioned something again, your particular church is, you know, your church latched on to this ministry. It was something that worked for your church. You didn't set out to be the bra pastor. You actually just kind of followed the leading of the Spirit as your people did in those moments. And I want to talk a little bit— I wish I had time to talk about every single church in the book and let all of you elaborate, but unfortunately we just don't have that kind of time today. So what I'm going to try to do is put some things in a nutshell and let all of us sort of talk about it together here as we start to think about closing down. Because the book is called Edison Churches, and you do talk about Edison and the invention of the light bulb, and one thing that you say, first of all, in the book is we start talking about not being afraid of failure and how different corporations actually won't hire a CEO until they've been through some sort of major failure because they need to live through that. They need to find ways to innovate and ways to, to survive after a great failure like that at times. And you say, just to read a little bit from the book again, few innovations have had the effect of changing our world quite like the spread of electricity and the commercial viability of the light bulb. Skipping to the next paragraph, says Edison wasn't the only person to invent the light bulb. His His company, however, was the first to create a commercially viable, reproducible, affordable bulb. And I think that's very important, that he wasn't the first to create it, but he was the one that kind of knew what to do with it, figured it out after many, many failures and much trial and error. I want to talk for just as we start to wrap things up about innovation and creativity, and I think a lot of our pastors and maybe our laypeople people too, but I know pastors specifically suffer from this, getting to a point where they feel like they've run out of creativity. And these churches that we read about in Edison Churches, they are certainly churches that have figured out how to try new things and how to be creative. They are grounded in their theology. They are grounded in, in understanding, I think, what the church's mission is, but they aren't afraid to branch out in those times. And this might be a question that is best addressed to each of you. Maybe we could start with Josh and then go to Megan and then Greg, and then maybe Dr. Mittendorf, if you could, could close us out with this particular question: What advice would you give to people who have run out of creativity? Because this is not a how-to book The last thing you emphasize in this book, the last thing you want people to do is to read about these churches and go, "Let's do that exact same thing." But you're dealing with a lot of ministers who are probably dealing with— maybe at this very moment they've just run out of creativity. So I'm going to start with you, Josh. And how do you— what advice would you give to someone who has just run out of creativity?

Well, I think a really good way of thinking about this is we have often lost touch with the surrounding culture. I was in Guatemala in the 1990s, and I saw in a large Nazarene church all the men were wearing white shirts and black ties, and I asked, what 'What in the world is going on here? I've never seen anybody in Guatemala do this outside of a worship service.' And one of the missionaries there said, 'Well, that's what all the missionaries wore in the 1950s, and so that's what a good Guatemalan Christian does because that's what the good missionaries did.' And so there just became this sort of internal church culture that didn't change. That became radically separated from the external culture of Guatemala, especially Guatemala City, where I was at. And I think that happens to us a lot in the American church. I think in many ways we no longer have an indigenous American church. The culture of the American church has become this other Christian culture that doesn't accurately represent the culture around us, that doesn't speak in the language and think in the paradigms of the culture around us. And that's a little tricky because the gospel is somewhat countercultural. But also, we don't go to Africa and make American churches, or go to China and try to make Chinese people into American— have American culture so that they can be Christians. We have to indigenize the Gospel and indigenize the church, and somehow we've missed that in America. And so my advice, I wouldn't even worry about creativity first. I would just try to be a missionary anthropologist and follow what Philip Zimmerman, Kristin Philip Zimmerman did in Germany I think it was Chris Zimmerman, when he was planting a church, he spent the first 2 years of the process just hanging out in a local pub learning the people. What kind of people go to this pub? What do they think about? What music do they listen to? What are their hobbies? How do they talk about life? What's most important to them? How do they deal with conflict and struggle, and what are their hopes and dreams? And in the process of spending 2 years just night after night after night after night hanging out with these people, he became an effective missionary and a true anthropologist and understood how to present the gospel and construct a church in a way that would make sense for the people who were hanging out in that pub. And since then they've multiplied it many times over. They have 20-something worship services in all kinds of different settings, and in each setting they customize it to the particular setting, whether it's a nursing home or a coffee shop or a bar or a movie theater. They just hang with the people there and shape the church and the language of the church to the people there. So my first advice would just be go hang out with some people who are never, ever, ever going to come to your church and just try to understand who they are and how they think.

That's great advice. Now Josh, I believe you said you had a call that you needed to get to. Is that correct?

Yeah, but I'll hang with you for a while.

Okay, well I just wanted to say just in case you had to slip out before we finish our conversation And thank you so much for your contribution to the book and for being here today. I also— let's move on, and Megan, if you could answer that same question, what advice would you give to people who have run out of creativity?

This question reminded me of a quote from Anne Lamott. She has a book that was published about 20 years ago. Called Bird by Bird. It's a book about writing. And it's a book that we use in the preaching classes that I work with to help preachers learn about writing. And I think it's related to this idea of creativity. She says, you don't have writer's block. To think of, or I'm gonna kind of make the parallel here, like it's not that you are blocked, that you don't have any creativity. Block suggests that we get stuck, right? That we don't have ideas, that we can't be creative. But the truth is, according to Lamotte, and I agree with her, that we're not blocked, we're empty. So how is it that we get full? I think for a lot of pastors, that requires just getting out of our churches, like Josh has suggested, like Philip did, like Hannah Terry did in the chapter on Westbury United Methodist, to get out of our offices, out of our churches, and into places where we can be filled. And that might happen with people who, like Josh said, would never come in the door to our church. That might also happen doing something we love personally that seems completely disconnected from ministry. But something that will fill us up again, whether that's like working in the garden or, I don't know, playing on a neighborhood softball league, something that gets us out of our routine so that we can be filled up again and have some space for creativity. That's the advice that I would give is just ask your question, ask this question, right? Am I— is it that I'm not creative or am I just empty? And how can I get full? And then once I'm full, I'm able to have this creative space again to hear from the Spirit, to have ideas, to have energy. And a lot of our pastors, I think, are just really tired and empty, and it's hard to be creative when you're worn out.

Great, great answer. I love that. You need to be refilled, and that's Wonderful. Thank you for that answer, Megan. Greg, I'm going to direct the same question at you. What advice would you give to people who have run out of creativity?

Uh, my biggest advice would be that you're probably in the, the perfect spot then, um, to actually learn and, um, and follow where God wants to lead you. Um, as I'm, I'm pretty creative, but when I am feeling particularly creative in that all that I need is within me, I listen rather poorly and often lead myself and others down paths that aren't necessarily bad, but they're not necessarily what God would have for us either. And having a posture of humility where your assumption is that the only way breakthrough is going to occur, or the only way we're going to actually be good news for those around us, is if we are working and walking in line with the ways of God. You know, Psalm I was reading this morning talked about, "Wait on the Lord and seek his ways." That posture of sitting and waiting and listening and pursuing, that's an okay place to be, and that can really be the position that leads to breakthrough as a pastor. If you just will stop and listen in those moments, um, and with the humility that says, listen, whatever we desire for our churches, God desires those things more. Like, whatever breakthrough we long for, God actually wants that more, and God is already working on that. So it's a matter of getting in line with what God wants to do within that. So, um, so yeah, just that word of encouragement for, you know, it's okay. We all get— we all reach that point of not being sure what to do And if at that point we stop and really learn to listen and focus in on listening well, then God will generally lead us where we need to go. But embrace the humility of that.

Powerful. Thank you. And, you know, I keep, I keep getting that from you— humility in leadership— and I really appreciate that, Greg. Well, last question also for you, Dr. Jesse Middendorf. We're so glad you're here with us today. What advice would what advice would you give to people who have run out of creativity?

Well, I think that's the critical question I'd like every church board to sit down and think about, every pastor to sit down and think about. We do become blocked, as Megan was talking, not because we have nothing. You know, it's not that we are blocked by some outside barrier. We are empty ourselves. I keep reminding myself that the most creative being in the world is God himself. I love Isaiah 43. Don't ponder ancient history, says the Common English Version. Look, I am doing a new thing. The new thing is not coming from Israel, it's coming from God. What a revelation. That wonderful, powerful passage in chapter 21 where the one sitting on the throne and the Lamb— I am making all things new. He didn't say in that case, I'm making all new things. He's saying, I'm moving within the people of God and I am providing for them this new life, this, this consummation of all things. It comes directly from God himself. My greatest concern is we have put God in such a box that we have God block. We, we want him to operate as long as he operates with what we are familiar with and what we have always done. If we really stop trying to make God perform the way we think he should and allow God to perform the way he would like to do it, it will become a transforming experience for us as individuals and for our churches. And I think that's part of what is happening in these churches we are reflecting on in, in the Edison book. These are churches that somehow tapped into a resource that can only be described as divine. And I'm hearing the comments made by these other co-authors. I— they've just described that very kind of thing. We've tapped into something beyond ourselves And it comes from God himself, and if we'll allow him to do it, he will make all things new, even in some of the most, uh, moribund places we might imagine.

That is a very powerful thought. Thank you so much for that. I want to take a moment to thank all of you for being on the Voices in My Head podcast today. I really enjoyed this book, and I want to just make one last, uh, maybe comment about it because it's not just that this book goes into 10 different churches and kind of explains the innovation behind them, but with each chapter there are resources about learning more. There are great web links. I actually bought a copy of it in addition to the ones that were sent to me just so I could have it on my Kindle, and it's a great resource if you have something like a Kindle or if you use it on an iPad because you can actually just click right on the resources that are provided in the book and go to these websites. There are recommended resources that are not necessarily websites but are books, and then each chapter is followed up with really strong discussion questions for group use. I've seen some people posting online that they're actually in university settings and they're going to be using this in their classes. So I want to say well done to all of you, and I want to thank all of you really for, for doing the hard work that it takes to really research, and not only research a book like this, but all of you are actively doing ministries that are innovative and are doing things that I'm very proud of you for. Some of you I know better than others, but I can just tell by reading your stories in the book, it makes my heart glad to see things happening like this in my denomination. So as sort of a closing word today, I just wanna say on behalf of myself. I am one of the ministers that's here in ministry trying my best day after day to be creative at what I do and to ask the Lord's leading. I want to thank all of you for your contribution to this amazing book, Edison Churches. I think every pastor in our denomination and even outside our denomination should go and pick this up. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it at The Foundry, which is the New Nazarene Pub House. And just go online, look up Edison Churches: Experiments in Innovation and Breakthrough. To all of you, Josh Broward, Greg Arthur, Megan Pardue, and Dr. Jesse Mindorf, thank you so much for being the voices in my head this week. Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com Follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/RickLeeJames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on Amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you, this day and forevermore.

Amen.