.jpg)
American Reformation
We believe the American church needs reformation. To go forward we must go back. This podcast will explore the theology and practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication and apply those learnings to our post-Christian/secular American culture. American Reformation is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. Follow us at uniteleadership.org. We consult, bring together cohorts of congregations for peer to peer learning, and certify leaders for work in the church and world.
American Reformation
A Pastor's Journey from Party Life to Church Planting with Pastor Ethan Matott
What if the key to church reformation lies in embracing simplicity and a missional mindset? Pastor Ethan Matott from Red Rocks Church in Austin joins us to discuss this radical idea and more on the American Reformation Podcast. Ethan shares his compelling journey from a college party lifestyle to becoming a pastor, highlighting his passion for returning to the foundational principles of the early church as depicted in Acts 2.
Our conversation takes a deeper turn as we examine the notion of spiritual warfare in today's world. You'll hear an intriguing contrast between the overt spiritual battles in third-world mission fields and the subtler challenges faced by the Western church. With a shift from atheism to spiritual seeking, we discuss how to discern the source of spiritual experiences and the importance of equipping Christians with the armor of God. Ethan’s personal insights into modern spiritual warfare will have you reflecting on cultural responses to Christianity and the audacity of Jesus' mission for his followers.
Finally, we dive into the journey of launching a Red Rocks church plant in Austin—a mission rooted in creating a welcoming environment for prodigals and broken people. Pastor Ethan recounts the serendipitous moments that led to the church's inception, the challenges faced during the pandemic, and the unique culture that has since flourished. We explore the philosophy of living a gospel-centered life through the simple church model and the significance of unity within the Christian community. This episode is packed with heartfelt stories and invaluable insights, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in modern ministry and church leadership.
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman here. Pray, the joy of Jesus is your strength as you lean into learning. Today with a brother that I just met and was referred to by one of our own in the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod, jordan Besling connected me to Ethan and I'm saying this right, is it, matat, bro?
Speaker 2:Nice, you're done. Most people mispronounce that.
Speaker 1:There we go, ethan Matat Now, ethan and I if you're watching this on YouTube we have a number of things in common. First and foremost, it's our faith in Jesus, our love for him, our love for the church going on mission. But then I don't know third or fourth down the line after family, after all that kind of stuff is definitely our love for what used to be NBA champions of the world, the Denver Nuggets. So I got to ask you before. I have a standard question, but we're just going to have that be second Start with sports.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do the Nuggets have to do to turn things around, because last year was pretty disappointing, ethan.
Speaker 2:I know it really was. I'm still haunted by blowing a 20-point lead in the second half of Game 7 in the second half. I don't know if I'll ever get over it, but we are forever NBA champions. No one can take that from us.
Speaker 1:We have a title.
Speaker 2:I'm optimistic. I tend to be kind of a grumpy old sports fan, but I am optimistic because we have the best player in the world we do. We have a great core. We lost one of our five, kcp, but I do think that there's young talent and there's some guys like in Moneyball. You may not be able to replace him, but you can recreate him through multiple players, yeah, and I think that if some young talent shows up this year, we could, we could take a shot at the title. We'll see. So who's going to replace kcp?
Speaker 1:do you think?
Speaker 2:well, christian braun is the guy they're saying uh and he's. He's a winner. He's won everywhere he's been and he's a hustle guy. He's had some key moments for us and so he'll be the primary guy. And then there's some other guys that can jump in some minutes to. We have russell westbrook now, which will be very interesting well, he's old man, he's been around he's an ingredient to add and we'll see how that takes.
Speaker 1:But so I hope you hung on for just a couple minutes of nba talk. I could say a lot more, but let's go nuggets west tough, but we can get it done next year. I think Jokic is absolutely hilarious. Did you hear his comments after the US beat him? I want to get back to my ponies, I want to get back to. Serbia for my ponies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's so hilarious how dry he is. That's a pretty good Jokic impression he is.
Speaker 1:I love to play basketball. I love a lot more is my ponies back in Serbia. So I just got to get back home to Serbia with my ponies.
Speaker 2:That was good. I love him. He's so refreshing to me because he's unlike any other athlete, he just cares. But not too much. So good for him, not too much. He's got his priorities in line.
Speaker 1:He does, he does. All right, let's get into ministry. Man Ethan is a pastor, one of the pastors at Red Rocks Church in Austin. Red Rocks has an origin story that goes back to our hometown in Denver. Ethan grew up in Highlands Ranch and I'm going to let him tell a little bit of his story. But the opening question after the nuggets is how are you praying as you look at the broader landscape of the American Christian Church, especially here in North America? How are you praying for reformation, ethan? Thanks for hanging with me, bud.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Great question.
Speaker 2:I think for me it always comes back to the basics, and I know that's probably a cliche answer, but I think the Acts 2 church embodied for us the simplicity of how the church is supposed to operate.
Speaker 2:And so I think there's always seasons of the church, and I try not to be a critic of the method as much as possible, because it's the message that is sacred, and so I think there's a shifting in methods, for sure, but my hope is that we get back to the simplicity of the glory of God being everything that we work for and do everything for so that he'd be glorified and that we whether that's, you know, seeing through a different method in a church worship wise or preaching wise, seeing the glory of God made known through our churches, but really with a missional outlook.
Speaker 2:I think it's been easy in the Western world to be very comfortable as the church and we don't really face persecution, we don't face a lot of the things that some of our family on the other side of the world does and that allows us to be insulated in the comforts of our society and living in the wealthiest country ever here in America.
Speaker 2:So my hope is that we get a more missional mindset, not just for our neighbors but for people on the other side of the world, and get back to kind of that DNA of the Acts Church that they got together, they heard the gospel, they worshiped and then it sent them to go reach people that had never heard of Jesus. And on the grand global scale we have still thousands of people groups that have never heard the name of Jesus, have no church, have no Bible, unreached people groups all over the world. So for us in America to see, not only do we need to recharge and get back to the simple gospel and what it calls us to, but to then go, be sent and support the work that's happening globally.
Speaker 1:Couldn't agree more. Man Acts. Some people criticize this, but is a type of early church? Now, it's not. It's descriptive of what God was doing, not necessarily prescriptive, right, but what is very, very easy to see is that they had radical reliance upon the Holy Spirit, right? If I could pray for one thing, it's for the release of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:And what does the Holy Spirit do? Creates and sustains. Faith starts, faith continues, faith points us to Jesus Christ, crucified, resurrected. And then it mobilizes us, empowers us, transforms us. You can even say some Lutherans, there are some Lutherans that listen. We sometimes bristle at the word transformation because it sounds like we're doing the transforming. No, no, no, and it's a Holy Spirit who changes us into the image of Christ, to mirror His love, His care, His hospitality, His message, obviously, most especially, and the way of Jesus into the world. Apart from the Holy Spirit, like discipleship is a moot point, Following after Jesus is a moot point. We got to have the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit. That we would speak with the authority of Christ, right? I mean anything more to say about the work of the Holy Spirit, specifically in, you could go to.
Speaker 1:Acts, but I mean the Apostle Paul goes off on the Holy Spirit too in a lot of the epistles. So yeah, what do you got?
Speaker 2:there. I love that. You love the way you just said that I read a book in college when I was first new to faith, called Forgotten God by Francis Chan, which is a really great, just simple book about the Holy Spirit and that is a great title for it. And even I can admit my answer to you when you first asked the question. You know I moved straight into mission and what we do but has to always be spirit filled and fueled and I guess that Forgotten God concept in the West, because we're comfortable, I can tie those two things together.
Speaker 2:The Holy spirits are comforter, but when you're comfortable you don't necessarily need a comforter. And when you are insulated by all of the things around you that you can see and put your hands around, it's easy to get so focused on that that you forget that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead wants to work through you, wants to work in your life, wants to make that transformation happen. And so, yeah, a release of the Holy Spirit. And I think for us as the church to be open to the reality that the Holy Spirit doesn't have a formula. I think because we have different denominations and different understandings of the Holy Spirit and how Holy Spirit operates. We tend to try to control that rather than be open to growing and being uncomfortable in what the Spirit might lead us to do. And so yeah, getting out of the formula and letting the Holy Spirit lead.
Speaker 1:In a Western context, we're much more comfortable with order, structure, and God is a God of order, right. But I love the juxtaposition of the Father. His primary attribute though the Son and the Spirit create, but the Father is a creator and obviously the Son is the Redeemer. That kind of pulls us together. But the Holy Spirit, yes, is the comforter, but he's also the reminder of the things that Jesus has said. He brings to mind the things and this is going to your persecution when you enter into those places of hostility to the gospel, it's not you who speak, don't worry about it. It's going to be the Holy Spirit that speaks through you. But the Holy Spirit, jesus says, is like the wind you see the effects, right, but the Holy Spirit is out there. I don't know that I've said this before, but the Holy Spirit is a bit chaotic. I don't know that I'd attribute anything that's necessarily chaotic to God. Right, chaos and disorder. God is a God of order, but still the stirrer-upper.
Speaker 2:That's not a word, but you're right.
Speaker 1:He's just stirring things up within us, obviously leading us to repentance and faith, but also this sending element of the Holy Spirit. I think we have to read the book of Acts a lot more and see how even the Apostle Paul is referring to the Holy Spirit consistently, obviously in the armor. Do you view, like today? I view the tactics of Satan today, ethan, as becoming more overt. I think he's been very, very covert in the American culture but becoming now way more overt. I think he's been very, very covert in the American culture but becoming now way more overt. So we have to armor up Ephesians 6, right, put on the full armor of God the spirit of truth, which is the word of God. Anything more to say about the kind of spiritual battle that I think the church is in right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, my faith really sparked in the mission field and so when I was in third world countries, places where spirituals out in the open, I became aware of a spiritual reality that I didn't see in the American church, and I think that was the tactic for a long time, that if we could be sort of lulled to sleep here and the enemy was very covert you don't have a reason to think there's spiritual warfare in your life, you don't really have a reason to go to God, and so that kind of lulled us all to sleep, whereas in a lot of other contexts whether it's because of witchcraft, voodoo, hinduism you know all these different types of religions that are very spiritually out in the open and other cultural contexts there's no question of is this all real? We had to explain to some of our friends in Africa what an atheist was, because they never heard of that, and when we explained them there's people that believe God doesn't exist. They laughed Like how could you possibly? Because they go to church and they're seeing people get demons cast out of them down the street in the village, right? So what's happened, in my opinion, is we had the angry atheism movement of the early 2000s, where that was very much the conversation and a war on God and all those kinds of things. That's died out in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Of course there's still people that hold to that sort of mentality, but I think atheism gave way to the spiritual seeker movement that we're in now and it's not.
Speaker 2:You know, we talked to our church a lot about the fact that just because something spiritual happens does not mean it's from God and does not mean it's good, and we live in a time with new age spirituality and universalism and a lot of these avenues, that people are genuinely trying to find truth. But they get led into some really dark paths through these movements of spirituality and the enemy because he knows people are open to this seems to be more overt, like you're saying, more out in the open waging war, and we're having different conversations in our church than a decade ago I was having with people that are a lot more about demonic attack and spiritual warfare, and that's why we do have to armor up every single day to understand the armor of God and understand the war that we're in and actually be equipped with the things that God has given us to walk into situations and look at them from a spiritual perspective.
Speaker 1:We'll put a timestamp on this around the Olympics. I don't know if you're an Olympic fan, but I love the gymnastic stuff. It was really cool to see the guys get bronze the other day. It's so amazing. But everybody's talking about the opening ceremony and kind of the mocking of Da Vinci and the upper room portrait and all of that, and while that was shocking, you've seen the pictures and things like that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think it's just. On the one hand, you know, christians are prone to get just super self-righteous, angry, and I guess there is some, I don't know. The anger doesn't produce the righteousness of God, but I think it's just a sign of the times. People are searching, some are mocking, but it's just very overt, right in your face, man, who is this God? Who is this Jesus? What's he done for you? That is the spirit of Satan, that is the spirit of the enemy at work in the world, and so we shouldn't be surprised and we should say oh, I'm just recognizing the times in which we live and it's ready.
Speaker 1:It's not too dissimilar, I don't think, from the pagan realities that the early Christians walked into For sure, the men who thought they were wise, the Stoics, the Hellenists, etc. But then also the pagans, we crossed barriers. I don't think people often realize how audacious it was for Jesus to say you will be witnesses. Acts 1.8, jerusalem, judea, samaria, to the end. Do we really know what that meant? Like you're going to cross not just the Jewish boundary, which is you know? They got quite the history.
Speaker 1:The Jews have quite the history, quite the traditions to hold on to, but then you're going to go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, into the pagan world. So the same thing is yeah, we have the same opportunity today, man, so anything more there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, yeah, we get surprised in our culture when Christianity gets attacked and mocked, like I said, because we've been pretty comfortable and America has been known as a Christian nation, so it's been kind of par for the course for a lot of our history. But I think we should be less surprised when the world acts like the world and the world is going to mock Christianity. You don't see the world do that about any other faith and that's because Jesus is the figure of all of history that everyone has to do something with.
Speaker 2:You can't be neutral about him, and so I think there's people that live in other parts of the world that would not be surprised at all, and we need to wake up to the reality that it's not neutral in the world, and it's because the enemy is behind the scenes, trying to wage war on the reality of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Speaker 1:Let's get into your story just a little bit, man, that was so much fun. Tell us about your call into ministry and kind of the launch down into ministry there in Austin in partnership with Red Rocks.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'll try to give you the quick version. And I'm probably the least qualified person you've probably had on your podcast to be in ministry. So I went to the University of Colorado in Boulder, majored in broadcast journalism, was a party kid who was there to live up the college life. At the beginning of my sophomore year, my brother, who was walking in faith and, you know, strong believer he called me one day and basically a friend of his who I didn't know on the East coast, was praying and had a download from God about my life. So he tells me that and in my mind I'm like that doesn't happen, like I don't know what you're talking about. He sends me what she wrote and it was like someone read my mail, you know. It really freaked me out, to be honest. I thought like God's mad at me, he's coming for me, I'm going to die, what's going to happen to me? So the only thing I could think to do was go to church and I'd grown up going to church, have a family with the legacy of many different amazing faith stories. But for me I always felt kind of like the black sheep, prodigal son, like God has something special for all these people around me but not me, has something special for all these people around me but not me, and that had led me to just live a very worldly life. I would have told you I was a Christian, but that didn't mean much to me at this point.
Speaker 2:So I had thankfully been invited to a college ministry in Boulder from some friends of mine that were Christians, and so I called one of them and was like dude, I got to tell you what just happened. I need to come with you, and the first time I went it was kind of like my eyes were starting to be open. The Holy Spirit in some way was guiding me, and I wouldn't have even had the language for that at the time. But there was a mission trip announced that night to go to Cuba for our winter break, and I signed up for that trip without knowing anyone going, without knowing how I'd pay for it. I just felt like I have to do something. I probably at the time thought like maybe I'll get out of some of my debt with God if I go on this trip and do something good. And in the course of that trip I got invited into a small group by some older guys in the ministry that had felt like it was time to reach for some lost guys on campus, and I happened to be one of those, along with the two guys I lead this church with today. We had known each other through high school and stuff, and so we all got invited to the same small group. I went on this mission trip and it was this transformative experience that began a rollercoaster of faith.
Speaker 2:Um, through the rest of college I, you know, was going through the party life and trying to be a Christian and how does this all work together? How do I live? But what I knew was when I was on that trip, I'd never been more alive in my life. I felt joy and peace and hope, love, grace and found truth that I'd never experienced in any of the other things I'd been trying. So I just very simply was like I need to do more of that.
Speaker 2:So the year after I graduated, doug Ryan who are the other pastors here another friend of ours we spent a year traveling in the mission field, working with organizations and pastors around the world, kind of charted our own course for 2012. And that was the year of, in so many ways, god just breaking us down and building us back up so humbling and we learned so much. We thought we were going to go change the world. And then we actually went and spent time with people who are changing the world and learn from them, while we were just doing grunt labor like you know, hanging out and learning. And so through that year I think I knew I want to do this, in whatever context. I want to be in ministry. And the first half of that year was very much like I'm never going back to the Western church. It's stupid. They don't get it very. You know, quickly you learn a couple of things and you think you're so smart. Um, and then in the second half of the year I really felt God humbled me and was saying hey, that's where you come from, that's the culture you know and that's the place where you can have the most influence so that you can connect to all these things in the world, the needs that you see, the things you've become passionate about.
Speaker 2:So I came back from that trip Thankfully, had a connection to a church. I had no resume, I was a broadcast journalism degree, right but there was a pastor at a church in Denver I'd been connected to who was looking to hire someone in the missions office. So I spent four years as a missions pastor and it was kind of like you have the experience. So take people on trips, go work with partners, develop our missions component of the church with us. And it was incredible. I got to have some awesome experiences.
Speaker 2:And in that time, doug and Ryan and I had always talked about planting a church one day, and Doug, who's our lead pastor here in Austin, he was working at Red Rocks Church in the young adults ministry and had shared with our senior pastor, sean, at Red Rocks that we one day were going to plant a church. So this was always a conversation when are we going to do this? When's this going to happen? And the story boiled down to one weekend. We went up to the mountains in Colorado with our college Bible study. We do a reunion every year to just catch up on life. We're spread out now and we were at that reunion. One of our buddies, chris, says hey, you, you three, are always going to plant a church. It's always five years from now, five years from now, when are you going to actually do it?
Speaker 2:And so we drove back down from the mountains and we had that conversation of what would it look like if we did this. And we realized if we do this, we're going to just copy Red Rocks, because Red Rocks is very much a church for the prodigal and that's us. It felt like our culture, our DNA, so we'll probably just put a different name on it, but use all of the ways they do things. And in that conversation we'd, you know, heard of some other churches that obviously denominations do this, but non-denominational churches that had planted not just campuses but church plants out of the same home base in other parts of the country or world. And we dreamed up what if we pitched to Sean and that we went to plant a Red Rocks church somewhere else in the country?
Speaker 2:While we're having that conversation, sean texts Doug and says hey, man, call me whenever you get a chance. I just want to talk about the future. So we'll do this is perfect, he just teed it up for you. Call him and tell him the idea. And Doug calls Sean and before Doug can get it out, sean pitches the idea to him that we had been talking about. Hey, I know you want to go plant a church with your guys. What if we did it together? And what if we tried something new and you guys went and planted a Red Rocks church. So I always tell people we're not the brightest guys, so God has to make things very clear for us.
Speaker 2:And that day was just like okay, this is. You know, we're going to lay down a lot of our plans and kind of humble ourselves in some areas to take up building a church that we didn't start. That started, you know, when we were punk high school kids in Colorado, but it's turned into something really cool. So we started dreaming about what would this look like, and we're still figuring that out. What does this model look like? To be a church plant, but with the same DNA and the same family, with the potential to grow here in Austin and in Texas, working in collaboration, but also with freedoms that we've been given. So we started game planning.
Speaker 2:And then the other question was where do we go? And of course, our answer was San Diego, because we'd all lived in Southern California. And where else would you want to plant a church? So Sean's advice was go to a couple cities and don't look at them just from where you've been or where you want to live or where you think it could work, but Red Rocks DNA. Where do you think our church will thrive. Where? Where should we be?
Speaker 2:And Austin, texas, got brought up. None of us had been here before, but we knew the Longhorns, you know from sports, and we're like we've heard Austin's cool, so let's go check it out. And spent a couple of days in Austin our team and the whole time we were here it just felt like these are our people and this is our place. If God had, or we felt like these are our people and this is our place. We always say Austin is like if Boulder and Denver had a baby in Texas. That's true and that's where we come from. And so it was like God put us into this city to see, hey, this is a lot like the places you've come from.
Speaker 2:And also Austin is a hub for prodigals of the Bible Belt so many people that grow up in legalism or whatever that pushes them away from Jesus. They experience church and religion, but they don't actually meet Jesus. They come to a place like Austin because it's a free thinking city in the South, where you're not a Christian just because you're an American or because, whatever state you live in, this is the city that you go to. So it felt like there's so many people who have been burned by religion, so many people who never got to meet Jesus, and that's our place. That's where we want to be A lot of prodigals in Austin. So we moved down here in 2018, launched January of 2019, which, historically, is probably the worst time you could launch a church, because we had a pandemic a year in. But we're still here and God's had a lot of favor on what we're doing and it's been a beautiful story a little five and a half years in.
Speaker 1:Hey Ethan, wow, so cool man. I love that. I agree with you in terms of Austin. I've hung out a fair amount there, boulder and Denver. Had a baby in Texas because there's still the Texas vibe down there, right yeah, and it is a place for for prodigals. Some view it as kind of the liberal bastion city in Texas, but man, I have. I've known of Red Rocks because I was a pastor in Denver for five years. Pastor Sean, my wife actually likes to listen to me. She's a really good communicator, right.
Speaker 2:So my wife listens to him from time to time and that dude cries like he cries, so much, he's so emotional. He wears everything. He always says about himself. He says means well, cries a lot, he's just wears it all and he's so authentic and open about his struggles in his life and ups and downs and stuff and I think that's one of the gifts of his communication for sure.
Speaker 1:Amen, and we were talking about the Holy Spirit being the connector. I mean, I have a number of stories like that too, where man, the Lord's stirring something up, the Spirit's stirring something up over here and you don't even have an idea, but the Lord's stirring the same thing up in Pastor Sean and he even pitches the idea to you. He beat you to the punch man. It's so good. So we're yeah, I'm, I'm blessed to be a part of uh, we have some microsite communities, we have a multi-site kind of a complex.
Speaker 1:We call ourselves a family of ministries. Uh, down here, a number of communities that have different brands, but all kind of underneath the same umbrella, um and, and so what's the? What are the blessings and challenges of being a multi-site? I can only imagine we don't have. We don't have a multi-site out of the state, but I mean totally, totally different. So what's that journey been like of? Like, hey, what DNA do we get? What is negotiable and non-negotiable? Those are always kind of the questions right For keeping the same brand of Red Rocks. Tell that story a little bit, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. We're still figuring that out for sure, because we hadn't done anything like this. So Austin was kind of like a guinea pig of let's try this and see how it works, and Sean and the leadership that sent us are some of the most open handed people that I've ever met. No-transcript there and take what you want Like what's helpful for you in building your DNA. What I have found is there's a needed autonomy in ways, because we're on the ground here and we need to just make decisions. But in a lot of the ways that we've jumped ahead or made a decision, I've looked back and gone man, we should have called them and we could have done the same thing, because there's wisdom and collaboration, and so I think it's finding a balance of being free to make decisions while also standing on the wisdom that other people have for you.
Speaker 2:And the non-negotiables have always really just been our DNA and our mission, and and the non-negotiables have always really just been our DNA and our mission.
Speaker 2:And we exist to make heaven more crowded.
Speaker 2:We want people to know God, to live on purpose and go change the world, and we have a strategy and a brand, so to speak, to which we do that with and that can speak to how our creative presence, that can speak to our missions presence, that can speak to a lot of different ways we operate.
Speaker 2:But from there let's work together and make our church better. And that, I think, is the great part of collaboration, is that we have different ideas here, because we're in a different phase as more we've been in more of the startup phase where in Denver they've grown to be a big multi-site church. So there's times where we need their wisdom and there's times where we have an idea that they go hey, that's going to stir the pot up here and that collaboration has been really fun. But there are certainly challenges, because geography creates drift, you know, and there's times where you haven't connected with somebody, or a decision gets made and somebody doesn't find out all those kinds of struggles that you go through. And, just like marriage, I think what we've learned is communication is the key to the whole thing.
Speaker 1:That is. That is so true. I just want to get under the hood. Just one more question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:So is there? There's kind of like a central support team in terms of tell me what those probably HR. You probably got your creative pieces, your communication pieces. There's a lot of share, marketing, branding, all that kind of stuff. What is shared and what is like released? Tell that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So HR accounting, those are the hugely helpful things because I mean, that's stuff that's very challenging to think about when you're just trying to set up church on a Sunday and make it happen. So that is a great shared resource for us. And then, ministry-wise, all of our ministries share the same DNA and have collaboration. But then we have people on the ground here that kind of contextualize, so creative. We have our Red Rocks branding and the ways that we design and the video and stuff like that, and sometimes we make shared projects. Sometimes our creatives in office here in Austin operate, you know, making their own stuff that fits under the Red Rocks brand, so to speak.
Speaker 2:When it comes to communication, we really collaborate for series. So we do the same series for nearly all of our series in Denver and in Austin. But we preach live down here, they're preaching live up there, and that creates great collaboration because, if you know, for example, we did an IM series of the seven IM statements this spring. So somebody down here when I'm preaching the Good Shepherd and James up in Denver is preaching the Good Shepherd, we can talk and we can create, you know, together and help each other kind of cultivate out of this base idea. So, yeah, we share in a lot and then we kind of contextualize from that.
Speaker 1:I love that you're doing a semblance of collaborative sermon writing. Uh, shared, shared teaching. We have we don't do video venue here. We're kind of testing it a little bit in some of our micro sites. Um, we've got this. The cool little story this cowboy church in Alpine Arizona you probably never even heard of it out of our micro sites. We've got this cool little story, this cowboy church in Alpine Arizona. You probably never even heard of it. Out in the middle of nowhere it grows to 3000 in the summer and then down to 500 in the winter.
Speaker 1:And so we've got one of our lay leaders who has a huge ranch set up. Worship in his barn can hold like 30, 40 people and he's being like raised up now into an elder, maybe a future kind of pastoral presence, but he's not been trained to preach.
Speaker 1:So we've been sending a whole bunch of our student pastors and preachers down there every other week and now he's going to be testing out video venue but he's going to be leading the worship and whatnot. It's a microsite kind of experiment we're doing right now, but we've been really, really robust. I'd love to get your take on this. Like not everybody has the ability to teach, like this is a gift. The Apostle Paul says find others who can teach and have them. Find others who can teach. Second Timothy 2.2. But I think there are more communicators in our congregations than often local pastors give credit for it. I've seen a lot of, I guess, fruit from casting the vision of a lot of guys who may be in their 40s and 50s, maybe have some experience in corporate America. They've led meetings for a long time.
Speaker 1:They've stood on stages and given presentations. They have a communication gift. Do we fan that into flame consistently? There's a lot of multi-sites. This is one of the things I love about Red Rocks. There's a lot of multi-sites who really, really focus on we're getting behind the pastor, sean, you're finding the one guy who can do the thing, but you guys have gone in a different direction, while still collaborating um in in that sermon, writing and tell. Tell that story a little bit about finding more communicators of the gospel and platforming them consistently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I that has always been kind of at the core of Red Rocks is to be um a stage with many voices, and you know that comes from really the. The humility of the beginning of Red Rocks is that a man named Scott Brueggemann moved to Denver and he was the original founder of Red Rocks church. He spent two years fundraising, had this dream of this church, but he himself didn't feel like he was the lead pastor. He didn't feel like he was that communicator. And when he met Sean, he asked him will you be the lead pastor of the church I've been fundraising for? Because Sean was thinking about church planning as well. And I think that they began as a team and Red Rocks has since then always operated as a team, not only in leadership but in teaching as well. And I appreciate that because I get to preach down here in Austin and I love it.
Speaker 2:But I think that Sean and those guys who started the church never wanted it to be about a personality or one person. They wanted it to be a church about what it's supposed to be, about Jesus, and have people serving in their gifts, but allow multiple voices to do that, because you know people. There's different frequencies of communication. There's different ways that we communicate the gospel and people hear differently from different teachers, and so I think that that's just been at the core of of Red Rocks, to let different speakers come up. But I will say that's scary, I'm sure, because you trust a guy with a microphone and a lot can happen, especially if you've been there for 15 years and then this new guy shows up and he's going to get on the stage. So I totally get why a lot of pastors primarily preach and maybe have a few guest voices here and there. I understand why Red Rocks has just operated a little bit differently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I like it for two reasons and I've warmed a little bit to video preaching from time to time. It could have its appropriate context, but I think it's more the way of Jesus, to be quite honest. I mean, jesus is a word made flesh. He empowered the 12 and sent them out and they found others. And there was no technology, I don't know. It's kind of a thought experiment. What would Jesus say about video venue preaching today?
Speaker 2:I don't know. We'll have to ask him. I know that's a good question. It's hard A lot of times people are like, well, the apostle Paul didn't need cameras and screens. And I'm like, well, yeah, he didn't have that options. He also didn't have a car, but he could have gotten placed a lot faster if he'd had one. So who knows? But I think I think God loves creativity and innovation that allows the gospel to spread in different ways, you know, and so because of the internet, there's a whole lot of problems in the world, but also the YouVersion Bible app has taken the scripture into places it's never been before.
Speaker 2:So, I'm a fan of it, but I also see the challenges of it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let me let's go deeper into what it's like to be a church for prodigals. You've said that a bit what? What are some of the key attributes that people come to Red Rocks Era in Austin? How would they know? Like, really quick. This is a place for prodigals, broken people in need of the father to run after them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we say when we welcome people to church we're a bunch of imperfect people pursuing a perfect God. That's who we are, and I think we kind of always own that part of the church that there's nobody here that wears a cape, there's not varsity Christians and JV Christians, like, whatever's going on, you're welcome in this place because that's the gospel. And so we try to model that in the way we welcome people in church and the way that we preach and the way that our greeters welcome people. And we always you know it starts with our volunteers I, I, when we were going to move down to Austin I was, we had this map in our office and we were pinning where different churches in Austin were, just to see are there gaps? Where are they? And so I was Googling all these churches in Austin all the time and I realized in that time that people fill out Google reviews of churches, which now we get blasted for this, that and the other thing. But I never had thought of that until I started that search and I realized I generally see more reviews about someone's experience if someone talked to them, if they were noticed, if someone made them feel welcome than about the preaching or theology or worship. It's much more about do I face-to-face, does somebody know that I'm here and does it matter?
Speaker 2:And so that's where we've always kind of pushed and relied on our volunteers to say, when someone drives into our parking lot, they may be right now terrified, like we feel like this is normal to be at church. This is what we do every week. They may not have been in church ever in their life, or it's been 20 years, and they feel like God hates them, he's mad at them, and I know that feeling of walking into a church like God has a worn out for me and it's not good, I'm in trouble. And so from the second they get on our property, we want them to feel welcome, from our parking team to our greeting team, to our cafe team, to people that are hanging out in the lobby that are looking for a new person you can spot a new person generally in church or someone who came alone to our usher team Like how do we make people feel not just say from the stage, you're welcome in this place, but they've got to feel it and experience it.
Speaker 2:And so it's a combination of what we can say from the stage but, more importantly, the experience they have to invite them into this family and make it feel like a family, not some sterile environment where you come for some Christian karaoke and a TED talk, right, and then you walk back out. That's not what this is. This is a family, this is a home, and so I think between volunteers and then just the things we voice from the stage is kind of our one-two punch. It's good man.
Speaker 1:What are some of the discipleship invitations that you guys make probably groups and things like that. How do you develop people? I think this is something we're trying to a lot of times. Hopefully, if we're seeking to be faithful, because it's not just about the seeker-sensitive, we want it to be an awesome experience, but we want people to grow in their faith and we want them to disciple other people. Discipleship multiplication is a big time value for us and I know it is for you. So what does that look like? What's that invitation into a deeper walk with the Lord?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so small groups is always the primary way. We do multiple launches through the year and try to get people in groups as quick as we can. Our sort of user journey, so to speak, is man, you come to church, you check this place out and you feel like I want to call this place home. Then we invite people every week to come to something called Welcome Party and that's kind of a one-stop shop where they can hear about our story, learn about our DNA and find out.
Speaker 2:How do I plug in and call this place home versus stop by every once in a while? This isn't a vacation house, but this is my home, and so that looks like serving on teams, which in small groups and serving on a team is you're in a small group, you're just bonding through serving, and then small groups could be. You know, obviously, bible studies, some groups meet and talk through the sermon from the week before. Uh, there's different themes to, to groups, that a lot of variety of those things. And our hope is that everybody's on a team and in a group, because that's really where you start to be discipled. Is that everybody's on a team and in a group, because that's really where you start to be discipled. And then we also have classes that people can take to go deeper into apologetics, or we have a class coming up on the Sermon on the Mount outside of Sundays to help people grow deeper in their faith as well. And we're always challenging people to say it's great if you're coming here and you get involved, but at some point you got to step up and lead and you've got to be discipling other people and there's a process for that right. You don't sign somebody up on their first day to lead a group, but I think that there is.
Speaker 2:In our church I've had people who kind of have the critique of like, well, it's, red Rocks attracts a lot of seekers and a lot of you know, non-believers and stuff, and I'm like, well, that's the point is that we reach people who don't know Jesus, that we're not a country club of people who just kind of recycle the same people who all agree on the same stuff. We want to go reach people in Austin that don't know Jesus, but we have to have a place for them to then grow. And to that person I say man, would you please lead a new believer group? Could you lead some other people and help?
Speaker 1:them to start growing in their faith, and so I call it a leadership within that process. Oh so good bro. I've talked to a lot of guys at a lot of different podcasts over the years, man, and it's funny how all of us or I think this is the unity of the Holy Spirit kind of say, hey, okay, we need to worship and you could go back to they gathered together in the temple, courts, right Book of Acts. You need to meet in people's homes, do life together, develop a community, three, five families, something like that. I mean that is so huge.
Speaker 1:My wife had cancer that's a part of our story about eight, nine years ago. We wouldn't have made it apart from the love and care and support of our small group at that time. And then we need to be the hands and feet of Jesus in active service and actually our relationships are going to go deeper when they see how much we love one another and we love our community and want to meet felt needs. And then there's going to be felt need experiences. People are at different places on their journey Um, where we we're going to care for the poor, we're going to um care for the mentally ill. You know we're, we're going to care for those who have walked through divorce or grief, and so we've got what we call CG cares, christ Greenfield cares, kind of experiences, that kind of cycle through. They're on ramps into deeper relationship in small groups. This is the intention there. But the simple church model, simple Church came out, you know, a number of years ago. Like that kind of is the Jesus way, like what else would we be doing outside?
Speaker 1:of worship small group and serve right, I mean it's super simple and it's funny how all of us kind of say roughly the same thing and I'd say for those of you in congregations you're maybe smaller, like it's the same thing there, it doesn't matter really. Size Like this scales, if you will. Anything more to say about how the simplicity we're all kind of in the same kind of Jesus discipleship journey together.
Speaker 2:That is funny.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, you said earlier like an ax is descriptive, not prescriptive, but in some ways it kind of is prescriptive because it lays out the basics what we do this is what you do and this is what we need to keep coming back to, and that, I guess, back to the original question of reformation is we just get away sometimes from the simple, like it's the fundamentals that you never graduate from. That's right. And we sometimes think we graduate from certain parts of the gospel and gospel living, but you don't. And I think that the beautiful thing that you find because I think for a lot of people, they show up to church and it's they're going to hear the same thing of what do you do now? Well, serve and get in a group, whatever, and it's not like you need to do these things for God now, because that's what he's required of you.
Speaker 2:If you want to live on purpose, if you want to live like on purpose, if you want the gospel life that Jesus has for you, this is the best way that that happens is living in community and being the hands and feet of Jesus. And we all do it with a little bit different. You know names and titles and branding and all that stuff, but it's the same concept and you find the same thing in other countries, the same thing on the other side of the world. Right, they gather together, they worship once a week. They have that time, that rally point, and then they're out serving their community. They're meeting in homes for dinners. It's kind of undefeated methodology, I guess you could say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it requires like a focus on leadership development For sure.
Speaker 1:And in my tribe, anything that I was telling this before. Some may say that leadership development, this is kind of moving liberal or something like that. The battle in our tribe is between the office of holy ministry and pastor being the deliverer in our context of word and sacrament. I'm not mocking that, it's very true, it's very accurate. People need the gospel proclaimed into their ears so that it creates saving faith. There must be. How will they believe unless they have those who have been sent to preach so that they can hear?
Speaker 1:I mean, this is a very the office of holy ministry and therefore the office of the keys, which is proclamation and the forgiveness of sins, in particular, like this leadership and pastoral leadership is very, very necessary For sure. And pastoral leadership that has a heart and mind of the suffering servant who came to place himself below and to Ephesians 4, equip the saints for the work of ministry, like this is always the dance, this is always the dance, and we in our tribe, we become sometimes imbalanced toward. You know, pastor does. Unless pastor says, unless pastor does it, it doesn't really happen and it just stifles, like it's just a heavy burden, and I've seen it on a lot of pastors. Oh man, I'm. On the one hand, I have radical insecurity because I realized I can't possibly do everything that's required on my job description. There are so many things that I'm not gifted to do so. Or on the other side, you know what I'm kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1:I have like look at all these people that show up to listen to me so pride, and insecurity are on both sides. The middle way of Jesus is equipping the saints for love and good deeds, releasing them over and over. And you have to consciously, as a leader, as a proclaimer, like put yourself, I am one with you. Right, I am. You may come here and think, wow, Ethan, Ethan's got it going on. And not to mock your hair, I'm a hair guy, but look at that amazing hair.
Speaker 1:No, but you know, I want to be like. No, we want people to be, like be like Jesus.
Speaker 2:So, anything to say about the kind of dance between pastor and the people. It is a dance I love in scripture when it talks about Elijah and it just mentions he was just a man. Yeah, amen. And I think that's such an important thing to remember about all of us as humans, because pastors I think a lot of pastors that have become quote unquote celebrity it's not because they asked for that, it's because we did that to them. We made them larger than life. Because we are, we have in us like that same thing that Israelites had. We want a king. It's not enough for me to have my faith in God and just let him lead me. I need a man in front of me who I can, and you see that with politics, you see that with pastors mantle for sure and there's a different call that God's put on their life and an anointing and authority, and whether people agree with or like that person or not, they're in that place and God has placed them there and there are certain responsibilities and burdens that come with that. At the same time, I think it does get blown out of proportion where the model of Jesus, which led to the model of Paul, was raising up other people who nobody would have put those guys in charge of anything, ofacts, of anything, and yet they became leaders because Jesus led, even though he's the ultimate authority, with open hands. Like, think about, if you're Jesus and you know that Peter's one day going to preach the gospel, I would be like no chance this dude's ever getting a microphone. He's never getting in front of anyone, for sure. But that, I think, is the confidence that Jesus has in the Holy Spirit, that we don't, knowing that the Holy Spirit's going to speak, the Holy Spirit's going to lead, the Holy Spirit's going to do what he's going to do. And I love using people as my instruments, but I'm not limited by them. I'm not worried about their flaws and failures because it's not about them in the end. And even through their flaws and failures, people will see my glory and my goodness. And then Paul, all the guys he raises up and sends out to plant churches. I mean, we just did a series on the book of Colossians and Paul never even visited that church. He didn't plant that church. It was Epaphras, one of his guys, that he sent there.
Speaker 2:Right, he had this open-handed, which again, is terrifying. I've been with this young guy in Ephesus for a few years and now he's going to go start a church and I hope he understands the gospel and we don't even know how are we going to do baptism and what's the age break off where they can get baptized. We do child like all those funny things. There's an open handedness that has to come with leadership because ultimately the Holy Spirit's going to lead and guide and you're, of course, not negligent in that. But I think we get a little bit too much like this as leaders and as the church, or we put this on our pastors and make them feel like they have to feel like this. When Jesus seemed pretty open-handed, he didn't give a whole lot of instructions for the church. I look at Acts 1 and I'm like there's like 500 questions we'd like for you to answer before you just tell us to go tell everybody about the gospel. But that comes back to the Holy Spirit which we started this whole conversation with. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:Well, it's messy Grace. The story of Jesus is remarkably messy. He came for the sick, for the broken. He came to be one who heals us and then invites us to be a wounded healer, right Shout out to. Henry Nowen. And God speaks best through our pain and suffering and trial. So let's close with that. What has the Lord taught you? Continued to teach you through suffering.
Speaker 2:Great question. I would say my first observation of true suffering was in the mission field and realizing that in so many ways I hadn't suffered in a way that so many people in the world do. And not that you compare stories, but I think suffering first like it's so cliche when people say God, you know, break my heart for what breaks yours. But that happened to me. It's not actually cliche, it's real. When you see human beings truly suffering, the plight of how cruel and dark this world can be, it has to elicit something out of you to say I've got to do something about that. And thankfully I witnessed those things through the lens of Jesus, because otherwise you carry a humanitarian burden that you will never fulfill, that will crush you. If you feel like I've got to go fix suffering in this world, um, and so I saw it from a, an outsider perspective. That led me to want to do something for it and with it. And God, would you use my life to bring people? You know, to help people, and ultimately spiritually, but also today.
Speaker 2:Um, but then in my personal life, you know, going through trials as a pastor is an interesting thing. My wife and I had a miscarriage and that was a uh, like a prayer kind of crisis for me, where I sat with my older son and prayed with him when my wife was driving to the doctor and I knew when she gets there she's going to find out if this baby's going to make it or not, and that prayer wasn't answered. And that was a really painful time in our life, right after coming off the heels of my wife, losing her grandfather who was her father figure in her life, and so it was just like one of those times where you can preach all day long the goodness of God and you can like stand on him even in your suffering and your trials. But when you're in it it becomes all the more real to you, and I think in that time for me personally, I just felt God continually saying like hey, don't run from me, run to me in this. And I found comfort in some things I read and realizing that in suffering we don't always get the answer, but we always have the answerer and that he is present with us in those things. And I've just found through my life like more and more marveling at the fact that God didn't withhold suffering from himself, but that he truly loves us enough that he suffered more than any of us ever will, so that he can relate to us in it and obviously suffered to pay for our sins, but also in the human experience, so that we don't feel like we have this distant God. But I could know Jesus has lost alongside me. He knows the feeling of loss and suffering and finding comfort in him rather than resisting him because I don't understand, but rather like the invitation has never been to understand God, it's been to know him and that was kind of a revelation that I finally released and surrendered to in the moments of my suffering where I wasn't going to get an answer. I don't know why miscarriages happen. I don't think I ever will. There's not a silver lining to that. But what I do know is that I know Christ deeper through it and at the end of the day I can walk away from that still with a scar, but knowing that he's with me in it on painful days. The last thing I'll say about it is I've always just been fascinated by the story of John the Baptist.
Speaker 2:And talk about somebody who suffered and received no reward on this side, right Like he died. Before Jesus went to the cross, he had questions at wait. This is not how things are supposed to look. And the dude gets beheaded before he even sees Christ fulfill what he came here to do. Um, and yet I think that if you were to ask somebody like John the Baptist or Moses that never made it to the promised land after all they went through and you're like this kind of seems unfair God, they say man, I saw the face of God, I got to be with him. I got to know him on this intimate level and in the temporary. It was confusing at times and it was hard, but I got to see him and be in the midst of his story and know that glory was awaiting me, and so I try to hold to that same truth I love.
Speaker 2:There's a book the Prisoner in the Third Cell by Gene Edwards about John the Baptist. That is a kind of confusing but wild take on his story. But he talks about when John sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him are you really who you say you are? That's his cousin. That dude leapt in the womb when their mom's, like this dude, has known his whole life. Your cousin is the guy and yet he's, in his moment of suffering, going hold on a second. This isn't how it's supposed to look and Jesus' response back is blessed are you, if you're not offended with me and that's such like a hard truth to take in, but if you can understand that his ways truly aren't your ways and you can walk away and not be offended when Jesus doesn't make sense to you and know that his offer is for you to know him, not to fully understand him, because why would you want to worship a God you could fully understand in the first place? I think that you find comfort in that. Never an answer, but the answerer who meets you there.
Speaker 1:So good, ethan, we're in a battle of the will. I come from a Lutheran background. Luther wrote a book called Bondage of the Will, and the will is between your will and God's will, and my call is to pray against my will like in the Lord's Prayer that God's will would be done right. Your ways are higher and they're better, and I know there are questions that I just can't answer. They're hidden from me.
Speaker 1:Luther goes deep on the revealed and hidden God and at the end of the day, he comes back to the revealed God, the promises of God for me. Lift up your eyes to the cross, see my love for you, my smile upon you. Look to the empty tomb and see the hope beyond the grave, like we got to go, and look to my word, which reminds you of my love for you consistently. So we go. We lean on what is revealed rather than what is hidden, and it's easy, in the midst of suffering, to think that God is not fair. He's more than fair. I mean, one of the biggest questions is the problem of evil, right?
Speaker 1:This is theodicy and we want to answer these questions. Why does evil happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Whatever you want to say, I think you flip that on its head, Ethan, and you say why don't more bad things happen?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, there's a lot of common grace going around. I'll tell you that, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1:And it's amazing, god holds in him we live and move and have our being, and he holds all things together, most especially in the person and work of Jesus. So I drop a couple Luther quotes there.
Speaker 2:In your experience.
Speaker 1:What is your perspective on Lutherans, ethan? Have you hung out with any kind of Lutherans and we can? You know people have a lot of. Or maybe you don't think about us at all and I'll I'll. I'll say what I think about, right? Well, I had you on the podcast, so I have kind thoughts about Red Rocks, but yeah, share what you've your experience with Lutherans.
Speaker 2:Uh, I've never been around a Lutheran. I didn't like. Uh, I've had.
Speaker 2:I haven't had a ton of exposure experiences, necessarily in the Lutheran church. I didn't grow up in a Lutheran church. I had friends that did, and I love, obviously, martin Luther, a Protestant, and I love what he did. I think the voices of guys like him through history that have called us back to the main thing, to make the main thing the main thing and to get back to the way of Jesus, have been so needed through history, and so I love people that make that, call for that and hold us to that.
Speaker 2:And when it comes to denominations, man, non-denominational is a denomination. Now it was like oh, we're the rebel kid, that's not, but we are. We have all kinds of things. I used to resent it and think it was like this oh man, everyone's just so worried about small things and why do we get onto teams and stuff like that? And now I kind of think it's beautiful, because every expression is a different flavor of the gospel and it gives people a chance to find their flavor and the place. Like I said, the message is sacred, the method is not, and so for people to be able to go and find their place where the gospel is being preached, it's the truth of Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected and then walk that out with the community of believers. Whatever the doctrine is, there's reasons for those conversations and debates and things we can agree on and disagree on.
Speaker 2:I think that God smiles at it in a way, because we care that much that we care that much about things that sometimes we care too much about, but that have led us to build communities with common theology and doctrine, and so I kind of feel that way about Christian denominations. There's obviously offshoots that I'd go. We're not actually talking about the same thing, um, but long answer to say. Big fan of your community and even being on your podcast today, like I love, love your perspective and hearing the way that you think of things and and the Martin Luther at your core.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm a third generation Lutheran church Missouri Synod pastor. You may not know there's like dozens and dozens of US Lutheran denominations.
Speaker 1:A lot of them are very small At the best. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is confession oriented. We have a big book I could pull off my shelf here called the Book of Concord, you know. So these are the confessions, which are a true we take vows right Kind of a true exposition of Holy Scripture. But the gift I like to talk about this. Every community has gifts and gaps, right, every person has gifts and gaps. And the Lutheran gift for the wider church is hey, let's look at the sacraments, the history and the way God wants to reveal himself to us. Yes, through the word, but also through the waters of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And in the Catholic story, right, they had seven. And one of Luther's greatest contributions, I think, is he flips it to say the sacraments are not what we do for God, right but what God does for us, to remind us of his love.
Speaker 2:They're a total gift.
Speaker 1:They're totally grace does, for us to remind us of his love. They're totally gift, they're totally grace, and I think where we have some room for growth, especially being in a very conservative denomination, is, hey, every conversation about the Holy Spirit does not mean that we're moving immediately towards speaking in tongues or immediately toward the gifts of prophecy or healing or something like that, because we're pretty suspicious of a number of those types of extraordinary gifts and I think we need to have more conversations about the hidden, hidden God, the Holy Spirit. So yeah, man, it's. It's been so fun to learn with you today. Any, any closing comments. This has been great. I know our listeners have been blessed, man.
Speaker 2:Oh well, thank you, dude, it's. It's great getting to know you. Fellow Nuggets fan obviously is a key thing that we share. But yeah, I think in the end I love that you're not having a podcast where you're just inviting fellow Lutheran people, but you're talking to people with different perspectives and different church types. I think we need more of that, one of the things that you sent in notes that we didn't get to today. But we can close with that. John 17, unity.
Speaker 2:Let's go, that is just missing a lot in the church and I always think about this story when the disciples come to Jesus and they're like, hey, those guys over there are kind of doing ministry differently than we do. Should we call fire down on them? And Jesus looks at them like what, what are you talking about? Like you want to blow those guys up for trying to tell people about me, and we as the church just have that in us all the time where it's like, well, they do baptism this way and they do this this way, and I think we need to just love each other and embrace each other. And that happens, Like I see in Austin, there is such a unity in the church in this city across denominations, across different theological backgrounds, all those kinds of things, because it's a hard city to be a pastor in and because we look at each other and just want to give each other a hug like dude.
Speaker 2:We're in this together.
Speaker 2:We may not do this part of ministry the same, but we're on the same team, trying to reach people for the gospel. We're trying to make Jesus known in this city to a city in a lot of ways that rejects him, and I think that we're going to see more of that and I'm praying for more of that unity in the American church. In a time when, like you said earlier, culturally the world's more and more kind of going to say things that offend us and be kind of anti-Christian and take shots at Jesus and all that stuff that stirs us. What it should stir us to do is unify as the church to show people the love of Jesus. Even when they're persecuting us, even when they don't like our faith, when they mock us, it should just embody us all the more to go okay. That means they just need Jesus even more. And so let's unify together across denominations and be the church that Jesus called us to be. And so thanks for modeling that through what you're doing on your podcast and at your church Mic drop.
Speaker 1:Ethan this is the one and only Ethan Matot man. Great, great stuff. If you want to connect with you and your ministry, ethan, what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, follow Red Rocks Austin on Instagram, red Rocks Church. Obviously, we have two different accounts because we got Denver, we got Austin. But social media, we're on YouTube, we have sermons, we have a podcast called Afterthoughts and we love to just have conversations like this with different people and talk about faith. And we talk a lot about sports probably too much about sports on our podcast. But, yeah, redrocksaustincom, If anyone ever is in Austin, come hang out, we'd love to meet you.
Speaker 1:Are you guys still writing music in the kind of Red Rocks world? Is there still? A group writing songs yeah.
Speaker 2:Red Rocks Worship on Spotify and Apple and all those places. They just recorded a new album that's going to be awesome, and a lot of those songs. There's so many cool stories of how God's using our worship around the world, so check check that music out and blast it in your car and in your house.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it, and we actually there's not many cause we have very traditional worship in our context. You know, I'm in a robe and things like that. It's out of the hymnal and we still have screens and step at Oregon, all that. And then across our courtyard, which I kind of my office is right between them, and across the courtyard there's two like more modern, modern uh worship experiences, still very liturgical Uh, but we're writing.
Speaker 1:We're actually writing. Uh, there's something called the songwriters initiative. If you wanted to look up songwriters initiative, just getting going about 30, um, 30, what, what? You wouldn't know. They're Lutheran, they're just biblical, but 30 really, really deep and rich songs. And I know Red Rocks has that same heart. So this has been so much fun. Ethan, this is the American Reformation Podcast. Sharon is caring Like subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in podcasts and we continue to at the ULC, have conversations that's the Unite Leadership Collective, uniteleadershiporg have conversations with those within the Lutheran Church, missouri synod and to learn from those outside of. But all recognizing I love the way you close, bro All recognizing the common banner which is Christ and him crucified, united in love, to make him known. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thanks, ethan, you're the man dude.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man Appreciate it.