The Tim Ahlman Podcast
The Tim Ahlman Podcast is your go-to resource for inspiring conversations that equip leaders to thrive in every vocation, inside and outside the church. With three primary focuses, this podcast dives deep into:
Leadership: Learn from experts across diverse fields as we explore how their insights can shape and sustain a healthy culture in the local church and beyond. Over 60% of listeners expressed a desire for practical discussions on cultivating thriving environments—and that's exactly what these conversations will deliver.
Learn: Engage in deep theological discussions with scholars who illuminate how Christ is revealed on every page of Scripture. Together, we’ll bridge theology to the realities of a post-Christian America, ensuring practical application for today’s world. This segment aligns closely with the themes of the American Reformation Podcast and resonates with the 60% of you who crave more exploration in this area.
Live: Discover healthy habits that empower leaders in all vocations to become holistically healthy. As followers of Jesus, we’re called to lead not only with faith but also with physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Join Tim Ahlman as we navigate leadership, learning, and living with purpose, so you can lead with strength, wisdom, and a Christ-centered vision.
The Tim Ahlman Podcast
A Reformation of Prayer
The catalyst for mission isn't found in strategy, resources, or technical knowledge—it's rooted in prayer. But not just any prayer. In this refreshingly honest conversation, Pastor Chris Paavola shares how his journey from worship director to church planter to established church pastor led him to a profound revelation: most Christians don't know how to pray conversationally with God.
• Prayer is the catalyst for mission and church transformation
• The Global South practices prayer with more desperation and dependency
• Scripted prayers are good but insufficient for developing a prayer culture
• The "prayers for" method creates natural, conversational prayer times
• Prayer walking transforms both churches and communities
• Most church members freeze when asked to pray publicly
• Creating systems for teaching conversational prayer is essential
• Prayer services and intercessory prayer teams build prayer culture
• Prayer reveals our desperation and need for God's intervention
• New churches reach new people, and different churches reach different people
Welcome to the Tim Allman Podcast. Pray, the joy of Jesus is your strength, as I get to talk today with a friend I've admired from afar and it's a joy to get to spend time today talking about well, we'll talk about a number of different things, but we're definitely going to talk about prayer. It's Pastor Chris Pavla. How you doing, brother?
Speaker 2:Man, I'm good, I'm good yeah cool.
Speaker 1:Well, Chris, if you don't know him, he's a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. He's at St Mark in Battle Creek, Michigan, Southwest he was pointing on his hand. We're at the Southwest corner of Michigan serving at a 50-year-old congregation. Before going to the seminary he was a worship director. He's been a part of church plants and, yeah, fill in any of the gaps there. I mean, what kind of led you into ministry? I know kind of like myself, you've got family who have been around the church. Did you come kind of kicking and screaming or, like me, was it kind of something that was in your purview the whole way? Tell that story.
Speaker 2:There was probably a kicking and screaming there, yeah. So my dad was a second career pastor too, so I got to watch him go through seminary while I was in middle school, high school, and then I went to pre-sum in Concordia, austin at the time. It's now Concordia, texas and then I got done and I was like you know, I think I want to be in a band and thanks for the degree, mom and dad and so did that for a few years. But God redeems all things and I became a worship director over the years.
Speaker 1:So pause right there. Yeah, what band were you in?
Speaker 2:like an early Christian and I'll say if I do that, yeah, yeah, if I do that, then everyone's going to be Googling pictures of me. You know from the three thousands. We don't want that.
Speaker 1:So you don't even want to mention it.
Speaker 2:No, but yeah. So there was a band and then, uh, actually it led to more of a singer, songwriter kind of thing and I did some songwriting and you know, and with publishing companies in Nashville and stuff and that kind of opened some really cool doors too. So but then eventually, while I was a worship director, got the bug for church planting. I found out that it's the most effective methodology under heaven for reaching people and that that that appealed to the evangelist in me, you know, and eventually took the pledge, went to seminary to be a church planter.
Speaker 1:So you entered into church planting before, like exploring, Tell that story Before even going to the seminary.
Speaker 2:What you were on like a church planting team of some sort, yeah, yeah, so out of college I really cut my teeth in youth ministry at a church plant.
Speaker 2:That's really where I was first exposed to it. And then, just as I was in the ministry, just kind of looking at my gifts and you know, just kind of as you grow right and just as God calls each of us in different ways going, I think I think I might be a pastor, I think I think I'm a church planter actually, and then so I went to the seminary and then right out of seminary I planted a church in St Louis right in the inner belt there called All Nations, and we rocked and rolled and did the thing and it was a blast man. And now, after a certain season at the church plant, we set up a constitution and board elders, all that stuff, and raised up an SMP guy now there. So there is now a church there where there wasn't one before and we thank God for the baptisms that happened. But it just I started to feel the call to move on and especially as my family was, you know, getting older and stuff, and so that led me here to St Mark. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's cool. St Louis is such a unique context. There's so many wonderful mission opportunities there.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:I made my friend Jeff Claytor. Uh, amazing kind of network so were you? Was all nations kind of connected to Pathfinder or St John's? And I know you have some connection to St John, aliceville. Yeah, yes, were there other churches that kind of helped you launch that.
Speaker 2:Oh, a hundred percent, man. That's one of the cool things about St Louis, it's such a network of churches. And so I'd say you know every church planner you start out, you know, when you're like, you know, hat in hand, going to people and asking them for funding to help you. You know, get your first few years under the way, and so all of my relationships were naturally through St John, now Pathfinder in Ellisville, but then along the way, man, so many other great, great churches in that area stepped up and you know whether it was Concordia, kirkwood or King of Kings and Chesterfield, just great.
Speaker 2:And then eventually, you know, I got connected with Bethlehem because we were doing an inner city kind of a ministry and so Bethlehem down there, and you know, just yeah, so it was actually a little bit of a change, you know, because my only experience was really in St Louis, where it's you throw a rock and hit a Lutheran church and then you come up to Michigan. It's still a pretty, you know, you know large Lutheran population up here, but it's nowhere near like, oh, you know, 23 churches in your hometown that you can call up and hang out with. So yeah, that was a little bit of a learning curve for sure, but um, yeah, that's the how were you trained as a church planner at the seminary Um was there?
Speaker 1:was there a track at that time for church planning?
Speaker 2:You know they don't do it anymore. Um, I wish they did. It was called CPAC, the church planner assessment center, and that's really the last thing that you do before you go okay, I'm not going to do this church planting thing. And when you get done with the assessment, they give you a red light, yellow light, green light, right, and they have experienced church planters who are doing this assessment.
Speaker 2:And so I remember sitting in a room with, like Pete Mueller, Greg Bursts and Ben Griffin all guys who have gone on to do amazing things for the kingdom and they're sitting there grilling you and asking you questions that they know, like you need this disposition as a church planter. You, you know like you've got to have this entrepreneurial spirit, just a relentless optimism and face of hardships, and can you, you know, interact with non-Christian people and carry a conversation with them that doesn't become hostile? You know, and I, I, when I got done with the, the assessment, I remember Ben Griffin going yeah, this is, I don't know why you need me to tell you this God is calling you to be a church planner for sure, and that. So that was really the last thing, that that I needed before I pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1:So how did can you think of that? I'd love to hear you just say some of the qualities that God gave you. I know it's hard to kind of I'm not asking you to brag on yourself necessarily, but you have the entrepreneur. If you could list the three or four kind of qualities that helped you plant and sustain a congregation, what were those, Chris?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I like one of them, definitely the entrepreneurial spirit. You've got to have that pioneer, take the hill mentality. Um, you know, I am always coming up with ideas to start something new, so I think church planners naturally have that. And then I think there's a self-starter thing in there, for sure, and you know these are all very secular skill sets, by the way, you know like, but you know God uses them. And then I think I think I alluded to earlier the optimism in face of all of the circumstances that suggest otherwise.
Speaker 2:The church I failed to mention I'm probably going to get a text message when this airs, but New Beginnings Lutheran Church in Pacific was really the church that you know helps, you know, issued me the call to be the church planner, and Joe Sullivan is an awesome church planner, but he, he always talks about, you know, um, the uh church planners have to have just this unrelenting optimism. And he's, he's right man, uh, you do, and I think those things, um, you put them all together. Um, it's a rare skillset and that's why, like I think church planning is, I can't crack the code. You know, like, as St Mark grows, I know we're going to plant either a satellite campus or another church and so much of it comes down to finding the right church planter. And that's the code I can't crack because it's a very rare skill set to find. And I don't say that in a kind of a kind of a self gloating kind of a way or a boastful way, but it's true, man Like that, that ability to have that evangelism, the giftedness of evangelism, talking to non-Christians, you know, kind of that apologetic ability to just a conversational apologetics, entrepreneurial spirit, plus, you know, visioneering kind of a mindset and and this optimism and the ability to rally people together, it's, it's a lot, man, it's a lot.
Speaker 2:And I, I, when I'm praying about it for the future of our synod, you know that's, and we're praying for workers in the harvest, it's just a rare skill set, man. And then you add onto the schooling requirement requirement that you've talked about on the podcast a lot. You add the schooling requirement on top of the skill set and it becomes harder and harder and harder for us to continue to plant churches. And the reason we need to is Joe Sullivan would well at this point I say it enough that I just say this is what I say, but Joe is the first guy who said this back in the day but more churches reach more people, new churches reach new people and different churches reach different people. And if we're going to reach more new and different, we've got to keep planting churches.
Speaker 1:Well, I couldn't agree more. I agree wholeheartedly that it's so necessary to find and empower, release, equip, the right planner. And it's for us as Lutherans. I mean, god works through means, right Through word, through sacrament, through individuals, giving them unique gifts. So it's not, it shouldn't, be surprising. What are your thoughts? Because I don't know that we're doing, and this is probably true in many main lines. I don't know other main lines. Some are growing. By the way, the Presbyterian church in the usa is actually growing.
Speaker 1:Um, I think one of our struggles right now as confessional lutherans is is having a path that looks attractive and I hate to use the word attractive, but for these guys, for these guys that have that skill set, they're looking for something that looks like man.
Speaker 1:I could do it.
Speaker 1:And right now, the restrictions on SMP and then kind of saying residential only, like it's a tough slog, like I got a whole bunch of executive leaders in my congregation Not every context is like mine, but they're coming into our training because it's adaptive, it's contextual, it's less expensive, it gives a degree, you're staying in context and you're connected to your congregation and we're kind of fanning the flame. This kind of new start mentality we're just struggling, I think, to embrace that type of a leader right now and I don't think, I think any denomination that is close to 200 years is going to have this kind of adaptive change challenge right now. So, but it almost feels let me, I'll get your take here it almost feels like we're against that type of a leader. And I don't know, I don't have one conversation but as because of the less than adaptive way in which we're engaging the entrepreneur or leader, they're almost left to say I'm on the outside looking in here in the LCMS and probably in many other longstanding mainlines. Any comment there, chris? I know it's tough.
Speaker 2:No, I almost just want to agree with everything you just said, man. And it kind of places the emphasis on what you're trying to do, you know, with other avenues, to try to figure out other avenues and ways to to get guys in the ministry. Um, and I don't know, you know, I, when I was at seminary, I remember, uh, president Harrison, I'm going to get, I don't want to get in trouble, so I'll just keep this very, you know, like there's no, I'm not saying anything, that's divulging some kind of a private meeting, but he took out about a dozen guys out to get dinner after, after a call service, yeah Right, after graduation. And we're all sitting there and I remember telling him that accreditation doesn't mean anything to me. You know I, I would, I would go to seminary, I. You know, like, if, if I graduated without any type of accreditation, I don't care, I just want to reach people, I just want to reach the lost.
Speaker 2:And and uh, and it was like a gasp went through the room. I'm like why am I like an anomaly here? I just want to, I want to be ordained to be a pastor so I can start, you know, kicking butt and taking names for the kingdom of Jesus and like why do I need you know some? And we're kind of beholden to an accreditation process, given you know our system and it really is, it's the elephant in the room and I don't know, you know, I don't know if there's an. I think alternative measures are going to continue to be explored until we figure something out. Man, yeah.
Speaker 1:And hopefully that's sooner, sooner than later, because there's a lot of churches not just not just churches that are declining and could potentially raise up local leaders. But, like you said, it's all about start new to reach new and and I I'm praying for that sort of a vision in our church body that embraces the leader, that has the gifting the entrepreneurial, super optimistic self-starter can take criticism, has the right level of an apologetic bent with a missional zeal to save some Just look at all the descriptors you're using and how rare this is too, man, and it's like.
Speaker 2:And what I'm actually doing, you know, like, in, in, in in my church, in my context here, is when I see anyone who's got that like, I'm instantly trying to like bring them into some type of mentorship or bring them into some type of.
Speaker 2:You know, we've kind of revamped our elder model to be elders as leaders and find that guy, because if I find that guy in our midst, man, and that I can send to go plant a church 20 minutes from here, or whatever man, it would be amazing, It'd be the most amazing thing, because it's just so hard to even even to think like I'm in battle Creek. I didn't even know where battle Creek, Michigan, was, you know, before I took the call here, Right, and like to think that I'm going to call somebody from four States away to come, and you know, and like, quickly, you know, ingrain themselves into our community and make these connections that planners need to be drawing on in order to have a successful church plan. Oh my gosh, it's so. The odds are stacked against them and it's obvious like the answer is raised within and, you know, developed from within. But you know it's again. It's not easy.
Speaker 1:It's not easy. All right, let's go to. Let's go to prayer. Pray to the Lord of the harvest. So we should definitely pray for more workers, but you have a prayer ministry. For those of you who don't know, prayforyourchurchcom is a website that Chris started. He's speaking on the topic of prayer and kind of demystifying prayer, making prayer accessible not just for the clergy, for the ordained, but for all of God's people, and you're going to get some. You probably want to take some notes on the conversation we're going to have today, because there's going to be some ahas for sure, as it relates to the topic of prayer. So tell the story about how you kind of started to have. It seems kind of like a dumb, but how did the Lord kind of put the ministry of prayer before you? Chris, tell that story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've become like a spokesman somewhat of prayer in our church body and it's not because I got it figured out, honestly, it's because I'm willing to admit I don't. Everything that I have discovered and all the growing in prayer has started with that recognition that I don't have this figured out and I need help and I need to grow in prayer. And I think that's kind of what the disciples were doing when they looked at Jesus. These are good Jewish boys, you know. They prayed in the synagogue, synagogue all their life. They've seen rabbis praying in the streets, but something about Jesus where they were like, oh Lord, teach me to pray, and that's kind of. You know, I, I, I I'm willing to admit that I that I'm not there, I've gone, and you know, I'm willing to admit that I'm not there, I've gone.
Speaker 2:And you know, when I was in college I spent a summer helping build a church actually in Africa and I had an opportunity to teach English in China and I got an opportunity to see the underground church there and when I saw people in Africa or people in China praying, I was so humbled, bro, it just it wrecked me and I was like I have got a long way to go and um, and so I think, yeah, I'm willing to admit that I don't have this figured out, and especially when I started planning the church, I was like, if I'm going to plan a church, this is a God-sized thing. I am a white guy in a black neighborhood. This has got to be a move of God. And that sent me to prayer and going. Ok, I got to figure this out.
Speaker 1:Dude, get us behind the curtain a little bit on the global south. What is there? What's different about their prayer life than than we in the West?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember, I remember, like you know where we were, was in Tanzania and kind of in the foothills of the Kilimanjaro, mount Kilimanjaro, there, and there was no hospital for probably 30 miles or so, and so when there was sickness that happened in the village, there wasn't. You know like it wasn't like oh, go grab some NyQuil, it was like let's pray. And it was just so pervasive everywhere, this constant, constant prayer. And then, like when they were, you know, building their, their church, like I was talking about um, and they lacked materials, what do we do? Well, we kind of look at our wallets and, okay, I'll run to Lowe's real quick, or something like that. And they just gathered around and we're like, lord, we need more lumber, we need more nails. And I'm like, and they just gathered around and were like, lord, we need more lumber, we need more nails. And I'm like this is, it was just everything it was, it was in, it was saturated, everything they did because they had nothing.
Speaker 2:And I realized there's this. I mean, if you look at second Corinthians, one right where Paul's talking about all the hardships and then the result is so pray, and he's, and, and I realized that it's um, that there's so many things that I go to quicker, whether it's, you know, technology or money, or strategy or resources, whatever it might be, rather than pray. And it's the first thing, it's the, it's the main thing they do, it's the last thing they do, and it's it's because they're desperate. And I realize that the formula is if we want to pray more, get desperate. And I'm sitting in a really comfortable church and what I'm trying to always do is to make us uncomfortable and desperate and so that we are growing in prayer, because if we're comfortable, that's where we stop praying.
Speaker 1:That's so good I have. We're in a unique context here, chris, in that I serve a pretty affluent church, Bro, I've seen your church.
Speaker 2:No, I've seen your church. Man, you are very blessed. There's so many churches in Phoenix right now. I'm just looking at you guys going. Oh my gosh, the resources are awesome, and same in Austin.
Speaker 1:It's just like you look at these growing cities and it's just money coming out of your ears and to who much is given, much is required, right and uh, it comes with with its own challenges, to be sure, the entitled, the consumer, you know we're in, you know we're in the, the bible belt of the southwest, and that there's we still have a lot of people to reach. I think we're only like at 15 percent are churched on any given sunday. So but, but nonetheless, you've got these worthy rivals, you could say, and all these big, big, well-resourced, multi-campus, ginormous megachurches that are worshiping 10 to 20,000 a weekend. There's five or six of those churches that are around us. And so you're like you can feel, if you play the comparison game, you're like, oh my gosh. You know, and we try to be distinct. We are distinctly Lutheran, we're liturgical, you know it's contemporary and traditional. There's still a liturgical flow, it's not just the arms race.
Speaker 2:Like you want to get into that arms race. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so, like the consumer mentality toward youth ministry, who's got the best band creates the best vibe, all that kind of stuff. So that's on the one hand. But then, like tonight, I'm preaching at one of our ministries that includes, but isn't exclusively for, the working poor and homeless, 15 minutes down the road in Tempe, and we're going to feed 250 people that are sleeping on the streets tonight and so some over time that ministry, la Mesa, has been going for 10 years. A number of our friends who have maybe been in recovery or are coming in and out of recovery end up calling Christ Greenfield their home. And one of those leaders his name is Bob, bob's a member. Bob has lived in a van on our campus. He's an evangelist for his calling. He does graphic design very much on the side just to kind of get his daily bread met. And then he's got maybe three or four you know very small donors that help him with his ministry on the streets consistently. And he lost one of those donors. I'm getting to a point here. He lost one of those donors the other day, for I don't know what the reason was, and he comes to me 730 church service and he goes to all of our worship services, by the way and then often goes. And you know he's. The Holy Spirit is just so alive in this guy. Guy, just like, leans in right Every time you're preaching. It's very inspiring for a communicator of the gospel.
Speaker 1:And Bob goes. Hey, pastor Tim, I lost a donor. I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep my phone and that's going to be hard for me on a number of you know, for a number of reasons. Would you pray? And so I go. Yeah, bob. So we said a quick prayer. You know that his daily bread would be met At the end of the 1045 service he goes. Well, just want to let you know. The Lord answered. I got two more folks that are going to come alongside to help me partner. Like it's like that, because he's like super living on the edge. Anybody else you know making the six, seven figure income. You know we have the idol of plenty.
Speaker 2:But Bob got desperate man Yep.
Speaker 1:Bob got desperate and in that lower income, lower socioeconomic community, I pray churches want to learn with them. Not just go and helicopter in food and whatever. No, no, no, but to go learn with the poor, learn with the other, learn with the addict who's trying to make it the least of loss, the lonely. This is where you're going to see the desperate nature of prayer. And it's just, it's how he lives, it's a constant state of prayer and dependence upon God. When the apostle Paul says, chris, pray without ceasing, how do you think we're supposed to understand that? I think it says what it says. Yeah, living, constant conversation and dependence upon the other.
Speaker 1:the other, uh upon God. Praise, praise God. So you have six questions for praying for mission. I was impacted by this because, man, we need to pray for more workers. You kind of go down who are we praying for? Where are we going? I'll just jog your memories. We got to walk through this. So start with the who. Who should we be praying for consistently as leaders within the church and just the everyday follower of Jesus connected to the mission of the local church?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when you look at like prayer and maybe kind of a backing up even further, there's there's this command to pray in scripture and so much of it is unscripted, right, and we have scripted prayers that we should absolutely pray. I'm a I don't mind scripted prayers. I've got a website full of scripted prayers that you know, like in our church services and you know scripted prayers are fine. But when you look at like the commands to pray in scripture, we have to be able to get off of the unscripted prayers and get into that conversational like unceasing mode, right. And and when you look at, you know what scripture calls us to pray for. When it comes to mission, just in mission, I mean you could run a catalog of all the things that scripture calls us to pray for. But we're called to pray for who, like who will go for me, pray for workers in the harvest. We're called to pray for where we're going to go, the people that God has called us to. You're called to your community, that down there in Arizona, I'm called to this community and I'm called to inter community and and I'm called to intercede in behalf of this community. Then we're we're called to pray for when. So like who, where and when, like that a doorway would open for the gospel. Like and we see that. We see that in Colossians, and Paul prays like pray that a doorway would be opened. We're, we're, we're called to pray for, like what we're going to say. Pray that the words are given to me, that I might declare these mysteries. You know fearlessly, as I ought, how we're called to pray for boldness and how we pray. And then we're called to pray for why? Like for them to receive the gift of faith and believe in their hearts and confess their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and that they might, you know, know the calling to which he has called them. And you look at all of this who, the where, the when, the how, the what and the why that we're called to pray for. First of all, we're called to pray very specific prayers for our community.
Speaker 2:When we're praying only scripted prayers, the natural default of them is general, egg, broad brushstrokes, general kind of prayers, and think of all of the scripted prayers we have in the LCMS man, and just the way we, the normal parishioner. The example I use is my grandpa right. He would wake up in the morning, he would say Luther's morning prayer and he would go to bed saying Luther's morning prayer. He would do the portals of prayer Like. I remember seeing him sitting in his chair in the living room there looking at the portals of prayer and then he'd read the one sentence prayer at the bottom of the little devotional right. That's what he did.
Speaker 2:Then we would pray before meals. Come Lord, jesus, be our guest. We would go to church, he, he would pray the Lord's Prayer, he would pray the Collect of the Day or he would pray with the prayers of the church. And none of these things are bad. Scripted prayers are good. Jesus prayed scripted prayers from the cross and throughout his. But that can't be the only kind of prayers. If scripture is calling us to pray specific prayers, we've got to get off script.
Speaker 1:And that's where I think our church body can grow man Well. I 100% agree. Look at the Apostle Paul. He is constantly. There are so many moments that they're spending like an extraordinary amount of time. As Paul is leaving the book of Acts I think it's later on in the book of Acts when he's being sent, I think, to Ephesus, they think they're not going to see him. They spend so much time in prayer for him that the Lord would keep him not just safe, but he would. The mission would be multiplied, et cetera. I mean, paul is this is an all-night preaching and prayer service. When the young boy falls off and dies and has to go be raised.
Speaker 2:When Peter's in jail, like they're praying for a prayer meeting, you know, or the prayer right after Pentecost, the entire prayer written. There isn't a scripted prayer. Jesus praying in the upper room that's not a scripted prayer, it's just a conversation, yeah 100 percent and it's, it's all over.
Speaker 1:Have you documented how many times the apostle Paul mentions prayer in the epistles?
Speaker 2:I have not, man. That'd be a fun little exercise to do, for sure it, man, that'd be a fun little exercise to do, for sure it would I, yeah, just like, even not not. You can do a search on the word prayer but, like so many times, just call on the lord, you know, like there's. There's other phrases to use besides prayer.
Speaker 1:Be interesting to find out, yeah and obviously we have, uh, david and the psalms, right, which is as a prayer book. I mean, he's, he's writing these down. It's like you get behind the scenes of his prayer life, right, it's his prayer journal, you could say, and it's very poetic and it's deeply rooted in who God is and how much he, how dependent he is upon the presence of God in the midst of enemies, et cetera, coming at him. So, yeah, the book, the Bible, is a prayer book. It's meant to be. It's meant to be prayed and serves as to double down on your point to serve as a catalyst for specific prayers.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes we look at the Bible and it's in context. So the prayers that he's bringing for the church to grow are for that context. We should have the same sort of boldness. I want our East Mesa campus to grow. I want the effect of what the ULC is doing to multiply, to get people to think outside of the box, to raise up more local leaders Like these are very real, real prayers. How do you let's get into? I love this. Oh, before I get off, paul, I got to drop this book Becoming the Gospel Paul Participation and Mission. This was turned on to me by Dr Jeff Cloa and I have Michael Gorman, g-o-r-m-a-n Becoming the Gospel. He's got another book called the Cruciform Life and his main point is that all of Paul's letters, paul's ministry, is an invitation for the church to have what his phrase is anticipatory participation. It's kind of like this future hope.
Speaker 1:So his main point is it's all about mission and to see the church come alive in the mission of God. If you read it as just a theological set of doctrines that are, you know, displaced from context, displaced from the indwelling Holy Spirit, you're going to totally miss Paul's point. Have you ever thought about Paul being I mean, I think of him as the greatest evangelical model of what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, to multiply missionaries with a heart of prayer, especially seeking and saving the lost? I mean, I can't read Paul any other way, but I guess some people read him in a different way. Any thoughts on Paul and mission?
Speaker 2:and prayer. He's not a theologian cloistered off in his ivory tower, you know, speaking on mysteries of God. He is not a monk, the guy you know right.
Speaker 1:He's on the move, man.
Speaker 2:Four missionary journeys and he's with the church for, you know, two, three weeks, two, three months, and he's like, all right, you guys are good, I'm going to go to start another one, and it's just, you know, yeah, it's um, it's hard for me to read any like. We're going through Galatians now, right, as a church, like we're going just, I don't usually teach like an expository style, but I'm doing it for the sake of just, you know, a little bit of a change of pace for our congregation, right, right, so we're going through Galatians, right, and it's all. It's impossible to read it and not hear, like the mission heartbeat through all of it and a heart for the loss. And the entire reason he writes the letter is he's talking back to this church plant and trying to correct their gospel and so, like this doctrinal, the fine doctrine that we find in Galatians, it's all related to the mission, though man, it's, it's, it's him trying to like, continue advancing the kingdom of God and that's, and, honestly, his calls for prayer are, are, are missional calls for prayer, right, there's like this, this heartbeat for the kingdom and the lost in all of his calls for prayer, and and and I think about like the, I think about like the.
Speaker 2:You know, the analogy that I use sometimes is like if we're writing scripted prayers and we're only reading scripted prayers, which every scripted prayer at some point was not scripted, but it'd be like in our marriage. It'd be like in our marriage with our wife, like we have scripts that we go through, right, we say good morning, we say I love you, we say good night, you know, or stuff like that, pick up your shoes. Like we have these things that are constantly hit on. But the beauty of our relationship is all of the conversation that happens in between these scripted moments, and that's kind of kind of how like my prayer life has changed. Is I? It's okay to lean on these scripted prayers? They're to get the engine going and they're they're to provide a framework for all of the other beautiful conversations that we're supposed to be having with our heavenly father.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. What would you say to someone who okay, I'll tease it something here a bit I heard that there are some pastors who think the Lord's prayer, because of the liturgy, should only be in one of our divine services and I'm going to, it's the one where it's chanted, and I actually like chanting and I've chanted it before. But the pastor does the first part and then the rest of congregation joins in. For what? The doxology or whatever, so or not? The doxology, the, the end point part that got added right For thine is the kingdom. And what do you call that? I'm drawing a blank.
Speaker 2:Like the call and response. The response no, no, no.
Speaker 1:At the end of the Lord's prayer, the part that for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 1:Oh like the yeah, yeah, it got added historically. Anyway, the rest of congregation kind of adds into that refrain and so, like the pastor gets, the pastor has this like closer, and we got to just tease this right Like the pastor has this closer communion with God. So I'm like praying the Lord's prayer kind of for you and or over you, and I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong, but I don't think when Jesus gave the apostles the Lord's prayer, that he gave it to them and this goes all the way to mission. Right, who gets to be about mission? Is this the pastor? Is it the people? Is it the priesthood? Like the prayer was for the apostles as a way to kind of orient and structure your prayers. But I don't think Jesus said when you pray, pray like this. I think he wants them to orient and go deeper into what does daily bread like?
Speaker 2:Well, we have breaks this down.
Speaker 1:Right, Luther breaks it down. Let's just go deeper into it. Go ahead, Chris.
Speaker 2:Right. No, we have other prayers that the apostles have written or that the apostles have said. Of course they didn't just pray the Lord's Prayer. Open up Acts two, three. Stretch out your hand to perform miracles among us. That's not the Lord's prayer, Obviously. We're told to pray beyond, just the formulaic scripted stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Good, hey. So how do you break down?
Speaker 2:Here's why that's hard, though, because you ask the average person. If you would ask my grandpa to go ahead and pray for the mission, pray for the church, pray, for he wouldn't know what to say. He wouldn't know what to say because because he was so dependent on the written form that he wouldn't know, like how many of your, how many of your members, if you would have, if you asked somebody on Sunday to stand up and lead the opening worship prayer, how many of your members would absolutely freeze if you handed them the microphone?
Speaker 1:90%, and that's and we're a mission oriented church, and still 90%, which is like cause there's something performative about it. Right, it's cause we put, we've made it, you got pastors who get up there.
Speaker 2:We got to go back to Africa. I mean, like it was so normal, it was so conversational, it was so. You know, like I think about, like teaching kids, like I have young, younger kids my kids are seven, as my youngest right now but like when they were young, younger, and you're teaching them how to talk, you're correcting little phrases oh no, it's not herded, it's just hurt. Or he didn't hit you, he hit you, you know, or whatever. I don't know why it's such a violent example, but but like you're, you're you're teaching a child how to speak and you're encouraging them to repeat words after you, to say phrases with you, and but they're learning how to form those words.
Speaker 2:We, what we haven't done as a church body, is the next step. That the scripted form, whether that's the Lord's prayer or our written prayers or script, you know, whatever it might be is the first step. But the next step is, is, is is like um it beginning to put this into your own words and having that conversation. You know, like in James clear's um atomic habits book I don't know if you've ever read it.
Speaker 1:It's spectacular yeah.
Speaker 2:Right and we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems and in our church body. When I look at the, if I'm going to indict the LCMS in our prayer life, it's because our system is all scripted and if we're going to teach people like the average person in your church to just to begin praying a conversational prayer, we've got to create a system that that that calls for that. Otherwise, we're just, like you know, hooping and hollering and then preaching. Third use of the law, trying to get guilt people and to do something that they don't know how to do. We've got to create a system to teach conversational prayer again and again and again because, like we are not call me crazy We've prayed the same way we've prayed for, let's say, a hundred years.
Speaker 2:I don't think we're going to reverse the trend of the LCMS, whether it's in churches or in our church body, by praying the same way we've always prayed for the last hundred years. We need a reformation of prayer. We have to, as a church body, become better at conversational kinds of prayer and dude, we aren't there. But we've got to start creating systems. If we're going to reverse the trend, it's got to be a move of God. If it's a move of God, we've got to become people of prayer, Amen.
Speaker 1:So let's go deeper into what that system could look like and we're not going to shud people into anything, but this is the power of invitation. What are some tests people could run in making prayer more accessible, more conversational for the everyday follower of Jesus in their congregation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I think well, first thing they could do is just ask somebody to pray and watch them freeze up, just do your own assessment and going yeah, we're not there yet. Man, I think there's some real. You know, when you look at other church bodies, there's things that they do that are very normalized, that I think we could learn from and humble ourselves and learn from somebody whose theology might be different. But you know a very simple I tell people often start small, right, like you know. Like start with your Peter James and John and just starting intercessory prayer on Sunday mornings, especially if I'm talking to pastors, like find a Peter James and John, three guys that could meet with you on Sunday mornings and just pray, and it's half hours. What we do every Sunday morning in my office here, and that I mean there's a couple of guys who got in here that I asked to be a part of it. It was super intimidating for them, but starting small gives them this environment, the system, in order to learn that.
Speaker 2:Uh, same thing with my elders man, we, our elders meetings are prayer meetings and some of the elders were really, really uncomfortable with that. We started doing. We started doing intercessory prayer after our services, which I think is another very, very simple thing that you can introduce in churches um, intercessory prayer after our services. And I asked our elders to do it. I had elders quit. I had elders quit because they were uncomfortable. They were uncomfortable with praying with people and like that, they didn't know how to do it.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, but you're an elder, if my elders can't do it, we've got a problem, you know? And but starting and just starting with simple intercession prayer, whether it's interceding for you, interceding after worship that will start to change the temperature and you'll get people going. Wait, what? What's going on here? What are we doing? That's not the pastor praying for me, that's somebody else in the church praying for me. But starting small with intercession, I think is one of the simplest things that that churches can start doing intercession before service for the pastor and then after the service, uh, with people come forward with prayer needs, dude it it, it will get people's attention and it will start to change the climate in a church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I agree. Do you have a prayer like team Um we have? We have a number of people, because I think some are kind of extraordinarily gifted, inclined toward this kind of intercessory prayer gift.
Speaker 2:Say more about some people who have that gift. You just said it. Now it's your intercessors. So it's kind of like, if you have a mission board in your church, well then those are the people that do mission. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We all do mission Same thing. If you have a prayer ministry, my hesitancy there is then right, oh, those are the people who pray yeah, yeah, yeah intercessors. It's a different term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's, that's interesting. But you don't discount that some people may have more of a proclivity toward intercessory prayer.
Speaker 2:100 and I think scripture would support that. Yeah, there are yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Um, and everyone could and should and should have the invitation to pray. Um, yeah, there are intercessors head down. You know no one's looking around and you feel your heart rate, you know starting to beat, because you don't really. This is more of a performative public communication kind of an endeavor, right? I think that's what we need to get over is demystifying that this is different than, like, public communication. This is just intercession and connection with the God of the universe who always there and attentive. We're just so judgy in our culture. We're just so judgmental, like if I flip over, you know, if I trip up over my words or whatever, like someone's going to oh man, that guy really stinks at prayer, man, this guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, right, right, and then walk with the.
Speaker 1:Lord is a mess, right, yeah, all of that. But you've got some good kind of handles to kind of lead into and out of and out of prayer. Could you share one or two of those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think this is another system that I think a lot of churches could start doing, and it started because I was so frustrated. This is a completely accidental discovery, but I was so frustrated with prayer requests. I hate prayer requests, so we get done with the team meeting. Yeah, any prayer requests. And here's why I hate them is because everyone hears you give the prayer request and we're talking about God like he's not even here.
Speaker 1:He's not in the room.
Speaker 2:And here's the prayer request and we hear about on Cindy's hip surgery or your upcoming trip to Chicago and safe travels, or whatever it is. And then, after we take five or six prayer requests OK, everyone, good, then we pray and you can I mean, the next time you do it at a staff meeting or something, or you're in the room and prayer requests are about to be prayed Listen for the sigh man you will hear an audible side of people trying to conjure up like the willpower to lean forward, close my eyes and pray as if I don't know what the guy is about to pray, because we all heard the same prayer request and we hear the same thing twice. And for me, I'm like trying to make the most of every moment of the day and I'm squeezing the marrow out of life, right, so I'm sitting there going, we're wasting time, you know like, and it was just it was eating at me, so one, uh, and this is, I mean, recent man, this is like this fall. At one staff meeting I was like, okay, guys're going to do we have any prayer requests? And I said, but the only difference I want you to say is prayers for dot, dot, dot and um, just share your prayer request by saying prayers for and then.
Speaker 2:So somebody would say prayers for my aunt Cindy, okay. And I said, okay, now say that. And then fill in the blank Okay, so prayers for my aunt Cindy that you know God would heal her upcoming surgery would be successful and God would guide the doctors. I said, great, okay, cool, now say in Jesus name. And they looked at me and like, and so she was, but it is my finance director, the finance director here at the church, and she goes, okay, in Jesus name. And I said, now we all say amen. And everyone said amen, and I was like you just prayed and it was, and nobody's eyes, you know, like, were closed and we're all, like, you know, in this, it was just this conversational thing. I said, okay, that's how we're going to do it.
Speaker 2:And then somebody else did it as prayers for and it was like our upcoming youth night that God would, you know, touch the hearts of kids and you know that we would see baptisms, you know, or something like that, you know, and it was a prayer for the unite and then a prayer for, you know, some kind of an upcoming meeting that we had or whatever. Whatever, it was a budget meeting, but it was always prayers for that, and it was so, tim, it was so conversational. People were talking and, like interrupting each other, like I don't know, a conversation would be with your father at the table, you know, and and like we were like, oh wait, it was teaching a group of people how to pray with this simple, simple thing Prayers for name it, that and then, after the meeting I was opening up, I was reading and Paul does this Pray for us that the message may spread speed ahead in 1 Thessalonians 3. Pray for us that the Lord may open a door for the gospel, and I was like it's this pray for that formula, so I told it.
Speaker 2:At the last conference that you and I saw each other at, I told that story. Scott Seidler, who's also in your neck of the woods, did it the next week with his staff, and he texted me like afterwards, like that was the best thing ever with our staff. It was like this prayer meeting that went on for 30 minutes because we did prayers for that, and again. What it is, though, is a system teaching conversational prayer.
Speaker 1:Chris, I love it, love it so much. Where in the Bible does it say that we have to have our head bowed, eyes closed, hands folded? Or in the oran's position, like where is any of this?
Speaker 2:it's just all cultural stuff, right, I think I've heard that monks wanted kids to stop fidgeting, so that's when they folded their hands. Okay, that's what I've heard. I don't know if that's an urban legend or not, but anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're so, we're so stuck on the it, it's, it's, it's a system that we've got to, like, get off script from.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, no, it's good man. I appreciate your, your passion, I love your, your evangelical heart. Um, last last, uh, so what about I got two, two closing kind of questions? What about like pray acronym, like the praise, praise, repent, ask, yield or whatever?
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts towards that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, acts or whatever. What are your thoughts toward using those as kind of a prayer handle?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know what your other kind of closing questions would be, but I think when I talk to churches, prayer services are one of them, prayer services are one of them, and in prayer services, we will structure times with like ACTS, adoration, confession, thanksgiving supplication, or pray, you know, repent, adoration, yield, stuff like that. That's when I do those and I think people privately, you know like if they experience something and they do it privately, I think it's fine. Again, I think these are, these are tools, you know not rules and they're they. They can become a crutch, but like it's, it's, it's keeping it fresh. So we will use those things um, in like prayer services and like leading people through it during our our uh, during our prayer nights. But I don't know what are they trying to do? They're trying to teach this kind of conversational thing and I, yeah, so I think, I think I don't have any opinion, you know, for or against them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but but I do think prayer services is something that another system that churches could be doing. I talk about it a lot, but a night where it's not it's not a prayer breakfast where we eat food and pray for five minutes, it's just a meeting where we get together and pray, and I think a lot of churches would, and so I tell people to start small. You know, start with your Peter James, john, then start with 10 people, 20 people, before you unveil that we're having a prayer service. But I think most churches, at least in the LCMS, the reason they don't do a prayer service is they're afraid no one will come. I mean, what are the other reasons we don't?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know and we're afraid no one will come because we're secretly afraid that nobody knows how to pray like that or whatever it is. And so, again, it's an education point. But once you create the prayer service, once it's in place and there's a lot of you know teaching I could go into there but once it's in place, then again it's another system that creates this culture of prayer beyond scripted prayers. And then I don't know if you're going to ask me about prayer walking, but I think, yeah, that's the final question for sure.
Speaker 1:But let's go, let's go deeper into. Is it once a month? What's your rhythm?
Speaker 2:of like a prayer night, right. So, start slow, start small, right so? So it's easier to ramp up than slow down. You always, we're always trying to capture momentum, right? So if you start small maybe it's your Peter, james and John, maybe it's your elders and then everybody invites one person and then you unveil it publicly.
Speaker 2:My encouragement is to do once a month because it's easier to ramp up, right? So if you start a weekly prayer service, that's hard to sustain when you don't have that critical mass. But if you start a once a month prayer night at your church and you're gathering together with people, man Paul says, like God can do more than we ask, Think or imagine, and like that's where people start asking really big prayers, and you can, you know, and at prayer nights you can, you can structure, you can give a theme to each one or whatever it might be. There's a lot I could go into that, but my encouragement is to start slow and keep on leaving a room for growth, because you know we, we can get, sometimes we can get too enthusiastic and and then everyone's burned out and then you know we have to. Then it's almost impossible to revitalize something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love do you guys have a prayer?
Speaker 2:night at your church or anything.
Speaker 1:We have and it it's kind of behind the scenes now. It we have the like 15 to 20 who are a part of a part of it and I'm I'm praying about it ramping it back up right right now, so excited about that. We've done it in the past. I mean it's like uh, um, elongated time for everyone in the. This is pre-covid covid honestly kind of did, did a number to to that ministry and I'm really looking to.
Speaker 1:I think we're in a season right now where we have a lot of leaders who are ready to go deeper. We actually have our first foray into a freedom weekend which is going to be saturated with prayer. That's a Friday night, like a five to nine. We've got about 100 people who are coming to that and it's teaching coupled with intercessory prayer, leading toward kind of addiction care. So some time of sharing men with men, women with women, kind of our different struggles, different crosses, and so it's kind of a combination between catechesis and intercessory prayer for a whole weekend. I'm really excited about it. We gave specific directions to have all of our leaders come, so it's kind of part of our leadership development. It's a once a year, only once a year, because it takes a little bit. We're sharing a couple meals together it's a five to nine and then a one to eight on Saturday. I'm really, really pumped about it, so maybe that's something I could share with you, but I do.
Speaker 1:Out of this I want to start. I want, cause I think we've got a core group of people that are committed to getting the monthly and that's what we did before. It was a monthly prayer night. Probably 30 people would come, which was great and and it was very conversational and the prayer was very communal and there was, there was some singing and and we did the Lord's, we did the Lord's uh, supper too for those that came kind of a more intimate kind of distribution of the sacrament. So yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's a. It's a sweet time to kind of reconsider that. Let's close with prayer. Let's close with prayer walking. Um, we, we love. You got an ebook on pray, what you see.
Speaker 2:No, it's actually I. So I, when I wrote it, I wrote it in a weekend. It was full of typos. It was an ebook I finally went through and edited, and now it's in paperback too.
Speaker 1:So Cool, nice, awesome. So yeah, pray. What you See is your book and really it's kind of the focus in the power of prayer walking. Just make a pitch to close on how powerful prayer walking can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So when I was at the church plan is really where this all started, and it's again because I was not good at prayer and I knew that if we were going to reach this community we had, I had to pray. And so I went for a walk and prayed for the things that I saw and I found out later it's called prayer walking. So I was like, oh, okay, this is a thing, and I was like I'm going to do that every week and so for uh, for an entire year, um, I went prayer walking and I brought people along, brought investors, brought people in the community that had met, that were interested in being part of the church plants or you know cause we were parachuting in and it was, it was spectacular, and I got done and I was like I need to kind of share this because so many people were asking me about it. So I kind of just shared my thoughts and I made it in eBooks. It's super cheap too, right. So I kind of just shared my thoughts and I made it in eBooks. It's super cheap too, right. So you can, you can, you know, get all the resources rather than me, like disseminate the information, just cut the metal man out and uh, and then, uh, I had no idea, man, but it just it really took off and that's why I finally put it in paperback too.
Speaker 2:But when I got to St Mark here and there's so many stories of things, that remarkable things that happened at the church plant and lives being changed and addictions being overcome and baptisms happening, and none of those stories were stories we could tell without the prayer that preceded it. Right, none of them. And because they were all just moves of God and miraculous things that we had called for, some of them like very specifically, we prayed for that and that happened, you know, and it was like awesome. And when I got to St Mark, I was like why would I? Why would I stop doing what made for a successful church plan, now that I'm an established church? And and I was like that's ridiculous. And I realized like, if we're going to reach this community, which every church has, that charge, when God looks at you, he sees your city, all the churches in Revelation, when he was writing to them, he doesn't write to the church based on the name of the pastor, he writes to the church based on the city they're called to reach. To the church in Laodicea, to the church in Philadelphia, to the church right, and he's writing to these churches, uh, based on the city they're called to reach, and so why would we not do prayer walking in this community? And so the very like I mean this is like months to here I was like I was telling the church, okay, we're going to do this thing called prayer walking, just meet me here at the church, and it was. I mean, people were like what is this crazy thing? And we started prayer walking.
Speaker 2:Um, by the third, we did it once a week through the, through the summer, so June and July and by the third week, man, I was hearing people say stuff back to me Like I've never talked to God like this. I can't believe how many things there are to pray for. I've never prayed for the kingdom like this. And I, and one one lady told me she's like I had no idea how much of my prayer was just about me. And prayer walking forces us to think extra. I mean, right, these are all things that we want our parishioners to be saying, right, and I was like, so we did that. Um, and we have a giant map in our lobby of our church and, uh, we trace in blue marker everywhere we walked and we are going to keep on walking every summer until every piece of concrete in our city is prayed for.
Speaker 2:Man and um, it, it, just, it has a way of just turning people's eyes outward and you can't tell the story of what's happening here, apart from the prayer walks that are made and the prayer nights that are making it happen. Man and um, when I talk to churches, if I could wave a wand and just instantly have them do anything, it would be prayer walking for sure, um, it will transform your church. And you know, like, up here we got to do it in the summer. It's like snowing as I talked to you. So down there maybe you got to flip it, and because it's blistering hot and then we're summer, you got to do it.
Speaker 2:But the point is that, man, it's just again, it's another system that that that if, if people, you know, like it teaches people conversational prayer, that's that unscripted and nothing's going to happen unless it, you know, like we're not going to see the move of God that he wants. It's so weird to me man, like the God, limits a portion of what he does to our prayers. I don't know why he would do it. He's got his word and then he waits for my word or my prayer. Right, and I don't know why he does it. I don't know why he, but he does.
Speaker 1:That's all. So our job is to be faithful to that. Amen. I hope, listener, you're taking one next step.
Speaker 1:Whether you're a leader, not really like you, you are a leader, you're listening to this, you have influence wherever the Lord has called you in your home, out in your community, if you happen to be a leader in a church, for that respective group of people in that location, and prayer is the catalyst for mission.
Speaker 1:So, lord Jesus, I'm grateful for Chris and the call upon his life, your presence at St Mark there in Battle Creek, that many people would come to a saving knowledge of who you are, receive your word, be baptized, brought into a right relationship, receive the forgiveness of sins through your body and blood and then be sent out into their respective vocations to reach people with the gospel, holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:You have to move and we are praying expectantly, lord Jesus, and we pray for our church body, we pray for the wider church across the world and we also pray for the tribe in which we're a part, the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod that unity would reign, that openness to reaching different people with different needs, different felt needs in their respective community, that creativity and entrepreneurial leaders who are collaborative, that are optimistic, that are expectant for growth would be the byproduct of our work together and that we've talked about systems, Holy Spirit, and that the systems would be present to raise up the next generation of leaders. Because this thing called your mission goes far beyond Chris and I. We're a small, small cog in that glorious grand big wheel advancing toward eternity, and so we just want to be found faithful, lord Jesus, and I thank you for your call upon Chris's life and this conversation about prayer. Lord Jesus, and I pray for Chris that the kingdom would expand through his ministry In Jesus' name.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen, chris, so good dude, grateful for you that the kingdom would expand through his ministry in Jesus name, amen.
Speaker 1:Amen, chris. So good, dude, grateful for you. If people want to connect with you, pray for your churchcom. What's your email, bro, if you throw that?
Speaker 2:out just info at pray for your churchcom.
Speaker 1:I love it. Info at pray for your churchcom. Any closing. Any closing comments. Both this has been a good time for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just inspired. I love what you're doing, man. I've prayed for your podcast before and I'll continue to do so. I think there's awesome conversations you're having and this is a good platform, and you have a very ironic, pleasant disposition to have hard conversations. It's a gift man. I just you have a very, uh, ironic, pleasant disposition. We have hard conversations. It's a gift man, and so just keep it up. You're doing good things.
Speaker 1:Well, God did it to me, so I take no responsibility one way or another. I only take responsibility for the doofy things. Sometimes I say and uh, thanks for honestly, thanks for your prayers as we enter into challenging conversations. But ironic is an interesting word If you have to Google it. I think it means something like trying to have conversations with a pleasant disposition. I think that's what it is. Did you just Google it, Did you? Just Google it, I didn't, I didn't. A few people have said that recently.
Speaker 2:And I have. Yeah, I don't know the yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like having a hard time recently and I have. I have a yeah, I don't know the Lord. The Lord did that to me and I I really see and I guess toward to land that I just see what comes on the other side of addressing what is the problem. That is, offering it to the Lord and walking arm and arm. There is nobody in our church. That is my enemy. Like we're brothers and sisters in Christ. I guess some people may say that I could be a part of you know I could be an enemy to them, but every time I have a conversation with someone, I'm like we got so much that we agree on. Like I don't think there's anybody in the LCMS, that's. Like I don't think the church should grow, you know. Like no one's saying that, it's just how. It's how it grows, you know, and the systems that could create the growth. That's what we're having a long form conversation about, chris. So I'm grateful for you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for your prayers and this is a Tim Allman podcast. Please like, subscribe, comment, comment wherever it is you take in these podcasts. The Unite Leadership Collective following us on YouTube really helps as well if you take this in on Spotify or iTunes, wherever it is, and I pray that the joy of Jesus is yours, that you take that one next step as a leader, in growing in your prayer life. It's not just for the clergy, it's for all of the priesthood to have intimate communion, dependency upon the triune God. It's a good day. Go make it a great day, wonderful Chris. Thank you, buddy, thank you brother.