Shownotes
- Why the Gospel is always Good News in context.
- 5 important elements of every city and neighborhood.
- How every culture has "keys" that unlock hearts for Jesus.
- Ways to gain a deeper knowledge of your disciple-making context.
Each week the Big 3 will give you immediate action steps to get you started.
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Transcripts
The gospel is very big and it's fuller than what we think.
Peyton:And so I want to know what are people's fears?
Peyton:What is the culture I'm in?
Peyton:What are they afraid of?
Peyton:What are their hopes?
Peyton:What are their dreams?
Peyton:What do they consider successful?
Peyton:What are they worried about?
Peyton:Missionaries know their communities, you know, your community.
Peyton:Cause you love your community.
Peyton:But what's the ethnic makeup.
Peyton:What languages do your neighbors speak?
Peyton:What's the socioeconomic makeup.
Peyton:What percentage of population is unemployed or on benefits?
Peyton:What's the chief type of occupation.
Peyton:You know, when I first became a missionary, I went in the heart of the city, lived in the homes of the people I was working with and worked in the factories they worked in and still working town.
Peyton:And learned what life was in, listened to him, day in, and day out.
Announcer:Welcome to the Everyday Disciple podcast where you learn how to live with greater intentionality and an integrated faith that naturally fits into every area of life.
Announcer:In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle, this is the stuff your parents, pastors in seminary.
Announcer:Probably forgot to tell you.
Announcer:And now here's your host Caesar Kalinowski.
Caesar:Back together again, loving that hope you're having a good week.
Caesar:I just got back.
Caesar:Literally.
Caesar:I just got back from a week on the road, doing all kinds of training.
Caesar:I got to do the story of God, a couple of times with different communities, loads and loads of leaders.
Caesar:And then just yesterday, I had lunch with a whole bunch of church planters in San Antonio.
Caesar:Maybe some of you are listening.
Caesar:Thanks a lot.
Caesar:What a great.
Caesar:Lunch.
Caesar:Thanks for lunch again.
Caesar:And what a great time together as we looked at all, that's going on there and talked about our gospel identity.
Caesar:What a privilege, what a blast.
Caesar:I loved it.
Caesar:Anyway, we're going to have a blast today here.
Caesar:I've got a special guest.
Caesar:I'll tell you a little bit about him in just a moment.
Caesar:I want to invite everybody to join us over in our Facebook group.
Caesar:If you've not done that yet, it's pretty happen in place.
Caesar:Love to see you be in there.
Caesar:Share your thoughts, ask questions about the podcast also bring your wisdom or experience to others.
Caesar:That'd be great.
Caesar:Look us up.
Caesar:It's the Everyday Disciple Podcast and Facebook, or you can just go to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash Facebook.
Caesar:Okay.
Caesar:Be sure to subscribe to the show, whatever platform you use.
Caesar:So you don't miss an episode.
Caesar:Sometimes we're putting out special episodes as we did over the last couple of weeks, but every Monday we drop a new episode, hopefully very encouraging and helping you learn to increasingly.
Caesar:Live out the gospel and make disciples in everyday life.
Caesar:By the way, if you're interested in getting some help with all of that and learning a full framework for discipleship and mission, I would love to meet you.
Caesar:Get on a zoom call, tell you a little bit about the coaching that we do and see if there's any way we can help you, your ministry, your church, or just you and your family.
Caesar:Get started making disciples.
Caesar:You want to do that?
Caesar:Just go to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash coaching Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash coaching.
Caesar:And you can learn a little bit more about that, how it all works, and you can contact me there to set up a time where we can hop on a zoom call.
Caesar:Awesome.
Caesar:Now, today, my very cool buddy Peyton Jones is going to join us here on the Everyday Disciple Podcast.
Caesar:This guy has done so many things and given so much of his heart and experience to the church and to church planting and discipleship over the years, it's really amazing.
Caesar:He's authored a bunch of books, including Reaching the Unreached.
Caesar:Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art.
Caesar:We actually had him on way back at episode one 12, to talk about that there was an episode called it's time to reinvent the church Peyton was on with us in there.
Caesar:He wrote the book Church Zero Raising First Century Churches From the Ashes of the 21st Century.
Caesar:All kinds of stuff.
Caesar:He originally began ministry serving at a mega church, kind of similar story to mine and he, but he was in Huntington beach and then he moved to Wales in the UK for about a dozen years.
Caesar:He's going to share some of that story and some of the stuff he learned there, he's also founded new breed church planting network, and he he's training frontline.
Caesar:apostolic church planters today, and he's trained multiple church planters across the globe.
Caesar:Lots and lots of people.
Caesar:Currently.
Caesar:He's the director for equipping for through the word.
Caesar:Maybe you use that app and he writes for outreach and leadership journal and all kinds of stuff.
Caesar:I'll make sure to put ways you can connect with Peyton in the show notes for today's episode.
Caesar:I think you're going to love this.
Caesar:As we talk together about understanding your specific context, that you're either planting a church in or living in and making disciples, take a listen, and then I'll be back at the end with a few thoughts and I'll give you the big three and wrap things up.
Caesar:Peyton Jones.
Caesar:Look at you back here on the podcast with me for a second time.
Caesar:Hey, it's
Peyton:always good to dance with you Caesar,
Caesar:you know, last time though, it did step on my toes quite a bit, but you know, that was it.
Caesar:It was at least a couple of years ago.
Caesar:So I have forgiven you.
Caesar:We're gonna, we're gonna avoid that sort of type of dancing today.
Caesar:How are you doing man?.
Peyton:They don't call me thunder foot for nothing.
Peyton:I'm doing good brother.
Peyton:I'm doing really good.
Peyton:And I always enjoy chatting with you.
Peyton:I've had you on my podcast a couple of times.
Peyton:Well, more than a couple, you might be one of the record holders, but yeah.
Peyton:I always appreciate brother, that you are a practitioner above all else.
Caesar:Well, as are you, and I'm glad that you have now surfaced from and had to have been in a monumental work writing Church Plantology which we're going to be talking about today a little bit in quoting from, but what a great work brother, what a great book, what a great work.
Caesar:I can't even imagine how many zillions of hours you put into that.
Caesar:So now you have your life back.
Peyton:Good job, man.
Caesar:Thank you.
Caesar:Well, we have a lot of church planters that listen to us here on the Everyday Disciple Podcast, but I really consider everybody a church planter in a sense, or at least they're gospel planters.
Caesar:Now, when people hear the term church planter, if they're not one
Caesar:or they don't work at a church that understands that term.
Caesar:I think people think, oh, church planter, that means I got to set up like chairs and rows and steer the pulpit, but, and all that.
Caesar:And that, that might be part of it ultimately down the road.
Caesar:But planting the gospel, I think is just a Christian thing.
Caesar:Seeing yourself as the church, planting the gospel, helping people come to faith, I E discipleship and then help them move to maturity is the work of church planting over and over and over, and then equipping more and more people to do the same.
Caesar:There's a section in the book.
Caesar:That talks about the importance of engaging.
Caesar:And I really wanted to pick your brain a little bit on this today because I think that as the church is now find itself, more scattered, more out there than ever.
Caesar:I've been talking a lot about this on the podcast that not only our church is trying to figure out how do they engage the culture, but also the people that are out there.
Caesar:Forming these new micro churches or resurrecting their missional communities or starting new ones.
Caesar:It's really important that they understand and embrace their culture versus starting with all the forms of their church.
Caesar:Just reduce down to little house church size stuff, right?
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:So I want to talk a little bit about engaging culture today in this section of your book, you talk about the parable where Jesus talks about the sower, the parable of the sower, and you brought a perspective on this that I.
Caesar:I got to ask that maybe I missed something here, not from you, but from my own reading of it, you talk about how Jesus highlights.
Caesar:One of the reasons that contextualization is crucial to communicating, the gospel, uh, is that he talks about.
Caesar:One of the scattered seeds that falls on a hardened path and the birds eat it up.
Caesar:And you go on to say, Jesus explains that this scenario, this scenario represents people who failed to understand.
Caesar:And oftentimes we're doing that.
Caesar:Like we're not communicating in a language that's readily received.
Caesar:Here's what I want to ask about that.
Caesar:I always saw that as well.
Caesar:It fell on hard hearts.
Caesar:And so it's their fault.
Caesar:And I think right, what's your flip.
Caesar:You're flipping the script here a little bit saying maybe we, we didn't speak good news to their bad news.
Caesar:And so what we had to say, our quote unquote, supposedly good news of the guy fell on a hard part of their heart or on a hard part of their life or the wrong part, but it wasn't necessarily them.
Caesar:That's the issue.
Caesar:Jesus is addressing, man, help me out here.
Caesar:Did I miss this?
Peyton:I love that you bring that up because having been a cross cultural missionary, and I lived in the UK for 12 years, I went to Wales.
Peyton:I started off at Dr.
Peyton:Martin Lee Jones's church in a steel working dock side Presbyterian church, just working there with, with working class people.
Peyton:I remember the first guy to come to faith.
Peyton:He just told me he walked into church and he said, man, those people are super clean.
Peyton:I am nothing like these people.
Peyton:I prostitutes for breakfast, man.
Peyton:Like, like I walk in here and it's like, I do not fit in with these people.
Peyton:And these were hardened people.
Peyton:you know,.
Peyton:I mean, I, I, I got my butt kicked like 10 weeks in that country, on the streets, port Talbot, you know, this, this is a scar over my left eye from literally having my head beat in.
Peyton:And that was just road rage.
Peyton:It wasn't like I was out preaching the gospel, but.
Peyton:It's funny because even, you know, when you look at it, you know, understanding component to the gospel, I mean, Jesus has having that conversation with, with Nicodemus, Nicodemus, Nicodemus, any, he, he says to him, you know, Hey, you have to be born again.
Peyton:He's using all these metaphors, speaking of things that we all understand.
Peyton:But Nicodemus ends by saying, but how can these things be in?
Peyton:Jesus says, if I'm speaking to you of natural things, you don't understand, how will you understand the spiritual Jesus is trying to contextualize spiritual truths into things that.
Peyton:Uh, Nicodemus already knows he's trying to take it.
Peyton:So I remember standing on the doors of a, of a church in south England preaching and the man in the Tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches kind of shuffled up to me and said, who, you know, you, I mentioned Raiders of the lost Ark, one of my favorite movies in talking about the Ark of the covenant.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:Talking about atonement.
Peyton:And as I, as, as I did it, People came to faith.
Peyton:During the service, you know, people would come and some, uh, young families had really responded and he said, oh, many people would have been offended by your use of a Hollywood film.
Peyton:And, uh, in your, in your preaching, the gospel and my response to him was I wasn't talking to them
Peyton:and I literally knew my audience were the people that British people that I had worked with in the factories because when nine 11 hit, I was over there and all my support shriveled up overnight, and I had to go work next to people on assembly lines and actually just make shoulders.
Peyton:That was God's greatest, tricky, played on me, send me over as a fully supported missionary and then steal all my support away overnight.
Peyton:But, but then when you look at Paul.
Peyton:it's the same thing.
Peyton:Like I realized when I was mixing , wasn't a ministry quote unquote anymore.
Peyton:I was, I was co vocational recorded our friend, Brad Briscoe.
Peyton:I was doing this thing, you know, nine to five, like actually 12 hour shifts, sometimes 16 hour shifts.
Peyton:In a factory and, and just realizing people had no clue what I was talking about.
Peyton:And so I had to use things like the matrix.
Peyton:Thank God for that film, when it came out right.
Peyton:Using my favorite movie, talking about things to communicate spiritual truths.
Peyton:I mean, right.
Peyton:But, but what, you know, even Paul, right?
Peyton:Like Paul takes his own culture.
Peyton:He, everything he knew about God.
Peyton:Was couched in Jewishness and not eating pork and washing your hands, ceremoniously and keeping this.
Peyton:And then Paul just goes, you know what, in order to reach the Gentiles.
Peyton:I have to strip all of that away.
Peyton:Right?
Peyton:100% of that has to go, because that makes no sense to Gentiles.
Peyton:I don't think we realize how radical it was when Paul contextualized the gospel in his own culture so much so that the Jews hated his guts because they saw him as destroying.
Peyton:He says, the faith he wants to try to destroy is now proponent of well.
Peyton:They saw him trying to destroy the Jewish.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:And so they, they came, but what do you use, actually trying to do is contextualize these timeless principles to all cultures.
Peyton:And that's what Church Plantology really does, is it, it takes the idea of church planting contrast against church starting, which is thrown a Sunday service off.
Peyton:I don't, I don't,
Caesar:I don't display that.
Peyton:So if I just sowed the seeds of the gospel and I make disciples.
Peyton:Then church planting will take care of itself.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:And what you're talking about here is sort of piggybacking, and we talk about a lot about gospel fluency, the ability to speak the good news of the gospel, but that requires contextualization because the good news is different everywhere.
Caesar:Do we know our culture and the context we're in?
Caesar:Or do we just live with a generic.
Caesar:Quote, unquote gospel presentational thing.
Caesar:That's that's what's going on here?
Caesar:You, you bring up in the book under context here.
Caesar:You, you talk about the book.
Caesar:Don Richardson, Peace Child, the peace child, what an old classic I'm guessing a lot of people don't even know that book.
Caesar:They, they, they've never heard about that real quick capsulize, the story of that book and what's going on there because to me that paints this beautiful, powerful woah, understanding of the difference between missing the context and.
Caesar:Contextualizing and knowing what the good news will be.
Peyton:Well, I have to give a shout out to my wife here because my wife was like, when we were dating, she was like, I think I'm ditching you for the mission field.
Peyton:And so I did what every lovestruck young man would do.
Peyton:I signed up for a missions class and I had the benefit of taking this course called perspectives in world missions.
Peyton:I remember that.
Peyton:In, yeah, it's, it's kind of like the holy grail of missions training and it was, you know, I took it right in the belly of the beast in LA and drove up every day while she was in Thailand, helping rescue kids out of child prostitution.
Peyton:Like my wife's the real radical in this house.
Peyton:Sounds like.
Peyton:But, you know, I, I remember I got to hear her Don Richardson.
Peyton:I actually got to meet him and hear him tell a story, which was pretty, pretty amazing.
Peyton:Cause it, it is one of the coolest stories.
Peyton:So Don Richardson wrote that book, the Peace Child, and he went to Indonesia and worked among the salary people.
Peyton:And the problem is he was a failed missionary because every time he tried to tell him the gospel, they latched onto Judas as the hero, that story, because in their culture, they valued deception and trickery.
Peyton:If you could get, get the upper hand to somebody.
Peyton:By deceiving them, tricking them.
Peyton:It showed your prowess and
Caesar:your Judas sounds like the US today.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:And so you can imagine this young man, you know, he's, he's new on the mission field and he just feels like he's, every time he tells a gospel of Judas comes and they're like, yay.
Peyton:And then Jesus, of course lost to them because, well, he didn't trick everybody well enough.
Peyton:That's why he's dead.
Peyton:So he was getting ready to leave as a failed missionary.
Peyton:Well, one of the values that they had was peace, but they were a warring tribe and they would eat each other.
Peyton:They would eat each other's body parts after they killed each other.
Peyton:So he's really feeling like I really want to reach these people cause they're killing one another.
Peyton:And one of the, the neighbor on the day he was leaving this war, broke out.
Peyton:And one of the chiefs literally offered their child, which was the peace child that it serves as a truce, that he gives his child to the, the enemy chief and says, we will exchange children.
Peyton:You raise my child.
Peyton:And for as long as that child is alive, we will have peace between us.
Peyton:Well of course that was his.
Peyton:Gospel in.
Peyton:That's what he called it there.
Peyton:It was his gospel in, and he says that every culture has that God, in, you know, if you go back to where Paul talks about, God caused all these cultures and all these people at various times on Mars hill, but he now calls everywhere to repent.
Peyton:Don Richardson says, it's the job of every missionary to discover what is that gospel in road that God hardwired into every culture?
Peyton:Cause he was at a loss until he had discovered
Caesar:that.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:So Jesus comes as the peace child that the father gives.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Wow.
Caesar:What a great, I love that.
Caesar:I it's been a long time since I've read it, but it really does show how far off we can be with what people are hearing or what we think it means when we are, we think we're helping them out or.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Are, are we really understanding how the gospel is good news to their story, to their bad news, to their unbelief till all the muck, all themuck in their life.
Caesar:Unfortunately, we're not thatfluent, of the gospel and what most Christians have been sort of left with.
Caesar:And a lot of church planters sort of start with is, Hey, want to come to my church service?
Caesar:And I'll let a professional talk about it, but they don't know your context any better, certainly than they don't live in your neighborhood.
Caesar:They don't live in your part of the city or whatever.
Caesar:Well, let's move, let's move to something that is also close to my heart.
Caesar:And that has to do with our, our missionary identity being really living as in being missionary.
Caesar:In our context as a church planter myself, obviously that's a big deal.
Caesar:You don't come in and just decide your forms and what you want to do and hope everybody digs it and put it on your show or whatever.
Caesar:But you come as a missionary and getting to know your community there again, it's that same contextualization understanding of, do I understand my community well enough to be good news to them?
Caesar:And as we live amongst them, and then obviously proclaim that as well.
Caesar:So I want to talk a little bit about that.
Caesar:Some of the things you think are important that we probably need to understand if we're starting a new church, or if we're even just trying to incarnate in our neighborhood as a Missional community.
Caesar:What are some of those things that would be really important to suss out then maybe we'll talk about why.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:So one of the things, things that I talk about in this is you have to know your community.
Peyton:When you read this scripture, you, you see Paul walking around Athens before he speaks at Mars hill.
Peyton:He knows he's going to speak there.
Peyton:He's killing time, but he walks around during the day and tries to understand the city that he's going to preach to.
Peyton:and he.
Peyton:You know, he looks at all their idols.
Peyton:He finds what idols that they worship.
Peyton:And of course that becomes very important for a missionary, but one of them, the idols he finds is the unknown God.
Peyton:And of course, to hold on our conversation again, that was him discovering the gospel.
Peyton:To use the phrase I always use.
Peyton:That's the donkey that Jesus is going to ridein on.
Peyton:Right.
Peyton:And the master has need of your donkey pop culture or whatever it is because I find this often in pop culture.
Peyton:When I went to Britain, we talked about the matrix.
Peyton:I mean, I would find all kinds of movies and films.
Peyton:I would use pop culture shamelessly because it was what people knew.
Peyton:I needed to contextualize nonstop, but, but you've got to know your culture really, really well.
Peyton:So
Caesar:everybody gets numb to their culture.
Caesar:I think you drive around your town, you drive around your neighborhood and you just sort of stopped paying attention to brokenness, to need to curiosity, to beauty, to where there's good news, where God's already at work.
Caesar:I think, I think familiarity oftentimes just breeds sort of.
Caesar:You know, a dullness, you know, just like
Peyton:an ambivalence, right?
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:Like, like the old saying that the fish is the last one to notice the water, water, what water,
Caesar:like the, you know, just swim up to each other.
Caesar:Hey, how's the water?
Caesar:And the second fish goes, what's water.
Caesar:So for church planters landing on the ground, or even just us who maybe have grown a little numb and ambivalent to what's going on around us.
Caesar:What are some of the types of things we should start to pay attention to and give some intentionality to understanding.
Caesar:So we understand our context better.
Caesar:therefore how the gospel would be good news to these things.
Caesar:Yeah.
Peyton:I mean, I've always kind of wanted to know , before I preached the gospel or contextualize it, what is good news to these people?
Peyton:And you can only really in a certain degree, know that because the gospel is very full.
Peyton:It's very big.
Peyton:I mean, I used to listen to your podcast back when, when you were given gospel talks and I would work out and run down the beach.
Peyton:And I would hear Caesar, Kalinowski talking about, you know, the manifest nature of the gospel, but the gospel is very big.
Peyton:Yay.
Peyton:And it's fuller than what we think.
Peyton:And so I want to know what are people's fears like what isgo, what are, what is the culture im in?
Peyton:What are they afraid of?
Peyton:What are their hopes?
Peyton:What are their dreams?
Peyton:What do they consider successful?
Peyton:What are they worried about?
Peyton:So in some ways, it's good to know, like what's the suicide rate in your part of the city.
Peyton:I mentioned this on page 2 32 that missionaries know their communities, you know, your community because you love your community.
Peyton:What's the ethnic makeup.
Peyton:What languages do your neighbors speak?
Peyton:What's the socioeconomic makeup.
Peyton:What percentage of population is unemployed or on benefits?
Peyton:What's the chief type of occupation.
Peyton:You know, when, when I first became a missionary, I went in the heart of the city, lived in the home.
Peyton:Of the people I was working with and worked in the factories they worked in and still work in town and, and learned what life was and listened to them day in and day out.
Peyton:Began to share some of those fears as I worked in that environment began to, to hope some of the things that I, you know, I was poor.
Peyton:Like the people I was trying to reach.
Peyton:And once you start incarnating within a community like that, there's no substitute.
Peyton:You can, you can do research, but you there's something to be said for as well.
Peyton:That if you love a community, if you want to know your community, you have to live.
Peyton:That community.
Caesar:And see there comes the rub brother, I think, is that so many of our current church leadership folks, this is gonna be a little bit of a poke.
Caesar:And I, you know, whenever you point, somebody's got fingers coming back at you, so I'll receive this as well.
Caesar:But so often our church leadership is isolated from the community they're in.
Caesar:And then if you send people out to plant, are they, are they doing this work?
Caesar:They get to, are they doing this work of soaking in and being in and among like Jesus was.
Caesar:Or are they just setting up church service?
Caesar:Like, so we're going to set up pews or seats and the sound system and we're going, but we're going to do it hipper than the mothership, or are they doing this work?
Caesar:But this is the exact same thing that we all get to, I think, need to be doing just as Christians to understand your neighborhood.
Caesar:I'm thinking right now, as we're talking brother about the 95 homes here.
Caesar:In our little subdivision and we probably know 60 of those families, those people at all varying degrees.
Caesar:But as I'm thinking about some of these things, I'm like, well, I wonder what the marriage makeup is.
Caesar:A lot of them are probably single.
Caesar:Are they cohabitating?
Caesar:Are they divorced?
Caesar:How many times?
Caesar:There's there's things like that.
Caesar:I don't understand.
Caesar:Well, there's a lot of good news to speak to that brokenness that unbelief the wounds from all of that kind of stuff.
Caesar:Is that real?
Caesar:Is it dominate.
Caesar:I need to know these things better.
Caesar:How many single parents are even in these 95 homes?
Caesar:I don't know.
Caesar:In my mind, everybody's got this beautiful- because the neighborhood's beautiful.
Caesar:Everybody's got a perfect family.
Caesar:They don't need any of this.
Caesar:It's not true.
Caesar:I, so I've got some work to do as well.
Caesar:And that's, this is encouraging me, but it's also shining a light on some things I can do.
Peyton:Well, one of the things that I learned, I mean, I was a psych nurse before I became a missionary.
Peyton:I'd start on staff at a, at a mega church - a psych nurse?.
Peyton:I became a psych nurse.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:I,
Caesar:Tracy people always get into that.
Caesar:See, you're, you're you're
Peyton:um, I'm telling you the statistics are there.
Peyton:That is true.
Peyton:And, you know, working, I remember going to work in the psychiatric hospital and, and you don't realize in the same community where I had been pastoring in a mega church, suddenly realizing.
Peyton:I had no idea the brokenness of my own community or my own church when I would see people coming up to me saying pastor Peyton, one thing I learned, I have been I've planted in the inner city in LA I've planted in working towns with very high unemployment in the UK, a planted.
Peyton:And all different contexts, but what I will say, this is that those pains and those struggles do not change.
Peyton:The only thing that really seems to change is the, the price tag of the drugs that you try to treat your own dysfunction with.
Peyton:So, you know, you move from crystal meth to cocaine, it's all there, or
Caesar:the bigger house in the faster car, or the bigger this to the second home or the boat that we need for seven weekends a year or.
Peyton:That's it.
Peyton:I mean, right now, we're, we're in this unparalleled time where addiction is skyrocketed, where now people, their pain has been.
Peyton:So self-medicated that we're now entering into a time where the gospel will be the gospel of freedom.
Peyton:That is the true, good news.
Peyton:The gospel that brings freedom from addiction and bondage and, and that, that has to be factored into how we're going to contextualize the gospel.
Peyton:And then.
Peyton:In the future.
Caesar:And as we are coming, I hope out of this pandemic season for the last year and a half.
Caesar:And everybody's saying, no, not till next spring.
Caesar:At least we don't know who knows what new variants, blah, blah, blah.
Caesar:There, they will be studying this sociologists and psychologists and all that.
Caesar:We'll be studying this for decades.
Caesar:The effects of the fear, the isolation, the sense that whoa, there are giant things out there that were.
Caesar:We didn't even know, we should be afraid of that.
Caesar:Killed millions of people.
Caesar:Like now, when now we can add that to the list of our fears and things to run from an isolate because of, and all that.
Caesar:This, this is going to require us doing some of the digging in and understanding how to speak to these fears and, and come alongside those.
Caesar:And guess what?
Caesar:We might be doing that while we have some of those same fears or those same hurts or losses.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:And that, you know, it's funny because that's, if, if you look at some of the famous figures in church history, like Martin Luther, Martin Luther, his gospel was, um, to deceased from your labor, you know, that this gospel of justification by faith, you believe in that, in the finished work of Christ.
Peyton:That's how he contextualized that that is the gospel, but he took that one aspect and drove it home.
Peyton:Then you come to George Whitfield.
Peyton:The new birth, then you come to John Wesley and John Wesley was more like Paul before.
Peyton:Agrippa where, you know, a righteous, it was the gospel of what he would present was not your sin.
Peyton:He would produce the righteousness of God and you could never attain it.
Peyton:So here's the imparted righteousness of Jesus.
Peyton:That's what Wesley.
Peyton:So each one of these famous figures in a, and of course Spurgeon was the atonement.
Peyton:Each one of these figures.
Peyton:preached The true gospel, but they, they contextualized the message and an aspect of the message of the gospel.
Peyton:And that's, that's one of the things you, and I think love about the gospel so much is it's not which one it's it's they, this has all the gospel.
Peyton:It's what, like you asked the question earlier, what is good news to these people today?
Peyton:Yeah,
Caesar:let's get some ideas on where people can look to learn these kinds of things.
Caesar:Like what are some of the places in their life, in their city, in their town that are around you?
Caesar:Quote some stuff from a book called Trade Craft where there's five elements of the city.
Caesar:I found this fascinating and very, very helpful cause I think, Hmm.
Caesar:I think I probably accidentally participate in or travel along some of these within these five elements and others.
Caesar:Maybe I need to up some of my, my intentionality there.
Caesar:So they talk about paths, nodes, districts, edges landmarks, give us real quick what each of these are.
Caesar:And then we'll talk about the types of questions we want to be asking ourselves with
Peyton:within.
Peyton:I, I have to give a shout out.
Peyton:I love this book, trade craft.
Peyton:I just got to, I got to give some credit where credit's due.
Peyton:Whenever it comes to talking about this stuff, I go to these guys, right?
Peyton:They were, they were a European missionaries like myself, but when they came back and I, and I will give them a little pre visa real quick, when it comes.
Peyton:To missionaries, there's something that's, that's maybe relevant to this whole conversation we've been having.
Peyton:When I got back, I wrote a book called Church Zero, which was raising first century churches out of the 20, the ashes of the 21st century church.
Peyton:So that was a, almost like a Missional manifesto when I got off the mission field.
Peyton:And I was, I was this cagey missionary come back to America going, Hey, I want to start
Caesar:at the time we met that's about the time we met.
Peyton:It is.
Peyton:Yeah, I think I was more irritating, man.
Peyton:I think I've mellowed out a bit, but.
Peyton:My editor edited Jim Peterson's book church without walls.
Peyton:And she had deja VU.
Peyton:She said, she wrote to me once and said, Hey, as I'm editing, I'm blown away that this is almost the same book that he wrote.
Peyton:Through research?
Peyton:No, not, not through plagiarism.
Peyton:It's just a very similar, and I started to see whether it was Leslie new begin or whether it was Rolan Allen, these stars of missiologists, which I do not include myself within their camp.
Peyton:But what I noticed was just,
Caesar:you just slipped yourself.
Peyton:No, I I'm like, let's put it this way.
Peyton:I'm like the, uh, the, the stupid man's guide to, to these other guys, right?
Peyton:I'm like that the cliff notes,
Caesar:your last book will be church planting for dummies.
Caesar:And that'll be your big open
Peyton:space.
Peyton:That's pretty much what this Church Plantology is.
Peyton:But, but what I'm saying.
Peyton:I started notice a similarity.
Peyton:These guys had all been on, including Lessie, who a guy, by the way, it had all been on the mission field, Roland Allen.
Peyton:These were all missionaries returning and they by and large became church reformers.
Peyton:And I realized that's what had happened to me.
Caesar:Part of my story too.
Caesar:It's
Peyton:part of my story, Brian Sanders, right?
Peyton:Same thing, same with Caleb Kreider.
Peyton:And I got to give a shout out to Sean Benesh as well.
Peyton:If you've not, uh, ever looked at Sean Benesh work, he wrote things like the bikeable church.
Peyton:I mean, to me, there's almost nobody better.
Peyton:And he used to work with these guys.
Peyton:Nobody better at contextualization.
Peyton:Let me
Caesar:back to these five elements though.
Caesar:I really want to bring this grounded understanding of why are these different elements of our city give us ways in places and paths to understand these things.
Caesar:You're talking about to find this contextualization.
Caesar:We'll talk about some of the questions we want to ask in each of these, but let's go ahead.
Caesar:Explain what, what are
Peyton:paths?
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:So if you picture like a map, looking at a bird's eye view of your city, right?
Peyton:A path would be the ways that people travel, whether it's streets, sidewalks, Bike paths, public transport.
Peyton:And what it does is it helps you understand how people move around.
Peyton:And the reason that's important is if I'm planting in an urban context, this statistically people do not walk more than five minutes from where they live to do anything.
Peyton:So businesses know this and they plan accordingly.
Peyton:So when you're coming to, to, to church plant in place with a bunch of high rises and in an urban context, you need to be aware of the paths.
Caesar:Okay, great.
Caesar:What about nodes?
Caesar:What are nodes and why is that important to pay attention to
Peyton:nodes are where people gather you go to New York.
Peyton:Central park is one of the keys.
Peyton:You know, that's the outdoor space.
Peyton:So it's places where people are gathering.
Peyton:That's defined often from whatever borders that they have and that's going to cage them in.
Peyton:So they're going to, they're going to find gathering points within those nodes are just central points of gathering
Caesar:places where people interact and hang.
Caesar:So parks or like a food court or cafe could even be the mall.
Caesar:It, depending on your city or context.
Caesar:The park, like you said.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Awesome.
Caesar:Okay then next.
Caesar:So we've got paths we've got, so how are people getting around or they travel a lot to the not what's contextual.
Caesar:What's too far.
Caesar:What's too close.
Caesar:Then the nodes, where do they hang out?
Caesar:Just to interact?
Caesar:What about districts?
Caesar:What are districts?
Caesar:Why is that important to understand?
Peyton:district would kind of be like, uh, it's your, it's the identity of where you live?
Peyton:So if I asked you where you're living might say I live in south side, You know, or I live in south Oceanside or I live in north county, San Diego, or I live at, you know,
Caesar:New York is totally that way.
Caesar:There's so hoe and there's the upper west side and there's Chelsea and there's hell's kitchen and you're right.
Caesar:Identified by it in some ways.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:And there's a whole different culture or like where I'm at in San Diego, you go from one area to the next it's it's a big deal.
Peyton:Yeah,
Caesar:there definitely are.
Peyton:all the gangsters.
Peyton:Talk about that.
Peyton:You know, all the hipsters live in south.
Peyton:Oh, it's a thing.
Peyton:Yeah.
Caesar:I've been there enough to know that's the case and they are very different in the sense.
Caesar:The F like how they eat, how the people dress, what the makeup of that chunk of that neighborhood, district culture is all about.
Caesar:They're very unique and people actually move into them for those reasons.
Caesar:If you're gonna plant the church in there, or if you're living in one of those, are you pushing against it?
Caesar:Do you see the culture as the enemy?
Caesar:Are you embracing that?
Caesar:Are you finding out.
Caesar:Yeah.
Peyton:And it happens sometimes like in San Diego back with when, when I was working with the north American mission board, we'd have like hipster pastors trying to move into a neighborhood.
Peyton:That was a multiethnic.
Peyton:I mean, we're talking like first-generation immigrants from Pakistan or whatever, or a hipster church.
Peyton:There was not in any way.
Peyton:Contextualizing what that culture community was going to need or want.
Peyton:We
Caesar:saw the exact same thing in Tacoma when we were early planting.
Caesar:And there was a bunch of 20 somethings, really young 20 somethings that barely had jobs.
Caesar:And they weren't part of our community, but they were part of another community that was trying to incarnate.
Caesar:And we were friends and grateful for that.
Caesar:And a whole bunch of them banned their money together and they moved into this real expensive high rise down in the water because they wanted to incarnate down there.
Caesar:But everybody that lived there were in their forties and fifties, double income lawyers, doctors, people in the government and all that.
Caesar:And they drank martinis and all this and these, these 20 somethings didn't even know how to spell martini.
Caesar:They would never drink one.
Caesar:They, most of them barely had jobs.
Caesar:There was zero contextualization of who they were and who they were dropping into.
Caesar:They were trying to do this geographical thing.
Caesar:Hey, there's people moving in here.
Caesar:Let's be there commendable, but they, there was a real mismatch.
Caesar:And I'm not saying that's necessarily like, well, couldn't they learn to incarnate.
Caesar:They were a very, very different people group.
Caesar:All I had to do was cross over one of the edges.
Caesar:That's the next one of the elements, the five elements, right.
Caesar:They just crossed over.
Caesar:There was this lit, there was this road Pac Ave on, right on the other side of PAC and just two blocks up the hill was all their people.
Caesar:How about incarnate up there?
Caesar:So let's talk about what are they.
Caesar:What are the edges?
Caesar:The
Peyton:edges are the natural boundaries in your city and, and
Caesar:they're just a river or the highway.
Peyton:Or a train track, you know, I live right on a train track, you know, that cause the train comes by during this recording sometimes, but that's where we get the phrase out there from the other side of the tracks.
Peyton:That's an edge.
Peyton:Yeah,
Caesar:exactly.
Caesar:And I'll tell you, we lived in Tacoma since we first moved out here and just not too long ago, a few years ago, we moved just across the bridge, crossed the Puget sound bridge here that narrows and it's 10 minutes away, 10, 12 minutes away.
Caesar:boy oh boy though, that's a very big edge, Its a big the difference.
Caesar:My daughter lives just over the bridge and the other side we live just on the bridge, this that's two different worlds.
Caesar:It's two different worlds and who they hang out with, where they eat, what they do and all that.
Caesar:And the last one's landmarks that's last one of the elements.
Caesar:Tell me a little about landmarks and how we pay attention to that stuff and how that might be important as we try to discern our context.
Peyton:So landmark would be something like if you're in long beach, it's going to be the pike, which is the big kind of walking district shopping centers.
Peyton:The
Caesar:Riverwalk.
Caesar:I was just in San Antonio yesterday for church planting time.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:Yeah.
Peyton:In London, it's going to be like the Thames, big Ben, uh, London bridge, London Eyethose are all landmarks.
Peyton:You see them on TV and you go, oh, that's.
Peyton:And again, that, that points back to identity.
Caesar:Yeah, it sure does.
Caesar:And for many that, that is like their third space too, where they're like, where do you spend your time?
Caesar:While we go down to the river, we go to the Riverwalk or we're always over.
Caesar:We hang out.
Caesar:And then there's a series of cafes right around this landmark and we love it.
Caesar:And that's where we hang whatever, pay attention to those.
Caesar:Now all of this too, does really fall into places to also look not only to understand your context and grow in that cultural awareness, but also to look for People of peace.
Caesar:I would caution people that your city has all five of these elements.
Caesar:And they're very helpful though.
Caesar:You may not live adjacent or within all of them.
Caesar:Mm.
Caesar:So understanding it's important, but thinking like, well, I'm gonna make disciples from across all five of these.
Caesar:You might not because if you can't do life with those people, but if you find yourself with one in one of these five or multiple ones, for most people, either understanding the paths, understanding the nodes, oh, that's our node, or this is our district that we live in and here's the node or landmark within it.
Caesar:Great.
Caesar:You definitely still want to look for your people a peace within some level of proximity.
Caesar:All right now, what are some of the things that then we want to ask from each of those five elements?
Caesar:What are some of the things we want to be asking pain?
Peyton:We want to ask, what are people doing here?
Peyton:Why are they here?
Peyton:How did they get here?
Peyton:What is it that they consider their own value in this community?
Peyton:How do they occupy their time?
Peyton:What did they themselves value?
Peyton:And then, you know, asking some of the questions, like how would a church that you plant be valued?
Peyton:To them like knowing what they value, you know, and all that.
Caesar:Well, just when you say that, I just go, wow.
Caesar:If a church plants and they can answer a lot of the stuff we've just been discussing.
Caesar:What a unique, good news opportunity to be the people be the church amongst that, knowing that knowing like, okay, we're availing some of our own preferences or the way we might want to do life or our traditions of our church, but we'll, we're bringing in good news.
Caesar:Like, because they hang out here this long or here's how they have to get here or here's what's going on in their life.
Caesar:Well, we're going to shape our church around that and how we exist, how we incarnate, even how we gather and proclaim and worship and all that.
Peyton:One of the questions I asked the church planters that I train to answer is describe your church plant to me, the only rule is a, cannot have a Sunday morning service because once you crack that nut you've cracked what church planting is in its essence, because it's not thrown a Sunday service.
Peyton:I don't mind if they, if they throw a service.
Peyton:But that's what I asked him that, because I feel like once they answer that satisfactorily, they've grappled with all these questions and they're going to be fine.
Peyton:If they can answer that they're going to crack it.
Peyton:Oh, I
Caesar:love that right away.
Caesar:My heart also went to even established churches.
Caesar:If I asked you to describe your church and what's so awesome about it, but you can't describe the gathering part of it.
Caesar:Tell me about it.
Caesar:Oh, oh, Peyton.
Caesar:I love that brother.
Caesar:I hope people are listening to that.
Caesar:That alone right there, I think is the, my big takeaway nugget.
Caesar:How do you do that?
Caesar:How do you, how do you describe your church plant or your ministry or your current existing church?
Caesar:If you don't just talk about what's happening in your gathering.
Caesar:On Sunday or whatever.
Caesar:Wow.
Caesar:Peyton as always your breadth of experience, but your ongoing heart of generosity for people and your love for people shows through in all of this.
Caesar:I really hope we get to hang out in person more often.
Caesar:I really want to come and see your world down there in San Diego.
Caesar:I haven't been down in a while or maybe I get you up here to the Seattle area.
Peyton:Oh, that'd be great.
Peyton:My stepdad was from Snohomish.
Peyton:So
Caesar:not too far from me.
Caesar:Now I'm going to wrap us up sort of by borrowing a little bit from your playback playbook, when I've been on your podcast, you, you kind of like to wrap up with like a, a particularly personal question.
Caesar:So here's what I'm going to ask you on.
Caesar:And this is kind of right out of your right out of your, your gig there, brother.
Caesar:What's your favorite band?
Caesar:Tell me that.
Caesar:And why.
Caesar:Okay.
Caesar:The Def tones.
Caesar:So why is the Def Tones?
Caesar:Your favorite band?
Caesar:Why come on?
Peyton:I mean, you know, well, you don't, no one has to ask that question.
Peyton:Everybody knows this.
Peyton:The deaf tones by the deaf tones are amazing.
Peyton:They're my age and, and I am 48 years old, so they've been doing it and they've been doing it for a long time, but they're in the matrix by the way, they are on the soundtrack.
Peyton:Uh it's it's called something about summer.
Peyton:shove it away.
Peyton:And that actually talks about God in there.
Peyton:And, uh, you, you should definitely listen to it.
Peyton:I'm going to
Caesar:dial it up as soon as we get done here.
Peyton:I'm telling you the Def tones are the perfect balance between hardcore punk, a little bit of metal and some alternative thrown in.
Peyton:There's just something about the Deftones where they actually tried to label them as new metal.
Peyton:I'm not a heavy metal fan, but they tried to label him as heavy, a new metal.
Peyton:And it just Deftones we're like now we're not that that's too lighting.
Caesar:All right.
Caesar:Well, maybe they're my new favorite band.
Caesar:I I'm always looking for the next, the next thing.
Caesar:I mean, I have always had those historic old ones, but you know, always looking for new ones.
Caesar:Hey, I want to just remind everybody there's so much goodness, in this book, this Church Plantology, it there's so many important things to not only think about and consider, but it is really chock full of practice.
Caesar:Are you thinking about this and how I do this?
Caesar:And here's a million ideas for that.
Caesar:It is a masterstroke brother.
Caesar:You've, you've put so much into this for people and not just planters.
Caesar:I think if everyone read it, they would all be a lot smarter about their own incarnation as missionaries part of our identity, our gospel identity.
Caesar:So thanks for not only that hard work, but thanks for coming on today, just to share a little bit of that.
Caesar:This
Peyton:book to me is really the internal operating system of just mission, not church planting it's for everybody.
Peyton:And I get that comment a lot people.
Peyton:Hey, I read this and I'm not sure.
Peyton:I feel like every Christian needs to read.
Peyton:Oh, it
Caesar:is totally.
Caesar:Is that kind of book.
Caesar:It really is.
Caesar:So that's why I wanted to have you on, because I knew your heart and what your passion is, is going to connect deeply with a lot of the folks that listen to Everyday Disciple.
Caesar:Cause we're all trying to figure out how to live this out in normal everyday life again, man.
Caesar:Thanks for being on.
Caesar:I'll talk to you real soon.
Caesar:I hope it's face to face.
Caesar:All right.
Caesar:Thanks brother.
Caesar:Wow.
Caesar:Peyton has stories upon stories.
Caesar:I could sit and talk with him and hang out forever.
Caesar:He's done so many things and he's got such a good heart for all this, that his mind immediately connects the dots and you can see he doesn't talk up there in the clouds in ways you can understand, but he, he brings it down to where guys like me can understand.
Caesar:I hope that was helpful to you as well.
Caesar:There is a lot in there and there's even more in his book, Church Plantology and then again, that's not a book just for church planters.
Caesar:If you're loving this conversation, as much as I did, you'll find so much cool and useful stuff in that book.
Caesar:Check it out.
Caesar:And also before I get to the big three for today, again, if I could hop on a zoom call and maybe talk to you about ways we could help you with, with discipleship, setting up a framework for that within your church, or just you and your family, even to get started, maybe live in this life, out in your name.
Caesar:Forming Missional Community is whatever I'd love to be able to do that.
Caesar:Tell you a little bit about the coaching that Tina and I offer.
Caesar:We coached together Tina and I, and we coached couples.
Caesar:Pretty cool.
Caesar:Pretty unique.
Caesar:If you want to learn more about that and set up a time that we could talk, just go to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash coaching.
Caesar:I want to leave you with the big three takeaways from today's topic.
Caesar:If nothing else, you don't want to miss these.
Caesar:And as always, you can get a printable PDF of this.
Caesar:Week's big three.
Caesar:I think today you're going to want to, you can get that download sent to you immediately just by going to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash big three.
Caesar:All right.
Caesar:Here's my big three for the week.
Caesar:First.
Caesar:It's important to observe your culture and context in order to be able to understand.
Caesar:Makes sense.
Caesar:And without this, it is hard.
Caesar:If not impossible to speak and embody the gospel in a way that is good news to people, spend time discovering the paths, nodes, districts, edges, and landmarks that make up your city and neighbors.
Caesar:To the gospel is always good news.
Caesar:In context, Jesus came to a specific people in a specific area at a specific time in history, and he embodied the fullness of his father and explained the good news of the kingdom of God in ways that those people could understand and embrace.
Caesar:And he desires to do that through you, his church, you and I today.
Caesar:Right?
Caesar:Where are you?
Caesar:Move beyond canned evangelistic presentations and churchy language and learn to speak good news to the specific brokenness and fear people are experiencing.
Caesar:And third pick a place that people regularly gathered a hangout in your city and neighborhood pick one, you know, where they are, and then spend enough time.
Caesar:In rhythm sort of picking the same time each week, spend enough time to answer these questions.
Caesar:What are people doing here?
Caesar:Why are they here?
Caesar:How are they occupying their time?
Caesar:Are they reading?
Caesar:Are they talking?
Caesar:Are they having drinks?
Caesar:Are they watching sports?
Caesar:Are they just having the headphones on trying to hide?
Caesar:Probably not.
Caesar:If they're in public, what about this?
Caesar:What would they consider valuable in their life?
Caesar:Probably going to have to talk them to know that how could your church be valuable to them and what would be gospel good news to them.
Caesar:That's going to take time.
Caesar:Can I have to probably spend enough time to build relationships, ask good questions, be a person of peace, and remember to look for the thing behind the thing and increasingly live as good news.
Caesar:I hope that's helpful.
Caesar:This is a pretty important subject and topic to think about as we are increasingly more out there as the church, which I've said over and over.
Caesar:I love, I hope this is going to be really, really helpful.
Caesar:That's all I have for today.
Caesar:Again, I want to thank Peyton Jones for joining us, sharing his heart and his experiences.
Caesar:Be sure to join me next week.
Caesar:I'm going to talk about a bunch of stupid things that the church that's us need to stop doing.
Caesar:If we want to be taken seriously, I'll talk to you soon.
Announcer:Thanks for joining us today.
Announcer:For more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit Everyday Disciple dot com.
