United Methodist People Podcast

Show Notes

On this illuminating episode of The United Methodist People Podcast, Dr. Brad Miller welcomes longtime friend, author, pastor, and leadership coach Roger Ross to discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities facing today’s United Methodist churches. Centered around Ross’s latest book, “Kinda Christian: From Curious to Serious About Jesus,” the conversation explores how churches and individuals can move beyond complacency to cultivate authentic discipleship, transformational community, and purpose-driven faith.

Episode Summary

The episode kicks off with Dr. Brad Miller introducing Roger Ross, whose decades of ministry and church leadership have inspired innovative approaches to spiritual growth and coaching. They revisit their joint history as church planters, emphasizing the importance of humility in leadership—an ethos behind Ross’s new venture, The Humility Group, created to support pastors and faith-based leaders.

Ross shares the origin story of “Kinda Christian,” highlighting his realization that many church newcomers crave clarity about what being a disciple truly entails. After wrestling with his leadership team, Ross’s church developed the G6 process, outlining six essential marks of discipleship: glory, grace, group, growth, giftedness, and generosity. Stories like Chantel’s—whose life was profoundly changed by this process—illustrate the transformative power of intentional discipling.

The conversation delves into the broader issues facing churches, such as lack of clarity and processes for making disciples. Ross argues that the mission to “make disciples” often falters when churches cannot define what a disciple actually is or lack a roadmap to help people become one. He introduces three core callings to help believers and churches get “unstuck”: love God, launch community, and unleash compassion.

Ross and Miller discuss practical metaphors—lake churches (static, attractional) versus river churches (dynamic, sending)—encouraging leaders to build churches that nurture, equip, and send disciples into the world. Authentic community, Ross asserts, is the antidote to today’s epidemic of loneliness and meaninglessness; it requires relationships that are loving, truthful, and deep, not merely surface-level fellowship.

The episode also touches on practical spiritual disciplines, like engaging with scripture regularly, and the statistical evidence of its impact. Ross explains that just four times of meaningful Bible engagement a week can significantly reduce loneliness and increase purpose.

Finally, Ross shares how “Kinda Christian” is being adopted by United Methodist bishops and conferences as a resource to help local churches define discipleship and create processes for cultivating it. On a personal note, Ross urges listeners to start small—pick one spiritual discipline, such as solitude or focused prayer, and commit to it daily—as the first step toward becoming a fully devoted follower of Jesus.

Three Takeaway Points:

1. Clarity on Discipleship Is Critical for Church Health: Without a clear, actionable definition of what it means to be a disciple and how to cultivate one, churches will struggle to fulfill their mission and fail to engage seekers meaningfully.
2. Churches Must Move from Lake to River Models: The future of vibrant ministry lies in churches that not only attract but equip and send disciples to impact their communities, flowing outward rather than hoarding resources.
3. Deep Community and Small Steps Lead to Transformation: Combating loneliness and spiritual complacency begins with intentional relationships and adopting manageable spiritual practices, like daily solitude or scripture engagement.

For more about Roger Ross and The Humility Group, visit thehumilitygroup.org, and for podcast updates, check out unitedmethodistpodcast.com.

Hello, good people, and welcome to the United Methodist People Podcast. I'm, uh, Brad Miller. I spent 43 years as a United Methodist pastor and, and a lot of great experiences doing that. And now I lean into helping people who call themselves United Methodist to tell the stories of their purpose and their passion and their ministry, uh, some of the great things that are happening, some of the challenges that we have in the United Methodist Church. And we like to do that by connecting up with people who are doing some really awesome things. So we have a great, a great guest with us today. He's an author and a teacher and a coach. His name is Roger Ross, and he also has the distinction of being one of my good friends for over 30 years, which has some good points and some challenging points.

But let me give you a little bit of background on on, uh, on Roger. He served as a pastor for many years. He's a native of Cambridge, Illinois. He served in new church— in a new church plant, planting two new churches, and was a lead pastor of one of the largest United Methodist churches in the Midwest for a number of years. He later served as director of congregational excellence in the Missouri Conference and worked as a coach for Spiritual Leadership Inc. And now Recently, in the last several months, founded the Humility Group, which is a coaching organization to equip pastors, faith-based leaders, and their teams to lead grace-shaped lives that transform the world. And he's the author of, uh, 4 books: Meet the Good People, Comeback: Returning to Life You Were Made For, A Comeback Participant Guide, and his latest book we're gonna talk about today called Kinda Christian. And he also— he and I have also spent a little time on the golf course where he usually beats up on me.

But, uh, Roger Ross, welcome to our conversation today, my friend.

Thank you, Brad. What a joy to be with you.

Well indeed. And, uh, it's kind of scary, my friend, to think about— I was trying to think, uh, through our relationship, and you and I both went through church planting era together, and that was well over 30 years ago. So here we are, we're still kicking, man. So, and you're doing some good stuff, and I'm enjoying what I'm doing, but here Here we are. So, uh, thank— here we are, Brad.

We both started churches on the very same day in 1995.

That's right.

And so we have been on the journey.

That's right. And so we have checked in from time to time, often on the anniversary of that, which is coming up in March of this year. It's, uh, in March. Remember that very well. Important, important part of my life. And our relationship has been important part of my life, uh, since then. And I loved your journey here, uh, Roger, and, uh, getting to know you over the years. You're a passionate guy, you're a spiritual guy, but you also are one to give back.

And I love also— I wanna get to a little bit later, but I love the name of your coaching program, The Humility Group, because I certainly think humility is something that is lacking in so much of our society, both in the church and certainly in our culture, uh, at large. So how'd you come up with Humility Group, my friend?

Well, you know, humility is the cardinal virtue of the Christian faith. If you look at all the other virtues, this is the one that they all kind of use as a foundation. And I, I don't think that anyone can actually learn or grow or become the person that they were created to be apart from humility. Uh, if, if you think you know everything, if you've got it all buttoned up and figured out, uh, then you're not able to grow and change.

Hmm. Awesome. Well, certainly humility as opposed to hubris is something that I believe is a huge leadership quality. And of course, a part of what you coach about is leadership. And, and then, but you're also certainly are a student. You're also one of the people I know, Roger, who's a real student of Christianity as a whole and kind of our niche of it, as it were, United Methodist, uh, Christians. And you've made a study of it. I know your earlier book that I read a few years ago called The Good People really made a study of kind of Wesleyan principles that have to do with that.

And now you, you have a book that came out recently called Kind of Christian. And, and then more, even more recently, a United Methodist version of that. But what I was kind of curious about, Roger, as I read through your book, I took— I read the book, uh, the last several days and took a bunch of notes and really was touched, touched by it and kind of made me feel a little uneasy and uncomfortable a few places, which I think is a good thing. But one of the things that I picked up on there was the subtitle, which is "From Curious to Serious About Jesus." Tell me kind of the origin story of Kinda Christian. The, the name itself implies that, you know, if you're kinda Christian, you're not all the way Christian, but tell me a little bit about the origin story., uh, what, uh, led you to wanna write this book? Any season in your life or ministry? What, what, what was the impetus for this? What's the origin story?

Well, actually it started back in the last church that I was serving, Brad. We kept having new people come to church and we had a very familiar mission statement, uh, to people that are United Methodist. It was to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. And we would share that quite regularly in our worship services and, uh, in our small groups and the like. And we would have these newcomers that show up and say, hey, love that whole transformation of the world thing, but what's a disciple? And we're like, everybody knows what a disciple is, right? It's, it's a little of this and it's a little of that. We know when, when we see one. Yeah. And actually that wasn't a very good answer.

And we realized that we did— a

little bit, a little bit, a little bit lame in terms of your response to, to that. Very important question. It's a good question, isn't it? It's a very good question.

It's a great question. And we were very weak in our response. It just wasn't helpful. So that happened enough times. I finally got the other pastors together and said, look, this is ridiculous. We have to have a better answer than this. We can't just say, well, we know one when we see one. So, uh, let's just get together.

You know, how, how hard could this be? Let's knock something out in 3 weeks and then we'll come back and we'll have an answer when people ask that question. 8 months later, we had something that we could bring to our leaders to say, we think this is what a disciple really looks like. And we had, we, it took us a long time cuz we had to rustle it out of our guts. We had to sink deep into scripture. We had to, to figure out what we really meant when we talked about a disciple of Jesus. And that was put before our leaders and then, uh, it was adopted by our leadership team. And then eventually it became a part of the way that we did our discipleship in that church. And we did a, a whole series, like a 8-week series on it in the fall one year.

And then we put a class together that coordinated with the series, and we had hundreds of people literally go through this, this class that eventually became known as our G6 class. Hmm. Because we discovered that there were 6 G's, 6 marks of a deeply devoted disciple that were necessary for someone to actually go into discipleship. And I can give you— I can kind of run those off for you. It's glory, grace, group, growth, giftedness, and generosity. Yes. Uh, and we thought each of those G's would have an inward experience to them and an outward expression. That's good Wesleyan theology.

There you go.

There you go. It's not just about what happens in your heart, it's also what's going on in your life. And so we made that a, a part of our discipleship process at the church, and that was, oh, back in the mid-20-teens, and they still are using it at that church to this day.

But tell me, was there a person or was there a situation in mind that kind of embodied that? Or maybe a— tell me a story about somebody who went through that process and has some, uh, you know, an aha moment or something for them?

Yeah, I can talk about Chantel, who's actually in the book. She came to our church, a young mom, 3 young kids in tow. And she had grown up in another denomination and it just never clicked for her. She had not been a part of the church for a long time and she just started attending and, and she got connected in some ways., and it's like something kind of fired for her, uh, in her own spiritual life. But it, but the, the larger process of what it meant to actually follow Jesus was not clicking for her. So she went through this G6 class that we had, and it just like her, the, the lights went on. I mean, she saw things that she had never seen before. It, it literally transformed her life.

That's why she wanted to be able to share something as a testimony in the book itself, because it has such a transforming impact on her life, the way she was being a mom to her kids, the way she was being a wife to her husband.

It changed everything. Hmm. So the book Kinda Christian then came about. Let me ask you this, was the Kinda Christian— the book itself, is it targeted towards people like Chantal or is it targeted towards, uh, clergy or church leaders? Or tell me about how— who's the audience here for this book?

That's a great question, Brad. And actually it's a combination. So when I wrote the book originally, I was thinking primarily about people that were like Chantel, that were kind of on the outside looking in and trying to figure out what it meant to actually follow Jesus. You know, our world is just teeming with good people who would check the Christian box if they're asked, but they feel like something's missing. You know, the, the— many of us have done church. I mean, we know the routine. It just doesn't feel personal. So a lot of us ask deep down inside, is there more? And of course, the answer to that is yes.

Yes, there's lots and lots more. But when you're constantly wondering, is there anything that could fill the emptiness inside, then that question is left unresolved in your life. You know, we may know the Christian faith, we may know the story, we, we may even believe in Jesus, but we don't always know how to follow him.

Yeah. And it seems to me that what you're saying there, we know the story, we know how to follow Jesus, and that the piece of it here— and help me out if I'm wrong here, you let me know— but a piece of this may be towards those pastors or church leaders, then how the how-to, and how, how to, uh, to, uh, implement this to the people like Chantel. Is that a part of what we're talking about here?

So that's the other side of it, you know. And so I, uh, in, in my coaching and teaching roles, I mean, I, I have an opportunity to talk to lots and lots of pastors. I do some adjunct stuff with the seminary that I attended. And so I'll talk to, to, you know, pastors in training, seminary students, and, and I'll get into these conversations all the time and say, well, you tell me. I said, your mission, broadly speaking, is to make disciples, right? And they're like, oh yeah, yeah, that's our, that's our mission. I said, great. Now, uh, do you have a common understanding at your church of what a disciple is? Hmm. Yes.

And to a person, I've never had

someone say yes. Ah, well, that's, that's a teaching moment right there. Is it not? You know, that, uh, right there. So gain— and it goes, it goes to gaining clarity. If we don't have good clarity ourselves, How are we gonna be able to teach direction, focus to the folks who come to us seeking and hungry like

the Chantels of the world? Uh, that's exactly right. And so I would just ask a follow-up question and say, okay, well, you, you, if you don't have any kind of understanding of what a disciple is, do you have a process for making disciples? Uh, and they said, well, no. Uh, and occasionally someone will say, we have a membership class. I'm like, mm, that's not it. So what you're saying to me is you don't know what a disciple looks like and you don't have a way to make one.

How's your mission going? Yeah. So why— and that, just to beg the question, to flip it on the other side, then why would the Chantels of the world want to follow, follow through? They're hungry, but if they're not being, you know, led down a pathway of being fed, We're failing. And I think, you know, we could go off on another tangent. There's lots of reasons why many United Methodist and other churches are struggling. And I think this may be a part of it. We don't have a good process for

people to follow to, to do this. Well, just imagine any business and you're asking the business owner, well, tell me, uh, how's your business going? It's like, well, you know, we don't really know what it is that we're What we're trying to do. We don't have a process for doing it. So our business isn't going very well.

Well, what a surprise, right? Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I'm finding interesting here, Roger, about what you shared here, I think we're focusing on the— I like to think in terms of what are the problems we have and how we're trying to go about solving them. And you're— I think you kind of define and lift up the kind of problem, you know, kind of when we do kind of things in a halfway, approach, both as seeking people and both as, uh, church, uh, church leadership. You talk about 3 callings that you— that we have in the church to love God, launch community, and unleash compassion through this G6 process you have. So say a little bit about how— about the problem, you know, about the kind of problem and about these 3 core, core callings. How we can get unstuck from the kind of problem.

Yeah, I, I really believe that, that our churches have lost kind of the core of what we are about. I mean, when Jesus talked about the two greatest commandments, you know, he talked about loving God and loving people, right? And, and so it all starts with the love of God. So if you're going to come into some kind of relationship with God, it's going to— have to be a love relationship. That's what it's designed to be. God— we love because God first loved us. God proved that by sending his son Jesus, so that the sin that is in us and in this world, uh, could be eradicated by the sacrifice he made for us, for our sake and for our sin on the cross, and that we could come into that kind of love relationship with God. But when we're in that love relationship with God, that's meant also to be shared with others. So that's about launching compassion.

Or I'm sorry, launching community. So we launch community so that we can be building relationships with others and sharing the love that has been placed in our hearts with other people and receiving the love that's been placed in other people's hearts with us. Uh, we need that combination, that, that, uh, that interaction, um, between each other for that love to, uh, take hold and have the kind of transformative impact it's designed to have. And then last but certainly not least, unleashing compassion. So the overflow of that love from God and others is to people that are in need in all kinds of situations, both close, like next door neighbor, and far away, the neighbor on the

other side of the world. Yeah, I think we can— it doesn't— we don't have to dig too far as, uh, as biblical people and pastors, as you and I are, to go to the, you know, the great commandment, love God, love others, you know, that's loving God and creating community. And to go and make disciples, which is kind of what we've been talking about here, has to do with applying then things like the Beatitudes and other things that has to do with, you know, how do we unleash compassion? I love the way you put that, unleash compassion. So you've— we certainly have the biblical foundation for this. Do you wanna say any more about that, about the biblical foundation of what

you've been working on here? Well, yes, the, the one thing I want to say in, in relation to your comment is that Jesus does not say, "Go therefore and make Christians." Hmm. Like, that, that wasn't even a word at the time. Yeah, right. Jesus was all about disciples. Well, there's a difference, certainly in our culture, between a Christian and a disciple. Like, these days you can be a Christian in our culture by simply holding a few beliefs about God and Jesus. And occasionally going to church, if at all. Hmm.

Yeah. Well, that's not what Jesus had in mind in the least. I mean, when, when Jesus talked about— when he was talking to his disciples, he says, if you want to come and follow me, well, then deny yourself, pick up your cross, an instrument of death, and then follow me. Right. So there's a completely different level of commitment and surrender that's involved in being a disciple versus calling yourself a Christian in our culture.

I mean, well, well, but Roger, come on, man. That sounds like hard stuff. That's not all sweet, sweet Jesus and donuts and coffee after church, man. Where you're talking about actually getting, getting down and dirty, doing some gritty stuff. And, you know, I, I think, and this is hard for people to swallow who want some comfortable pablum, you know, in their life. And so I want to I want to go with you on this tangent here a little bit here, and that you use a metaphor in your book that I thought was really interesting. You talk about basically running and running marathons and hitting a wall, because what you're talking about is hard stuff. In order to get through this hard stuff, you do hit a wall and things of, of this nature.

And people, you know, have done anything hard in their life, you know, you know, you hit the wall and that's— but go with me there. Tell me about the wall. Tell me about this marathon kind of metaphor. And then how you kind of change it, the wall thing to a doorway. So just unpack that for me a little bit. I, I thought that was a really

great chapter in your book. Yeah, actually you're referring to the, the 6 stages that, uh, Janet Haberg and Robert Gulick came up with that I use in the book. And the, the first 3 stages are very familiar to anybody who's been on the journey whatsoever within the Christian faith. The first is just recognition of God. Right? There, there's some bare recognition that we have a need, that there's something that's not right within us. And then this, the second, uh, stage is this life of discipleship. We come to faith in Christ and then we start following Christ. We, we start to get into some of the, the disciplines of the faith.

We begin to practice prayer. We start reading scripture. We start getting involved in a group of one kind or another. We may even experience or, or dabble in fasting and solitude and other kinds of spiritual disciplines that are classic down through the ages. And then we get into that third stage, which is more the serving part where we're going out and we're actively trying to not only communicate our faith, uh, verbally, but communicate it in our actions, uh, to show the love of Christ in a practical way. Hmm. Well, then in that stage four, we start to hit a wall. And something happens, invariably something happens in our life, right? Where, where, you know, the phone rings the wrong way and pick it up and the doctor says it's cancer.

You know that all too well, Brad. Yes, indeed. Or your spouse walks in and says, hey, it's been great, but I'm out. Hmm. Or, or, you know, a child dies or your, your parent unexpectedly is in a car accident and you lose them and you know, that just some kind of great tragedy takes place. And all of a sudden, all the things that you thought made sense and all the, the, the neat little boxes that you had your faith in blow up. And, and you're like, I don't, I don't even know if I believe in God anymore. And I'm not sure that God's even listening to me.

Was this just all a hoax or was I fooling myself or what's going on here? And that's when you hit the wall. You know, you've hit the wall when you're having those kinds of questions and, and your faith just doesn't make sense anymore. And that's an invitation that God is making to us. I wish someone would explain this to me 30 years ago, Brad. Uh, that's an invitation that God is making to us to wrestle with God at the wall, to go to a deeper place than you could have ever gotten, uh, before this crisis hit your life. And many people just hit that wall,

that crisis point, and they bounce off. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. That's— that the wall is a legit wall for a lot of people. And so I'm really interested in what strategies and what thinking you have about, uh, helping those people who are bouncing off the wall to find

their way through it. Right. The, uh, it, it's not an easy process 'cause it's a real wall and it's painful. You hit it and And it's painful. And the last thing you want to do is stay there and wrestle with God. You want to go back. You want to go back to those places that were more comforting, that were easier, frankly, with regard to following Christ. And this is a part of, of Jesus' call to us, you know, to say, I mean, I think it was Bonhoeffer says when Jesus calls a man or woman, he calls that person to come and die.

Hmm. And there's a dying that happens at this wall. We lose something. Of ourselves, but we don't lose it completely. We give it up. We surrender it over to Jesus so he can transform it and give it back to us in a completely new way. And what we learn when we hit the wall, if we stay there and actually wrestle it out with God and, and, and stop thinking that we're the one that's in charge and actually for the first time put God in charge. Yeah.

Then we get a gift. And, and the gift is to go into a deeper place with God and really a deeper place with others. And that wall that looks impenetrable and is so painful actually turns into a door. Yes. And it leads us into a whole different level of living with God and others that we didn't know was possible

when we were on the other side. Yeah. 'Cause before that, you really didn't even know there was a door. You were just the, the wrestling with God part. Is difficult, it's painful, and so on. And then when you give up, so to speak, is when the door can, uh, be made evident. So it's tough, but I think that's where community comes to play. Don't you think so? Where we don't have to go through this alone.

That's where a true church community can help people to navigate the wall and to deal with it and maybe help them struggle through it together.— and I think that's an important part. And so let's talk about the church then, how the church can be a way of helping the kind of Christians, those people who are, you know, kind of nebulous here, you know, kind of waffling back and forth. Let's, let's talk about a strong church. I love the metaphor you use, the image you use of, uh, lake churches and river churches. So in terms of how these two types of churches then can be ways to help people the kind of Christians to navigate the wall, uh, for instance. So I want— I won't say too much more, but I want you to navigate, or once you unpack, if you will, uh, the nuances and the difference

between a lake church and a river church. Yeah, I really like this, this metaphor as well. It came originally from Larry Wackelmire, but I, I love it because it's, it's so descriptive of the kind of church that I grew up in, the kind of church that I knew for most of the early part of my life. I didn't know of any other kind. And that was the lake church. Uh, the lake church is, uh, it's a body of water that doesn't actually move anywhere. Right? It's, it's stationary. You, you know where the lake is and you go to the lake.

The lake doesn't ever come to you. Right? And the goal of a lake church is simply to get bigger by adding more and more attractions. All right? So lake churches will have more programs and activities and dinners and fall festivals. Sports leagues, and you name it, so they can get more and more people to come to the lake. They, they really want everybody essentially centered around the building. The building is very important in a lake church. And that's why the building then ends up getting larger and larger. And if it, if the building can't grow any larger because of it being landlocked or whatever, you buy more land and build a bigger building someplace else so you can do the same thing, right? Uh, so you can attract more and more people to the lake and make the lake bigger, right? A river church has a completely different approach.

Uh, the river, river church wants people to jump into a stream, a process, uh, that helps them find God and live as disciples of Jesus. And then as, as a disciple of Jesus, they're not there to be entertained or to be kept, uh, in a sense, in the same location, but rather they are then sent out to others who are downstream. So it's a sending church.

It's not a come-and-stay church. Hmm. Okay, Roger, you've got them meddling a little bit with the way people understand church, man. You gotta be— 'cause so many churches and so many church leaders have been trained to the, the lake model. In fact, they're built— yeah, we got, uh, church leaders who are experts at building dams and, and other ways to build bigger, uh, bigger lakes that, that, that models. So what do we do then? You know, is this— how can we be helpful to church leaders? How can we be helpful to congregations? How can we be helpful, uh, to develop this framework of the river and, uh, not be kind of condemning or indicting those people who've built a big lake? So is there a way that we can navigate this?

I think that there is, Brad. I mean, I, as I mentioned, I, I was an absolute fan of and knew really nothing else other than the Lake Church for at least half of my life, if not longer. Yeah. And I was enamored by the Great Lakes, you know, these churches that were 10,000, 15,000, 20,000. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, how did that happen? And how could it happen? And could I be a part of something like that? And wouldn't that be awesome? And— Yeah. And then I, then I received a different vision, actually. And to be honest with you, it has something to do with a trip to the Middle East and going to the Dead Sea. And I'd never been there before.

I'd heard people talk about it, but the Dead Sea is truly dead. Like, there's nothing that lives in it. There's no fish, there's no plant life, there are no microorganisms. There's nothing that lives in the Dead Sea. And it's because it's got a salinization level about 6 times higher than regular ocean water. So not only does nothing grow in it, there's nothing that grows around it. Right. Like usually in a, in a large body of water, you see all kinds of trees and vegetation around it.

Like there's nothing, it's just a sand desert all around it. And as we were there, our guide said, well, the reason that the, the Dead Sea is dead is because everything flows into it, but nothing ever flows out of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm like, well, this is a lake church. I mean, I, like, I don't want to be that kind of Christian where it's all about everything flowing into me, but nothing flowing out to others. And, and, and I realized at that point, I didn't want to be a part of a church that had everything flowing into it. It was getting bigger and bigger and, you know, lots of, lots of happy, comfortable people that were hanging around there, but it wasn't, there wasn't anything that was flowing out.

To people in need that were downstream. Hmm. Awesome. I have a couple thoughts here. One of them is, you know, when you— when the, the Great Commission says go and make disciples, let's not forget the word go. You know, we gotta go. You don't stay and make disciples. They don't come to you.

You gotta go and make disciples using the, the 6 Gs and other things we talked about prior. You gotta go. That means flow. Go. Flow and me keep— keeps moving here. I know the other— it comes to my mind. I'm not sure how it applies here. When you went to the Dead Sea, I went there a couple of times myself.

Did you go swimming and bob around on top of the water? Did you do it? I did. I think there's, you know, that's just a weird, weird sensation. And to me, I'm not sure where I'm going with that analogy, but it's either to say that you have no control and you are literally kind of bobbing on top of the water. That it's not a— you're not really a part of it. You're kind of on top of it, you know, that kind of thing. So I just think it's, I think it's a good analogy. I remember writing a paper proposal a long time ago when I was working on some church planting stuff. It basically was canal, reservoir, river, which you wanna be.

It's basically this analogy and that, uh, I, I, I love that. So the idea here is that if we're part of the flowing river, then, then that is also where the kind of Christians know that they can't just tiptoe within there. They gotta jump in, they gotta be a part of it and do, to, you know, you're not gonna just stay on the periphery there. I think part of this here— I'm

sorry, were you gonna say something else there? I, I would just, uh, mention that, uh, one of the things I found helpful with regard to the whole river idea was talking to a number of people that have been, uh, that I've been connected to, uh, over the years in, uh, various, uh, places and churches. That had become disciples. I mean, their, their lives had clearly been transformed from who they were to who they are now. And so I just asked them, tell me about that process. Like, what, what happened? How did that work? Yeah. And as I listened to their stories, Chantal being one of them, we mentioned earlier, right? I, I realized that there was a pattern that I'd never seen before. And that pattern, I kind of used the acrostic RIVER to describe a pattern. Right.

Right. So, uh, RIVER stands for relay, invite, encourage— I'm sorry, visualize, V, visualize, encourage, and then release. Yes. So, so that's how a church that might be a lake church right now could turn into a river church if, if they just relay the, with the, the love and power of God through teaching and through community that has been placed in their hearts to others. And when you see people starting to get it, to see the shining eyes, you invite them into a smaller group. And you say, okay, well, let's— because, because that's exactly what Jesus did. You know, he saw people with the shining eyes and he invited them to come closer to him. Yeah.

So, you know, he taught thousands, but he had 12 that were his disciples. And he had 3 that were executive committee of that, Peter, James, and John, that he spent even more time with. And, and there's something that happens in that, that rubbing off time that the Greek word is diatribal, where you rub off on one another, uh, that, that can't happen when you're in a larger group. Yeah. So you're in that group and then you, you know, as, as someone who is watching what God is doing in another person's life. You say, you know, I think I see in you this new thing that's happening that God is doing. Yeah. And you visualize for them what you see God doing in their lives.

And, and by doing it, you're kind of doing the work of a prophet. You're actually calling forth what's in them

that they may not see yet. Yeah. You know, for me— Love that. It's part of the whole process of the sending, the sending of— I've One of the things we have in the church I attend now is we talk about one of the key, key tenets is what is your sending capacity? What are— who are we sending out to do other things as part of the core values of the church that I'm a part of right now? I wanna touch on something else here with you, Roger, that I think is a real key part of your, of your book and your life as I've known you. And it's something that I really strongly want to address in my own mission and ministry that I work on. I work with cancer-impacted people, among others. But it has to do with loneliness and crisis. And I just believe that we are living a time of epidemic of loneliness and a sense of, uh, meaninglessness in life.

And it seems like you're developing a process here to kind of, to deal with that, that fellowship is more than coffee and donuts, you know, after church, that kind of stuff. Uh, but what do you think it takes to really address loneliness? And to go beyond the shallow to

something deeper that can help you be transformative. So I, I couldn't agree with you more, uh, Brad, loneliness is an epidemic. Uh, actually the former person that was the US Surgeon General wrote an entire research paper on that and saying that that is an epidemic in American life. And I, I really like the way that Mother Teresa talked about this, uh, some time ago. She said the most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. I mean, that, that, that just strikes at the core of every human being. I mean, there's a reason why the very first time that God says in the Bible that something was not good, it had to do with the loneliness of the man that he created. Hmm.

Up until that point, everything else was good. That— was not good. And it's, it's continued to be not good throughout human history. Whenever human beings get into a deep sense of loneliness, bad things happen. Bad things happen in their lives, bad things happen in the people that are around them. It's just really, really destructive. Uh, so the sense of authentic community is crucial for us to thrive as human beings and to, to to be in the kind of relationship, not only with others, but with God that we were intended to be in. And I think that there are three parts to that, uh, to be loving, truthful, and deep.

Hmm. All right. So you can have, you can have relationships that are loving, but not deep or truthful. And that can be actually an abusive relationship.

Hmm.

Okay. You can, uh, so that's most abusive relationships. There is a loving dimension to that. But there's not a truthfulness and there's not a depth to it. You can be truthful and bring the hammer down, but there's no sense of love and nobody wants to get deep, uh, with someone that's bringing the hammer down all the time. And you can be deep, right, without being loving or truthful, and that's what cults do. That can take you in a really desperately bad direction, uh, because you're, you're cut off from truth.

Yeah. So I think all, all three of those are key. So you, you, you need all three is what I'm hearing you just say. You need all three to have true, true community here.

Yeah, you do. So you can kind of draw a Venn diagram and have those three, each one in three circles, and they overlap in the middle.

That's where we're meant to live. Yeah. And that's when you see a church that's thriving or people who love one another and you see some cool things happening. And when it happens, it's pretty cool, isn't it?

I love, I love that.

It is. It's the best. Yeah. Well, let's talk about one of the things I think was really cool about what you shared here in your book and what we've talked about before is how you make a kind of a practical application of scripture to people's lives that dealing with this loneliness issue and other things, uh, of that, of that nature. You, you touch on some, actually some statistics that if people engage with scripture in a meaningful way, multiple times a week, you know, prayer, Bible study, journaling, things of this nature. Faith sharing, this actually statistically, it shows that it deals with things like loneliness. Is that right?

Say, say just a bit, say a word about that. Yeah, this is really an interesting finding. There's a study that was done that, that asked people how many times they read the Bible in a week. And if it, if it was zero times in a week or one time in a week, there was basically no difference. If, if it was 2 times a week, there was not much better, not much of a greater difference. 3 times a week, still not much of a difference. But when you went to 4 times a week, it changed everything. I mean, it changed dramatically the, the suicide rates.

It, it changed the level of sense of purpose and significance that a person felt in their life. It, it changed their engagement in, uh, other people's lives and a sense of community. I mean, it, it was transformative if they just went to 4 times a week. Now, there may have been other things that were associated with that. Like if you're reading your Bible 4 times a week, you may be doing other things, uh, in your life that are connected to that, right? But that was the, the tipping point, 4 times a week and all kinds

of other things start kicking in in a person's life. Yeah, I think it goes also to a discipline to help you become a disciple. In such that the engaging part of that is, I think, is so, so important. And what I love about that, and coming out of a sociological background, that shows there are actual true implications of this that really matter. All right. Well, Roger, we are the— we call this podcast United Methodist People Podcast. And so let's touch on one or two United Methodist related things. You recently had your book, A Kinda Christian, reviewed or, or read by some United Methodist bishops.

Tell me, what was the purpose behind that? How did they react? And how is this maybe a tool to be used kind of denominationally or in local United Methodist churches?

Say a word about that. Yeah, I'm excited about that, Brad. I, uh, asked 6 United Methodist bishops, uh, if they'd be willing to take one of the 6 Gs and write, uh, a approximately 500-word reflection on that particular ji, which we could include in the book, which we've done in the United Methodist Edition. That edition just came out on the 27th of January, so not long ago. And I'm, I'm very excited about that because, uh, there's also a, a foreword in the book, uh, from Bishop Bob Farr, who's my bishop, uh, in the Missouri Conference. And I'm, I'm just excited about that as a tool to help people that are a part of the United Methodist Church. See this as something that could help them deepen their discipleship. And my, my whole goal in this is that there would be tens of thousands of disciples who make disciples who

make disciples of Jesus. The multiplication factor is what you're talking about here, Al. Exactly. And so part of the United Methodist model, the bishops are coming to this, is how this can be applied in some way to kind of carry out what you and I know is kind of the Wesleyan movement in a sense. In a modern context.

Am I anywhere close to what you're talking about here? Yeah, absolutely. And so we're— I'm, I'm excited about it being used in some conferences. There's one conference already is committed to use the book kind of through the conference, and there are others that are considering it. And I just, I think it has potential to help us get out of a situation where we don't have any kind of definition of what a disciple is. And we don't have any process to make one. Like, if those two things aren't in place in a local church, how can

you actually accomplish the mission? Hmm, awesome. Well, that's a high bar to— high bar to multiply, but that's what we're called to do as Christians of a functioning church that functions well in a society that has all these issues and things that we need to deal with, and the church needs to speak to that. So we've kind of talked corporately a little bit. We've talked about kind of the aspects of the church, but I wanna talk about, kind of bring us around, Roger, to kind of the personal part of this, kind of about you personally and about the, how the lessons of the book can be applied personally. Uh, you say something in one of your chapters here in the book about, uh, you kind of had to move in your own life, your own spiritual life from what do I have to do for work today to what do I need to do to live in the presence of God today? And I'd just like for you to go with that for a minute to hear how that applied to you personally, how that made a shift for you. I know you mentioned earlier about at one time or another you thought, you know, about the megachurches and how cool that was. And that's a kind of a part of the deal here. Let's talk about your, uh, this chapter you had about this spiritual shift that you made and, uh, and how that, that question that you had here that you asked yourself, walking into the presence of God day and how it makes all the difference.

Just go with her with me for a minute. Yeah, that, that makes a difference for me, Brad, because I think pretty much everybody, when they wake up in the morning, uh, they immediately start thinking about the things that they have to do that day. And that was certainly the case for me. I'd wake up and I'd start thinking about having to send this email or talk to that person or go run that errand or whatever it may be. And I finally realized one day. What is the question that I'm answering by all these things? Like I had, there was no conscious question that I'd asked, but somewhere in my subconscious, I was asking this question, what do I have to do today? And because I was a pastor, I, I kind of thought that was an okay question to ask. Like I'm, I'm on mission. This is what I have to do to follow Jesus as a pastor.

Right. And And then I began to realize, you know, I can do all these things and they look a lot like what people would do who are in any other avenue of life that have, have maybe nothing to do with Jesus or his church. And then I realized, gosh, maybe this isn't the right question because in reality, that question often boiled down to, what do I have to do for work today? And, you know, when I thought about it in those terms, I'm like, well, that's not really what I want to be about. I want to be living in the presence of God day by day, moment by moment throughout my day. So I changed the question, like, what do I have to do to live in the presence of God today? And that changed the way I looked at my— the time, the way I was spending my time., what was important, like if, if I'm going to spend time in prayer, not just once during the day, but at various times during the day, if I, if I'm going to practice solitude, if I'm going to be reading through scripture and engaging with scripture and journaling about the things I'm learning in scripture, uh, trying to apply those things to my life. I mean, all that stuff is a part of what it means to live as a Christian. Day by day, moment by moment, not just occasionally or intermittently, uh, when

I show up in a Christian group. Hmm. Cool thinking, cuz it— you gotta make it personal in order for this to really work. And that's where I wanted to kind of conclude our conversation today. You've talked about how you made it personal for you. Let's talk about how we make it personal for the person who may be reading this book and saying, you know, Roger, You nailed me, man. I'm just kind of— I'm just a kind of Christian. I'm just kind of going through the motions, you know, or I'm a pastor where I'm just punching the time clock, so to speak, getting by, you know.

I, I read the Bible just to prepare for my message or whatever it would be, only it's not really transformed my life. And so, but I want to do something about this, you know. I know you, you mentioned about how, boy, what would happen if a If all, you know, 3 billion Christians, whatever they are, really got motivated to be transformative in this, that could be really revolution that takes place. But let's make it more personal. What would be your encouragement, your advice, or your challenge, as it were, to that person who's stirred by what you've written here, what you've come up with? But they may feel a little bit overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Oh my word. What do we gotta do? How do I make a river church out of— to a lake church, what's their first step? What do they need to do? What do they need to do tomorrow morning to take a first step to move from being kind of Christian to

being a fully devoted Christian? Well, here's what, here's what I would encourage people with. I mean, if you would consider yourself a kind of Christian, here's the good news. You're, you're on the journey somewhere. You've started and that's fantastic. And you may have wondered, well, is there more? You may actually kind of feel like you're stuck in spiritual neutral. Well, the truth of the matter is you can shift that into gear. And you don't have to try to incorporate 6 Gs all at once. You don't need to try to set up 6 different kinds of, of spiritual disciplines that you've never done before.

And you're going to start doing that tomorrow. Pick one thing, you know, pick a, a particular G, you know, maybe you want to enter into the glory of God. Well, there, there are some practices, you know, pick a practice like solitude, you know, set your watch for 3 minutes or 5 minutes and just sit quietly before God with everything else around you turned off in a, in a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Uh, and just focus your mind on God. You might, you might even say, you might even just say the word Jesus over and over again, silently to yourself. Jesus. Jesus, just to calm your mind, calm your spirit, focus your, your soul in a Godward direction. And you can do that.

You can do that. You can set your watch or, you know, set a timer someplace for 3 minutes or 5 minutes and just have that little bit of solitude. So perhaps start out your day or be maybe in the middle of your day, take, take a little 5-minute break at lunch. And that could be a beginning point. And then you build on that. I mean, my experience with, uh, people that are on the journey but wanting to go deeper, um, is that they oftentimes overwhelm themselves. Pick something that you can do and

stick with it and build on it. I love that. Pick first step, something you can do, try not to make it too overwhelming, but, but to do it. And you might be surprised the progress that you make quicker moving from beyond the kind of stage to one step closer to being a fully devoted, uh, follower of Jesus Christ. Well, I loved our conversation today, Roger. Roger Ross from The Humility Group. Why don't you share with our folks if they want to find out more about what you're all about, your coaching

programs, your books, uh, how can people learn more about you? Yeah, thanks, Brad. Uh, actually, you could just go to thehumilitygroup.org. And you'll find out all the stuff that's going on there, including a, a weekly blog. I have a, a free weekly blog that, uh, comes out on Fridays. You can sign up for that there. And there are a number of things that are available from one-on-one coaching to, uh, a network that I have is called the Humility Network for Pastors that has actually become pretty popular. So, uh, feel

free to check that out on thehumilitygroup.org. And we'll put, uh, connections and links to that, to, to our website, uh, unitedmethodistpodcast.com. And pleasure to be with you, Roger Ross from the Humility Group. And all we gotta do now is you and I gotta find some time to play golf so you can do what you normally do, which is, uh,

wipe me out when we do that.

So, so I'm all about finding that time, Brad. All right. All right. Great to be with you. Our guest today on the United Methodist People Podcast, Roger Ross with the Humility Group, the humilitygroup.com. You can find out more about him at our website, unitedmethodistpodcast.com. I'm, uh, Brad Miller from the United Methodist People Podcast, where we look to lift up all things of the people