How the church can faithfully navigate a changing world?

In this episode of the Pivot podcast, co-hosts Dee Stokes and Dwight Zscheile are joined by special guest Eun Strawser. 

E. K. Strawser (DO, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine) is the co-vocational lead pastor of Ma Ke Alo o (which means "presence" in Hawaiian), non-denominational missional communities multiplying in Honolulu, Hawaii; a community physician at Ke Ola Pono; and an executive leader at the V3 Movement, the church planting arm of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. Prior to transitioning to Hawaii, she served as adjunct professor of medicine at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and of African Studies at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania (where she and her husband served with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship), after finishing her Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Dar es Salaam. She and Steve have three seriously amazing children.

Tune in as we look into the pivot from focusing on making and sustaining members of voluntary association institutions to making disciples of Jesus.

Stay tuned for more episodes unraveling the complexities of this cultural shift.

You're in the right place if you're a pastor, lay leader, or simply curious about how faith communities adapt in changing times. Let's embark on this journey together!

Mentioned in this episode:

Q4 Webinar: The Path from “I” to “We”: Extending Christian Community to the Neighborhood

Faith+Lead: Hey there, podcast listeners, the holiday season is upon us and we've got something truly special for you. It's the five day Advent challenge starting on December 4th. In just 20 minutes a day, you'll rediscover your place in Jesus' story and celebrate the true meaning of Advent. But that's not all. You'll also be part of a vibrant online community, sharing heartwarming insights and growing in faith together. So if you're ready to embrace the spirit of the season, find inspiration and connect with like minded individuals. Join in on this journey. Register now by visiting Faithlead org.

Dee Stokes: Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Dee Stokes.

Dwight Zscheile: And I'm Dr. Dwight Zscheile. Welcome to the Pivot podcast. If you're new here, this is the podcast where we talk about how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. One of the key pivots we've been exploring in this series is the pivot from focusing on making and sustaining members of voluntary association institutions, to making disciples of Jesus. This is not to say that faithful institutional church members can't be faithful disciples. Of course they can. Many these things do overlap, but not always as we know. Think about the people in many pews who would call themselves religious but not spiritual. For instance, what we're interested in exploring is where the primary focus in the church is. Is it gaining and retaining voluntary association members, or is it forming disciples of Jesus? The fact of the matter is that many legacy congregations were not designed primarily to form disciples in today's cultures, and that makes this a really vital pivot for us to explore.

Dee Stokes: Now, listen, today is a really special episode we have with us today, Reverend Dr. Eun Strawser, who is a co vocational lead pastor of Makayla, which means Presence in Hawaii. And it's a non-denominational missional community multiplying in Honolulu, Hawaii. Dr. Strasser is a physician. She's also an executive leader at the V3 movement, the church planting movement. She is also the author of a new book called Centering Discipleship. And if I had those little clap things, I would clap for you. But I don't have that, and I guess we don't have that in our repertoire. So welcome, Reverend. Dr. Eun Strawser.

Eun Strawser: Thank you, Dr. Dee. Thank you, Dwight, for having me.

Dwight Zscheile: So, you know, for so many of us, we have been just thinking about what's happened and the devastation in Maui and praying. And so just give us an update, tell our listeners what's going on and how we can all be praying.

Eun Strawser: Yeah, I think the biggest prayer and for, for our church community, really working with a lot of mainland organizations who are also trying to offer some help. It's been, you know, if we all don't do the, the, the good work of exegeting our local culture, this is when it matters. Right? And so I think the biggest hardship has been, how do you care for a really deeply cultural indigenous population who has felt like they've lost everything, because they have, but really also provide resources and care and support in a way that doesn't garner a lot of suspicion. So that actually has been the bigger work for us. Our local community identified really quickly that four of our member families have been directly impacted with families in Lahaina, and so our work is to just directly work with them. So each family probably represents about a hundred people, including their neighbors and their family structures. So we're probably working to serve about 400 folks there, but we just have access to them because we have a local community.

Dwight Zscheile: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Well, so you have a very rich vocational and cultural background that spans continents yourself. Tell us a bit about your story and then how God led you into ministry.

Eun Strawser: Yeah, I love telling this story because I think a Brandon Wrencher and Alexia Salvatierra, they always say that if you if we as leaders and ministry workers don't understand our own lineage and how that affects our local and current work, then it's something that we ought to also explore, right? I also think that most of us probably if we want to go into vocational ministry, we have something else, you know, full of expectation in mind when we go in and God just does really, really interesting things. So my family and I, we were all born in South Korea. During the 80s there was a big wide open pool of immigrants coming from East Asia. The US is looking for a lot of white collar professional migrants to to move up. So my family had an opportunity then. And then they close the border down quickly because there is there's too much of an influx. So we always feel like we just kind of made it in. And there was a whole collection of people, especially in the East Coast and in the West Coast, of Korean immigrants coming in. So I'm a first generation or what we call 1.5 generation, because I got to learn English faster than my parents. Um, we moved to Philadelphia. I did all my my growing up and adulting in West Philadelphia. Everybody starts hearing that song in their head as soon as I said it, you know? And I went to school there, undergrad, medical school, everything in Philly, met my husband there had all my babies there. And then when we were really contemplating race dynamics, because then Philly was especially still remains to be a very black and white culture, even though the diversity was really, really increasing a lot even then. So we knew that for our kids, because they're a mixed race, we wanted to buy ourselves some parenting time to have those conversations. And then we had an opportunity to move to Hawaii about 15 years ago. So we moved to Oahu, which is the where the main capital is in the island state, and I really always had an intention. The reason why that I went to medical school, all these kinds of things I, I am fluent in Swahili, is because I thought that God's plan for me was that I'm going to be a medical missionary in East Africa, in Tanzania, that that's where I'm going to land. And one of my mentors here in Hawaii, he said that he's like, Eun God was calling you to brown people, but maybe to like a different set of brown people, you know? So it just made me think about how so much of my own learning and growing and being equipped, I feel like it's today in a place where we moved my parents from North Philadelphia about eight years ago to Hawaii, and it's been such a gift to see my dad where he felt like in Philly, he just constantly was scrounging to, like, fit in. And here he is in Hawaii, where he was just like, I feel like I'm in heaven. Not because of the weather, but he's like, I feel like I'm in heaven because I feel like I have a sense of belonging. I fit into this culture. No one questions me, you know, by the way I look or how I say things. And it just was something that I really kept to heart, that I'm so thankful that we have a gift of family here. Family is so important in Hawaii that that I get to also share in that, and that it's a gift for both my children and my parents.

Dee Stokes: We love your story. Tell us about your current ministry context. Make Aloho

S5: Yeah, Make Aloho. Oh, yeah. This is my second church plant. The first one was, and I write this I write about this in the book because I feel like I have two sets of experiences, right? Not just as a church planter, but a church planter who also did a very traditional model, a church plant with the Sunday worship service centric, you know, and grew the church really, really quickly. So, yeah. So the first church was we started with about 20 people, started with a Sunday morning worship service model, had some small groups, had a children's ministry, and in five years time we grew to like 450 people, um, kind of going through like year three. I was really, really asking that question around discipleship. It's one thing to be able to grow something really quickly and grow a bunch of volunteer based spectator, a core group of people. But that question, that nagging question of discipleship, has always been on my mind. And year three in that first church plant was when I started asking a lot more explicit questions around it. So fast forward the second opportunity. We did not start with a Sunday worship service. We're in year six, and this next year will be the first year that we're going to actually have a public worship gathering that we're going to start monthly on purpose. And so I really anticipated that our church was going to stay this tiny little pocket of like 15 disciples meeting together, being equipped, growing together. And then that's what we're going to do for for the next five years. And like Jesus, 15 people capacity. Thank you so much. I will trust you with these people. But in six years' time, we actually multiplied it that construct of a discipleship core group of people, about 12 to 15 in each group that's tethered to some, some sort of missional space or an identified space of mission. So it could be like a neighborhood or a network. So we multiplied that the years date we're going to years, and we're going to have about 12 different communities. And that's why because we multiplied it enough times that we feel comfortable starting some sort of public worship service next year.

Dwight Zscheile: So I'm curious to hear more from you. What does discipleship mean to you? What are some ways in which you have been formed as a disciple in your life?

Eun Strawser: Yeah, I, I love that question, and I think that it's probably one of two really pivotal leadership questions, whether we ask of ourselves or we ask of our peer leaders. And folks here we're thinking about bringing into leadership is, you know, have I been discipled and have I discipled somebody else? And how do we concretely know that this has happened? Right. I can probably say that I've been mentored by many different sets of people, but I know that there are two people who have specifically discipled me. They've journeyed with me. All of the contexts I've always been in one on one settings. Um, I've discipled people for ten, in the span of ten years, I discipled 50 individuals one on one. And, you know, everybody always feels like that's such an amazing number, what with faithfulness, you know, investment into people. And I really, really believe that. Like that it was such a gift in my own experience. But I also knew that some parts of just one on one discipleship felt really limited in my mind, and sometimes it felt not replicable. It, you know, all the one on one stuff could have been that because it wasn't embedded into a context of some sort of community for each of these individuals, it felt limited. And oftentimes it felt more like a counseling session, a friendship session, you know, accountability, maybe, some guidance or skill set based stuff. But it didn't feel, it didn't sort of land the plane of what does discipleship look like within a community that this person or this group of people want to strive for. So a lot of the clarifying questions that I was asking probably came from it felt like such a success story, right? Eun discipled 50 people. What an amazing thing in our life, right? But I really felt the responsibility of how limited it was, because I felt like if I didn't connect these people to a concrete community that's on mission together, then probably missed something in that span. So discipleship, I think, in a nutshell, has a lot to do or everything to do with imitation. I think that it is imitating Jesus. I think that's the faux pas when we try to sometimes do one on one discipleship, because you give one model of what it means to be a discipler. And I feel like in most of these one on one relationships that people really wanted to just model me and just me, but not in a clear picture within like shared leadership or community on mission, things like that. So imitation of Jesus, where I think it does two things specifically, it increases our spiritual confidence and it increases our social competence that you know and love God and you're known and loved by God. But that's equally tethered to how you start behaving and living like God within community. So I think it's those two things specifically in how we imitate Christ.

Dee Stokes: I love the distinction you just made between one on one discipleship and community discipleship and the importance of it. You know, God made us to be in community with each other. So tell us a little bit how now you do discipleship within your micro communities?

Eun Strawser: Yeah, it is really hard. The commitment level, it probably feels harder doing it in sort of these micro communities than it is, because there isn't that luxury of like coming in and out. You enjoy some of that anonymity. Maybe, maybe your attendance doesn't matter that much, but you still have the freedom to show up when you want to or feel like you can. So I do give a fair warning that that these micro communities or what we call discipleship cores do require a higher commitment level. But we also know that it's not for years and years and years. We do put a cap to it about 12 to 18 months within each of these micro communities or discipleship cores. And the main focus of meeting together for, for the, these communities is so that they are a concretely and intentionally discipled through a discipleship pathway that's unique to, to our local culture. So, so each one of the the discipleship cores run through that. At the same time, they are tethered to some sort of missional space. So for example, that first year, 12 to 15 persons starting out together, being committed to Jesus, committed to one another, committed to the community around us. The community around us was very, very, very easy because in my mind, as a as a main leader, I needed to see what's the easiest thing that a community member could probably replicate. If these communities are going to multiply, what could they replicate? I needed them to be able to replicate discipling a group of people, and I needed them to replicate what kind of missional practice space would that discipleship core or that learning community be tethered to? So we had our discipleship core. We only met twice a month for about two hours each. People are like, what do you mean you only met then? I'm like, oh, it just leaves a lot more space for practice. Time for people to work out and live out, make lots of mistakes, have like like some victories. Right? But have some time and a normal rhythm and pacing of how they actually live out their faith in the in between weeks, it was tied to a community dinner. We wanted to keep it very, very simple on purpose. Not again. Because in my mind, do I think that dinner churches are the end all, be all of all community, you know, faith communities. I just needed something very simple for my the disciples who are being equipped to be able to to do on their own in the near future.

Dee Stokes: Can you give us some examples? Share with us some some wonderful stories of how this has happened in those communities.

Eun Strawser: Yeah. I'll share with you. I love how, Dwight, you started off thinking about why this is such a big pivot in thinking through, you know, is the church really making disciples of Jesus, or are we making a really strong volunteer base? Right. And I think that's a really, really clear question to ask. Right? One of our leaders today, she she would say that she would be the life lifetime winner of being the best greeter in church. She really thought that her full participation in being able to be a leader in the church was that she was going to be one day the point person for the greeters ministry. And the thing is, she's probably right. Anytime Kelsey went to to any sort of church thing, she's bubbly, she's wonderful, she's super friendly. You know, she's a woman in her 30s who who looks like she's like she's like a teenager, right? So she's non-threatening, all those kinds of things. And so she really, really thought that that's, that was going to be how she's going to participate and contribute to the church. Discipling a person like Kelsey within that first year. She's a hospice care nurse. She has this deep, deep, deep care for seniors or what in in Hawaii, we call kupuna, who are the revered ones or the elders in our community. And she happens to live in a neighborhood where there are three different low income senior living facilities right within a bike path from her, her condo to her workplace. So that so that's Kelsey. When she got discipled and one of the questions that we started asking is like, who's our neighbor? And who do you feel, who do you feel like God is inviting you to partner with him in, in the renewal of, of all things, right? If those are some of the questions, Kelsey's specific answer is the kupuna who live in my neighborhood. Um, she at that point started gathering a group of people. And if you're like the top greeter person that every church person would be like, you're are you're our point lead for for greeting ministry, right? She's bubbly, friendly, all that. It means that like she's going to have like a really, really large group of people. So she had a small group that she, that she loved. She was super, super hospitable, all those things. But she felt this urge that God was placing in her heart for years and only through discipleship, she started. She started telling me, I really feel like God's calling me to something. We worked on this for probably a year before she was able to utilize something that God was putting in her. Her biggest fear was that if she shared this vision about wanting to start a community, people who whose whole goal was to love these low income seniors in that neighborhood together, what would it mean if our whole ministry was that these kupuna would know that they are seen and known and loved, right? That loneliness is the thing that's going to be eradicated in each of these low income living facilities. She started asking this question because she was so afraid that she was going to lose this group. We worked on it. We worked on the vision pitch, all that kind of stuff for, for months. And then when she shared this with her, her group of friends, it's really her friends, right? She had 25 people in that in that group, and she was left with five people at the end who said yes to that vision. So she felt like such a cost to do this. Fast forward six years later, when she actually stepped in and had the courage to do this. Throughout the pandemic, they provided one month's worth of groceries to 500 residents throughout the pandemic every single month. Her group is probably the one that city and county look to to ask for how do we do senior low income senior care the best? And it all sounds really awesome because it feels like so charity bound. But the truth of the matter is that Kelsey has discipleship cores now in those low income senior living facilities, we have a heart to know that we have about 5 to 10 years to disciple these residents because they have a limitation in their own lifespan. We know that these are people who don't have a lot of family, who don't have a lot of friends. So in their own discipleship, these core groups of people make sure to make a phone call so that every resident gets a phone call every single week. And people are coming to faith because of their faithful presence within those low income senior living facilities. So that I think what did they start off with? I told you, command dinners are the easiest things to replicate, right? So they did bingo and pizza night. What senior doesn't love bingo? And what low income senior doesn't want to have, like, free pizza every week? Right? So they started doing this. And the only like Jesus-y thing that they did in the beginning was just to pray over the meal. And I remember Kelsey telling me that one of the aunties who's from a Buddhist background, she would faithfully come because she loves bingo. And she was like, I'd like to pray for dinner this week. And they're like, oh, okay, auntie. And then she does it and she's like, I realize that you all pray to God and say, Father. And we don't say that in my faith, right? And so she's like, but I just want to give it a try. So, so she, she's just started off of Father God. And then she just broke down in tears because she couldn't understand how there could be a God that, that she could see as a parental figure. You know, it was those kinds of stories that eventually got built up so that now they have Jesus followers within their own living facilities, where they all share resources. They love checking up on one another. You know, usually these the these facilities would be people would just keep to themselves, you know, and things. But it's an entire community. Because Kelsey started seeing what would happen if an entire low income senior living facility, they were discipled, you know, now she's going to grow it so that there are actually nine low income living facilities identified in that one pocket neighborhood. And her big, big dream now is that what if an entire neighborhood became Jesus followers? And if they were discipled, would they take on the task of adopting one low income senior in from each of the these living facilities, and then the entire neighborhood would actually become a family together? I just feel like that's what discipleship does, you know? What I thought that it was going to be okay, let's just do a structured thing for 12 months together. Try this easy thing of doing a community dinner together. But I just really, really believe that, like, you know, if discipleship is not the main thing that we want to have people work through, you know, I really feel like we limit what all of our people who attend our churches could actually do. Kelsey would have been really, really happy being a greeter the last six years and thought that she was contributing really, really big. And now we get to have Kelsey, who's leading, you know, multiple communities because of the love that she has for this population of people.

Dwight Zscheile: That is an amazing story, a beautiful one, and it just really emphasizes how in your understanding and practice in your community, discipleship really is about loving the neighbor and really engaging missionally, as well as replication and personal spiritual practice. So sometimes I think people when they think of discipleship, that's, oh, I've just got to pray and read my Bible. But you have a very holistic understanding of that, which is really, really wonderful to to see. So in your book, you make a really provocative statement. You say, the thing about discipleship is if it's not at the center, it doesn't work. Unpack that statement for us.

Eun Strawser: I really believe it, Dwight. I'll just say one more thing. If discipleship is not at the center of your church, then I would suggest that something else is. If discipleship is at the peripheral, if discipleship isn't even in the scope of what your church is doing, then the next question that I would ask is what is at the center of your church? Because if discipleship isn't, then something else for sure is. And the way that we can think about if whatever is in the center is what are our assumptions around leadership? Who do we think are leaders and who do we think are not leaders? How do we utilize our resources? Whatever is at the center is the thing that most of our resources are going to go to. And how do we divvy up our time? Whatever is at the center is what we usually give most of our time to. And so, yeah, I think, I think the centering piece of where, where a thing is that we value is placed in the life of our congregation really tells us not only that we value that, but it really tells us how we behave and put our resources, time, energy, leadership towards that thing, whatever that thing is in the center.

Dee Stokes: Tell us what your goals are for the next six years. You've accomplished so much in six years. What's next?

Eun Strawser: Oh my gosh, Dr. Dee, I feel like you're like putting me on the spot.

Dee Stokes: I am.

Eun Strawser: What do I imagine in six years? My prayer every day is that, I pray that I would, in my own lifetime, experience the kingdom of God here on earth, here in Hawaii, in a visible, tangible way that even if I just get to experience just a little bit of a needle of being pushed there, that that's what I really, really desire to be able to see. And, you know, I, I happen to live in an island state where in its own history, 90% of its residents, so local indigenous people who are living here, 90% of its residents actually were Jesus followers. So I feel like the old adage is that history will always repeat itself. Then I really long for that one day that I could see the islands in Hawaii be people who love Jesus, you know, love their land because they love Jesus love and include more family members because they love Jesus. A think about whose rights they're going to fight for because they love Jesus, right? So, so in the next six years, I hope that I can, you know, contribute to that here locally. But I also feel like because I believe so deeply in how leaders think about discipleship, that I really want there to be a clarity on how leaders are, where leaders are placing discipleship. I think that, you know, in our era now where church planting, there are church planting numbers statistically is not beating out how many churches are closing every year. Right? I think in 2019, it was a 000 Protestant churches closed their doors with 3500 church planters, planters are starting, you know, and most of the statistics are that church plants don't last the full five years, that they'll close within the first five years of start time. You know, when I'm like looking at that kind of landscape in North America in particular, then I'm really, really curious about what centering discipleship will do to the big C Church in the West. You know, um, a lot of my work, you know, I work also trans locally with churches here in the US, but I also work with with folks and having these conversations with folks in Southeast Asia, in the UK, in Japan, in, in different parts of Africa. And a lot of these, these questions about how can church plants last write a sustainability about the big C Church is a big question for me. I feel like it's discipleship. Is that bridge work? Why it needs it ought to be centered is that discipleship is a bridge work of connecting the church to the city it lives in, connecting the church to what the community and community development actually looks like in their real life neighborhood, right? I think discipleship is what clearly tells a Jesus followers to not just work towards a vision to grow their church, but really work and live out having a vision for a renewal for their city. And that's why I think, you know, can it happen in six years' time, Dr. Dee? I don't know, but I want that needle to move, you know.

Dee Stokes: May it be so in Jesus' name.

Dwight Zscheile: So you're a church planter and we've started to touch on this a little bit in that last answer. But what would be your advice to church planters who might be listening to this conversation as they think about starting the work of a new Christian community, and some ways to center discipleship in a new church plant.

Eun Strawser: Yeah, that's a good question. I love thinking about it. Some of my friends and colleagues would argue that, you know, whenever you just think about and camp on leaders, then you're you're not including the entire priesthood of believers, right? I'm like, I really understand that. And I think that discipleship is for everyone. Everyone should be able to, every follower of Jesus should be able to go and make more disciples. Right? I really, really believe that. I do think, though, because of where that placement of discipleship is. And who determines if discipleship is centered or at the peripheral for communities, this is a leadership question, right? And so, you know, church planters are included in that leadership role. Um, I think from the get go, there's like clear pieces of how we know if a church or a community or a church plant is centering discipleship or keeping discipleship at its periphery. So, for instance, if we kind of divvy it up into where do leadership resources go to, where is the community being called to and what does a community have a vision for? If you kind of look at those three categories, I can probably walk into any community and ask those three questions and find out where discipleship is placed within its community. So the resources part like leadership resources who do we consider leaders? Who are we training leaders to be? What are we training them in? What skill sets do we value? Right. All those kinds of things. Most of the time, I think discipleship is at the periphery when most of the leadership resources are geared towards instruction, aka the sermon. Right? If most of our senior leaders are all the folks who are coming up the pipeline in leadership, if most of their time, energy, resources, training time, all that kind of stuff is geared towards how to give a better sermon or kind of that worship experience, right then I think that there is a loss, because it takes away from how much time and effort and leadership resources we would put on imitation or discipleship. So I think it's peripheral is instruction. I think centering discipleship is imitation that that's where the resources are going to. I think the next thing of who are we, where we inviting the community to? Most of the time, if discipleship is at the periphery, then we are inviting the community to a Sunday worship service. That's where most disciples would be like, hey, if I have a friend who's interested in becoming a Christian, I will bring them to this, to this worship service. Whereas I think when discipleship is centered, most of the people are moving out, right? They're inviting people into the community that they live in that they feel called to. They feel compelled to love. Right. And so it's a Sunday worship service invitation versus an invitation to get to know the community better or their neighborhood better. And then I think, lastly, what it that the church has a vision for? I think if if discipleship is at the periphery, pardon my frankness, but I do think that it's that we have a vision for just our church, whereas I think if discipleship is centered then we're saying that we have a vision, that there's a renewal for the entire community, or renewal for the whole city.

Dee Stokes: So most of our listeners are pastors in established churches. So you just answered that question for church plant. But how how can our listeners turn the dial and do exactly what you just said, be more focused on the community at large, not so insular, not so much focused on ourselves to really center discipleship, not just in my little church, but in my community. Just give us, encourage our listeners with with something where they can turn the dial.

Eun Strawser: Yeah, I yeah, I love that question, Dr. Dee, because I really, really believe that it's not just through church plants or just trying to think about innovative things, right? And all that stuff. But I'm like, we actually have to partner with churches that are trying to re-mission and rethink about what does it mean to be the church. Right. And and the brave ones are asking the question, if my church didn't exist right now in this neighborhood, would it make a difference? Would we be missed? Right? Would any of our neighbors even pay attention to that? Right? You know, one of the I just visited Pastor Jonathan Brooks Church, Lawndale, just recently and brought my own leaders to what's happening in that part of Chicago and how that church's presence really matters. But it was a church's presence for over the over 30 years of faithful presence, of being committed to Jesus, committed to the community, to one another and the community around them. Right. Um, I think a centering discipleship actually happens even better and more meaningfully in re-mission established church settings. I think that it's because that you already have a group of people. You already have a a group of people who are in that neighborhood or attending this church and this location or this community for a reason. My biggest advice is please start with the people whom God has given you to lead and love. As soon as you start thinking about other people and wishing for other groups of people, and you start to have a resentment for your own people, that's not good leadership, right? Discipleship actually won't be centered if we don't have good leaders who love the people God has given them to lead in love, right? So that's the first thing. I think the second thing is that there's a lot of wiggle room to be experimental, right? That you can you can begin to assess and survey the people that that God's given you to be like, who are the people who are already kind of living missionally? Who are the people who are constantly asking questions about their neighbors? Who are the people who are hosting things to like, go and do together within their neighborhoods? Right? Who are the people who are already hosting dinners and meals with their neighbors? To me, they're probably the front runners of those who should be imitated as they imitate Christ. Right? So in my previous context, that's that's what we did year three when when I started asking those discipleship questions, I started figuring out what is it that makes a mature disciple versus an immature disciple? Everyone's going to be if you're a Jesus follower, right? You're on some sort of some sort of spectrum along those lines. Right? So what's the difference between somebody being mature and somebody being immature? Um, and then you start having lots of conversations with these people. What makes it so that these are the particular people that that other people in my church ask, go to for like wise counsel, right. Who are the people who are living out missionally and those are the people that that other people want to join in on to experience what it's like to live for the sake of their neighbors. Right? Who are the folks who are so integris that people are going to ask them for, for, for decision making kinds of questions like, what do you think? Or what kind of input can you give? Right. So you kind of think about who are the folks who are already maturing or more mature than most in my community. I take them first. You know, in my previous context, it was we took those kinds of leaders and we took all of our small group leaders. Why? Small group leaders are already a value hospitality. They already have, are leading groups that are neighborhood or geographically based. Right. And so we took them over the course of a summer. Um, we did we broke even what I wrote in Centering Discipleship, and we just did it for 12 weeks. We took those mature disciples, and we took those small group leaders away for one summer, where most smokers are just going to have barbecues anyway, right? A lighter schedule, meeting schedule, all that stuff. And for 12 weeks, we made sure that we were going to concretely disciple these leaders while while we're discipling them in in the fall, what we had them do was just like, have take the time so that everybody just begins to share their stories. Do testimonies. Take 1 or 2 people from the group to just begin to share their stories. Over the course of three months, you guys will all know everyone's stories. What we did in the fall from from the pulpit was we shortened our sermons from 25 minute sermons to about 10 to 15 minutes. We really, really talked about discipleship the most, and we platformed and highlighted all of our small group leaders, because our intent was that we were going to turn all the small groups into discipleship cores, they're already tethered to a neighborhood or a sense of mission that their neighborhood are the people that they're they're being called to. And so 15 minute sermons just talking about discipleship, platforming and hearing stories from these small group or neighborhood based leaders. And then for 40 minutes, we just opened up the foyer. We put cafe tables up so that every week for an entire quarter, everybody who comes their biggest meaningful impact was interacting with one of the neighborhood community leaders on purpose. All the communities would be kind of lying around, around, around the cafe table. They have their big neighborhood sign right above them and people just connected. It sounds crazy, but in the course of a year we actually trained 85 leaders. So now there are people who have been discipled and can disciple other people. Our attendance for small groups, or what we began to call as missional communities, outnumbered our attendance on a Sunday worship service. We still were able to do both, but it's what and whom leadership started focusing on and centering because we wanted discipleship to be focused on.

Dwight Zscheile: So we have one last question for you. So what would be your advice to leaders who are in ecclesial traditions, perhaps, that haven't emphasized discipleship as much as the one that you're in? What are some concrete steps that they can take, if that's really not kind of the cultural DNA and expectation in their church context?

Eun Strawser: Yeah, I think that's a really wise and strategic question you're asking, Dwight. So I really appreciate that. Yeah, I think that if I think discipleship, that word on its own is such a loaded word that sometimes when that feels like like like the obstacle, then I'm like, let's not use it. Right? But when we don't use that word, it helps us to begin to clarify what how would we describe what discipleship is, right? I in my book, I kind of go further into this, but I think that if we just kind of talk about it more and every church did irregardless of ecumenical background, right? Everybody wants to long to be more like Christ, right? That is a goal of a Christian, is that we are going to every day we're maturing more and more into the likeness of Jesus, right? If that's true, I think that every every church, regardless of a background, can begin to ask, what does that look like in my context now? What does imitating Jesus look like in Philadelphia? What does imitating Jesus as entire community look like in Kansas City? Right. These kinds of questions help us to be to clarify a little bit, what does maturing into the likeness of Christ mean? Um, I think the second thing is to know that there are probably, in my unbiased opinion, I think there are four really, really concrete marks of mature disciples. I think it's maturing into the likeness of Christ in Christ like character, in Christ like theology, the way he thinks, the way he thinks about God. He thinks about humanity. Christ like wisdom, is every disciple of Jesus equipped and know how to navigate the complexities of life, right? And in a Christ like sentness, if we're going to follow Jesus and we're also going to be sent by Jesus, I think those four things help us without having to use that word discipleship. Right. But really replacing it with, if we're called all of us in our church to imitate Jesus, what would that imitation look like in our local place?

Dee Stokes: Tell our audience how they can get your book.

Eun Strawser: Dr. Dee, your audience can get Centering Discipleship, which is published by IVP. Really you can just go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or you can do W-w-w centering discipleship dot com and it'll take you straight to all the links that you need.

Dee Stokes: Awesome. We appreciate you, Dr. Strawser, for joining us today. And thanks to everyone for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you. We'll see you at the next episode of the Pivot podcast.