Not sure how to help people grow spiritually? Watch this interview with Steve Thomason, seminary professor and pastor, and learn how to invite busy people into the journey of spiritual growth.

Having trouble getting others who are overwhelmed by life to engage in spiritual practices? There are simple and concrete steps to take to create a clear vision for discipleship and spiritual growth in your church. Watch this Pivot podcast episode to learn how to engage in spiritual practices as a church leader in everyday life. Getting stuck on how to engage spiritual practices when you are busy or overwhelmed? Learn how to follow Jesus and apply the Scriptures to your everyday life.

Faith+Lead Academy courses with Steve Thomason:

The Gospel of Matthew: Life in the Way of God

Overflow: An Introduction to Growing in Faith

The Book of Acts: The Ever-Expanding Church

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Steve Thomason: Invite the congregation to be open to God's presence, like even little words that we say as we're opening and inviting to worship. Because I've been in some liturgical spaces where the rote words are just said in such a way that they just kind of glance off the head, right? But if you could do a call to worship where you just stop. Let's just breathe together. Let's allow the concerns of the world to pass. Just drop to the side and acknowledge God is here.

Terri Elton: Many church leaders we talked to today are wrestling with how to help people in their community engage in spiritual practices so they can grow as disciples. We know how important prayer and worship, reading Scripture and listening to God's voice truly is, and how engaging in spiritual practices can bring clarity in times of uncertainty and chaos in our lives. Yet, we also know that many people in congregations really struggle to do this. They may say that they're too busy to engage in practices, or maybe they just haven't been formed in a way that they know how to do them regularly. How might church leaders address this? Today, we're going to talk about some simple steps you can take to invite others to engage in spiritual practices, even, and maybe especially if you're busy or overwhelmed with life demands. Hello everyone. I'm Terri Elton.

Dwight Zscheile: And I'm Dwight Zscheile.

Terri Elton: Welcome to the Pivot podcast. If you are new here, this is the podcast where we talk about how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. In today's episode, we are going to talk about some simple ways to invite others to engage in spiritual practices in a day and age where most people are overwhelmed by the demands of life and global events. Spiritual practices can anchor us in God's truth and in God's reality. Spiritual practices can bring clarity, comfort, peace, and even direction in dark times. We're excited today to have with us Doctor Steve Thomason, who is Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation at Luther Seminary. Steve also has decades of experience as a pastor in many church traditions, from megachurches to house churches. He's the author of The Cartoonist's Guide to the Bible and the Visual Preacher. Welcome, Steve.

Steve Thomason: Thanks. Glad to be here.

Dwight Zscheile: So, Steve, a question. We recently received from a pastor was this: "I do spiritual practices as a leader, but have trouble getting others who are overwhelmed by life to engage in them. What can I do? How can we make this simple and concrete?" So you've worked with lots of different kinds of people and lots of different kinds of churches in different traditions over the years, from Evangelical to mainline. What have you learned about how to invite people into the journey of spiritual growth?

Steve Thomason: Yeah. You know, the question itself answers the question because there's two things. Uh, the person who asked the question said: I do spiritual practices myself, right? So that would be the first thing that I would say to any church leader, to borrow from the old parenting, saying that for your children, "more is caught than taught." Yes. The best thing that a leader can do to invite the congregation or the people into spiritual practices is to authentically be practicing them. And. But here's the catch. You might be doing them yourself, but if you're never talking about them, no one will know that you're doing them. And I know, I know that Jesus said to do them in the closet, right? And to not publicly. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is in your preaching, in how you make announcements, in worship, in how you write your newsletters, how you talk to people in, in every day. If you are naturally talking about, well, you know, in my quiet time the other day, or as I was reading and reflecting on Scripture or during my walk with God or whatever your practices are, if you naturally talk about them as like, like, you know, I was at the gym or I was having dinner. The things that we do. The more people know that that's a normal part of your life, then you normalize it. And so maybe there's a little gap between your personal practice and the fact that people know that that's your personal practice. And and so. I realize and acknowledge that you don't want to be up there saying, "well, you know, in my quiet time and I was being awesome." You don't want to be that guy. Just find the balance in there, like make it be part of your your life. And then the second part of the question that now I forgot.

Dwight Zscheile: How do you help others? How do you help others engage.

Steve Thomason: Yeah. One of the things that I would say is that. This is getting more into big like theory of like what is spiritual practice and all that is. Spiritual practices are not a program that we introduced to a congregation. And they are they are not a list of things you do that we want you to add to your already busy life. Yeah, that spiritual practices actually are about reducing the amount of activity you do in your life. Um, and so, um, simple ways to invite people is to create spaces, you know, like, so the. Where do you have most of your people together in one time? It's in worship, right? So if you want to introduce basic spiritual practices to people, perhaps create spaces within worship where people could experience a practice that they've not done before. For example, a simple thing like, let's take 60 seconds to do a centering prayer practice in community. That could be the longest period of silence that some of those people have experienced in their whole week. Or do something like a dwelling in the word practice as part of collective worship. Um, and fill in the blank whatever practices that you're trying to lift up to the congregation as helpful for them. Um, start with everybody together, and they're like, oh, I've actually done that, practiced that. So those are just some quick ideas.

Terri Elton: So it's funny, as you were talking, Steve. This image came to my head. I have always been physically active. As a child was always on teams. I always was in team sports. So, you know, I'd play volleyball or I played softball and would go and the coach would tell me what to do, and I'd do it at a certain time. And I was lucky enough to continue to do that in college. And then I graduated and I didn't know what to do.

Steve Thomason: Because the coach was always telling you what to do.

Terri Elton: And and even when the coach wasn't telling me what to do in practice, I knew, oh, I'm going to have to do this. So in the preseason I could run or I do whatever to get ready for that.

Terri Elton: And then I had to just, I was at a loss. And I feel like that's a point where faithful church people and maybe even faithful church leaders, they've been the coach; I know what to do to for confirmation or I know what to do around the whatever the box is. But the difference for me in my mind was this isn't for a sport or competition. This is for healthy living. And this is something I need to learn to not prepare for a race or whatever, but to be healthy every day. And that was a shift in mindset. And it was also an opportunity to like, learn from all kinds. Like, I knew certain sports, but I didn't know other things so I could learn from the long distance runners or whatever, or people that were were not athletes, but just healthy living. What does this look like? How? Talk through that? Because that to me is an example of, I think, a shift that's taking place in congregations.

Steve Thomason: Well, I think what's really helpful for this conversation is to make sure that we frame it and know what we're talking about, because we talk about spiritual formation or spiritual practices and we we can have a tendency to throw those words around as if we think everyone understands what we're talking about. And so. There's two metaphors that help me as I think about spiritual formation and what it is that we're trying to to do and what we're talking about. And first of all, for me, the key word for all of this is relationship. Because what what we're talking about is cultivating a relationship with God and with others, right? Because Jesus made it super, super simple for us. And like, how do you be a disciple of Jesus? It's super simple. Love God with your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Boom! That's it, right? Love God. Love your neighbor. Question is, how do you do that? Right? But but both of those things are about relationships. Relationship with God. Which in turn is a relationship with ourselves. And relationship with our neighbor, which we love our neighbor as ourselves. Right? So. So it's not about okay, so the first metaphor is our our relationship with God. The best metaphor for me is the relationship between a parent and a child. And I know that that's a problematic metaphor for a lot of people, because they had really horrible relationships with their parents, or they just didn't have a relationship with their parents. And we can actually go deep into those metaphors. But the metaphor of a healthy relationship between a parent and a child. That the child, there is nothing that a child can ever, ever do to not be a child of the parent. That's even true for horrible relationships. Or even if you were like literally hatched in a test tube, you still had a biological father and a biological mother who contributed cells to that test tube. Right? You can't not be the product of that DNA, right? That's just impossible to not so. What's helpful for me in that is one of the reasons that a lot of traditions are somewhat resistant to spiritual formation is because there's a lot of Christian traditions that that teach that you have to do something in order to be good enough or to earn your place in heaven or to, you know, have God love you or forgive you. But the good news as I read Jesus, the good news is that you are a beloved child of God, right? My. I was meeting with my spiritual director last week. By the way, to the leaders out there, have a spiritual director or be in some kind of relationship where you have a spiritual mentor in your life. Don't just be the mentor, be mentored. Okay? But my spiritual director led off. Every time we meet, she always starts with like a reading, a poem or a sentence. And this time she started with, uh, a common quote from her mentor, Henry Nouwen, which was, he would say to everyone, "you are invited to live the life of the beloved." Isn't that a beautiful sentence? You are invited to live the life of the beloved. And that really resonates with how I understand this parent child relationship. Right. So. Spiritual formation is not about doing something to be loved. Spiritual formation is about waking up to the reality that you are loved. And deserving of love because God creates you and loves you and so, so much of our culture tells us that we aren't enough. That. And so for some people, they've been put down their whole life. And, you know, they're in the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and society tells them you're worthless. You're no good. Their journey towards living the life of the beloved looks one way. Other people who are maybe in that fast track upward mobility, society tells them you're not good enough yet. And so that's why you're motivated, right? Go go go. And so part. I'm going all over the place here. But one thing that's really important to remember about spiritual formation is that it's highly contextual. Every person's journey looks different. And so it's really hard to program spiritual formation. And that's why we struggle in congregations. It's one of the biggest thing I biggest things I learned in the megachurch was, you know, in a megachurch. You're herding cattle, right? You got we got 8000 people coming in on those doors every single week. And you're like, how do we help these people find that they are beloved? And the more people you have, the more systematic and programmatic you have to become. And you can fall into this this trap of thinking that a program is going to help somebody grow. And sometimes it does. And, you know, it's all good and you have to do it. But what I learned increasingly was the spiritual formation is super messy. It's as messy and individual as each person. And so that's why cultivating these relationships of helping people understand where they are in their understanding of God and themself in the world. And then what? What does it take to get from my current distortion of God's love for me to truly believing and trusting that I am a beloved child of God? That's what we're trying to do. Right? So. So going back to the parent child metaphor. Even though I am 100% a child of my parents. The quality of the relationship I have with my parents requires me to have intentionality around it. Like I just came this morning. My parents are in their 80s. And I every Thursday morning have breakfast with my parents. I drive to their house, I sit down, we have breakfast. Even after 55 years of being their child, I still have to be intentional to create space to simply be in their presence, right? That's what the spiritual practices are trying to do, is to cultivate space in our life where we can slow down. And be with God. To be able to receive the love of God that is unconditionally pouring out to us always, right? And then. When I know I am loved. And deserving of God's love, not because of me, but because I am created by the loving God. Now I am free to love my neighbor, right? That's why we call that the overflow principle, that love just overflows from who I am. Which is how you invite people, right? If if the love of God is just oozing from you as a as a leader. People are like, how do I get me some of that? And you're like, well, I'm glad you asked, you know? So and then the other metaphor is, um. You mentioned you're an athlete and the coach piece. Right? So I like the. I was an athlete too. Was is the operative term. Um, but I love to play the guitar. Right. And so like, the purpose of playing guitar is to make music. You want to sit. You want to be like. My family loves to sing. And so I was 30 years old when I started learning to play guitar. And my goal was, I want to pick up this instrument and just start playing and singing freely with my family. Well, you don't start there, right? It requires intentional, disciplined action, action, and sometimes very painful. As your learning scales, like your fingers sometimes bleed, you have to build the calluses. And you go through these, these disciplines and whatever it is, like tennis, biking, mountain climbing, cooking, whatever it is when you're just starting out. You have to do ritualistic, repetitive movements to build muscle memory, to train your mind, to recalibrate your orientation of your priorities around that thing. But the practices are not the purpose. The practices are a pathway toward the freedom of playing music. Right? So the spiritual practices are about. Doing whatever it needs, whatever you need to do. To recalibrate your mind toward the love of God as the active agent in your life and the world. Does any of that make sense?

Dwight Zscheile: Absolutely. Um, so I want to wonder with you a little bit about culture within congregations. Um, one of the core challenges that we at Faith+ Lead are trying to help the church navigate is, um, in some ways a cultural shift from a focus on kind of making institutional members and sustaining institutional members, of a church voluntary association. Right, kind of, model to really cultivating a community of disciples. And, you know, a lot of congregations don't have a culture of discipleship that's well established. Um, so let's talk about that a bit. And particularly, I'm curious for you to reflect on how important it is to have a vision of what the Christian life looks like. So you talk about loving God and neighbor, but how does that not default back into people's secular formation that just means I'm supposed to be a nice person, right? Right. Or not break the law or something. Like what? What is actually a vision of the abundant life in Christ? And then how might leaders begin to cultivate that?

Steve Thomason: Yeah. That's a lot of that's a big question, a good question. Um, so let's start with vision. As as an Evangelical of my generation being trained, many of us were shaped by the work of Dallas Willard. And he was he was very influential in my in my spiritual formation and identity. And one of the things that he talks about is: vision, intention and means. And he says one of the reasons why congregations aren't living into or people are not living into a life in the kingdom of heaven and following as disciples of Jesus is because they just don't actually believe it's real. And he uses Jesus' parable of the treasure in a field. And I love this parable. It's super simple. Jesus always taught in parables and metaphors, and he said, the kingdom of heaven is like a person who discovers a treasure buried in a field. This person goes sells everything they have so that they can purchase this field. Boom. End of story. Thanks, Jesus. What does that mean? And what Willard talked about and what I think is part of what Jesus may have been getting after was that. I was thinking about this this morning and wondering if Jesus lived today. He may have used this parable. Now, this could go really bad really quick. But the kingdom of heaven is like the stock market. Imagine a person who discovered a startup company. That this company's vision was doing all the right things for all the right reasons, and it was going to change the world, right? And they wanted to invest in it. But the only way they could purchase into this was to sell everything they had. Now, what would it take for that person to actually be willing to to liquidate all of their assets, like become homeless and put the money down and buy into this company? They would have to believe with all their heart and trust that this company was going to change the world, and they would get that return on their investment. That's a stock market metaphor. Well, Jesus was using an economic metaphor. If a person sees that there is actually treasure in this field. And they believe this treasure is going to return the investment. They're willing to give up everything. So the question then is, what's the treasure? And so I am a disciple of Jesus. And the reason I am is because I trust that Jesus was God become flesh, the word of God, Incarnation. And that Jesus showed us what the love of God looks like lived out in human form, right? And Jesus' life and teaching, death and resurrection is the best revelation we have of who God is. And so to be a disciple of Jesus is to be an apprentice of this person. To follow the ways of Jesus. Because I believe that the way of Jesus is the way that will bring life and healing and wholeness that we call salvation, right? And so that's more than and what Jesus modeled for us, is that the love of God looks like. Not seeking your own agenda, not repaying evil for evil. But he gave up his own life, right? And showed us that death is not the end, but that there is more to this life than that. And so, yes, I could be a good person, maybe in my own strength. But ultimately not. Because what I need is the power of the Holy Spirit in my life that is given to me by God. But I don't know about those things. I don't know about who I am in Christ, without Christ, and without the revelation of Scripture. Right. And so. All of that to say that you asked, how do we do this without just looping back to a secular world, right? It is the way of Jesus that is the salvation of the world. But but not in the way of, uh, another thing that Dallas Willard talked about was, um, he was, he was very critical of what he called Christian vampires, which which was. And he's speaking from. It's an internal critique. He never stopped being Baptist. Right. He. But his critique of the gospel, the reduction of the gospel to because Jesus died and shed his blood, I just have to claim the blood of Jesus to know I'm going to go to heaven when I die. That's what he meant. Like, we only want Jesus to suck his blood to get myself out of hell. But that's not the gospel. That's not the good news. The good news is that in Christ, as the way of Jesus, we can actually live as the beloved. In the love of God and love our neighbor, and even to the point of being able to love my enemy. Uh, by following the way of Jesus. So I got way off track from your. You had a lot in your question. What was the other part of your question?

Dwight Zscheile: Well, I think this is great. I mean, because because by going theological with us for a moment here, um, you're doing you're modeling something that's really important for this conversation. Um, I think churches that are able to, to cultivate a culture of disciple making have a clear theological vision of the difference Jesus makes. And I think one of the ways in which many churches struggle with this is that, you know, they aren't particularly clear. And within talking to everyday members, ordinary members of those churches, um, if you ask them what difference Jesus makes, they're fuzzy about that. The church has not helped them actually articulate that. So so I think having that clear theological vision is, is really important. Um, but then just thinking about again, how do you shift a culture that's normed around making and, you know, institutional members who maybe serve on committees or participate maybe in more performative worship where there are certain holy people doing most of the things, and most people are just kind of passively sitting and, you know, watching to people who are owning their own spiritual growth and practicing. And I mean, you know, partly this is to pick up the athletic analogy people who have figured out in their own daily life here are the practices by which I grow. I become fit, you know, spiritually or grow more deeply into relationship with God. Um, what's your counsel for leaders thinking I want to make that shift in my church? But where do I start? Yeah.

Steve Thomason: So there was a time in my life where I thought, it can't be done, I just need to leave and start something new. So I did, and that is one way of doing it. But that doesn't really help the existing system. And so God. In God's beautiful sense of humor, brought me into the ELCA because I when I went when I did the house church, when I left the megachurch, I was like anti institution church, you know, it's unfixable. We just need to start over and do it right. God laughs. It's like, oh that's cute. That's a cute idea. You try that for a while. It fails. Now let me bring you into one of my beautiful manifestations of the church called the ELCA. And see how it works there. That's kind of how I, so, for the last 14 years I've been, um, asking that question within this framework. And so I've served two congregations as an associate pastor, particularly around spiritual formation. And so one of the things that we've learned that I've learned in my experience is, again, back to the very first comment. Make it transparent that spiritual practices are normal, in your preaching, in your how you just present things in worship. And, you know, and so for these 14 years, I've done both the liturgical Lutheran worship and contemporary worship within the both of these churches. They both had that, those aspects to them. And in the style of the worship doesn't matter. It's, I think, how you as a leader are present in those things because it's very easy to just become very robotic in, in both styles. Right. But if you are just authentically talking about and being present with God and with people in your leadership, you know, a warmth, just a genuine warmth and like, maybe smile when you're preaching or something and, uh, just have more of, like an open space where you're inviting, like when you come into worship, if you take the time to actually invite. I don't want to say invite God as if God's not there already, but invite the congregation to be open to God's presence. Like even little words that we say as we're opening and inviting to worship. Because I've been in some liturgical spaces where the rote words are just said in such a way that they just kind of glance off the head, right? But if you could do a call to worship where you just stop. Let's just breathe together. Let's allow the concerns of the world to pass, just drop to the side and acknowledge God is here and invite God. I used to say things like: Isn't it amazing to realize that God invited you into this space and that we are together present, right? Or as you frame the communion? Uh, one of the beautiful things about Lutheran sacramental theology is that happy exchange that happens at the communion table. Right? And I used to talk about it. I sometimes talk about it like it's God's lungs where we breathe in all the toxins. And then we exchange it for the gospel. And God then breathes this oxygenated blood back or, you know, mixing metaphors, but it goes back. So just creating this, this space within the normal practices of worship, that's one thing. But another thing is. It's very hard, now getting into organizational leadership theory, right. It's very hard to change an entire organization. And it's very hard to do that top down. So my suggestion would be start. So when I when I teach about how Jesus discipled people, right, he I think Jesus was just aware of people. He he would say, people have eyes to see, ears to hear. Like if you have ears to hear. He's like. Simon, I think you've got ears to hear. Come on. Come and see. Right. Let's let's and walk with me for a while. He invited a small group of people. So I think as if you're the pastor or a leader in the church, just invite a small group of people to do experiments around spiritual practices. Uh, one time when I was at, two ongregations ago, a friend of mine named Mark Scandrette wrote this great book called Practicing the Way of Jesus. And so one thing that we did is I just invited Mark out for a Friday night for a weekend. And I, we did a Saturday. We did a Friday night Saturday event, where we just invited people to come. And Mark led us through some of the practices. And that book is so good because it has really, really concrete practices. The the premise of his book is, how about instead of talking about what Jesus taught, what if we actually tried to do what Jesus taught because kind of how he ended the sermon on the Mount, like the wise person is the one who actually hears my words and puts them into practice. And so what we did was we created this this weekend, you know, and some people came because you're going to get the people who are interested are going to come to event like that. Right. And Mark talked and we did some practices. He had us go out and do prayer walks, and he had us do different practices throughout the the Friday night and Saturday. Then he preached on Sunday. But what we did, we called it our renew weekend. So it was like a spiritual formation event, but I had beforehand trained invited a group of people that I knew were really interested in going deeper in their spiritual practices, and I trained them to be small group facilitators. And so what we did was we had some information at the end of the retreat and at the end of worship, when Mark was there to say, if anything that you heard this weekend was remotely interesting to you, here is a four week small group experiment that you could sign up for, and we've got people ready for you. So we started this little group and so we had a group of people continue that journey. And so and so we had this little group that we called the bubble, and we had a core group of people that like they caught the vision of a deeper life and then they tell some friends and so on and so on. And so you kind of Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is like yeast in the dough, right? So if you want to change a congregational system, put a little patch of yeast in it. And if the Spirit of God is working in people's lives, it's going to slowly transform that congregation from the inside out.

Terri Elton: And I want to connect that back to where you started with the leader and what you said about a vision. As I listen to church leaders and the weariness, we've had a lot of Pivot podcast talking about the burnout and the weariness and how to renew that. But I connected to this conversation. I wonder if one of the moments that we want to invite leaders to out of this episode is to actually believe that a life, living the way of Jesus is transformational.

Steve Thomason: Mhm.

Terri Elton: Um, I've had a lot of stuff in my life. Some of you know, uh, of just death and walking with people in our times and, and it's demanding. And leading churches today is demanding; it's high level. You're showing up in really pivotal times in people's lives and leading congregations through these adaptive challenges. But I will honestly say, the thing that allows me to get up the next morning is that God's way of living provides hope, even when I can't see it. Mhm. That that God's love is so expansive that I don't have to I don't have to always be on my best and God's still going to be present. This whole sense and sometimes even as a leader saying right now I'm holding on to that hope because it's not it's not apparent to me, but to still believe that the Easter message changes lives. And and I wonder, has there been a time for you, Steve, where you've had to just go: God, it's not apparent to me. And what would you say to leaders that are struggling with believing in that transformation?

Steve Thomason: Well, I will say, first of all, to all the leaders out there, um, I was a an associate pastor of a large suburban ELCA congregation during Covid. I don't have to say any more than that. Uh, we did that, and it was really, really hard. I remember, so in the church that I was leading at that particular moment, I was the family pastor. So I had the children, youth and family staff that I supervised. And I was the primary leader of confirmation of 300 kids and all that stuff. And so I remember when Covid hit and our team got together and we're like, talk about pivot. Like, what do we do now? And so I remember my first confirmation Wednesday night with 80 middle schoolers on a zoom call. That was quite an experience. Oh, man. And just, you know, to pile on. We were in an interim pastor situation in that congregation when Covid hit and. That was really, really challenging. And my other associate, my colleague, uh, that poor guy had to some of the administrative stuff, and I was so thankful I was the family pastor. But it's hard, hard, hard hard work. And so. Um. Yes. What you said, Terri, at the end of the day, I always, I always say this about my personal testimony is that I am a I am a Christian kind of in spite of the church, but because of my parents. Because what was modeled for me in my home is an authentic relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that it was real. And the vision, the vision of the gospel. To me, church is a beautiful thing, and it is a vehicle that God uses to gather people around the good news of Jesus Christ. But it's not the point. Um, I don't. I'm. I'm a I'm a follower of Jesus first. And I'm a rostered leader in the ELCA second. And I'm very glad to be here and very grateful that God called me to this space. But it's not the only space, and it's not the best space necessarily. There isn't a best space. And so. One of my practices is every single day I wake up and begin with centering prayer. Because as I have learned about it and practiced it, um, a long time ago, I came up with a little daily prayer called kill me, fill me, spill me, and it comes out of I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, right? And so part of our our daily call and and after I became Lutheran, I understood that this is part of baptismal identity, right? Is that we wake up and we we need to just die to ourself. So that we can be reminded that I'm actually a beloved child of God. And all the stuff that I'm worried about and all the things, because I think one of the reasons, quite honestly, one of the reasons that ministry is so burdensome. And I'll say this because it's true. It was it is true and was true of me, is that we allow our identity to become wrapped up in our performance as a leader. And so every day we need to wake up and die to that and be like, okay, this isn't about me. This isn't about if I'm successful today. This is about the fact that God has called me into this place. So that's kill me. Then fill me is okay, Spirit of God, the very word that brought all things into existence, You are with me today. And I can't do this on my own. But you've asked me to do this. So what are we going to do today? And you're going to have to do this in me because I can't do it. And when you fill up with when you allow, see, it's always there. But when you have to slow down and tap in, plug in to the power. Of the spirit, not my power. That's a renewable, inexhaustible source of energy. And be like, okay, so it's a recalibration. And that's why the spiritual practices are so important, right? Because they they recalibrate us to the kingdom of heaven and the work that we're called to do. So then kill me. Fill me. If I realize, if I'm remembering, reminded that I am actually filled to overflowing with the love of God through the through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. That's going to overflow in my life. So. You know, there's an old saying, you know, "too busy not to pray," right? Uh. It's true. And when you can get caught, when you when you deny that that centering moment, then you're going to hit the ground on empty to start, and then you're going to then you're setting yourself up for real disaster.

Dwight Zscheile: So, Steve, as we bring this conversation to a close. Um, I'm so grateful for your wisdom. Those of you who are watching or listening who want to, um, to connect more with what Steve is offering as instruction. Faith+Lead Academy courses, on demand courses. Um, there are several that Steve has been the lead instructor on, including one called "Overflow," which is really about kind of growing in the spiritual life. Um, and you also have a new Acts one that's just come out. Do you want to just say a brief word about that as we close?

Steve Thomason: The new Overflow course, or the new Acts course?

Dwight Zscheile: The new Acts course.

Steve Thomason: Oh, the new Acts course. Yeah. So I'm excited about this one. It just came out. It is called "Acts: the ever expanding Church." And we just walk through the book of Acts in 12 modules and have a conversation partner, Doctor Katherine Wright from Bethel University, who, who walked with me, made sure that I was biblically sound in my, uh, in my thinking. Um, but one of the things that I love to do, I'm a visual artist, and I love I've been illustrating my way through the Bible for years. And so a cool thing about this course is, um, I did a cartoonist guide to Acts. It's a graphic novel that just tells the story of Acts, and so we visually walk through the story as well as reading through the story and, and we look at key themes. So this isn't like a Bible scholar course on acts. This is really a thematic course around what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in this world. Looking at what does it what does the power of the Holy Spirit mean today? What does the church mean today? What does it mean to be a witness of Jesus in our world today. And then, um, power, witness, church and spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit and how does the spirit work today? So those are the big themes that we track through. I had a lot of fun making it, so I hope it's helpful for people as well.

Dwight Zscheile: And those are resources that can be used with congregations, right. For people who do want to take this journey of.

Steve Thomason: Yeah, you can take it as a group or you can take it individually in your own time.

Terri Elton: Well, Steve, I want to thank you, uh, for reminding us of the agility and the stability of spiritual practices for the encouragement to both as leaders, have them part of our regular practices and to not add them on all the time. But think of in our ministries how might we draw people in, expand their repertoire of what spiritual practices are accessible to them, and might be meaningful. But I think the biggest takeaway for me is the reminder of what's the vision? What does it actually mean to be a follower of Jesus and and letting the beloved ness that we are, and God's love for us flow out of us into the world? I think we don't have enough of that today, and that is contagious. And if the church was a community of love overflowing into the world, into each other and to the world, what a difference that would make. So I hope that this episode has been encouraging and inspiring to you as our listeners, as you navigate these big challenges, especially this one that we're highlighting today, from membership to discipleship. And we'd love for you to come back and join us next week as we continue to help the church faithfully navigate this changing world. This is Terri Elton and Dwight Zscheile signing off for another episode of the Pivot podcast. We'll see you next week.

Faith+Lead: The Pivot podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith lead. Faith lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at FaithLead. org.