Mikel Collins introduces the remarkable journey of All Things All People (ATAP), a ministry in Rutherford County, North Carolina, dedicated to equipping Christians to spread the gospel to the least reached and darkest communities. We hear from Jeremy Jenkins, founder and executive director of ATAP, who shares the ministry's transformation from a consulting company to a nonprofit with a global mission. The conversation covers the unique challenges and successes of engaging small towns with evangelism and discipleship, particularly through the Engage Network initiative. Discussion includes the significant role of addressing nominal Christianity, the importance of rooting missionary work in local contexts, and the transformative power of true spirituality over cultural Christianity. ATAP's commitment to staying and thriving in Forest City as opposed to moving to larger cities is a testament to their dedication to their community. The episode wraps up with insights on engaging younger generations and spiritual nones, and a call to share the gospel with those around us, emphasizing the need for a united Christian mission.

00:00 Introduction to Small Town Big God

01:15 Meet Jeremy Jenkins and ATAP

03:51 The Origin and Evolution of ATAP

09:31 Challenges and Changes During COVID

12:51 The Importance of Local Engagement

20:13 A Personal Story of Outreach

27:21 Understanding Cultural Christianity

30:02 Jeremy's Dual Life and ATAP's Mission

31:52 Engaging Nominal and De-Churched Christians

37:18 Reaching Spiritual Agnostics and Neo-Pagans

44:15 ATAP's Local Impact and Vision

50:45 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Welcome to Small Town Big God.

My name is Mikel Collins, and I've got another story for you of God at work

in Rutherford County, North Carolina.

Today, you're going to hear about a ministry that's

called All Things All People.

All Things All People is working to equip Christians to engage

the darkest and the least reached people groups with the gospel.

Now, this is a ministry that I am very connected with, which I will

explain a little bit more about later.

But it's a fascinating story because All Things All People

did not start out as a ministry.

The original idea was actually for a consulting company, and in just a

second you're going to hear from Jeremy Jenkins, who is one of the pastors here

at Element Church, where I work, and the founder of All Things All People.

And he'll explain a little bit more about the original vision and some of

the frustrations that he ran into, and We're also going to talk about a lot

of the problems that churches here in Small Town Friendly especially have

faced, and the importance of evangelism and discipleship in small towns, and

how ATAP, which is what we call All Things All People, is going about it

in a really awesome way.

So without further ado, I'm going to let Jeremy introduce himself and tell

you a little bit more about all of that.

i'm jeremy jenkins With all things all people.

I am the executive director all things, all people, what we affectionately refer

to as ATAP, started around 2019 and now, exists as its own nonprofit 501

C3, we say that it exists to explore the darkest and least reached places

to engage people with the gospel.

that takes on a lot of different, methods strategies content and

all sorts of things that we do.

at the heart of it, it's, a ministry that operates with the conviction

that not enough Christians, know about, or are engaging.

the least reached and the least known, communities, especially

here in the States, in the church.

the church isn't sufficiently, engaging, the weirder and darker

more openly non Christian communities in the States with the gospel.

so, that's who I am at least today.

that's, that's what we're doing today.

Most of my friends, I should say, who also run ministries that either

are global or like a big idea or ministries that have that trajectory

that somebody wants them to be global or a big idea are almost always in bigger

cities and bigger regions and areas.

And

for

me, probably going along with the small town, big God idea.

And just, really kind of spending, the last third of my life at

Element functioning in that way.

It became important to me early on that any success that we were going

to have in any momentum that we were going to have with a tap was

going to happen in the context of Forest city in Rutherford County.

As opposed to building something for the sake of one day leaving,

I think that's pertinent to the small town big God mindset.

if I could draw a map back, I can't.

Look at the chronology of ideas, but I would imagine that became important to

me when we were doing the small time, big God series was the idea of like,

I want to, I

I feel called to do this big thing.

not for my glory, but for God's.

one thing we said to each other a lot back then was, can anything

good come out of Forest city?

And so, That was, that, that's still integral.

Like, so when we do the fall lecture, we'll do the spring lecture again.

if we ever have a conference or something like that, you know, it'll happen in and

around Forest city as opposed to saying, we've reached a certain level of success.

Let's go to Charlotte, or Atlanta that's built into the DNA of ATAP.

Now I should be honest and tell you that this interview with Jeremy was recorded

several months ago, back in February, I believe, because my original plan

was for this to actually be the third episode of the Small Town Big God podcast.

Obviously, my plans have changed.

But I'm happy to tell you that Jeremy's have not, as of right now,

we are only a few weeks away from ATAP's very first conference, which

is set to take place right here in Florida City on October 26th, 2024.

But before you go rush to sign up, let's continue the story

of how ATAP got to this place.

So how long has Atap been in existence as a ministry.

So, officially started, well, I, I guess I should say unofficially started.

In 2019 and initially it was, not even a ministry and not

even Christian in general.

So I, for the last like 12 years, 13 years have, been studying, religions

and world religions, and really felt The call that word calling is kind of

overused in evangelical circles, but really like, I think that's probably

the most appropriate word to use because you know, really all I could think about

most days, even in the context of, my first, full time job, which would be,

one of the pastors at element church.

I was trying to figure out how I was going to factor in my passion

and fascination for studying world religions and more so with philosophy

into my ministry at Element.

You understand as does anybody from a small town when you're a small

town pastor, even at a contemporary church like element, there's not

much need for, an aptitude for world religions, at least not seemingly.

And that's how I felt.

So I got the idea of well, who would need that?

And I had this idea and I don't know that it was a bad one, but originally

all things, all people started as an idea to offer consulting services on,

intercultural studies to businesses.

to either global businesses or, you know, businesses where there's some

aspect of cross cultural communication.

And so the idea was to provide that type of service.

but not only was there not much traction for that but I also felt

that wasn't scratching the same itch that I was trying to get to.

It seemed very transactional.

It seemed very much, stripped down.

Then the other thing too was what I found was that I was really sanitizing

my passion, which wasn't just to teach people about world religions.

it was.

to see those religions and the people in them Discussed in a way

that pointed towards the gospel.

So originally, ATAP begins as a secular business designed to help

other businesses make more sales to people in different cultures.

But like a lot of people who are working on something that they're not passionate

about, Jeremy was getting frustrated.

This business was a good idea, and Jeremy knew how to run it, but what he really

wanted was to be talking about the gospel.

And Eddie Nichols, who you should remember from episode one, helped Jeremy

realize that something needed to change.

I was having a conversation with Our friend eddie nichols who's always kind

of sort of served as a consultant now.

He's on our board But I asked him, you know kind of I, I'm frustrated

and don't really know how to introduce the idea that my faith is in this

company, this ministry, this idea.

And he just encouraged me to be myself.

so I think it might've been January of 2020.

right before COVID was hitting, I really began to turn towards discussing

world religions from a Christian perspective, primarily on Instagram.

we've been on Instagram for quite a long time now, I think really since

2019 and then started creating content that really, Mike, there was very

little aim initially, was really just.

At first, just a creative outlet of like a basic edge, developing a basic education

for Christians and world religions, and then just creating content and a

lot of it initially was geared towards overseas, because the best footage

pictures and stories were found overseas.

And because I was traveling so much back then, it was really easy to go

overseas and then come home and tell the stories of what I had experienced

in South Asia or Central America or Europe or Africa and then to try and

distill those down to something that.

Educated Christians on world religions.

And it was very academic.

I think I had just come out of academia.

With my master's degree it was very academic and took itself very seriously

and it just didn't gain much footing.

Even though I wasn't openly speaking about my faith, I was talking about

world religions in a really general way.

when you try and talk about something like that generally, you

really don't appeal to anybody.

You're not going to appeal to believers or non believers.

And both are looking for a more critical lens.

And so that started in 2019, probably within six months, which

is kind of like, just doesn't seem like anything's happening here.

And also felt kind of like, I don't really feel like this

is what I had set out to do.

So Jeremy changes things up, starts talking about world religions from a

Christian lens, the way he wanted to, but is still keeping things too general

to really gain much of a following.

But then, everything stopped when COVID hits, and Jeremy realizes

this could be a good opportunity.

During COVID, just like you, I listened to a ton of podcasts

and I have always felt like, you know, I think I could do that.

And I think I might enjoy that.

And I told Courtney, my wife, all of these famous people are

sitting at home, just like us.

And everybody has learned how to use zoom.

so I got the idea.

to start a podcast and it really pivoted more towards Christian thought.

It began to go more in the direction of Christian thinkers on this podcast.

And so we started that, I mean, probably the first episode was

probably like, March or April of 2020.

for a year we did an episode a week and almost every single

one of them were guests.

And so we were doing a guest every single week.

And a lot of them were pretty well known and it was a lot of fun.

most of the people who follow us now in some form or fashion we owe that to the

podcast a lot of the better friends that I have in the ministry world outside

of element now, I found through that podcast, people like Felicia Mason

Heimer, there's a large number of people that I still communicate with today or

still are, friends of ATAP and actually are huge champions of the hyper focused

mission that we have now that we met and bumped into when it was still just kind

of like, Hey, we just have a podcast.

By the middle of 2020, All Things All People is an established ministry

with a website, an active social media presence, and a rapidly growing podcast.

In fact, the pro the podcast was growing so quickly, and had become so successful,

that it was kind of becoming a problem.

I remember being frustrated.

Because the podcast had become so successful that people would come

up to me and be like, you know, Hey, how's the podcast doing?

And I'd be like, well, the podcast is good, but here's this, here's the bigger

picture of what we're trying to do.

And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who's, who's going to be on the episode next week.

Right.

Or like some people knew I had a list of, dream guests And I was pretty.

I was pretty driven on how I would try and get guests.

I had tried to get every single one of those people.

some of them were going to happen, maybe they weren't.

people would talk to me about the podcast and very rarely about,

the teaching opportunities I was getting and things like that.

And that was always frustrating.

And that also kind of told me that, okay, we're a little bit off foot.

Like success doesn't always mean we're on because we were beginning

to get really successful, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing.

a lot of the following we have now, I don't think those people still follow us.

because we had the podcast, however many years ago, but I think that a

lot of times they started following and enjoyed what we were doing, the

direction we were going in, even though we weren't podcasting as much anymore.

The All Things All People podcast has changed quite a

bit since those early days.

It's no longer called the All Things All People podcast.

It is now called Basecamp, and it's also being produced by yours truly.

So I encourage you to go check it out if you enjoy podcasts and you want

to hear Jeremy and I and other guests discuss topics related to evangelism

and reaching people with the gospel.

I'll make sure to put a link to that in the show description on this episode.

But getting back to the story.

As ATAP has changed over the years, Jeremy was running everything from

his office in Element Church, which is where he and I are both still on staff.

But it started to become apparent that ATAP really needed its own space.

A lot of people thought ATAP was my full time gig, but I, still to this

day, don't make any money from ATAP.

Element was my full time gig and Element was and is my main priority.

but it was really hard for me to sit in this office and do both things mentally

from a time constraint standpoint, from people coming in standpoint, I'm

just kind of one where it's hard for me to, think element in a tap and then

also the teaching stuff that I do.

Without moving to different spaces and so real quick I Tried to find us an

office, space in an old school building and we used that for a long time And

then here lately we've been very slowly renovating well eventually I think will

be a really nice office space Behind Hope House coffee, which is across

the street from where we are now from what i've heard it was in one of the

roughest sections of that building It had to have been the roughest section.

So that building I'm sure J.

R.

told you, that building was in, a horrible state of disrepair and, a

lot of brokenness was going on in that building, a lot of drug use and people

who really had nowhere else to go.

If you haven't listened to the first episode of this podcast, which covers

the story of Hope House Coffee, this might be a little confusing.

But the building that is now Hope House Coffee is located directly across the

street from Element Church in Forest City, and before Element purchased

the building and turned it into Hope House, it was a hub for a lot of

drug use and other darkness, And the ATAP office is now located in one of

the rooms behind Hope House Coffee.

interestingly enough, ATAP, finds itself in a room in that building where

there was probably witchcraft happening.

when you interact with a community of people who are defined by their

substance abuse, it shouldn't surprise us that, they sort of appealed to some

dark spiritual things and so we would find those things up in that that room

and in Jr bore the brunt of that I was I was very rarely involved in a lot of

things that had to do with that building.

So When the idea was brought up that we would move the office to

that space, it seemed appropriate that ATAP would find its way there.

And perhaps that would serve, if anything else, just from a narrative standpoint

as a redemptive thing for those rooms.

It fits so perfectly with the short taglines of ATAP into the dark.

Yeah.

Quite literally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's, what's funny is Even when we were doing the podcast

and the fascination With what is now, a tap, before it had a label, it was

really this fascination, this passion about studying world religions.

And then really just trying to figure out how do we communicate

the gospel to these groups?

And I had a drawing towards, okay, who are Christians kind of scared of who

are Christians weirded out by, and the idea of dark and light and there's this

song by Hillsong United called Captain.

And I was listening to this song when I was a student pastor All of

this fascination, this passion for studying religions was happening, but

it felt so aimless and almost like an idol at times because it distracted

me so much from what otherwise was a clear calling to pastoral ministry.

And I was listening to this song and the first line is through uncharted

waters, my soul will embark.

I'll follow your voice, straight into the dark and I would and still do I

would listen to that song on repeat and sometimes I would even Get through

the first verse and go back and listen to it And I remember just being like

that's what I want to do I want To frame a discussion of missions in evangelism

and anthropology from the Christian perspective in a way that communicates.

We don't want to be afraid to go into dark places.

I feel like a lot of times Christian mission and evangelism,, is a

exercise in risk assessment of like the idea of if something's too risky

or if something's too burdensome or something's too scary, then there

has to be a better way to do it.

And sometimes I think that, especially in it, you know, not to suggest that

men are better at this than women, 85 percent of a tips following

is actually made up of women.

The most passionate people who follow us are women.

And I think that's quite telling because I think what we found is that not enough

Christian men and not enough Christians in general have that attitude of saying

We want to be the ones that go forward.

And when we see, a foothold, for darkness, a foothold for the enemy,

we want to go towards that as opposed to waiting for it to come towards us.

And so that's been.

Defining rallying cry for us.

It's on a lot of our merch for that reason.

It's actually not on a lot of our newer merch.

Cause I figured out it's not a great rally.

Like a lot of people don't know what all things, all people is

they know what into the dark is.

but it's a huge rallying cry for us.

And it's sort of like, our way of defining, are we doing

what we say we're going to do?

Are we going into those places?

that wasn't by design that our office would be a literal example

of that, but it's fitting.

Into the Dark is just one of ATAP's many rallying cries, but all of them

are focused on the mission, if you go listen to the Base Camp podcast,

you'll hear me begin every episode by stating the mission, which is,

equipping Christians to engage the darkest places and least

reached people with the gospel.

When you hear that mission statement, it might bring to mind the image

of a missionary on a boat in the middle of a river in Asia or some

other far off corner of the world.

But what a lot of us don't realize is just how many people of different religions are

living right here in Small Town Friendly.

But Jeremy's definitely noticed.

All the other small towns in the United States that are just like ours,

probably the citizens there have fallen victim to the same things that our people

have, which is to assume that the people you notice are the only people here.

So right now, and really for the last, couple months, but especially this last

month in January, 2024, all we've been talking about is what we call the engaged

network, which is, Our way to partner with churches to engage the darkest and least

reached places in their city and region.

when I first came up with that idea, I was assuming that we would

only be able to talk to churches in major metropolitan areas.

I was talking to another one of our pastors here, Neil, and.

You know, we were kind of talking about, well, you know, is that the case?

and.

And he was even asking me like, well, you know, there are people of

other religions here, aren't there?

Neil is the founding pastor at element and, he's been a

friend of mine for 13 years.

and a mentor on top of that.

right before I founded tap, it was this half baked idea, you know,

like I was saying, and, and we knew that at some point in time,

it was probably going to include educating people on world religions.

I was telling Neil about what would eventually become ATAP and getting his

advice, and we were both excited about it.

we were driving through the backroads of upstate South

Carolina in, the middle of nowhere.

All of a sudden Neil, points out the window slams on his

brakes and goes to pull a u turn I'm like, what are you doing?

we had been talking about Hindus and Muslims he pointed over

at this gas station and he had seen this man wearing a turban.

And he was just like, we're going to go talk to that guy right there.

We're talking about these people.

We're going to go talk to him.

I was kind of like, this is very typical Neil Perry.

He's very excitable.

but what's interesting is like, you know, if he were sitting here in,

in the topic was world religions, he wouldn't self admittedly, he wouldn't

have a lot to offer the conversation.

He doesn't really know that much about religions, but he's really well traveled.

He's been on a thousand missions trips, so we pull up to this gas station get out

of the car and he goes to pump his gas.

He goes, Hey, go talk to that guy.

I go over and start talking to him, and he's this older man, he's wearing

the turban, right away, I knew he was probably Sikh, Sikhism, which it's

pronounced sick in a lot of other places, especially in India, It is a religion

that essentially, in a reductionist way, combines tenets of Hinduism and Islam,

and it was founded in northwest India in a state called the Punjab, While the

rest of India is overwhelmingly Hindu and has a strong number of Muslims in

the Punjab, pretty much everybody's Sikh.

so I walk up to this guy, we start talking, and I speak very broken Hindi.

he spoke Punjabi and, I begin to figure out, okay, he's, he's visiting from the

Punjab, likely this is his family's store.

Well, so Neil walks up and joins the conversation I lean over

to Neil and whisper he's Sikh.

And Neil, I guess he just doesn't know what that was.

He he's like, Oh, okay.

You're sick.

You're sick and I, I'm like, no man, no, no, no, he's not, he's not sick.

He's sick.

He's sick.

And Neil kind of looks at me confused.

He's like, yeah, he's okay.

So you're sick.

Can we pray for you?

in South Asia, there's this gesture that you make a lot of times where

when you're greeting somebody, you might gesture towards your chest.

And it's almost hard to describe, but it's this upward gesture where you kind of

like point to your heart and gesture up.

Neil had seen me and this guy doing this and was like, is it your heart?

the guy's son who runs the gas station walks out likely thinking, his dad's

being harassed, which at this point, I'm not sure he wasn't, but, he walks out.

And so I start talking to him and he, his, he explained, yeah, this is my dad.

He doesn't really speak English.

He's from the Punjab, but he's just visiting.

I was like, oh, okay, that's great, Neil's like.

There's something wrong with his heart.

Can we pray for him?

the son is just confused as all get out.

And it's just like, yeah, sure.

So Neil actually prays for this guy and praise that his heart would be healed.

And I'm like furious, you know?

so we just say our goodbyes and everything.

We get back in the car and I'm halfway furious, halfway just

dying, you know, in laughter.

I'm like, you idiot.

He's sick.

And he was like, what do you mean?

And I was like, it's a religion, and I explained it.

He's like, Oh, I know.

I had no idea, you know?

And so for about a year or two, I would tell that joke and, you know,

at element, we have a pretty, you know, we kind of rag on each other.

and so I would tell that joke and oftentimes Neil would be the butt of

the joke, you know, but what's funny is I was getting ready to tell that story.

at a conference I was speaking at, and I don't know if it was the Lord or I

don't know if it was just my common sense caught up with me, but I realized,

if there's a good guy and a bad guy in that story, I'm not the good guy.

I began to operate under the conviction that I was in the car talking to Neil

about groups like Sikhs and Muslims and Hindus, but Neil was looking for them.

And while Neil didn't know that much about Sikhs or maybe anything about them,

he's the one who saw the guy and he's the one who pulled the U turn and he's

the one who insisted we go talk to him.

And he even prayed for him What better way to see the Holy Spirit move in

somebody's life than to pray for their heart, So I began to kind of walk

around saying okay, and this is fairly instrumental moment in ATAP Honestly,

it's when I began to realize okay.

It's not just enough to speak From an educated standpoint, these religious

groups and the people in them, we also need to be looking for them and take

action and go on mission when we see them.

If anybody listened to this, especially if they're from Rutherford County, but

even if they're not, if they're from the upstate of South Carolina, the

area on the North and South Carolina border is not a metropolitan area where

there's large populations of ethnic or religious minorities, but yet here, this

man is sitting outside the gas station.

so they're right down the street.

They're here.

and in all likelihood.

however foolish we might have looked that day, we were probably the

only non Indians who talked to that guy his whole time here because we

just have a propensity to ignore people who aren't part of our tribe.

Here in Rutherford County.

I think we're like 80 percent white.

10 percent black.

5 percent Hispanic or Spanish speaking and then the rest is 1 percent Asian.

there was a conglomerate of other, ethnic groups not that ethnic groups are always,

an indicator of religious groups, but we can make some general assumptions

about what those ethnic markers tell us

The religiosity of Rutherford County is in a place like Rutherford County.

We can assume that if it's 80 percent white that the overwhelming percentage of

that is Likely Protestant, and that's not always the case but here in the Bible Belt

they would probably recognize themselves as Protestant or at least Christian

the same could be said for the african american community You grew up here.

I've lived here for a long time.

We know that overwhelmingly that that group is not devoted to a Christian faith.

they recognize themselves as Christians, but they're really cultural Christians.

then we look at.

the Spanish speaking community, largely, we see a lot of similar

things there, which is that there's a strong nominal, contingent there.

A lot of them have come out of the Catholic church.

and so we know that they're dealing with a lot of nominalism too.

but then, you know, in Rutherford County, 1 percent Asian, well, Asian, of course,

can mean a lot of different things.

but in this county.

most every convenience store and gas station, is owned or

operated by a South Asian.

Almost every single one of the independent motels and hotels

are owned by South Asians.

So what we're trying to convince people of and communicate in Rutherford

County and in other places like it is that you walk around with the

assumption that the majority is the entirety and that's not true.

And push this one step further.

The majority is not reached either.

You know, and that's why, like what we've been doing here at

element and with the network at other churches is we're developing

missionaries to nominal Christians.

even in small towns, when you say there are other religions, nominal

Christianity, isn't another religion, but it is an unreached group.

our focus has really made more room for that, I'm pretty, Comfortable talking

to non Christians about their religious beliefs and about my religious beliefs,

but we're really broadening a taps.

Mission to include the majority of Christianized Americans who actually

are not following Christ as Lord.

even in Rutherford County and in small town places like it, there is an

overwhelmingly unreached population that we need to develop mission strategy for.

I want to take a moment to explain in a little bit more detail what

Jeremy is talking about here,

because there's a good chance that some of you listening might

fall into this category of nominal Christian or cultural Christian.

See, I'm sure you guys have noticed how in Rutherford County, we can't drive a mile

down any road without passing a church.

They're everywhere.

If you grew up in small town friendly, it's likely that

you grew up going to church.

Going to church is part of our culture.

It's just what the majority of people do.

But going to church does not make you a Christian.

And what we mean by a cultural Christian is someone who claims to be a Christian

because they go to a Christian church or pray before they eat or something

like that, but they're not actually following Christ with their life.

Now, I have to be really careful here because I don't want you to hear this and

think that I'm telling you that you're not doing enough to be a Christian.

That is not it at all.

What I'm saying is being a Christian is not about what you do.

It's about where your heart is.

It's about what you are focused on.

Being a follower of Christ means giving Him our whole heart.

About making Him Lord of your entire life.

So that he is what you are seeking above everything else.

And cultural Christianity is about going to church on Sundays so

that you can justify the way you live every other day of the week.

Now I promise that we're going to get back to our story in just a second, but

I want to tell you that if you're not following Christ with everything that's

in you, if you fall into that category of cultural Christian, you are missing out.

Because there's nothing in this world that could ever bring as much

joy and fulfillment and meaning to your life as following Christ

with everything that you have.

And if you are following Christ, make sure you're sharing that

with the people around you.

You don't want to be a person who finds the secret to happiness and then

doesn't tell anyone about it, right?

Now, I know I've been talking a lot and this podcast episode is supposed

to be about ATAP, but ATAP ATAP is about sharing the gospel, so I

don't think it's out of place for me to include this little section.

Nonetheless, let's get back to Jeremy.

that, you know,

For a long time, I've almost lived like two lives, you know,

for four or five years where it's like you have element Jeremy.

In Rutherford County, Jeremy, and then you have a tap, Jeremy, a tap.

Jeremy is more typically found online or traveling to other parts of the

world or in big cities, you know, where churches there feel like, Oh, we're

surrounded by people of other religions.

And for a long time, I, and, even other leadership at element had long

pursued, well, how can we really harness The momentum that ATAP has.

And then also just like how fun ATAP is and it's exciting.

we talk about missions at ATAP, like it's really exciting.

This next season with the engage network, which really is going to be the launching

pad to see that happen is going to be awesome because we are going into churches

and equipping them and developing, people group oriented mission teams to engage

the least reached and darkest places in their city and region with the gospel.

But we're starting with element and that's because element, is a partner of a tab.

It's, it's our oldest partner.

But, we, Element and ATAP, kind of partner officially in the Engage Network,

which is to say that, ATAP and all of the resources, it's somewhat, it can be

somewhat awkward to talk about because I'm both sides of this equation, but

like ATAP is going to be used as a vessel for training and mobilization

inside of element, because what we're doing with the engaged network is going

into churches and providing demographic analysis and then providing, some coaching

as the church sets goals for, okay.

Who around us do we feel like we can begin to strategically reach?

And then we raise up mission team leaders, who essentially are operating as

missionaries towards those communities and then raising up a team to work with them.

we're doing that very thing at element right now.

at element we have, a team that's targeting nominal

and de churched Christians.

which, is, probably our biggest demographic in Rutherford County.

Just people who say that they walked an aisle or say that they're Christian, but

they don't have any fruit in their life.

And, oftentimes they're just not following Christ as Lord.

And then the D church, you know, like there, I don't think

we've seen it quite as much in Rutherford County yet, but we will.

Rutherford County is always five to 10 years behind the fads of the rest of

the world and the rest of the country.

So there is going to be a younger population who begins to use

deconstruction type language.

And then even the language that we see, coming out of the LGBTQ plus community

where it's, the church has hurt me.

Or I feel alienated by the church or I like what the church has to offer,

but, I don't ever want to go back.

so we have a team oriented towards that population.

And just to pause.

Yeah.

I mean, there's.

Decent chance probably that there's people that feel like that that

are listening to this probably

Well, so I would say what we're teaching and training our missionaries and mission

team leaders to say is that Because a Christian has hurt us doesn't mean that

Christ has hurt us oftentimes Christians are the worst Especially considering

the high calling that we should be, orienting our lives in If you've been

hurt by the church or you feel the church is a poor representative of Christ

you're still looking for truth, right?

And I don't think it's a worthy exercise because you've been hurt by, some

particular dogma , or a representative of that dogma to then discount the dogma

or the religion or the faith itself.

And so what better way to, address the questions and the problems that you

have, with the church, by simply talking to somebody who's a Christian and not

necessarily by trying to attend a church.

Even with this element, mission team, we're not trying to get people

to come to element, we're trying to get people to follow Christ as Lord.

And even if that means that they go somewhere else, or even if that means

that there's a house church started, I don't think that somebody needs to

accept my church to accept my Christ.

And so I would encourage people to continue to look into the truth

suggested by the teachings of Christ and his apostles and what we find in

scripture and don't, you know, don't, don't feel as if you also have to accept

element, you know, or, or whatever, you know, down the line, wrestling

with those things will come into play.

the missional effort we're going forward with, with, with, a tap and then what

we're doing in partnership with element, it's not a church growth strategy.

It's, it's not like, well, that happened to you at that other church

that won't happen to you at element.

It's just well, I'd like to think that it won't.

You know, whatever that church is, I like to think that it won't,

but that's not my selling point.

My selling point has nothing to do with element.

and you know, we say to element all the time, we don't want God to make

the name of element famous, right?

We want to make his name famous.

so even as I'm talking to other churches and we've been privileged

to really, talk to some big churches, And some well known churches.

And we're on the precipice of, seeing some of those churches join the network.

I've been clear, like, Hey, some of these people might not ever come to your church.

They might accept Christ.

They might join a disciple making group.

They might be part of a house church.

They might even become a great evangelist in your area.

And they might not know.

they were ever associated with your church, when we do that we re

establish some of that credibility that Some people feel we've lost

as christians when we don't tie our success to church attendance going up?

And so yeah with that nominal and d church team, that's kind of the heart behind it.

I didn't interrupt earlier because I thought it would be better to let Jeremy

finish his point, but he mentioned something just a minute ago that I think

needs to be our repeat moment for this episode, and maybe you've already guessed

what it is, but here it is again, so just in case you missed it the first time.

I don't think that somebody needs to accept my church to accept my Christ.

With all of the churches that we have here in Small Town Friendly, it can sometimes

create this mindset of competition between different churches, as if we're not all

trying to be more like the same guy.

And if you're a Christian, hopefully you have a church that you're a part of,

but also, hopefully, you're working to share the love of Christ with people,

not just the love of your church.

Just imagine what small town friendly would look like if all of these

churches that we have all over the place were to work together

to serve the people of our county.

A three fold cord is not easily broken, right?

And we can do a lot more together than we can apart.

So I think it's important that we remember that People don't have to

accept our church to accept Christ.

There's a lot of fantastic churches all over this county.

And just because somebody doesn't go to yours specifically does not mean

that they're not following Christ.

I love the Jeremy brought this up

Because I think it's really important for us all to hear.

And that's one of the things that I love about ATAP, yes, it's very

connected to Element because Jeremy is on staff here, but the goal is

not for them to promote Element.

ATAP is working to share the gospel, not just with nominal and cultural Christians,

But with tons of different groups of people,

And at these engaged gatherings that you heard Jeremy mention earlier,

they've put together different teams for each of these different groups.

And then with that too, we are raising up a team, of Spanish speakers

to engage, what probably is a similar religious, demographic but oriented

towards the Spanish speaking community.

and then we have a team, that is focusing on, spiritual agnostics and neo pagans.

in Rutherford County, I've seen personally that we are seeing a little bit of

what's very prevalent in Asheville making its way down here, sometimes

called new age or metaphysical, belief.

like, spiritualism in general.

it's very hard to classify because it can really involve any number of

things, but without saying any names like we've had a number of shops open

up in Rutherford County that are geared towards that community, which is a great

sign that those people are present.

And then with that label that I referenced as well, spiritual agnostics, you and

I've had plenty of conversations where The realization that most non Christians are

not atheists is an important one to make.

And even within the fastest growing religious category in the

United States, the religious nuns

n O N E S.

Yeah, nuns.

They don't, they have, they, under religion, they put none.

the, the smallest group in that category is atheists.

most classify themselves as spiritual, but not religious.

And so, so we have a, we have a large.

Growing.

I don't know if it's large yet because it's almost impossible group to count.

But, we have a large, population in Rutherford County of that demographic.

And then that group trends very young.

As we see more young people staying in Rutherford County, which is great,

like, you know, for a long time, people in Rutherford County, like, you know,

nobody ever stayed in Rutherford County.

It was like, you leave as soon as you can.

We have a large number of, or we have a growing, youth population and a

lot of those people, yeah, they don't like religion and they don't like

the church and they don't like dogma.

Instead of just turning to a neutral stance, they have taken

on quite a few spiritual beliefs.

a lot of people in this demographic believe in, karma.

an afterlife.

They believe in angels or demons.

They believe in spiritual figures.

You know, they, they believe in impersonal spiritual powers, things like crystals

that they'll participate, in any number of spiritual practices, you know, examples

like tarot cards, or like you said, palm readings, we've seen, you know,

astrology, astrological signs, grow in popularity, things like zodiac, and,

and, and, you know, Every single one of these things, even proponents of them

might say, well, that's not religious and that's not hardly even spiritual.

With that particular demographic, there is a great divide between

religion and spirituality.

And one has the connotation of systematized and organized in the

case of religion and spiritual is.

Individualized and so I wouldn't consider it religious.

but I would consider it Trending towards spiritual now.

I mean some people read the horoscopes the same reason they read Twitter, you

know, just for entertainment, but some people take it quite seriously in the,

in the, in you'll, especially, you know, I, I'm on social media, my Instagram,

I have stuff sent to me all the time of people who take what they read in

their, not so much their horoscopes, but like almost like, well, my astrological

sign tells me a lot about myself.

And when we begin, the reason why it's, Something to be taken seriously

from a spiritual standpoint is when we talk about the self, we begin to

talk about something that's spiritual, whether we want to say it is or not.

And so when you meet somebody who says, Oh, well, I'm a cancer or I'm a Gemini.

So this is true about me.

Oh, okay.

So we're talking about what's true about ourselves now.

Well, we're beginning to embark upon things that I believe.

Are spiritual.

And what's true about me, is that I'm made in the image of God and

that I'm not a purely physical being.

that's the other thing that's so interesting about this demographic is

that they would agree with the fact that we're not a purely physical being.

when we begin to see that Venn diagram overlap, we might not call

all the same things religious or spiritual, and they might trivialize

some things that we take quite seriously, but at the end of the day.

The Venn diagram overlaps in a lot of places, and we're trying to engage those

people with the conversation about faith.

If I talk to somebody who takes their Zodiac signs quite

seriously, I'm certainly not going to, Condemn them for that.

I, in fact, I don't, I don't really care about the Zodiac sign.

What I want to do is find out, well, what do you believe about that?

really get to the core motivation.

Cause what I think is probably happening is that we have a generation and

generations before it, Of people who askew religion, but are still looking

for what religion provides, which is a framework to understand reality, what

we might other times call a worldview.

And so when you hear someone say, well, this is what my sign says about

me, or this is what this crystal does,

Herb incense does.

I don't look at that demographic.

It's like, Oh, you're weird.

I go, Oh, you have the same core motivations that I do.

I just feel like you're looking in the wrong places.

And I think there are better places to look.

And those places are just as spiritual.

and I think it's an important, like, I'm more, that's kind of one thing

I'm working on is like even myself and then hopefully in turn be able

to really help Christians with it.

It's like learning how to talk to that group in a way that

indicates to them, Hey, we have a lot of things in common, right?

we have so much more in common with each other than we actually

do with some other groups.

you believe in a rich and vibrant spiritual world.

And I believe in that same rich and vibrant spiritual world, but I believe you

are appealing to the wrong parts of it.

those parts of it want nothing more than your destruction.

And I know that sounds like an overreaction to some, but that's what my.

core belief is about that spiritual world.

Okay, maybe you didn't notice but we did get off topic there a little bit.

This is supposed to be an episode about how ATAP got started and what

they're doing in Small Town Friendly.

But you just heard a lot about what's going on with the younger generation

of spiritual nones and neo pagans and how we can engage them with the gospel.

But that section, I left it in because it's a great example of

what the ministry of ATAP is like.

Everything that they do, every blog post, every podcast, episode, book, or

resource that ATAP creates is trying to educate Christians on how to engage

a particular group with the gospel.

So, So if you enjoyed hearing Jeremy talk about engaging spiritual nones and neo

pagans with the gospel, I highly encourage you to go listen to the Base Camp podcast.

Not yet, though, because we still have to hear some of the other things ATAP's

doing right here in our hometown.

I operate with the conviction that every church should, be reaching

what we call the shadow of the steeple.

every church should have a team of people focused primarily on the

people in their geographic region.

Like for us, it's Alexander mills here in Forest city.

So that's what we're doing.

And then with that, along with, investing heavily in those mission team leaders who

are over those teams, we're doing things like what you mentioned, the engaged

network, which is a monthly gathering where the community of people who have

banded around this stateside mission strategy, get together for fellowship.

Prayer, teaching and training and then goal setting, Hey, how are we

going to get after it this month?

how do I feel called and compelled to go on mission this month?

and so we do that every month.

start by, doing the debrief, Hey, how did the last month go?

And then digging back into teaching training fellowship

and, setting goals for the next.

And so, that's how it's playing out in the life of element.

one thing I mentioned to you, it's important to me that any momentum,

any progress, any exciting things that happens at ATAP happens

in the context of Forest city.

this is, you know, I've lived here for 13 years and then four years before that.

I was here quite often because my now wife grew up here.

Forest city in Rutherford County has been a part of my life for almost 20 years.

coming out of the nineties and early two thousands, which is really when I started

coming here in the early two thousands, the place had very little going for it.

All the mills had left.

population was dwindling.

now you go downtown Forest city and you can't get a

parking spot on a Friday night.

Back then you'd go downtown Forest city and there was nothing there,

And so it felt very hopeless.

and so now, not only do we see.

from a civic standpoint that things are bouncing back.

but I think part of the heart of, small town, big God, which has been our rallying

cry for a long time, is, if Hope House coffee or element or a tap or, whoever

else it might be, there's so many.

little spinoffs out of the life of element even that have

achieved some level of success.

Like the natural thing is that if a tap was going to become really

successful, that it would one day move to Charlotte or move to Asheville

or move to Atlanta or Greenville.

And we're just intent on not doing that and not for any reason other than we do

think something great can happen for city.

And I take a lot of pride in, Providing for a place that can

sometimes feel like to do anything good, we have to go somewhere else.

For instance, any chance I get, I'll go to an academic lecture or a

conference or, hear somebody speak.

Well, I always have to drive an hour to do those things.

In the past, I would get frustrated because I'd be like, why is, it was

almost like hard to get people to go with me sometimes because it was just

like, well, why would I go do that?

Why would you go sit and just listen to somebody talk about this for an hour?

I was like, no, it's actually a great time.

You should come experience it.

I realized kids here never grew up getting to do those kinds of things

because That was big city stuff.

And so like I'm intent upon bringing scholars here.

a few months ago we had, Joe Modamali come and speak.

that was a big deal for me because it was just like, okay, so here's

this world class New Testament theologian coming to teach us.

Coffee and standing in this coffee shop that used to be just a busted up

laundromat where people sold drugs.

And it was right across the street from element church and a few

steps away from the ATAP office.

we are trying to engage people all over the country and all over the world.

through churches one of the core things is that we want this to

benefit small town friendly.

if ATAP goes to where I think it's going to go, in a conversation about missions

and evangelism reaching the darkest places in the States, ATAP will come up in

conversation amongst Christians one day.

I want them to know it's in Forest city and in the same way that like, when I

think of, you know, Bethel or something like that, I didn't know what Redding,

California was Until I knew what Bethel was I don't know if Redding's a big

town or a small town and I could say that about a lot of things so we feel

strongly that not only do we want to engage rutherford county with the gospel

We also want to be something rutherford county can be proud of especially the

christians in rutherford county maybe one day we could have moved to Charlotte or

Atlanta and had a lot better networking opportunities and a lot more money thrown

our way and a lot more opportunities to do our mission more effectively,

While those communities are here, it's easier to find them in big cities.

Um, but we just feel, we just feel married to Rutherford County.

we feel really intent that God does want to do something big here.

in a small town and something big, not just for here, but something that could

go all over the world can start in a place that, just a few years ago was only a

few steps from being wiped off the map, I think all of us feel pretty strongly.

It's like, no, we're here.

No matter what.

Yeah.

ATAP's here to stay.

Elements here to stay.

Hope House Coffee, you know, all of those.

I remember I was sitting around the street corner in downtown Port City,

doing the Christmas lights a few years ago, and somebody came walking

by and they asked me for directions or how far it was to get there.

Like copper penny.

I was like, what do you mean?

You don't know where copper, they're not from here.

they drove in.

You aren't from here.

Oh man.

The same, like, so I've been in PI safe before and that's happened.

We're like, like a van load of, I mean, genuinely, I mean, they were tourists.

they had come off the highway, I guess.

From somewhere else and were talking about how they had come out of

their way because a friend had said.

Oh, you got to go try this bakery.

It's amazing and then stuff like the carolina arcade I take my kids there

all the time and I just look around and i'm like, you know, honestly, this would

be cool anywhere Like this is a this is a cool place so yeah, things have

certainly been changing I don't know but at the same time It's one of those things

where I feel there is still a little bit of that that hopelessness or even

especially for younger population anytime you grow up in a small town There's part

of you that wants to go somewhere else.

I just don't want the motivation for that to be a spiritual hopelessness.

The idea that this place feels dismal or bleak.

And I don't think it does.

but I also exist in this community, you know, and we wear shirts and have podcasts

that say small town, big God, you know?

So that's, that's why I think like what you're doing so great.

And then what elements been kind of doing this rallying cry, which is like,

you know, no, you don't have to leave.

To be part of big God ordained things.

And in fact, I do think God, desires more people to have that

kind of mindset in small towns.

We're about to bring this episode to a close, but there's one more thing that

we need to know from Jeremy, which is, what would he say if he could say one

thing to all of Small Town Friendly?

I recorded this episode before I started asking everyone this at the

end of our interviews, so I had to get Jeremy's answer after the fact, but

he was okay with me reading it to you.

So, here's what Jeremy has to say to you.

Rutherford County is not as reached as most people think it is.

being radically changed by the gospel.

So if you're a believer, look around at your life, and find the people who might

not look like they're lost, but are.

And however possible, Share the good news of Jesus with them.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Small Town Big God.

And if you'd like to connect with ATAP,

If you want to join the Engage network or be a part of those Engage

gatherings, you can find out more about that at allthingsallpeople.

org.

I'll have a link in the description.

Also, if you're not a part of a church,

we would love to have you at Element.

But like Jeremy said earlier, you do not have to accept my

church to accept my Christ.

We have a lot of great churches in this county.

A few of them are 2nd Baptist, Florence Baptist, Father's Vineyard,

Floyd's Creek, Adaville, 1st Baptist, West Point, Harriet Memorial.

I have some friends there who do a basketball ministry

that sounds pretty cool.

And, I mean, there's a ton more.

If I missed your church, I apologize.

There's, there's so many.

Uh, most of the ones that I just named were Baptist because Element

is Baptist and we're just more connected to other Baptist churches.

So we know those pastors a little bit better, but you don't

have to go to a Baptist church.

Anyway, I hope that's made my point and nobody's upset with me for not

naming their church, but thank you for listening to this episode and thank you

for being a part of Small Town Friendly.