Author: esschurch

Episode 165: A Conversation with Jared Patrick Boyd

On this episodes hosts Andrew Arndt and Daniel Grothe have a conversation with Jared Patrick Boyd, a pastor, spiritual director, and founding director of the Order of the Common Life. In this conversation, the trio dive into Jared’s complex origin story of church and the Christian ‘story.,’ as well as the topic of Christian deconstruction — and how a study of theology and contemplative prayer brought him back to a deeper need for the love of God. 

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to stay connected with us throughout the week!

Host: Andrew Arndt

Co-Host: Daniel Grothe

Guest: Jared Patrick Boyd (see below for info on Jared’s upcoming book)

BOOK: Finding Freedom in Constraint

BOOK INFO: ⁠https://www.ivpress.com/finding-freedom-in-constraint⁠

PRESS KIT: ⁠https://www.ivpress.com/Media/Default/Press-Kits/A0431-press.pdf⁠

EXCERPT: ⁠https://www.ivpress.com/Media/Default/Downloads/Excerpts-and-Samples/A0431-excerpt.pdf⁠

Episode 164: A Conversation with Ian Simkins

On this episode of Essential Church, Andrew and Daniel sit down with Pastor Ian Simkins who joins us from Nashville. They discuss pastoring and how storytelling can shape how we pastor. 

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to stay connected with us throughout the week!

Host: Andrew Arndt 

Co-Host: Daniel Grothe

Guests: Ian Simkins

Producer: Briggs Boyd

Episode 104: The Pastor and the Worship Leader: 5 Battles

In this episode we take you to a conversation between Pastor Brady and Pastor Jon Egan at our recent Essential Church Learning Community on the relationship between the senior pastor and the worship leader.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to stay connected with us throughout the week!

I firmly believe that this is one of the most vulnerable relationships in the church… it’s an area where the enemy attacks… the key for Pastor Brady and I is understanding that we have different personalities…

If you do not like conflict, you can’t lead… leadership requires conflict… conflict is where the best ideas come from…

I believe that there is an ordained leader to lead the church and that it is not the worship leader… I think the senior pastor is the worship pastor of the church… deciding that early makes things a lot simpler…

Most of the major conflict in the church is just the accumulation of minor aggravations that went unsaid… but if you’ll speak out on the minor issues, you’ll have very few major issues…

One of the things that’s helpful is that you want your worship pastors to feel like they have ownership over the process of choosing songs, but they have to be willing to submit it…

Another battle is the battle for the clock… we shouldn’t go long just because we haven’t prepared… a lot of worship can happen if everyone comes ready…

I grew up in a tradition where 20-minute worship sets felt like a joke… it was a great lesson to realize that every minute, every breath, can truly count…

A lot of the wasted time in worship is not the songs, but the transitional moments that aren’t prepared… if you’re not prepared, you’ll start rambling…

All of us need words of affirmation, but we all need to wrestle with whether we need inordinate amounts of affirmation in order to do our job… how much of the spotlight do any of us really need? 

People are coming to church when their whole world is being turned upside down… people need to know that church is predictable, stable, and safe… and sound and lights can help with that…

This is a highly relational environment, and there needs to be as much relationship as possible between the senior pastor and the worship leader… I don’t just see Jon as a gifted musician and singer… the first thing I see is a remarkable person who I enjoy as my friend and who happens to be my worship leader…

New Resource: Roman’s Preaching Guide

Hey Essential Church friends—

 

We’re really excited to share with you a resource we’ve developed.

 

Last fall our teaching team at New Life preached through the entire book of Romans. It was a thrilling and incredibly enriching experience that left both our congregation and our teaching team edified.

 

To guide us as a team on our journey, we created the Romans Preacher’s Guide; which we’re now making available to you on Amazon.

 

The guide includes:

  • A short historical and theological overview of the book of Romans
  • Big “preaching themes” to keep in mind
  • Reflections and suggested “preaching pathways” on each chapter
  • A short list of recommended resources

 

The Preacher’s Guide is available in electronic format for $6.99 or in paperback for $7.99. If you’re planning on or even considering preaching through the book of Romans (or even just working through it in an adult education or Sunday school class), go ahead and pick it up. We think it will be a big help to you.

 

And, of course, we’d love any feedback you can give. You can email aarndt@newlifechurch.org.

 

Grace to you,

 

Andrew Arndt

Associate Teaching Pastor

New Life Church

Episode 033: Drawing the Best Out of Your Team

For this conversation, we were joined by Ted Egly from the Center for Creative Leadership to talk about what leaders can do to get the best out of the teams and organizations they lead.

 

The research says that a high-performing team has three things: they celebrate wins early, they slow down in order to power up, and they are willing to change…

 

In my experience, the celebrations that are most powerful are the ones that affirm or encourage those who are actually moving the mission forward…

 

This really means that pastors have to be mindful of what is happening in their ministries… sometimes when the church gets to a certain size, ministry leaders lose a sense of what is going on…

 

We need to give ourselves white space [in our schedules] to slow down in order to be more intentional about what we’re doing…

 

Routines and rituals are all about being intentional about the script that you’re writing for your week, month, and year… you need to set them up so that you’re not just pulled by the emergency of the day…

 

I tell pastors all the time that if they’re preaching every Sunday, it’s a mistake… it’s hard to be creative that often… I use my weeks off to do exactly what we’re talking about: planning, leadership development, etc.…

 

We’re married to the mission, but we date the model… the model is going to change… sometimes we get stuck in a model that used to work…

 

The pain of staying the same has to be greater [for you] than the pain of changing… pastors need to make assess whether the pain that comes from change is worth it… a lot of times for pastors, the perceived pain is greater than the actual pain of the change… usually, it brings relief to the organization…

 

We can prepare people for the changes that are coming by having the conversation early with a core group of influencers and letting them speak into the process…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Assess yourself: which of Ted’s three elements of a high-performing team do you think you and your team are best at? Why did you give that answer?
  • Which of the three do you need the most improvement at? Why do you think that?
  • What is one thing you can begin to do this week or month that will help your team perform at a higher level?

Episode 032: Prayer, Unity, and the Kingdom. A Conversation with Pete Greig

In this conversation, we were joined by Pete Greig to talk about the role and purpose of prayer in the local church and how we can contend for unity and revival within the Church. We were so encouraged by the stories of bridge-building that are unfolding through the 24-7 prayer movement and we hope that it blesses you.

 

Every transformational movement of the church through history has begun with a movement of prayer…

 

We’re experiencing around the world an unprecedented coming together of the Body of Christ in our lifetimes… we’re facing profound challenges and we need each other and we’re long past thinking that one tradition, approach, or celebrity Christian leader is going to have all the answers…

 

It is in the present that Christians are worst at finding God… if prayer means anything at all, it means that we learn to encounter God in our present circumstance… and until we can find God in the present, we will never find him anywhere else…

 

I am praying for revival more than ever, but I am wary of revivalism… not only does revivalism keep Christians immature, but it is blasphemous insofar as it refuses to worship Jesus Christ as he is manifest in our present reality…

 

Prayer is not so much an activity of the church as it is the very heartbeat of the church… we don’t pray to get people saved, we get people saved so that they can pray…

 

I pray for the church in America with a great deal of gratitude but also pain… the blessing of America to the nations is beyond calculation… but the pain is that I see such division and I am deeply concerned…

 

The church’s prophetic voice must be based in the revelation that God is a reconciling God… and so when I see profound divisions around race and class and wealth and politics, it breaks my heart… my prayer for the church in America is for reconciliation…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • What most stood out to you about Pete’s comments and why?
  • Is prayer the “heartbeat” of your church, or just one of the things that happens? How can you begin to change this?
  • What would it look like for you and your ministry to move towards greater reconciliation and unity within the Body of Christ in your area? How can prayer be a stimulus to that end?

 

RESOURCES

Pete’s books, including Red Moon Rising, God on Mute, and his most recent, Dirty Glory, are all available on Amazon.

Watch a short film about Pete’s Vision

Episode 031: Developing a Discipleship Culture

Before His ascension, Jesus gave a Great Commission: to go and make disciples. In this essential conversation, we talk about how discipleship happens and what it looks like for us to help people become disciples of Jesus. Join in as we discuss what the long journey of discipleship unfolds in the lives of the people around us.

 

To me, discipleship is becoming cruciform, becoming like the One who spread his arms out on a tree… you know you’re becoming a disciple when you’re learning to lay down your life in the journey to be like Jesus…

 

Discipleship happens painfully slowly, it happens over conversations and meals… that’s why you have to pace yourself… it’s a long obedience in the same direction… if you’re trying to get everything fixed in six weeks, you’re going to be disappointed…

 

One of the things we’ve gotten wrong in the American paradigm is that we’ve made this a solo project, discipleship becomes a do-it-yourself kind of thing… and it really just doesn’t happen that way…

 

If you pay attention to what Jesus was doing, he was always telling people to “come and follow me…” it has be relational… for all of us, we need to put ourselves in spots where we can do “come and follow me…”

 

I can’t call everyone into the depths of my life as a pastor, but one of the things I can do, maybe my principle task, is to create the right kinds of conditions where the Spirit can do what the Spirit characteristically does…

 

At some point, all of us as pastors have to think about how we’re multiplying our ministry… and not in the American business sense, but in the sense of investing in people who will become disciple-makers…

 

The corporate worship gatherings are absolutely part of discipleship… it’s never been easier to show up to church and hide… I want to lead my gatherings in a way that makes people bump into each other in ways that make discipleship possible…

 

Is the goal of discipleship for people to look like me, or to look like Jesus? We need to be able to distinguish between what is just personal preference and what is Jesus…

 

In the New Testament, what you see is the Apostles speaking to the whole people of God together… they assume that the living Christ himself is discipling all of them, together, through all the instantiations of the church’s life…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Think for a minute: how do you and your team describe the “bullseye” of discipleship?
  • What kinds of “seedbeds” or environments have you created to help people grow into the stature of Christ? Are they sufficient to the task? Why or why not?
  • How much of your ministry is devoted to making disciples who will make disciples? What can you do to grow in this?

 

Episode 030: The Life of the Preacher

Have you ever had a week where you feel like you should just pack up your study and give up preaching altogether? It was a week like that for Pastor Daniel Grothe that sparked this conversation about The Life of the Preacher. Listen in as we talk about what we find at the core of the calling to preach the Word of God.

10 Things I’ve Learned As A Preacher by Daniel Grothe_ Essential Church Podcast

 

Preaching is simultaneously the most joyful and maddening work I could ever do… we all have a little Jeremiah in our bones: “Who am I?”…

On paper we would all say, “Well of course the life of a preacher is a life of prayer…” but on a busy week, what people typically do is white-knuckle it trying to crank content out, forgetting that prayer is probably our best play…

There’s a difference between exegeting a text and discerning what the Spirit wants to do in this moment with these people right here, right now… I’m always saying, “Lord, who is this for? What is the pulse of this moment?”

When you preach to your congregation, that should come out of your life with these people… there shouldn’t be a disconnect between your life with them in the coffee shop and your preaching to them…

A story has a way of sneaking behind people’s defense mechanisms, and if Jesus is the consummate storyteller, then it’s okay for us…

There’s a profound element of mystery that not enough preachers appreciate, and so we fill in the mystery with talent, expertise, more stories, content, etc., and it becomes an anxious space…

For me, before I preach, the thing that I must do is quiet the space [of my heart]… I find a quiet place and say, “Come, Holy Spirit…” I need to clear the mechanism so that the Spirit can quiet me… if I go up there with all that anxious energy and I haven’t quieted myself, something’s not right…

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM
1) Which of Daniel’s 10 things resonated most with you and why?
2) What does it look like for you to have your messages grow up out of the soil of a healthy life lived in authentic community?
3) Which of these 10 things was most challenging to you and why? Where do you need to grow?

Episode 029: Doing Ministry in a Secular Age

When Jesus told his followers to make disciples in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and all the ends of the earth, he meant that the gospel should be brought to people where they are and in their contexts. So how do we as pastors and leaders bring the gospel to our neighbors in today’s secular age? We talk about it in this week’s essential conversation.

Episode 029 – SHOW NOTES – Doing Ministry in a Secular Age

 

One of my favorite metaphors is to think of the world as like an arena with a retractable roof, where the roof closes and no one really cares… everyone is so consumed with their own life that whether or not there is a God is kind of irrelevant…

 

The new situation makes you learn to say [the gospel] afresh… we’re having to learn how to tell the Story to people who are living in a new situation, but have the same hungers…

 

It’s almost like we’re in an Acts 17 moment… in the collapse of the marriage between Christianity and the culture, there’s a fresh opportunity to stand in the marketplace of ideas and tell people, “God raised Jesus from the dead—what do you think about that?”

 

Today’s climate is such that all belief is contested, and so in one sense we’ve gone to a pre-Christian culture, and in another sense we’ve “evolved” past it… people want the Jesus values without the Jesus claim…

 

We have to get better as pastors and leaders to say to people, “You’re going to serve somebody; you’re going to choose a cross somewhere…and only Jesus says ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light…’”

 

The ministry of hospitality is one of the best gifts the church gives to the world… in a secular age, we need to be ones who open our doors and hearts and we host people and let the kingdom unfold so that people say, “This is where I need to be…”

 

Beauty is a great way of thinking about how the church can be at its best here… a Rembrandt painting doesn’t need to explain itself to you… it has a way of communicating itself to you and drawing you into it… the church needs to think about its own life that way… let people see!

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • How aware are you and your team about the rising tide of secularism in terms of your ministry process (planning, messaging, programming)? Does it figure at all in your ministry? Why or why not?
  • How would you describe your strategy for equipping your flock to live faithfully and hospitably within our secular age?
  • What can you do to help your congregation see the opportunities of living in this moment?

 

RESOURCES

James. K. A. Smith has written a dense but really helpful summary the new “secular” moment we’re living in called How (Not) To Be Secular. Check it out.

Episode 028: Singing Our Hope

What happens when we worship? How do we select songs for congregational worship that instill hope? In this conversation, Dr. Glenn Packiam talks about what he learned as he researched the expression and experience of hope in our worship.

SHOW NOTES – Episode 028 – Singing our Hope

 

The thing that was most surprising to me in my research was how little the songs dealt with the future… we don’t sing about the future (or the past) all that much… it concerned me that songs about hope had no future orientation…

 

It might be that the spirit of the age is one of the reasons why we don’t sing about the future all that much… it’s a luxury to sing about the present tense when the present is pretty good…

 

There’s a challenge here for pastors and worship leaders to help people see their felt needs in terms of the great need of our lives, which is the hope of Christ…

 

The Holy Spirit is the experience of God’s presence, and many would say that the Spirit is God’s future presence in the now… which is why people who experience the Holy Spirit feel hopeful [regardless of the song lyrics]…

 

Only on paper can you distinguish between hope and comfort… when people say “I feel hope,” what they’re saying is “I have a sense of God’s presence with me”… theologically we’re saying, “The Holy Spirit, who is the deposit of the future—you’re having a taste of him now…”

 

The good songs are not just songs that are true this month… I think we address the realities of our day better by singing about something that transcends our day… it’s great to sing about our present pain, but there’s something about the church coming together to sing about something quite a bit better, higher, and stronger…

 

One of the things we’ve challenged worship leaders and writers with is not just thinking of theology as the fence but as the doorway…

 

I hope that what worship leaders and songwriters hear is that what they’re doing is incredibly powerful and the Holy Spirit breathes on it, so let’s allow him to make our craft the very best it can be… when he breathes on that, how much more could it do?

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Look at your worship set lists from the last 8 weeks. How many of the songs speak of the future hope of Christ? What do you think that says?
  • What are you doing to create space for people to experience the presence of the Spirit in your worship services?
  • What can you do to help your congregants fix the concerns of their lives in the future hope of Christ?

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