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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. 

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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

• Visit his website at ⁠jaredpatrickboyd.com⁠.
• Follow him on X (Twitter): ⁠@BoydJared⁠
• Follow him on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/jaredpatrickboyd/

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

On this episode of Essential Church, Andrew and Rory sit down with Eddie Hoagland, one of the Senior Executive Pastors of New Life Church. Eddie shares different ways to approach and have difficult conversations. 

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Host: Andrew Arndt 

Co-Host: Rory Green

Guests: Eddie Hoagland

Producer: Briggs Boyd

In this episode we sit down to talk with Katelyn Beaty about her book Celebrities for Jesus—on the perils of celebrity in the evangelical world and what we can do to counteract it. 

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

My goal in writing this book was to help the church heal and better reflect the integrity and wholeness of the gospel…

I’m tired of seeing the headlines of celebrity pastors failing and the damage that does to people… I’m trying to help people see the dynamics of celebrity so that we can better guard against it…

As someone who grew up in an evangelical context and is very grateful for it, it’s important to say that we tend to be kind of pragmatic in our approach, which usually means that we’re early adopters for the use of media in sharing the gospel… 

In that milieu, celebrity has been seen as a neutral tool for sharing the gospel… if we can turn our pastor into a celebrity, maybe we can reach more people… I’m trying to argue that while celebrity an EFFECTIVE tool, it’s not a NEUTRAL tool…

The quest for celebrity and platform can (and has) shaped us from the inside out, often by drawing more attention to the celebrity than the person of Christ…

Celebrity has a way of creating distance between the person on the platform and the crowds… but as Christians we know that we’re called to live in proximity to one another… people knowing the good and the bad about us isn’t always fun, but it does lead to our flourishing… 

Celebrity is sought and garnered for its own purposes, using the tools of mass media to project an image of importance… it becomes social power without proximity… we ought to be able to know the people who are shaping us week in and week out—celebrity makes that impossible…

People who have celebrity talk about the loneliness and isolation at the top… it’s not good for us… I’m trying to caution people not to seek celebrity status… if you end up famous for doing something good—fine; but don’t seek it out…

I’m a millennial and totally get the allure of screens and the desire to build platform… one of my “checks” is asking, “How much time am I spending in front of a screen?” vs. “How much time am I spending with real people in my church?”

We need to be surrounded by people who are not impressed by me and can speak the truth in love, asking hard questions about motives… we all have blind spots, and we need those people in order to stay in the process of transformation…  

In this episode we take you to a conversation New Life Midtown’s Jayde Duncan and New Life Friday Night’s Jordan Victoria Lewis recently had with our ministry staff on the challenge of cultivating unity in the church in a culture that is very often divided over issues of race. (This conversation is based in part on a chapter in Glenn Packiam’s new book The Resilient Pastor. Order here.)

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

Unity is important because God is essentially unity… our concept of unity must be rooted in the ontological nature of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…

John 17 tells us that there is an unanswered prayer that Jesus prayed [on unity]… our posture towards one another is a nonnegotiable, it is critical to the validation of our entire message…

Unity reinforces or qualifies our witness, and division disqualifies our witness… division is the way of the world… 

I’ve had a lot of difficult and shameful experiences… I’ve sorted through a lot of that with the Lord and have sensed that this is a kingdom issue… thinking that way has enabled me to take a bird’s eye view of what’s going on… 

For me this is not just a call, but an act of spiritual warfare… if I leave, the spirit of division will think that it has won… 

The early church was radical and revolutionary in its unity because it believed that Jesus is Lord… Jesus was a new King who brought a new Kingdom… 

We need to recover the sense that King Jesus has exclusive right to ask us whatever he wants to ask us… and what he is asking us is to lay down our own perspectives for the sake of listening to the stories of brothers and sisters who are in pain…

Distance is fatal to empathy… I wish I was making up the humiliating things that have happened to me… I wish it wasn’t all true… it is a real shame when someone tells you about their experience and you tell them that it is fabricated or exaggerated… 

Over the course of many conversations, what I have come to discover is that for many black Christians, white Christians seem to want to have statistical conversations rather than lament-type conversations, which exacerbates the pain…

I can’t tell you how healing it has been to be able to call a white friend—and there are a few that I call—to carry the burden with me so that I can carry my black friends… 

In this episode we pick up the conversation on attracting strong and capable leaders by talking about just what we mean by “strong and capable”.

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

Regardless of if you’re pastoring a small rural church or a large urban church, we all need the same kinds of leaders… 

The first thing is, I am looking for leaders who will help me expand the vision… the senior pastor shouldn’t be the sole vision-carrier for the church… I want people with ideas…

I get so frustrated when leaders come to me simply to tell me that something is broken… I want leaders who see not only problems but also solutions…

I want people who are creative and innovative, and if I want that I know that I can’t make fun of bad ideas… I always tell leaders, if we shoot one messenger, we won’t get another one… 

The second thing is, I am looking for leaders who can coach others around them… many are good at their craft, but the question is, “Can you coach people in your craft?”

Coaching doesn’t mean always been punitive and corrective… it’s about helping people grow…

If I came into your area, would it be clear and organized and would everyone on your team know what it means to win…?

Lastly, I am looking for people who can carry the weight of the organization… can they take responsibility and deal with problems without involving me all the time?

This a question for all leaders… have you actually empowered your staff to lead?

If you as the senior leader have to be involved in every issue and conflict that’s happening in your church, it will wear you out… it can happen in small churches as much as in large churches…

The key to longevity and your organization growing is making sure your team feels equipped and empowered deal with issues with very little input from you…

Recently I took a trip to Central America and took a number of staff with me… I didn’t need that many folks with me, but I did it to get purposeful time with some of my staff whom I’ve empowered to carry the work with me…

In this episode, we revisit a conversation to talk about the “what” and “why” behind the launch of our Essential Church Learning Community.

Register for the Essential Church Learning Community HERE

On Feb 19-20^thof 2019 we’re launching our first Essential Church Learning Community… We want to get together with leaders who are hungry to learn in an intentional environment… to explore topics we’re all wrestling with…

In a traditional conference setting, you have one person on the stage giving their best talk… I often walk away from those with 30 questions about what I’ve heard… usually there isn’t space for that in those conferences…

There are great conferences around the country that you should go be part of, but I know there are lots of leaders who want to be at a table with men and women who are in the same stage of life where we can sharpen and shape and learn from each other…

When I was in my 30s, I had a thousand questions and I was so grateful that in that season I found gatherings much like this… at one of them, we all had 30 minutes to share our greatest concerns and fears… the advice and relationship I gained from that have lasted a lifetime…

Very often at conferences, the best ideas go back to the cars in the parking lot, because participants don’t have a space to share them…

What’s beautiful about a learning community is that you don’t give people a solution to a problem, you give people conversations around big ideas that can help them in their ministries…

The format will be plenary sessions plus lots of guided conversations around tables, with food and time for interaction…

I think one of the things we’ve discovered is that we’re trying to live in some healthy tensions: the tension of having a senior pastor PLUS a strong team approach, the tension of the energy of the charismatic PLUS the rootedness of the Tradition, the tension between growth AND discipleship… these are the kinds of conversations we’re going to have and you’re the kind of person who should be here…

In this episode, we sit down to talk about the “what” and “why” behind the launch of our Essential Church Learning Community.

 

 

https://newlifechurch.brushfire.com/events/447094

 

On Feb 19-20^thof 2019 we’re launching our first Essential Church Learning Community… We want to get together with leaders who are hungry to learn in an intentional environment… to explore topics we’re all wrestling with…

 

In a traditional conference setting, you have one person on the stage giving their best talk… I often walk away from those with 30 questions about what I’ve heard… usually there isn’t space for that in those conferences…

 

There are great conferences around the country that you should go be part of, but I know there are lots of leaders who want to be at a table with men and women who are in the same stage of life where we can sharpen and shape and learn from each other…

 

When I was in my 30s, I had a thousand questions and I was so grateful that in that season I found gatherings much like this… at one of them, we all had 30 minutes to share our greatest concerns and fears… the advice and relationship I gained from that have lasted a lifetime…

 

Very often at conferences, the best ideas go back to the cars in the parking lot, because participants don’t have a space to share them…

 

What’s beautiful about a learning community is that you don’t give people a solution to a problem, you give people conversations around big ideas that can help them in their ministries…

 

The format will be plenary sessions plus lots of guided conversations around tables, with food and time for interaction…

 

I think one of the things we’ve discovered is that we’re trying to live in some healthy tensions: the tension of having a senior pastor PLUS a strong team approach, the tension of the energy of the charismatic PLUS the rootedness of the Tradition, the tension between growth AND discipleship… these are the kinds of conversations we’re going to have and you’re the kind of person who should be here…