Lead Time
Lead Time
Has God Put a Dream on your Heart? with Pastor Matt Peeples
Do you have a dream to reach people with the gospel, but feel stuck? There is hope for you.
Join us on an incredible learning journey to discover, develop, and deploy your calling to bless the world around you with the love of Jesus!
All NEW ULC Missions Class
For a 10% off discount - use code LEADTIME10
For a 25% off discount - join our LeadTime Email List!!
Kairos Network: Missionary Pathway
Discover the transformative power of Lutheran theology with Pastor Matt Peoples as we explore the importance of adopting a missional hermeneutic to engage lost communities. We promise to equip you with insights on how the rich tenets of grace and justification can resonate deeply when contextualized thoughtfully. Guided by Matt's personal journey, we wrestle with the challenging balance between retaining essential theological elements and adapting cultural aspects. Our conversation shifts the traditional perspective, suggesting that it should be the church that adapts to the cultural landscape to truly connect with those they seek to reach.
We also spotlight equipping leaders for effective gospel sharing and delve into what makes Lutheran church planting distinctively impactful. Amidst declining church attendance, we discuss the potential for mission by meeting people where they are, addressing felt needs, and building relationships outside conventional settings. The episode highlights exciting developments within the Kairos Network and the Missionary Pathway's expansion, emphasizing the need for training everyday missionaries across diverse cultural contexts. Whether it's navigating the Bible Belt or engaging in post-Christian regions, our discussion provides practical insights for anyone passionate about the potential of Lutheran theology in today's mission work.
Join the Lead Time Newsletter! (Weekly Updates and Upcoming Episodes)
https://www.uniteleadership.org/lead-time-podcast#newsletter
Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here. Jack Kalberg has a day off, but today I get to hang out with one of my favorite people on planet Earth, pastor Matt Peoples. How you doing, matt.
Speaker 3:Oh man, I'm good, the feeling's mutual, man, the feeling's mutual.
Speaker 2:The context for the conversation today is the Unite Leadership Collective has a brand new missions class coming out and if you're not in the Kairos or Luther House community, this class is also available for you. You can go to uniteleadershiporg In the upper right-hand corner is Learning Platform and then on October 6th you'll see the missions class that's being dropped there. So would love to have as many students as possible go on this missional hermeneutic journey with us at the ULC. So let me start out with this question Matt why is a missional hermeneutic necessary for Lutherans? Thoughts there, bud.
Speaker 3:Oh man, how long do we have so 30?
Speaker 1:minutes. This is what I would say.
Speaker 3:We have an incredible gift to give. Our theology is the best theology for reaching the lost. It's why I'm Lutheran. I noticed that when we were planting churches. You know, you take the Lutheran theology, word and sacrament, you know our understanding of grace, our understanding of justification, sanctification, and you implant that in a contextual way in a community, you will reach people that many churches have a hard time reaching.
Speaker 3:The issue is, when we don't have a solid missional hermeneutic, we end up trying to bring too much in, and so the example I use is about two years ago, we stepped out of the full-time parish to go into the Kairos network and so, in order to do that, we started financing four moves on our own, and I remember that first move. I had 27 foot Penske and we're loading this thing up. I think I'm doing good and we get to the very end and I look back in the garage and there's still so much stuff that can't go. And while it's not the critical stuff, it's the stuff that has this deep significance to me the grill that my dad bought me on a father's day, the fire pit that we sat around with the kids, the old trophies and high school memories, and all that. All that kind of stuff was still in the garage and I realized in that moment, in order for us to step into this new season, that stuff wasn't able to go with us and so I had to allow myself to have a little bit of that grieving period. But I realized, if I really wanted to step out into this new spot, I couldn't bring those things with me.
Speaker 3:And I think one of the issues is we try to bring too much into the culture and the context and when we try and bring all that stuff in, we kind of sit there on the edge of the truck and we say, well, this can't go, I'm not going. And then the people that end up losing out is the community, the lost people that need that connection to Jesus and need our theological scriptural understanding in order to really connect. And the problem is we're sitting at the back of the truck going, well, if it all can't go, I'm not going. And I think we need a much better philosophy with that. We need to really sit down and say, okay, what is it that does go and allows us to contextualize without losing the core of who we are, which I think is vitally important, but realizing that that is far less than what we realize.
Speaker 2:Well, the argument is going to be, Matt, what do you leave behind? Like we're going to disagree on what gets left behind, right, and I think that's maybe in the LCMS today. Where we're struggling is what gets left behind, because I'm just going to play maybe devil's advocate as far as this is not a devilish statement at all but like, if you're going to compromise on the liturgy like I'm not going to do that many will say, Like it's all about the liturgy. I was reading an article in one of the Lutheran publications I forget which one, but it was a brother in Japan.
Speaker 2:He's a missionary in Japan and someone is going to link his name for me, but he's kind of his missionary approach. Is we're going to do traditional worship, the proper type of Lutheran worship, and that's my, that's my missional hermeneutic. Is we just do, is we just do word and sacrament? I know he's trying to engage a community, but the orientation of the entire article was toward toward that end, and I that that is one approach, right? So, yeah, Talk to someone who may say that should be our approach, Matt.
Speaker 3:Okay, two thoughts on that. Sometimes it helps to take a step back and to look at not just our tribe but tribes in general of the Christian church. And what I would say is, in my training in city to city when we're doing church plant training there, one of the most interesting things was they pointed out that the area every church planner struggles to contextualize is worship, and the reason we struggle to contextualize worship is because we tend to gravitate towards something we like or something we are reacting against. And so the idea is every church planner, every missionary, is going to struggle to contextualize in that area, and so to realize this isn't like a uniquely Lutheran thing.
Speaker 3:The other question that I really press into people is who's the missionary? Like, a missionary is somebody that goes out. They learn a culture and a context, they learn a language in order to translate the gospel to people. And the problem with taking the Lutheran worship service and saying I am going to share the Lutheran worship service and you're going to meet Jesus through that is, who are you asking to be the missionary? You're asking the lost person to be the missionary because they're called to learn your culture, your language, your way of being so they can meet Jesus and really that's backwards when it comes to mission. When it comes to mission, it is my job to learn the language, learn the culture, to be able to share the gospel in a contextual way that's honoring to the gospel, because the gospel is unchanging but the gospel contextualizes. But in order to do that, to be able to reach the lost.
Speaker 2:That's so good For people that have never heard that. You should rewind that and listen when we start with worship as the primary evangelical tool. We want those that are far from Jesus to become the missionary that is so so well said, matt. So let's press in, though, to a little, because we do have some Lutheran distinctives that we're going to keep on the moving van, right. So how?
Speaker 1:does it sound?
Speaker 2:different from a general evangelical missional hermeneutic. As we pack up and go on mission Matt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, the beautiful thing is we were already given that Augsburg, confession 7 and 8, boils it all down to Word and Sacrament. So and that is the most contextualizable bucket you could possibly have so I think that is one of our core distinctives. That has to go. The other thing that we did when we were doing our church plant, as I said, we had the things that were the non-negotiables. So in that word and sacrament there's our understanding of theology on baptism, communion, confession, absolution. Those are vital things. Also, our understanding of how we read scripture reading it through a law, gospel framework, reading it through a scripture, interpret scripture framework, reading it through justification, sanctification, being able to have those lenses and to interpret scripture that way. But then also to step into the world and say, okay, where are the challenges of the world? And then how do I help people see the truth of the word in the challenges they're experiencing in the world? And to read it from a Christ-centered lens is huge too. But I think when you're talking about those things, let's think about all the things we're not talking about. Okay, we, we had the historic creed, because that was an anchor and a grounding, and we had confession, absolution, baptism, we had communion but we had the Lord's prayer, because obviously Jesus taught them how to pray and he gave them the words of the Lord's prayer. So that's huge.
Speaker 3:But what are all the other things we didn't have? Like, that doesn't lock us into a specific worship style. It doesn't lock us into a specific worship format. It does not lock me into a specific style of preaching. I can do all those things, and I can do a five to 10 minute sermon, and I can do all those things and I can do a 45 minute sermon. I can do a sermon where I'm throwing it out and I can do a sermon where I'm inviting questions and feedback, like, and so you know, when we look at that, I just kind of get a passion about that.
Speaker 3:Sorry, but the reality is we've already created this really small contextual bucket. Our problem is we think we need so many more things in order to be distinctly Lutheran, and I think we need to realize that one of the missional advantages that we have is we have classified distinctly Lutheran into such a simple and contextualizable framework that it allows us to be distinctly Lutheran and yet diverse, and I think we need that diversity in our culture today and one of the reasons we need that. Diversity is number one. If we're asking the worship question, we're asking the wrong question when it comes to mission, because the reality is, statistically, people are not coming into our churches. So if your church is your only vehicle for reaching loss, I'm not saying it should not be a place where you reach the loss that's really important but if it's the only vehicle for reaching the lost, you are already at a loss because, statistically, barna found that even self-identified Christians, only about 38% are going to church, 14% aren't sure if they've been going to a church or sacred space and 40, whatever percent is left say they don't attend a church regularly. And that's right, in line with culture.
Speaker 3:But what you're finding in culture in a 2023 Barna study is that, whether you're looking at Gen Z all the way through boomers, what you're finding is that 75 plus percent of people believe in God or higher power, and well over 72, 73% of each generational bracket it goes up, depending on which generational bracket you're in desire to grow in their faith.
Speaker 3:So you've got this. You've got this thing where, yes, they're not coming into church, and because they're not coming into church and I teach this all the time people say, okay, well, they're not interested in Jesus. Well, no, that's not true. They're still interested in Jesus, they're still interested in the conversation. They just need you to do what Jesus did, which was actually show up where people are, meet them in the spots they are, share the truth of scripture, be in relationship which I know creates tension, but be in relationship and then allow the gospel to be shared in those places. And what you're going to find, with this highly contextualized bucket we have of Lutheran distinctives that you're actually able to take where people are going, you're going to find the church starts getting planted in all these different places and it's going to look different and diverse, but it's going to have that golden thread of the gospel word and sacrament and our understanding of grace.
Speaker 2:Dude, what I hear is there are 40% of people in our culture, give or take, that are waiting to have spiritual and we can bring Jesus into the conversation. They're hungry for it.
Speaker 3:I think right now especially over 70 percent tim.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm saying the difference between those that are in church. Those that are in church and those would love so that difference right there like yeah we'll just go if we'll just go and we'll be a place that wants to meet we at the ulc talk about felt needs all the time if we just want to like kind of meet people where they are talk about finances or their parenting or politics and bring, bring our two kingdom theology into the political conversation.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a lot of people in our community if leaders will simply go, so let's. We have a lot of leaders that listen to this podcast, right? So the the devil is in the details. Man of like I'm overwhelmed by just caring for the flock, right, yeah, I, just there's so many, so many needs and I don't even know how I would establish a rhythm of going. Uh, so where? Where do you encourage a lot of leaders to?
Speaker 3:go, go ahead, matt, go ahead. And this is the thing you hit the nail on the head. So Lifeway did a research project, and they found out that seven out of 10 Christians you know roughly 70% have never been trained in any way to share their faith, any form. And so what happens is we give the sermon on the Great Commission, on going on sharing the gospel, on sharing all these Lutheran distinctives, and we stop there with the mandate and we don't give people the equipping they need to be able to do it, and so the problem is they don't know how to do it, and one of the reasons they don't know how to do it is because, if you were to remove the pulpit and remove the Bible study class, most of us don't know how to do it either, and so what we need to do is we need to take a step back.
Speaker 3:We need to use all that energy that we waste on what a Lutheran service is supposed to look like, and all that energy we waste on whether somebody is contemporary or traditional, and we need to take that, and we need to pour it into actually training people how to share faith, how to make a disciple in context, which will also make them stronger in the context of church, by the way, and we need to focus our energy on doing that.
Speaker 3:And if we don't know how to do that, we need to ourselves walk through a process where we learn how to do that. And the amazing thing is we've spent the last two years walking people through processes like this and the amazing thing about it is what you start to realize is it doesn't matter what my worship style is. I was hanging out with a guy at the Florida Georgia pastors conference who does a gravitates toward a very traditional style of worship and he was just raving about the training that we do missionary pathway to help equip everyday leaders, and he was just sharing with his leaders how important this is and how much it's helping them in mission. And one of the reasons it's helping is because we pulled worship off the table and we said let's just talk about how you share these things in the community where people are going, because at the end of the day, I have even recognized in myself worship is a preference.
Speaker 3:I prefer a certain style of worship over another style of worship and I gravitate toward that. My family gravitates toward that. But that's not about right or wrong, and the problem is we've turned that into right or wrong and we've allowed that to be the conversation instead of saying what would it look like for us to share our gift. The other big problem that we've run into is fear. We are so afraid that if we take this gospel out and we share it in the community, we might break it. We kind of treat the gospel like a brand new parent treats a baby in the sense of like it's so fragile it'll break by the time you have your third kid not as fragile as I thought.
Speaker 3:I watched my middle son in the backyard trying to do front flips running, doing a front flip, landing straight on his back, doing it over and over until finally I went out in the yard and said you are hurting me, you need to stop. That's how rigid and strong the gospel is. We need to treat the gospel like I treat my middle son, which is like you want to go for it, go for it. Chances are, you're not going to break, okay, god? God protects the gospel. It's our job to share the gospel.
Speaker 2:Ah, matt, it's so good, and this is the way of Jesus. This is the way of Jesus. I, I, uh, I'm going to have Chad Lakees on soon, um how the light shines through is a new book, a new book that he wrote, um, and we're going to do a two-part episode.
Speaker 2:There is so much golden in the hills of that book, man so nails. He goes off for a chapter on how Jesus never put um issues ahead of relationship. Right, and you can go through the Bible. You're like oh yeah, zacchaeus. Oh yeah, the woman at the well. Oh yeah, the woman caught in adultery. Oh yeah, nick at night, nicodemus, and yeah, I mean over and over there's all sorts of issues and so can we, even in the LCMS, start to talk about one another like well, and come to places that's what I love about your story in Florida, georgia, just come to places. Of agreement on the gospel must get into the ears and hearts and I'm going to trust you in your respective context. I pray you trust me, but at the end of the day, we can't let our little issues get in the way of relationship and unity within the church and we can't then let those issues that are in culture, in the secular culture, get in the way of going to people who are lost, who are worshiping all sorts of idols, just like I'm prone to, and bringing the word of love and care centered in the person and work and way of Jesus Like can we do that? This is what Jesus invited us into, and it's why the early church exploded like it did.
Speaker 2:Matt there was. Jesus took the training wheels off and sent the Holy Spirit and said you're going to, you're going to stay up, you're going to continue to go. Is it going to be messy? Is it going to be hard? Is it going to be difficult? Is it moves from Jew to Gentile? Absolutely, but this isn't about you, like, get off the throne. This is about me and my work, and I have chosen to use you fragile vessels to carry that, that message, out into the world. God has to get all of his kids back, and he chooses to use messy little us right To accomplish his work. Anything more, though, on the way of Jesus in the early church.
Speaker 3:I would say you hit the nail. You hit the nail on the head with that high trust. Like Jesus, jesus poured high trust into his disciples. If you read through the gospels and you look at how quickly Jesus sent his disciples out, like we wouldn't do that, like we would not have sent them out as quickly as Jesus did. But Jesus trusted in his disciples, he trusted in the message and he trusted in the fact that they were going to come back and he was going to get a chance.
Speaker 3:To debrief, the other thing is Jesus. Jesus took people where they were and move them forward, and I think a missional hermeneutic in a post-Christian culture demands that, like we have, we have to. If you need to grieve, grieve. We have to just realize the days of the church being at the center of culture and people pretending that everything they believe lined up with the, with the things that we believe in the church. That's over. We're out of Jerusalem, we're in Babylon. We need to realize that and we need to operate the way they operated there. We need to love people where they're at. We need to allow the spirit to move them forward. We need to be willing to be in relationship with people that we do not agree with, which I know culturally, even outside the church, is hard. But if we're going to be in a missional hermeneutic, we have to be willing to do that. We have to love people that are not like us and we have to be willing to navigate that tension. And it does create a tension. Like I have different conversations with my kids because of the people that we choose to love and have in our life and be in relationship with, and but those conversations are discipling conversations I get to have with my kids and it's teaching them how to navigate a post-Christian culture. Cause the reality is, if we keep bickering and fighting about these silly things, instead of stepping into a missional hermeneutic, instead of teaching our church, people in our churches how to navigate this culture and navigate these relationships in a savvy and authentic way, like we're going to rob our kids of the ability to have a resilient faith.
Speaker 3:Because I've lived in Bible belt, tennessee and I have lived in post-Christian New Jersey and I now live in the Midwest and I can tell you this each culture and context is different, which is why the high trusting you're talking about is so important. You can't create a McDonald's style missional ecclesiology and hermeneutic. It's not going to work the same in St Louis as it did in New Jersey, as it did in Knoxville. The challenges are different, the people are different and there are universal principles that transcend culture, which is what we need to really be pouring into people, but we also need to be pouring in just trust and the reality that, like we're going to hold each other accountable, but we need to focus more on trust, because I think we've overemphasized the accountability and we've forgotten that God is going to ultimately hold us accountable and like he stares deeper into the heart than we can, and so we need to give each other grace and trust, definitely if somebody's veering off, to call him, but to realize that we need to ask a lot more questions before we determine if somebody's veering off, and we need to be willing to do that person to person and not just.
Speaker 3:I saw you say this on a video, so I'm going to blast out an email or I'm going to call my DP and have him talk to you. It's like come on, let's trust each other, let's realize we're in this together.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you mentioned St Louis, Matt. What do you love about your community context right now in St Louis? What's hard or surprising about doing ministry and life in St Louis?
Speaker 3:Man, you know, okay. So here's. Here's the thing that's interesting. Like most people would think, I'm in St Louis for a different reason. Um, I'm in St Louis cause I grew up in Kansas city and my brother married a girl who's three generations from St Louis and she said, when we have kids we will be back around there. And then my parents ended up moving here about six months before we did and we were doing this translocal ministry and we're like oh wait, a second, we can live anywhere. And so we chose it because it had a better cost of living.
Speaker 3:It was around family and what I learned from that experience was there are certain places that certain people are uniquely wired to thrive, and I've had the honor of getting to be in a few places where I felt uniquely wired to thrive, and this is one of them, because St Louis is very familial. So if you're coming from the outside in, it can be very hard to connect because you're three, four generations in. So if you don't have a family connection, it becomes really hard to connect with people in St Louis because you don't have that kind of strong area. The other thing that really surprised me was everybody assumes St Louis is going to be this super political you know place in our tribe to try and do ministry, and there are some just amazing missional things happening out here and some guys that are just doing incredible work in the city and really the political side. I don't feel that much and I think what I learned was I feel that as much as I choose to feel that. So if you don't want to feel that, then don't pour extra time and attention into it. Like you know, focus on the things God's given you to do and do them and realize he's given you a great gift in Lutheran theology to do them. So just focus on doing them and don't wait for somebody to give you permission.
Speaker 3:I think oftentimes and this is what I learned, not just from St Louis, but Lutheran church in general we oftentimes don't do things because we're worried about what somebody might think True, and I'm like that's, that's a terrible reason. Like we, we should care more about the lost people around us than we do. What's somebody who has, uh, some kind of you know online profile and wants to throw it out there and they might get upset? I'm like you know what the reality is. If you're doing mission, somebody's going to be upset about it. Devil's certainly be upset about it. So are you going to not do mission, cause he might get upset? Are you going to not do mission because somebody who might not understand it as much and maybe hasn't poured into that as much is going to get upset? Or are you going to put your focus and your attention on the lost and discipling those to live out what Jesus clearly commanded them to do, which was to go and make disciples, you know to be a light to the world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Hmm, so good, hey, let's promo what God's doing in the Kairos Network for you. It's kind of confusing whenever you talk Kairos, right there's Kairos University and then you got Kairos Network and you started the Kairos Network. We've been affiliated with. Kairos University now for some time. So talk about what God's doing in the Kairos Network and Missionary Pathway.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been crazy. So we watched it grow. I learned a ton. Essentially, I learned what the flywheel of discipleship looks like. So we started with 18 people in two cohorts and by that was September 2022. By December of 23, we had 350 in 8 countries. By January 24, we had 450 in 12 countries. By February 25, we had 550. Now we're right around 800. So it kind of goes in this fun ebb and flow.
Speaker 3:And the thing I'm super excited about is my passion has always been church planting and so training everyday missionaries. Like you would a church planter, but now we have a cohort of 10 church planters around the country that have gathered together to learn how to become church plant training centers and so by January, we hope to have five to 10 training centers around the country that will train missional leaders for the church, that will train new church planters who will plant Lutheran gospel-centered churches in communities in contextual ways. So, like, crazy excited about that. And we've seen a real impact in actual staff teams that have walked through missionary pathway together and are now able to be more intentional in their disciple making in every area of their ministry. Um, so that's been really cool, um, to get to pour into that.
Speaker 2:Proud of you and what the Lord has done. You've blessed us here at Christ Greenfield and it's an honor to partner with you through the ULC. If people want to connect with your work and join the missionary pathway journey, how can they do so?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can check out thekairosnetworkcom or you can email me, matt M-A-T-T at thekairosnetworkcom and you'll find out about Missionary Pathway on there and a bunch of other training resources that we've got to really help you dig into mission. And then my encouragement too is and this is like it's so fun to be partnered with you guys and Kairos university and the stuff that you're doing and I'll oftentimes hear okay, well, how are you different from this person or this person?
Speaker 3:And the reality is like you've heard the numbers like the problem is so big and the reality is like you've heard the numbers, Like the problem is is so big and the need is so great that I don't care whether you do PLI or joining Jesus, or five, two or, or you all see, or you do some kind of crazy mix of everything like together, Like if you're learning how to share the gospel, like I celebrate that because we need more and more people learning how to do that.
Speaker 2:Amen, that's it. We are united on getting the gospel into as many years as possible and you know there are going to be different approaches and I think difference is great. Like we're, probably slightly we lean. I don't think we're imbalanced per se, but there's a fair amount of theology that is being learned, lutheran theology with a missional hermeneutic that's being learned in our kind of network in partnership with Luther House of Studies etc. And we also, when the rubber hits the road man, we need more missionaries and then future pastors with a missionary heart starting churches that start churches. We agree on the multiplying need right now in the US and across the world. You will be my witnesses Judea, jerusalem, judea, samaria, to the ends of the earth. So this is still our call and there's just going to be different approaches and I celebrate that.
Speaker 2:I pray that other leaders in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod would celebrate that and that we would all just have this humble posture that we want to learn what is God doing in your network, what's God doing in your network, and that we'd celebrate where God is at work. Because at the end of the day, man, we all signed on to the same confession. Right, there's no difference. We signed on to the Lutheran confessions, which are a true exposition of the Word of God, and we simply believe Lutheran theology needs to permeate our culture today, now more than ever.
Speaker 2:The tension filled, law, gospel based, balanced I mean just as it works. It works. I don't know how else to say it because I'm in so many conversations. I get to teach. Maybe last point here I get to teach. Maybe last last point here I get to to teach a whole 60 young men and coaches every single thursday before a friday night football game. Um, and last week, last week, we looked at the book of james luther says it's a, it's a gospel of straw right, which is still needed right, and so I gotta I gotta do.
Speaker 2:I gotta do a Lutheran uh whole class, hour long class on on faith and works and basically a Lutheran understanding of of faith and works. And and my evangelical brothers were like oh, this is really good, you know. So it even, it even works to unite us across, the across the faith, you know, across the evangelical Christian landscape. So anyway, I'm just praying for more openness rather than a closed mindset, Go ahead Matt.
Speaker 3:You've got to mention. You guys are getting ready to launch a missional hermeneutic course that people can plug into.
Speaker 2:October 6th. It's being released.
Speaker 3:Share more of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just going to be great we're going to. All of scripture is God's love story to get his lost kids back right? And so we're going to walk through the six acts of scripture, from creation to rebellion, to promise to Jesus, the center point of all of scripture, to the sending of the church, to the restoration of all things when Jesus returns to make all things new. If you don't have that kind of missional hermeneutic on those kind of six acts and a shout out to Mike Goheen and other missiologists Bob Newton, others who have contributed epically in that space we're taking some of that and then a lot of. I wrote a fair amount on the mission of God and our need for pastors in collaboration and churches in collaboration to accomplish that mission by the Spirit's power. I did a fair amount of work on that on my doctorate, so it's taken a lot of that in a six-week class that we'd love to have as many leaders, learners jump on board.
Speaker 2:You can go to uniteleadershiporg Again, hit the learning platform in the upper right-hand corner and you'll have free access to the first set of classes that are available. There are a whole bunch. It's basically flip classroom. It's Thinkific. It's using a similar platform. You use Thinkific, right, matt?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we use Thinkific too. Yeah, it's a major, a major driver, and one of the reasons I love it is the stuff that you guys are releasing. The stuff that we've got is what I've learned over the last couple of years when it comes to discipleship and training people to go out. 80% of it is just me putting it in my schedule and the other 20% is just having a plan, and so, if you all are willing to put it in your schedule, steal one of the plans that we have. Actually, it's not stealing because we're giving it, we're giving it away, we're putting it out there for you. Grab one of those, and that's all you need there for you. Grab one of those and that's all you need, and what you're going to find is it may be a little slower than you think, but that discipleship wheel is going to start turning. Just put it in your calendar. Have a simple plan. Doesn't have to be a perfect plan, but if you do that, you will see your church starting to move more toward mission.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. This is so much fun, matt. You're a gift to me. Thank you for your. When I send the email and say, hey, can you get on and talk about Jesus and mission with me? You say you say yes, and we'll continue. We'll continue to partner together. Man, I'm so excited about what the Lord is doing and I believe the best days for our churches and I pray for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod are out in front of us. If we have that sort of mission posture, god is on a mission to get all of his lost kids back and he has a church to accomplish that mission. Let's be a part of it. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day.
Speaker 2:This is Lead Time. Sharing is caring, like subscribe, comment, wherever it is you take in conversations like this, and I pray that the outcome of this conversation, as you listen to Matt and I talk, is joy and then urgency. Joy and urgency to share the gospel with the people right in front of you in all of our various vocations, and that would be amazing to see the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod come alive toward that end. Jesus loves you very, very much. Thank you, matt. Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3:Dude thank you.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.