#214 | Working from the Inside Out with Jeff Haanen, Pt. 1

The gospel is the good news of what God has done. Culture is where we find ourselves, and vocation is our response in this moment, in this time, to what God has done and to what he's summoning us to.

It's a response to God's voice in all areas of life. So we have to think about how do people live their life?

Where, what are they thinking, what are they feeling, what is the practicalities of everything from what I was saying, driving kids to soccer to working in healthcare to my community. We actually have to think about what is the shape of Christian mission in all those contexts.

It's watering time, everybody. It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast.

To saturate your faith with the things.

Of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and.

I am your host.

And today we're having another one of our.

Deep conversations.

How does our Sunday interact with our Monday? How does what we hear on Sunday morning affect how we live in the 9 to 5 Monday through Friday? Because life is messy and it can be very confusing.

And I know that I've talked to.

So many different people.

They say, you know, I think it's.

Great what we hear on Sunday morning.

But it really doesn't affect my 9 to 5.

I've heard other Christians say to justify themselves on why they've done this business deal the way that they have, in a very backhanded or underhanded way. And they say it's just business, as if their Monday through Friday is separate than their Sunday.

And I know in talking to many of you out there that are living in the 9 to 5 world, whether it's in a professional class job or a working class job, whether you're in the trades, whether you're in an office space, whether you are working, you're a weekender, whatever it might be.

I know that there are times where.

You hear in your church on Sunday stuff that you're like that doesn't fly on Monday through Friday.

As a matter of fact, I actually wonder if my pastor is living in.

The same world that I'm living in now.

If you're a leader out there, I want to encourage you because you need to know what your people are facing in the 9 to 5 and you need to be able to speak to that. I've even heard some say that they should invite their pastor to work day.

So that their pastor might be able.

To understand the world that they live in, the pressures that they experience, the Temptations that are all around them. I think we need to actually recover a good theology of work itself.

You know, churches talk a lot in the generalities of salvation and we need to do that.

But we need to get into the nine to five, the crux of our everyday lives where it's messy, where we live, where we go about our relationships with customers, with clients, with bosses and that kind of thing.

Because if we're not doing work the way that God intended it to be, we will become malformed and we will be unable to fulfill the mission that Christ has called us to today. I'm very excited about this conversation that we're going to have. It's with Jeff Hanan.

Jeff Hanan is the founder of the Denver Faith and Work Institute and he.

Is the author of the soon to.

Be released book Inside Out, A Brief Guide to Inner Work that Transforms Our Outer World. I am very excited for you to hear this conversation for a couple of reasons.

The first is that over the last year we have been working very hard to refine the way that we talk about our mission. We've been processing how we can better help the church to be the church, wherever the church may be.

And I'm not talking about the assembled gathering of believers. I'm talking about you, the individual Christian where you are, as well as you, the leader that are leading these groups of people.

Because we want to be able to help you fulfill what God has called you to do. That's it. We want to do more than just simply have interesting conversations and ideas for you.

We want to help you to take the important ideas that we're talking about and translate them to your day to day life, to rethink the greatness of God, the scope of his mission, where you are, and then reimagine your identity as an individual believer created in his image and called into his church and then redeployed as the Body of Christ.

Pursuing his kingdom and the power of.

The Holy Spirit in all of your life, including your work life. This conversation with Jeff exemplifies our mission. He offers wisdom and a challenge to every single one of us.

He makes us to rethink the way that we've looked at some things and then reimagine how to live our mission so that we can be deployed in the way that God wants us to be. And. And that's all for God's glory and honestly, our good. So listen in to my conversation with Jeff Hanan as we talk about our work. Happy listening.

Jeff Hanan, welcome to Apollo's Water.

Yeah. Great to be here, Travis.

I am super excited to have this conversation that we're going to be talking about some of my favorite stuff today. We're talking about culture, we're talking about work, talking about God, but we're also talking about my guy, Nez. Leslie Newbegin.

But before we get to that, are you ready for the fast five?

I'm ready. Give it to me.

Okay, number one, because you are from Minnesota, which is school in Indiana, but you've been in Colorado for the last 20 years. The best thing about living in Colorado is what and why.

Oh, hiking in the fall when the aspen leaves are turning yellow. Beautiful.

Oh, that is absolutely beautiful. I've been there for that. Oh, it's so pretty.

Yeah, it's amazing.

I'm in Florida. It never changes.

So that's. I'd also say no mosquitoes for coming from Minnesota. Like, the lack of bugs here is just a game changer in Colorado.

So for all you that want to, you know, move out, this is where. The land of no bugs. It's a little dry, but there's some real benefits.

But Minnesota is like labor and delivery for the United States mosquito population.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

Okay.

From being from Minnesota, but you went to school at Valparaiso University, a school that I have a little bit of fondness for. So I'm going to ask you this because you mentioned that you were a hoops fan in the beginning of your. In your book, if I remember correctly.

So the best basketball player to ever play at Valparaiso University is Bryce Drew. I knew it. I knew you were gonna say him.

Yeah.

And the shot.

Golden age. There was a golden age. And that's actually. That was when I was looking for colleges when I was 17. I'm like, wow, who are those people? And I want to.

I want to be a part of that.

That was the shot. I still can remember that. I mean, he's coaching now. Grand Canyon University in Arizona. Yeah.

Yeah, that was a shot against Ole Miss. That great Sweet 16 shot.

Oh, that was a great shot.

All right, here we go. Number three. The best restaurant in Denver is what, where, and why.

Oh, that's a great question. I have a handful of answers, but I'll say one. A little cafe in Littleton, Colorado, called Cafe Terracotta. It's in a house. A friend owns it.

It is beautiful, it is small, and it lends itself to good conversation, which I love. So if you're ever in Colorado, come to Cafe Terracotta in Littleton. It's quaint and gorgeous.

Cafe Terracotta. What's the. What's the genre? I mean, the menu.

No, it's. Yeah. I mean, American bistro. Yeah. But it's. It's just outstanding. Yeah, it's the environment.

You know, I'm a guy that just likes a good conversation, so if you get the right environment, I can be happy with lots of different kinds of foods. That's my personal melody. So there's actually a very significant foodie culture out here though, as well.

And if anybody listening to this wants a great list of the best restaurants in Colorado, my friend Abby Worland has the very best that is categorized from meh to last meal before I die. So we can get to the list.

We'll have to put that in the show notes. All right, here we go. I know you have four daughters, Is that right?

That's right.

The thing. How old are your kids?

8, 10, 13, and 15.

Ooh. All right. So the thing that I love to do the most with my daughters is what and why.

Boy, it's a good question. I can tell you what I do. Do. I drive a lot. What would I like to do? I like trips with him. We took a trip to Europe this last year.

I love discovering new things. I love being outside and adventuring. My wife and I. My wife was a D1 soccer player and just being outside with the kids in Colorado.

Everything from paddle boarding, hiking. There's a garden near our house that we can spend a long time just talking at. So being outdoors with my daughters is my favorite.

When we can find the time. But we gotta. We really gotta battle for the time in this season. There's just a lot of driving.

All right, number five, last question. If you were a restaurant, what restaurant would you be and why?

I would be a restaurant that like slow, slow conversation. So I'll give you another restaurant. Sierra is the name of the restaurant in Lone Tree, Colorado.

It's got a beautiful view, and it has a lot of opportunities for slow, good conversations. So great food, elegant context. Not that I'm terribly elegant, but I do like to slow it down because my life is pretty fast. So that's why.

The slow place is certainly not anything fast food.

So maybe we should have done the.

Slow five instead of the fast five.

Slow five. I like that. I like that. Next time, let's slow that down. I'm always looking for ways to slow down my life, but haven't been very successful so far.

I don't know too many people that are. Unless you Just totally disengage for a little bit, which is nice actually. Then it's what I think the rest of the world would call normal.

Right? Yeah, absolutely.

But let's talk a bit about your ministry, your life, your ministry. I know that you have founded the Denver Institute for Faith and Work. You've actually handed the keys off of that.

You've written a lot about work and vocation. You've dedicated your life to that.

But let's get a little bit of your bio, like a 30,000 foot view and then let's just jump right into the book and how this book came to be.

Yeah, sure. So a little bit of my bio. Let's see. Grew up in Minnesota, college in Indiana, as you said, at Valparaiso University.

It came out of my convictions after reading the foolishness to the Greeks and Gospel in a plural society that the west is indeed a mission field. And I thought what does that actually look like?

And there's some hints in new begins writings, right, that where you are is your mission field like that is. That is a context. And I thought where people are tends to be their families and their work.

And this book, working from the Inside out is about my experiences after 10 years of trying to think how do we land the plane?

How do we actually live in the wholeness of the life of God in the real places that we find ourselves in our work, in our communities and our families. And so this is what Working from the Inside Inside out is all about.

All right, well let's, let's, let's delve further into it as you said, where people are at. And we often think at times where we, we have pastors that have this insider speak and sometimes we develop this insider language.

Having been a pastor within the church, we think that everybody is familiar and knows the church world. But as you've drawn out, no people are out in the world all the time and they're faced with far more complex realities than we ever real.

Why has the church so missed this idea in the evangelical church? This idea of Vocation and its importance within society.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. Vocation. There's a couple reasons on that.

One, I think when we talk either about faith and work and vocation, which are a little different categories for me, I think if to a lot of folks in churches, in particular, pastoral leadership, it sounds competitive. Like, if, if they're going to go do that out there, then they can't do it in here. And I always want to bring that down, saying it's not competitive.

This is equipping the saints for works of service in the world, which is core to the church's mission. So I think that can be a challenge. But vocation, I talk about this a little bit in the book, but gospel is the good news of what God has done.

Culture is where we find ourselves. And vocation is our response in this moment, in this time, to what God has done.

And so what he's summoning us to, it's a response to God's voice in all areas of life. So we have to think about how do people live their life? Where, what are they thinking? What are. Are they feeling?

What is the practicalities of everything, from what I was saying, driving kids to soccer to working in health care to my community, we actually have to think about what is the shape of Christian mission in all those contexts. And that's really what the book is about.

It is thinking about what does holistic discipleship look like in five categories, which I'm sure we'll get into, but what does holistic discipleship look like? And to. To loop back on the vocation piece. We've been doing good work on this for a long time, least since the Protestant Reformation.

And yet I think it is still a real challenge to say, what does it mean to be distinctly a person of faith in a culture that feels more and more removed from the faith every single day? So I think it's a. It's an important question we have to keep asking ourselves. Who are we becoming in the context of our real lives?

Now, as you go about the book, you do something I've not seen and not just focus on work generally, that God created us to work, which I find the most books do. But you've gone further, even.

Even to the point where you were dividing between the professional class and the, as you call the working class perspectives. Why is it important to differentiate? Because I've very rarely seen anyone categorize it in that quite that way, at least recently.

We used to have white collar, blue collar, the terminologies, but it seemed like, that's more now because we realize, hey, those terms can be pejorative. How did you. Or why is it so important to keep those two distinct?

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. So a couple things.

One, having led different events and gatherings in this topic for years, I realized that there were a lot of doctors and entrepreneurs that were coming to my events, but very few people that were actually making the world around me. Very few, you know, line cooks, janitors, people that were actually shaping the world around me that were coming to our events.

And I agree with you that there's not perfect terms in terms of white collar, blue collar, or pink collar, whether it be professional or working class. But there does tend to be different perspectives and how I tend to notice how people are seeing their work, and I think it's helpful.

So nobody fits perfectly into a professional or a working class context because all working class people have professional abilities and all professional folks have, you know, lots of, I think, hard labor that they're doing as well. So they're not perfect terms, but I do think they're important to think. Not everybody has the same assumptions that we're answering.

And I think the vast majority of the faith at work movement has only addressed professionals.

So, for instance, I'll give you one example of when we talk about Genesis 1 and 2 and the goodness of work, and this is our chance to cultivate creation and bring about cultural renewal, which is stuff we talk about sort of in reformed communities. Right? Yeah.

If you're working as a greeter at Walmart or if you're hauling around chemicals, this is not the way you think about your work, generally speaking. Right.

That tends to be almost like a proof text for people that already like their work and want to have a big impact for it, but it just misses the vast majority of people. So in the book I put, at least I'm start.

I want to start this conversation about, hey, there are people that have different kinds of work that are thinking about their work differently, and theology is going to shape and form our work a little bit differently. So anyway, I have these six perspectives which we could get into.

But it is really important to not assume that everybody feels and thinks the same way about their work. Even in a church small group, if you have refugees or as you said, PhDs from MIT, you're going to see your life and your work pretty differently.

And it's important to listen to how people are understanding their work.

I want to park on that. You referred to it. I want you to draw that out. Those six principles that you're referring to.

Yeah. So I don't know if I'll remember all of them, but I could give you a couple of them.

So, for instance, like, work identity versus communal identity was one of the contexts. Professionals tend to get a lot of their identity from their work and from the influence that they're having in their community.

And it tends to be that working class communities get more identity from their family and their community. And so that's one reason why people, working class folks don't come to these events. Because that doesn't sound like a fun idea.

I don't want to do that on the weekend or evening because I'm not actually like finding my sense of self worth from my work. Work is good. Something you're doing, something that is incredibly valuable, but it's not necessarily the most valuable thing in your life as well.

So, you know, that's one of. Another principle I is networks versus real work.

And in professional communities, for instance, people tend to, it tends to be working with networks of either management or networks of sort of professional influence. Working class communities tend to say, okay, that's fine, but we're really, actually making the stuff of the world. Right.

We're doing the concrete slab for the sidewalk. We're actually serving the food. We are actually the backbone of America. Like, Right, right.

These are the conversations that most people saying, that's fine, that you're doing whatever on your laptop with your latte. But I'm actually, you know, I actually am bringing, I'm bringing you the coffee beans on my back. Right.

So those types of things of like, how are you seeing your work? Even in those two, they're pretty different. And I think Christian faith actually speaks really well to both of them.

But we do need to think that we're, yeah, we're seeing our work differently.

And in the book, I did try to highlight both professional and working class voices because they're incredibly valuable and both, I think they're both important is, is.

The fact that we have this professional class that has Come about. I mean, that seems like a really modern notion of things.

Not to say that there haven't been that historically, but I think the majority of people historically have been, you work to survive. It wasn't work for fulfillment.

That's right. That's right. So that is a much, a much more modern notion, for sure. You are right. You worked to survive. You did what you needed to do. Right.

So the idea that work is now principally even about fulfillment. There's a friend, his name is Andrew Lynn, wrote another interesting book called Saving the Protestant Ethic.

But he said that a lot of the faith at work movement grew up to help professionals answer the question of meaning. So I'm not thinking that's not the whole story, but there is a lot there.

And I think actually both professionals, working class, I think everybody asks questions of meaning because everybody asks questions of purpose.

But nonetheless, I do think there needs to be a broadening of how we're talking about stuff and then overlapping with conversations about biblical justice, about workforce development, conversations that are happening in other areas that of course, going on for a long time, that faith people and people that are thinking about biblical justice just got to have, have, have more overlapping conversations.

When we talk about work, I mean, and obviously this transcends both professional and the, the working class. But you know how our work is deforming us.

There's a dehumanization that's gone on, and some would probably say, I mean, you could go back to the industrial revolution and in our, in our economy now, it seems like we are treated more like machines and we're trying to get in touch more with our humanity.

This is why many theologians have noted that the greatest probably question of this millennium is what does it mean to be human in the midst of this world? And what does it mean to work as a human when we are trying to survive? And it is ne isn't necessarily about fulfillment.

My question is how is our work, though, in our modern culture actually deforming us?

Yeah, that's a good question. And I bet every listener to this podcast, this video could give their own. Their own story.

So it could be I'm looking at a screen all day and my body is literally being deformed, Right? It could be I have to do what this boss says, and I don't want to, but this is what I need to do to support my wife and my kids.

And I feel devalued in this context. But this is the option that I have before me, and I need to do this. And so it can be a spiritual devaluing as well. Right.

I also think there can be, particularly, at least in some of the circles I'm in, sort of a competitive, sort of a softly competitive nature of who's more successful or who's had the best startup or whatever it might be. And I think that can be really deforming and takes us away from our identity in Christ. Right.

So there is, there's lots of different ways to think about work and work. I actually believe God can use work to form us in his image, which is the main topic of the book.

But we have to think too about how is my work actually shaping me. So I'll give you just a little story.

So I realized one day, this was January after we got year end financials, that we didn't hit our goals and that I had made several mistakes in the previous months that I knew were going to have a really negative impact on my team. And I just felt anxious, I didn't know what to do.

So I said to my wife, okay, I'm gonna go to Starbucks, I'm gonna go work this out and figure out how to solve this problem. And after I worked at Starbucks for a couple of hours, I got more anxious. It got, it got worse.

And I felt like, oh no, what is gonna happen in the next several months? So I have to fire people. Like, what am I gonna do? Anyway, so I come home that night, we're gonna have Saturday night pizza with the kids.

And the kids are asking, which movie are we going to watch tonight? And they start getting into an argument about which movie we're going to watch.

And that sort of anxiety from my work just led to an explosion of saying, no, we're not going to watch any movies. And I just yelled at all of my kids and I sort of had this realization of, oh no, I've really damaged, like my kids.

I just had a very negative impact on them right now. And what I literally did was I sent them downstairs a movie.

I took my pizza on an unmade bed into my room, shut the door and was by myself for like two hours. It was definitely like an eighth, my eighth grade moment.

But I realized like the context of my work and what was happening in heart, mind and body, and then it was happening in my family. Those are very interconnected, right. And so the concept of working from the inside out is I.

A lot of my own work in this space was first thinking, what is the gospel? Then what is the gospel in society?

But the third question which we may decide to dive into was, who Am I becoming in this context of trying to be a missionary in Western culture? Who am I really? And what does it mean for me to live in the wholeness of the life of God in this context so that work can be deforming us?

As just one example, you've already alluded to it.

You talk about how being a missionary to this Western culture, you actually bring in Newbegin. And as we said before, I mean, Newbegin has been someone that we have looked to and emulated in many different respects.

And he talks about a missionary encounter, which is what our ministry is all about.

Yes. Yeah.

And he has several different pieces in his recipe for a missionary encounter that you brought in a few of them. A broadened sense of the gospel, much like C.S. lewis's Mere Christianity, kind of a broad view of it.

The recognition that culture isn't really neutral as we think it is, or there's no such thing as neutral reasoning within a culture and the understanding of vocation is entirely lived response to the call of God or his idea of making sure the laity brought the gospel into their public lives.

Yes.

What made you focus on those specifically that we needed to understand? I mean, you've done an excellent job.

You made him understandable and translatable to the everyday person, which I think is very difficult to do, but you've done it marvelously. Why focus on those pieces specifically?

Yeah, well, let me just focus at least on one. The culture piece.

This is, I think one of the hardest things about being missionaries to our culture is that people still don't feel like this is a missionary moment or this is my job, or somehow that culture is neutral. And for instance, religions or religious perspectives are not. Right. They're a particular. And that's actually not true in the least bit. Right. Giving.

Giving people a vision for their communities, the media they consume as well as their workplaces. This is contested territory, you could say, with many different gods and you could say worldviews or ultimate values. You could also say idols.

That is to new begins point, maybe a little bit more like a Hindu culture with many gods rather than a secular space with no gods.

I actually think that has been very important insight is to say, I know you're thinking, I'm just doing my business, or I'm doing work over here, I'm working in health care, and that's just sort of neutral. And then I do my religious things over here. But. But you know, it's a very Act 17 world out there.

There are many gods that are being worshiped constantly And I think getting people a sort of eyes to see that I think is really, really important. And then it brings in all sorts of other things to saying, well, what are the values in my company? Right. Or my school? What do I believe?

What can I get behind? What should I not get behind? What does it mean for me to be wise about the type of language I use in a missionary encounter? Right.

Language that may make sense in the church context, but we have to be very thoughtful.

One of my book chapters is about the vocation of translation, of continually translating between Christian doctrine and if you're working in a marketing department at a cable TV company, right. You have to think about their language and what they're talking about and translating it to that right there. So all that to step back.

I do think we have to give a vision. For the world is filled with many gods, as it were, is more of an Old Testament world than sort of, I'd say a 21st century.

There is no kind of God there. And in that context, then all of a sudden the Christians aren't the weird ones awkwardly bringing their faith to work.

We all are bringing our faith to work.

Some of those gods we've tried to identify on the show before, where you have an idolized view of success and what makes success, dehumanization, the various identities, the autonomy idea that I'm my own. I have this unbridled freedom to do whatever I want to do and become whoever I want to be. These are some of the gods.

And again, that's just some of them. But I'm trying to give our people some context because some are saying, what are you talking about right now?

Now, what do you mean?

That there are gods that are active within our world. These are the highest values. And you've alluded to them, I believe and done quite well what determines the ultimate value in what I pursue.

And this is what I see that's happening a lot in the church today is that we have not brought in the biblical story. And you have. You draw on some of Goheen's work and the idea of the biblical story.

Why is it so important to frame this within the biblical story, to understand the Western culture within that frame of biblical story?

Yeah, let me get to that and then we'll talk about the gods. So I happen to find myself at a time of my life where I'm sitting at a lot of kids soccer games, right? I am.

I am at a lot of Colorado United soccer games.

And my kid loves soccer and I love soccer and there's A lot of good things about youth sports, but there's a lot of strange things about youth sports as well. Parents can sometimes get really emotional, right?

It's not only kids football, but all of a sudden, like the sort of tenor of what's going on in the sidelines and then it get transferred to their kids and some of the anxiety they feel. Some sort of ultimate value is functioning here.

And actually my wife and I regularly had these conversations as we care about sports, but why do we care about sports? What's really operative? What's really going on here? What are the values in this community? And then what are values of people of Christian faith?

That's sort of the everyday context of a missionary encounter.

As we think about sitting on the sidelines or think about going to work our community, those are the types of things where we have to regularly be aware that people are always worshiping. People are constantly worshiping. Dostoevsky said this, right? We are made to worship. We're continually be worshiping in all these contexts.

And it doesn't look like, you know, praise songs at a church, but certainly there are a lot of passions. So we see politically in a culture, you could see it in a company.

For instance, there is a woman named Carolyn Chen, wrote an interesting book about how Silicon Valley and sort of the obsessiveness of work in Silicon Valley has really taken the place of a religion. And I think that's actually true. But to be fair, in lots of other communities, there are things that are ultimately valuable.

It could be nationalism, it could be lots of these different things that we all have to put in light of how does this either make sense or not inside the biblical story, right? So I think I. I had a context. I wrote one story in this book, a guy named David Lopes, really interesting guy.

He's a maintenance technician at a church. And what he does is he. He goes out and he cleans the parking lot on Monday.

And he said to me, when I interviewed him in, he said, you know, a lot of people would look at this job like, why do I have to do that? Why do I have to go out and clean the parking lot, right? And he, he said to me something. And she said, but I don't, I don't see it that way.

He said, when I go out and clean the parking lot, what I envision is Christ cleaning me and cleaning the world. He had a theological vision in that moment for his actual work.

And his theological imagination was saying, I'm doing this work and I'm imagining God continually doing his redemptive work in. In the world. And what an amazing example of theological thinking as he's cleaning up a parking lot.

And I think that's what we need to do more and more of. As I do my life. How do I reimagine myself and my life and my heart and what I care about? All inside the biblical story.

You alluding to the imagination. It's funny. One of the three things that we do is rethink, reimagine, redeploy as a ministry.

And so you're seeing that reimagining according to that theological vision.

And.

And I know Keller has done a lot with that. Richard Lent kind of brought that idea in his fabric of theology of having a greater theological vision that people need to have.

That is not just the individualistic view of just personal salvation, which to many is still really blowing them out of the water. That's all they've known and I know talk with people on the. We've talked with many people in our.

That have listened to the show and they're still coming to terms with that.

That.

That it's not this. What do you mean? It's Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I don't see anything about creation itself.

Well, when you look at the kingdom of God, you do. And that's where you see the kingdom of God as a greater perspective within the biblical story that helps ground the gospel.

Yeah.

And helps to understand that.

Why is it so important though, when we're talking about vocation to understand that rootedness within the kingdom perspective and not something separate. Separate from or. Or. I don't want to say in addition to.

But it's a further orbed understanding of the kingdom of God rather than just individual salvation as a prone to the renewal of creation.

Yeah.

Is that a question in there, Jeff? There is a question like 10 questions in there.

Yeah.

I'm just gonna keep throwing them at you, Jeff. You just keep swinging the ones you can hit.

Yeah. So a couple things on that. First, we do need that. Right. There is a lot of.

We, particularly among more conservative evangelicals, we've gotten stuck on Jesus died for my sins so I can go to heaven. So I do think that's true. But there's a lot more to the good news than that.

And so even at Denver Institute for Faith and Work, in some of the work that we've done, we talk about sometimes the concentric circles that Jesus did save me, but he's also reconciled my relationship with God, my relationship with others, with the created order. As well as with the social systems of our day. Like, it starts in the heart, but this is the content of the book, working from the inside out.

It moves from the heart to the way we think, to our relationships, to the work we do and why we do our work, to how we're involved in our society. And I actually think when we lose some of that, we lose. Boy, we lose a lot of the beauty of what Jesus is doing in the world.

And I would also say we lose a lot of the beauty that thinking Jesus really wants to redeem all these areas of how I interact with the world as well. There isn't sort of a separate political box, a religious box, a work box, and a community box, right? It's all inside the biblical story.

So I think that's in the chapter on serve others sacrificially, finding ways to say, what does it look like to be engaged in society as a sacrificial servant. I think that's really important.

The second thing I wanted to say is I at least have been on a journey that those convictions have been really important in terms of how do we be missionaries in our society today. And I would say what's become more and more pressing for me is who am I becoming?

How do I live in the depth of the life of the kingdom in this moment? Because Jesus is inviting us into all that we need right in the kingdom.

And I have all these operative things in my work and in my family that do not do that. And so a lot of my own journey, and actually I've seen this with other leaders as well.

Boy, I work with different business leaders that wanted to do interesting things on caring for the needs of the community and workforce development, caring for the city, but they themselves were exhausted, strung out, too focused on money.

There was just a lot of things that were going on in their own heart that over time I realized their spiritual journey was deeply influencing their work and the systems around them that could actually be moving the mission of God backwards. Like, there is no mission of God apart from God actually transforming us deeply to become a certain kind of people in the world.

And that's kind of the main idea of the book, is that who we become, right? To actually become the body of Christ. This is the real challenge, right, to become like Jesus. Because I think, what does the world need?

It needs people that are like Jesus in their different areas.

And when I actually look at the realities of my own life, the blowing up with my kids or coming off short or whatever it might be, like, those are those are the real challenges. And where we end up spending most of our time at Denver Institute for Faith and Work is sort of this connection between soul and system.

I really think they're deeply, deeply connected to each other.

I agree. The solar system. This solar system. The soul and system.

Yeah, those are connected too, probably somehow. Colossians 1:15 through 20. The solar system's in there.

That's right. Well, to reconcile all things to himself. You know, it's interesting you alluded to how again, new begins concept that we're the.

The body of Christ is the real hermeneutic of the gospel to an unbelieving world. And I think about Russell Moore, who's been a guest on the show when he wrote in his most recent work Losing Our Religion.

Yeah.

And he.

He actually referred to this in different public forums too, where he said people are young evangelicals are leaving the church not because they don't believe what the scripture says. It's because the church that they look to basically doesn't believe what the scripture says does.

Yeah.

Because they're not under. They've looked at the scripture or the salvation as a product rather than understanding the process and the means and.

And a means to power rather than the idea of subversive fulfillment within the gone against the system itself. And you've alluded to that. And I love how Simon Chan put it.

He actually described in a modern culture, we were to convince when we communicated the gospel that the gospel was true. If we could get people to believe it was true, then it was believable. And then if it was believable, it's livable.

But within our postmodern culture, it's flipped because we have all these fake news and everyone offers their perspective. That's why people want to see is it livable? If it's livable, then it's believable. And then it's believable, then it's true.

Yeah.

So reversing that order. And you've kind of alluded to that. You're basically saying this is how you operate within society as you develop.

I'm going to use a term here, honor capital. So that people want to listen to what you have to say by serving other people sacrificially.

Yeah. To give you even just a very practical example, actually two. One, you're with workers, you're with your co workers.

Somebody says something that really ticks you off in that particular moment. I don't know if this ever happened on your team, Travis.

Certainly it's happened on my team in every Context of like, I can't believe you just said that. I am really ticked at you right now. What do you do?

You grab your pizza and go in your room that with the unmade.

Yeah, that's right. You shut the door saying nuts to you people. You're all dumb. And I'm smart. Smart, right?

So I would have a lot of times in my own, like, somebody said something in a work meeting and for some that are listening to this podcast, but they didn't sense if I didn't like. And I would just do this, it kind of be like, you know, lean back in my chair and completely disengage. Right?

So if you are a believer and you have six other believers that are in a meeting or six other non believers. I'm sorry, that are in a meeting and you interact like that, what is your humanity like? Like, what are you saying right there?

So, like, your witness and your emotional and spiritual health and how you understand yourself and how you interact in different situations in your family, in your marriage. Right. Or in your work with kids. This is my world. These are very, very, very intimately connected. Right.

Can you. Can you do workplace conflict? Can you say, hey, you said this. I think I know where you're coming from. This is what really frustrated me.

And I think we can get through this. Right? Can you maintain a relational state in a time of crisis? Right. Can you do that? That.

I think that is just as connected to our missionary statement as do I understand how our individual vision of success has gotten out of whack in a Western society. I do think that's important. But then how. How am I interacting with you right now?

Like, those types of things, the fabric of, like my actual interactions.

You know, Dallas War would say that we always are acting out of our real beliefs, and our real beliefs are somewhere between our mind and in our heart and somewhere in our spinal cord system. Like, they're just sort of pop up out there. So doing that work of formation is one and the same. It's formation formation, right? They're. They're just.

They're the same side. They're the same coin.

You are speaking my language because not only are you quoting Dallas Willard, you actually quoted Jim Wilder within the Book. And Jim has been on the show three times.

Yeah.

So the neurotheology, the formation, the understanding of that, that's what we've been maintaining, is that formation is so important as we go about it, not just in what we say or the beliefs that we fight for, which people will fight. I mean, people will fight online all day about Calvinist, very ar, or whatever your eschatological belief is. And I'm not. Or position.

I'm not saying those aren't important. But Jesus said very clearly to love your enemies. And this idea of loving your enemies seems to be largely lost as we've gone into enemy mode.

And it's then all. It doesn't matter. It's end game wins.

And unfortunately, that's not the posture that Jesus takes at all within the scripture and the upside down kingdom, this Kingdom manifesto that he lays out, out within the Beatitudes.

Right.

And you're bringing that to the forefront, saying, okay, wait, how does this look like in your vocation when you disagree with your co worker? How do you stay curious?

How do you stay relationally connected so that your behavior doesn't not misrepresent the kingdom of God, but you're showing the reality of your sanctification and how you express it, Even if you do get angry again in your anger, don't sin. Right.

But what do you do with it then?

Yeah, exactly.

And how do I love my enemies? What are the tangible steps that I need to do rather than blow up, grab my pizza and walk out of the room. Room. Which we've all done.

Yes, yes.

You're not the only one there. You're not the only one.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, you know, also say too, just at least in some of the circles that I've been in, I think sometimes we've taken some of this, maybe Western vision of success. We've baptized it and we've called it missional impact. We've, like, how big, how much, you know, what have we done?

Maybe it could be size of church, it could be how many people, like, we've just done that.

And one of the things I realized in my own career, one of the reasons actually I stepped back from something that I love and I still love, my work at Denver Institute, is I realized I'd substituted the calling for the caller. And there was a sense of being summoned into the mission of God. Right. But I had come to clamp my heart down on that very tightly.

And that means if somebody didn't do something, right, or if we didn't perform or Hit a target. Like I was, I was angry or I was frustrated, I was annoyed.

Like I just wasn't treating them like we just talked about love your neighbor and love your enemies. I wasn't actually becoming, as Bob Goff would say, becoming love. It just wasn't happening.

And I realized it wasn't so much the problem with sort of our missional theology, it was my heart clamped down to a sense of self worth and impact more than the abundant life that Jesus offers us right here, right now, in this moment. So I just think those types of things, like what do you really love?

Are sort of ordered loves and God at the very highest of that, that allows us to say I could be very successful or unsuccessful, I could live a long life, I could live a short life, right? Either way, like what leads to the deepening of God's life within me?

Those are the kinds of questions that I am asking more and more because I think again, who we become is what we say to our culture.

What we become is what we say to our culture. That really is a mic drop quote. That's it right there. It's not about always our proclamation, it's about our demonstration.

How do we show that Jesus is real to the world around us. It's not about what we say, it's about what we do.

Not to say that we shouldn't have a proclamation or proclaim the message of Jesus, no, we're to do that, but it's demonstrated by the reality of our lives. And what does it say when we say one thing and do another? Right?

Isn't that the quote that those who become atheists do so because they see Christians saying one thing and then go out the door and deny him by their lifestyle, isn't that it? Or something like that.

We need to be able to show Jesus in our nine to five, in our relationship with our spouse, in our relationship with our co workers, in relationship with our neighbors, if we're going to make any type of impact in the society around us? Well, honestly I prefer not even to think of that way because it's too big.

I need to think of those who are on the front row of my life, those who are my neighbors, those who I do see in the day to day.

And I think if we can do that, if we can demonstrate and show the reality of Jesus lordship in our lives in the day to day, in the nine to five, when we're with our kids, when we're home, when we're tired, when life is messy, when we're faced with the bills, when we're dealing with the stresses and pressures of the relationships of our friends, when we are misunderstood, when we are gossiped about, when we are trying to simply hold it all together. That's when really Jesus comes out and we have to demonstrate the reality of Jesus in the day to day.

There are always going to be forces.

In the world that are trying to shape us.

And honestly if it's not the word of God that's shaping us and the spirit of God working through the word of God, then we're going to become malformed. We live in a very fallen world after all.

But we must remember that we are created in God's image and we are redeemed by God so that we can take up that image and reflect it out into the world. Because God is using us as the agents to establish the reality of his kingdom.

Next time we're going to continue our discussion with Jeff about what that really looks like. But before then, I want to conclude our time today with a word of prayer for you. Please allow me to pray. Pray.

Heavenly Father, I lift up all of those who are listening to the sound of my voice and got to hear this conversation. I pray Lord that the truths that they've heard about today might be applied to their life.

That they might see that you desire, you desire them to work in such a way that shows the reality of who you are. And I pray that they might do their work well. I pray that they might be honest when they fail or when they fall, when they hurt someone.

That they might seek to make restitution or seek forgiveness. They might seek to correct that wrong when they are misaligned, when they are treated poorly, when they are unjustly accused.

I pray that they might be upright, that you might battle on their behalf and that Jesus might be truly their advocate.

Lord, we thank you that you have not left these other aspects of our lives where we do spend our day to day untouched by your love, your grace, your peace and your purpose. Lord, I pray for them and I pray that you glorify your name in their lives. And I pray this now in Jesus name, Amen. I want to thank you for listening.

To Apollos water today.

I hope that your faith was watered.

I do want to thank our Apollo's.

Water team for helping us to water the world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered.

Stay watered everybody.