Ep. 215 - God So Loved!
Well, welcome to another episode of Tell Me More. Today, Kurt Grice is our guest, And, it sounds strange to say that. He's been on staff here for thirty two years, but, to this, podcast. And we are talking about all things flourishing. I hope it's informative and inspirational to you.
Speaker 2:Well, welcome to Tell Me More.
Speaker 1:I've been wanting to say that for a long time. I'm actually doing the intro. Welcome to Tell Me More.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Today is your day. It is. On a
Speaker 1:Monday. And Katie is not with us today. She's at a conference. Luke is on his way to Canada, and so is me and the most right reverend Kirk Drummond.
Speaker 2:This is what it's come to. So welcome. We're glad hear If you've always wondered what it was like when the inmates take over the asylum This is it. This is your day.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm actually managing this thing.
Speaker 2:I can't
Speaker 1:You know, and it
Speaker 2:gets You want just practice pushing one of the buttons?
Speaker 1:I think what I wanna do is give myself a big cheer.
Speaker 2:Did you hear that? Yeah. Is it happening? Did that actually work? I didn't hear it.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to turn it off.
Speaker 2:Okay. Just push that button. So
Speaker 1:Do you feel better? I do feel better. And That's beautiful. Think somebody else will be manning
Speaker 2:this next time. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But so, Kurt, first thing I want to do is say congratulations on twenty five years.
Speaker 2:Oh, wait. Yeah. Well, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:That was for me.
Speaker 2:So no. No. No. I was here for all
Speaker 1:three months. Say, no. I wanna congratulate you for putting up with me for twenty five years. Can I do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I feel like there's a certain sort of residual congratulations that some of the rest of us deserve Exactly. In the midst of all that.
Speaker 1:I could not have done it without you. You know what mean? You.
Speaker 2:You could have been. It wouldn't have been near as much fun.
Speaker 1:No. And, that is the honest truth. We have literally been all over the world together. My goodness. In twenty five years.
Speaker 2:Lot of memories.
Speaker 1:32 for you, think.
Speaker 2:32 for me coming up on 33 here in just a few months.
Speaker 1:Well, I was just to Ricky Chelette beforehand. 31 for him.
Speaker 2:He's 31.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, so we were we were discussing how you, Brian Sepulveda, I think Beth Getz
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Y'all have him eclipsed, I think. And Yeah.
Speaker 2:But there aren't many left. Yeah. There aren't many left that, can can have a longer tenure than Ricky Paul Smith. Would think not. What's Ricky Paul Anthony.
Speaker 1:Yes. Man. But we are glad to have Kurt Grice with us today. I'm glad to be here. And Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We are, we've we've been doing this for a really, really long time, doing doing it together. Of course, Kurt was our youth minister for a long time, but he's been associate pastor now for a long time. But, your role has changed a little bit, and we have, found ourselves in the middle of a of a journey that we didn't even really know what we were getting into when it all first started. Right?
Speaker 2:And it's usually better that way. I found so often in life, that you don't need to know how this is gonna play out at the front end or you might not do it.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, so it all really started a few years ago when I was getting ready to go on study leave and Katie and several of the staff members were asking me, okay, so what is it that we need to we think we need to address over the next three to five years? What what is it that you think we should address? And one of my answers to that was, well, I think we need to settle in on the the imagery from the Psalm one tree, what I believe about that, the whole concept of fruitfulness. And, and so Katie, just said she said, I I think that needs a refresh.
Speaker 1:We need to reframe it all. And I didn't really know how to do that. And then we came across this flourishing study led by Harvard and Baylor. Had no idea what that would mean to us. We didn't know there was a flourishing in church piece that was kind of growing up out of it.
Speaker 1:We really knew nothing except for the fact that a group of researchers from Harvard and Baylor with Gallup's help were going to study human flourishing on a global scale. That's really pretty much all we knew going in. And then the next thing you know, we're being introduced to Scott Hare and from Baylor and he wasn't even at Baylor yet when we
Speaker 2:met him. No. He that that's exactly right. He he was the, storyteller in residence at a church down in San Antonio. But a gifted guy, great guy, and subsequently, is on staff with Baylor and is meeting all kinds of people and the things just growing.
Speaker 2:I would say this about that. It illustrates what happens more often than not and what we hope happens is you go away on study leave and you listen to God. And something almost always captures your attention.
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Your imagination gets captivated by something and that year it was flourishing. And so, you saw that thread and began to pull on it and lo and behold, it led you into some interesting places. But this is the providential part of it. Even as God was capturing your attention about this and calling you to this, he was doing the same thing to a whole bunch of other really sharp bright people both within the church and within the academy.
Speaker 2:And so this global flourishing study, this historic one of a kind longitudinal study of the world's population and what does it mean to be a human and to want to flourish. What is human well-being? And growing out of course, Tyler Vanderweel and his work as an epidemiologist in Harvard. Why do we just try to treat sickness? Let's figure out what are healthy people doing that prevent sickness.
Speaker 2:And so that preventative sort of approach rather than just the curative kind of approach was also a part of this. So one thing led to another, we met some folks who did a lot of reading and then subsequently, Linda Livingstone, Byron Johnson, Baylor decided they wanted that wonderful institution to be known for flourishing and to begin to define what that even means. And we met Victor counted at Regent University over in Virginia. And so, God was just doing what God so often does.
Speaker 1:Exactly right.
Speaker 2:And unbeknownst to us, he is actively at work in some wonderful people's lives and praise his name. We get to be a part of it even now. And so it wasn't as if we hadn't been doing a lot of this for, well, basically the old time you were here. But say back in the teens when we felt like Psalm one just epitomized what we believe we want to be about both as individual Christians and as a church. And so that imagery stuck with us.
Speaker 2:And so often we'll have an idea and especially you as a visionary understand that every idea is not a great idea. And so you need to test the spirit to see if it's of the Lord. And so that's what we do. And so flourishing passed the test. And we stayed after it.
Speaker 2:Psalm one obviously passed the test. We stayed after it. Occasionally, we're finding and tweaking, but we just believe that's the essence of who we are. And so those things just merge together very naturally Mhmm. Rather obviously.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so that deep roots of our identity in Christ, that strong trunk of of growing as a follower of Jesus being transformed on the way. And then those fruitful branches of making an impact in the world for for the kingdom, all is very much illustrated and flourishing.
Speaker 1:It is. And what's interesting is when when we first get introduced to it and we meet Scott, Kate Long, they introduce us to her from Harvard. And again, we don't we don't know these people, but we get to know them pretty quickly. And then we realized that there's this other study that's grown out of the global flourishing study that's actually analyzing flourishing in the church. And so while all that is going on and we're trying to figure out how how would we connect to that, well, then we are in the midst of a restructuring of our staff here, I would say providentially, so that we feel like we can better respond to the needs of our congregation and answer this particular moment, this era in history for us.
Speaker 1:And so while we're doing that restructuring, we decide to move you out of being in charge of this entire spiritual formation staff and bring you into the pastor's office, actually, in in pastoral ministry. And, and then And
Speaker 2:can I just say that was that was providential? I'm also grateful because I went from supervising probably two thirds to three quarters of the staff. I don't supervise anybody. But yourself. Yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But that's enough. Which is I was a I was a management major at Florida State in the business office. They said the hardest person you'll ever manage is yourself. Turns out, I think that's true.
Speaker 1:I think job in it.
Speaker 2:It's a whole another day.
Speaker 1:But, but we wanted to take your expertise, your theological depth, richness, your experience here, your pastoral skills, and put them into an arena that we believe would serve the church during this particular season. Because you're somewhat of a unicorn, in my opinion, because you you've got that educational side to you. You've got that, But when you and I were coming along, as you know, most of the people that were going to go into religious education went to the school of religious education. They didn't go to the school of theology. That may be kind of may sound kind of odd to our listeners, but that's just
Speaker 2:the truth. But it was so clearly defined back in the eighties. I mean, you you knew everybody. You either go this way or this way or
Speaker 1:this Exactly. And that kinda defined, in some ways, your career trajectory. Mhmm. And and I mean it respectfully, but you chose the MDiv route, theology route, and yet you have this educational management side, do you formation, all of that. So you've spent your whole career doing that, and now we're capitalizing on all that you know and who you are.
Speaker 1:And our church is benefiting greatly from it because I then asked you to take over the flourishing journey really for our church, help us be connected to it, understand it better, and help us also figure out ways to apply what we're learning in practical way. And so this this flourishing in church, journey is the one that we're really connected to even though we're watching the global flourishing study, obviously.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that massive longitudinal study will ultimately help inform a lot of of what we're doing. Right. But right now, our our personal connection is to the flourishing and the church study.
Speaker 1:And so we kick off everything January '25 with the launch. And Kate Long and Scott Hare come and spend the weekend with us, and it was, it was memorable. It was one of those turning points in the life of our church. It was one of those where people still talk about it and say they were there. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know, I I was there that night when we launched this. It was that meaningful to us.
Speaker 2:And it was totally of the Lord because I think we can say, folks, in all transparency, we felt led to do this and we always wanna be responsible and prepared. But we didn't know We did not know. What's gonna happen. And and we didn't really know these people and we wasn't sure how how all this was gonna play out. And and God just showed up and it was to his glory.
Speaker 1:Yes. It's powerful.
Speaker 2:And it launched, literally launched us on this journey Mhmm. In a way that that still is providing momentum and impetus for us.
Speaker 1:And I and I think that weekend, in some ways, it fostered credibility and Mhmm. And it built trust and integrity into the journey for us, which then will lead us to have this deepening relationship with Kate in particular and Scott as well and her and her team of researchers. And then the next thing you know, we're ready to actually enter the research ourselves and become a part of the data collection, which Yeah. We weren't sure how the church would respond to something like that cause we've never done
Speaker 2:it But we're only a 155 years old. So you know?
Speaker 1:Exactly. So you know? But the church responded incredibly well.
Speaker 2:They did.
Speaker 1:Just shut up 1,300 adults, take a survey on a Sunday morning of all times. And, and then we allow this team to take that data, research it, compile it, and give it back to us. Then it's on us, first of all, to determine what do we do with it. And then second of all, how does it connect to what they're learning from all these other pilot churches? And so so you've been you've been tasked for helping us figure all that out.
Speaker 2:And and I'm loving it and it's still evolving and unfolding as we speak. I was down in San Antonio last week with many of these people. Well with the Texas pilot churches and Kate and her sister Julia from San Francisco and then Victor was in from Regent. And so it was a wonderful evening with these these folks that are a part of this study. But a couple of things I would say about it.
Speaker 2:Number one, when Kate was explaining to everybody our participation, they said we were the only ones who were brave enough to do the survey at the end of the service. Everybody else did it at the beginning because I was afraid everybody would And so apparently we were the only group that was brave enough to wait and do it at the end but again to have almost 1,300 of our people take this. And and these are adults.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And take it seriously.
Speaker 2:100 adults because it it has to be over 18 Mhmm. For the purposes of of the research.
Speaker 1:So Mhmm. Yeah. And and so then they give us this report, which you have with you today And we then take that and it's massive.
Speaker 2:It is massive.
Speaker 1:And they're proud of it because they're researchers, you know.
Speaker 2:But even this is as impressive as this is and all the analytical and statistical, they're still refining it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so this is how they view the world and we've tried to understand it but they're they're keep making it better. They keep trying to figure out how to make it better.
Speaker 1:So when we when we compiled all this research, you've got adults who are. So what distinguishes this study, the global flourishing study is about just human flourishing in general. No matter who you are, no matter what your background is, no matter what your ethnicity or your religious, particularly your religious proclivities are. Human world flourishing. Right.
Speaker 1:So,
Speaker 2:22 countries over 200,000 people, they're trying to go back and find the same people year after year and surprisingly they've managed to find most of them. So they've got two years worth of survey done and processing, and they're doing the third wave even now. Which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a it's a five year journey. It's a massive I mean, it's the largest sociological longitudinal study on flourishing in history, So you
Speaker 2:it's
Speaker 1:it really is amazing when you It is. But then that what's grown out of that is this question, well, okay, what does it mean to flourish as human being? Got it. Living life as God intended. But what does it mean to flourish as a Christian in particular?
Speaker 1:And I'm so grateful that this team decided that that was worth studying. What what about a Christian? What about a church? What about that spilling over in the community? And so Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That's what's happening in our part of the world. And so when we did that, we're doing it with all these other churches and we're getting to learn more about that. But let's start first of all with what did we learn about ourselves? Because you you've spent the most time pouring over all of the answers and because there were a lot of handwritten answers multiple choice. Yeah, there
Speaker 2:were as you know, there were over 500 sort of personal responses and they captured all of them and shared all of them with us. And so you have sort of that, I don't know that personal narrative but the analytical stuff that a statistician can actually measure, we zeroed in on. And so for the purposes of our conversation, I know for some of our people they're wondering so what's being done with that or what happened with that whatever. Well, we organized 2026 in some ways in response to the
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And so
Speaker 1:Not everybody probably knows that but
Speaker 2:No. I wanna I wanna mention a couple of things real quick. Mhmm. And this is just a this is a 90 page report but just a couple of things on page 35. There there were key things that you would expect a church to be addressing.
Speaker 2:And so of those key things, the church helps me develop habits of prayer that better connect me with God. 77% of our people scored seven, eight, nine or 10. So I just looked at, again, what scale of to 10 looking at seven and above, seven to 77% of our people agreed with that. And
Speaker 1:statisticians have told us you get in the sevens, you're in the That's territory.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's positive territory. I know everybody everybody thinks they're a 10. Yeah. Everybody wants to be a 10.
Speaker 2:Well, Jesus was a 10 and that's it. But so anything seven and above is solid. We're People
Speaker 1:were pretty honest in
Speaker 2:the words. Oh, they were very honest.
Speaker 1:That's what
Speaker 2:I'm So 77% say the church helps them with prayer, connects them to God. Deepens my understanding of scripture and Christian teaching, 89%. Wow. We're seven or above. Wow.
Speaker 2:Growing closer to God through the worship experience, 88%. And then
Speaker 1:Those are all good.
Speaker 2:They're all really Excellent. Really good. But they're all great and this is great too. But of all the ones that we would think are key and core to us as followers of Jesus in a church, the church helps equip me to share my faith with people who had different spiritual beliefs. So evangelism.
Speaker 2:75% agreed with that. So sadly and no, awesome. The lowest of the bunch was evangelism at 75 Yeah. It's in the But we felt like that was an area that we could address. And what we also looked at was even though 80% of our people say they share their faith on a regular basis with people who may believe otherwise.
Speaker 1:We
Speaker 2:also saw that only 2% of our people have been here less than two years. And we felt like, okay, if we're sharing our faith and people are coming to faith in Jesus and wanting to be baptized, be followers of Jesus, we would hope that number would be larger. That percentage would be larger.
Speaker 1:We don't know what but but more than two.
Speaker 2:Right. 2% seemed low to us. Yeah. But then the other thing that seemed low to us was only 36% said they were reading the bible daily. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Now reading the bible weekly, that was up around 80% total. Right. But daily, it was 36%. Well, you and I both believe, man, that is key That is crucial. To growing as a follower of Jesus, growing spiritually, maturing spiritually, having your whole worldview shaped around a biblical understanding of life.
Speaker 2:And so I decided, well that's something I can address now that I'm not supervising everybody. I had the time to do this and so started writing this daily devotional just to try to get our people engaged in scripture daily. But at the meeting in San Antonio this week or last week, when we were talking about, so how are you using this stuff? And I said, well, I felt like we needed to start providing a daily devotional for our people just to get them in the word because only 36% said they were reading the Bible daily. And the rest of the room, the other pilot churches are like, oh, that's that's really a lot higher than so I guess it's all relative.
Speaker 1:It's right.
Speaker 2:So, you know, everybody else in the teens and maybe in the twenties.
Speaker 1:So this is a five
Speaker 2:mile We're like, we we What? We we have failed. You know, everybody else is like, wow. You got 36% of your people in the world. But we're not comparing ourselves to No.
Speaker 2:Anybody
Speaker 1:No. It's just us.
Speaker 2:We're just trying to be who God's called us But to but that's the beauty of this. While we're looking at the whole and it's the collective and so it's the pilot churches in California and the pilot churches in Texas. And it gives us some insight to know the whole state of Texas, the whole state of California, The USA. We're also engaging with the European churches. So when we go to Assisi next month, there'll be German Lutherans and there'll be Austrian Christians and Christians from Switzerland and Italian Catholics.
Speaker 2:Go figure. And and so there'll be this very global ecumenical kind of understanding of flourishing and the church. And we wanna see what God is doing with his church collectively. But then the key is for each of us to apply it personally to our unique situation in our community because flourishing in the church is flourishing Christians who are part of a flourishing congregation who are contributing to a flourishing community.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right. That's what we're talking It Well, so in response, when we when we saw these and you and I talked about them, like, okay. So we're looking at we're we're already committed to a three year journey. So this second year, transformed on the Jesus way, we've decided to address things like prayer, evangelism, the daily bible readings as we asked you to get engaged with that.
Speaker 1:So I'm as I have placed these daily bible readings before us, now you're, writing a devotional that's been very intentional, connected to flourishing habits. So it's a part of our of our our response to what we learn from our self assessment.
Speaker 2:It grew out of the survey.
Speaker 1:Right. And our interpretation. And we're and we're watching it. There there are over 700 or so adults that are a part of the daily bible reading from just from our church.
Speaker 2:I think we're up over 800 subscribers Okay.
Speaker 1:So so the Lord has brought us into that journey, and it's awesome. You've done a wonderful job. And and and you've had the time to be Mhmm. To truly take the flourishing experience and somehow baptize it into First Baptist. We then also decided, okay, we wanna address the evangelistic piece if we're if we're not happy with the percentage of new believers in our church.
Speaker 1:We don't even know what that number should be.
Speaker 2:No. We just feel like it should be higher.
Speaker 1:Right. And so and and in our and in the program that we're in, there are, 12 pilot churches here in Texas and 12 in California, like you said. So we're going to actually so there there's a retreat being planned. We're gonna actually be able to sit down and just see what's happening in all these different faith communities, different types of churches, how are they responding to what they're learning, what is God blessing and honoring, and how is it all contributing to flourishing the life of a Christian, which is what this is about.
Speaker 2:And you saw the the results from the San Antonio Meeting. For the purposes of the study and the research, there has to be a great variety and so really small. I think the smallest congregation was like 90. Mhmm. You know, we were the largest I think in terms of how many actually took the survey but the age of the church, we're the oldest at a 150 and there's some new church plants just a couple of years old.
Speaker 2:It's a comprehensive Pentecostal, Methodist, Catholic, the Catholic Diocese of San Antonio. Yeah. Why would I surprise but to talk to the priest who's over that Saint Timothy and then the the lady who's part of the whole diocese just so gracious and wonderful and it, you know, of course, why wouldn't they be? These are followers of Jesus. And and and I was so encouraged that the predominantly Hispanic Catholic community in San Antonio Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is engaged in
Speaker 1:this study as well. And Baylor is home to the research piece for the global flirting study. But, flourishing in the church, Scott lives in San Antonio, so he's kind of our connection. In And his
Speaker 2:he really helped recruit churches.
Speaker 1:And his comment to us was, well, if I'm going to do a survey of Christianity in San Antonio, well then, obviously, we will have to do Roman Catholics because that is a massive number of people there. So and so then, we've expanded to Europe, as you said. So, so we we we decided to address the evangelism piece. Well, in order to do that, I just felt led to call us to prayer because to me, prayer is what undergirds everything, our spiritual formation as well as any kind of programming. So we spend the summer focused on prayer, launching a prayer meeting in the fall every Wednesday night, and now focused on evangelism.
Speaker 1:And we're and we're bringing in three, evangelists to help train us Mhmm. During the fall. Rafael Anzenberger, who is an evangelist. He leads the French Canadian Baptist Union. Oza Jones is the director of evangelism for Texas Baptist.
Speaker 1:Gary Stidham.
Speaker 2:Our own Gary Stidham.
Speaker 1:Who trains all the BSM leaders in evangelism. And so, we're going to get to hear some very practical voices during this series. Really excited about it. And it addresses it's a direct, application of what we learned in this survey. So that's important, I think, for our people to know that we didn't just
Speaker 2:say this. Yeah. We know what we're doing. We're living it every day, but but how would they know if we don't tell them?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So So it's pretty awesome. So on the heels of that, now that the research is being gathered, so Kate, who's the researcher, who oversees all of this, the church piece at least, researcher from Harvard, sociologist, she now is convening meeting in Assisi, Italy. So tell us about that, Kurt. And Well how how we're how that's gonna transpire.
Speaker 2:Back back at our meeting back in the spring, she said and and what I want She had this vision, this grandiose vision of what I want is for us all to come together because she and Victor had gone to Austria to meet with these churches to look at how do we apply flourishing the church in that very unique setting there. And so taking it to Europe wasn't as big a stretch for she and Victor who had been in Austria in the spring, but said to the collective group, and and what if we could go on a retreat someplace? Where would you like to go? I went around the room. Well, we were all in places in Yeah.
Speaker 2:Florida, Lake Tahoe, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And she said, what about a CC? Everybody's like, what?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I remember that. I was thinking,
Speaker 2:I don't
Speaker 1:think people are gonna go to a CC. Was like, k. Come
Speaker 2:on now. And she didn't try to push it too hard then. She just as you so often do, my dear friend, fired one over the bow, just foreshadowed, planted some seeds and lo and behold if that didn't come together. And so Lindy is this other wonderful person from South Africa now living in Pasadena. She's kinda helped putting it all together and she went to Sissy earlier this year just to scout it out.
Speaker 2:And you and I, you've been to Sissy. I've been there. And it's it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Saint Francis from there, right?
Speaker 2:Saint Francis plays very like Mary in Rome.
Speaker 1:Was gonna say. He does what
Speaker 2:Sisi it plays very very well but she actually went with in mind. There's gonna be about 80 of us when we all get together and trying to see is there somewhere in that historic area that would be able to host and house what we're wanting to do. And and there really wasn't sadly. Well, or not. It's become very touristy.
Speaker 2:It's very crowded. The streets are very narrow.
Speaker 1:This is the eight hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 2:Just so happens. Just so happens back in the twelve hundreds. He he was doing his thing and now here we are eight eight hundred years later. But so she has moved us outside of Assisi to a little community called Montefalco and and they are going to be able to house us just barely. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But everyone will come in from there. But Assisi, the Mount Of Assisi, the Cathedral Of Assisi is just right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're in that community and it's Umbria and it's this beautiful part of of Italy. And it's a spiritual retreat. And so we are coming as pilgrims on this spiritual retreat. We're coming in a spirit of humility and unity. And as I've written the devotionals preparing us for this that there are no experts.
Speaker 2:And and my concern was that we would have people from so many different settings. Some may be feeling really good about them selves. I know for a fact many are not. And especially the the German Lutherans right now just see this whole thing getting away from them and they're by and large very discouraged about their church, the church. And so I hope that we will come together as brothers and sisters in Christ, as fellow shepherds and fellow stewards, but really as pilgrims just seeking God's direction for us.
Speaker 2:And I hope that we will be able to encourage some of the European ministers and leaders. But we need to be encouraged too by their faithfulness and their suffering. And you bring together California Pentecostals and Italian Catholics and This everybody in could be really interesting.
Speaker 1:Think so.
Speaker 2:And so there's this guy, John Swinton who's actually at Aberdeen in Scotland. He's coming as one of the artists. We have artists coming in. I visited with John the other day. He says, I just want him to talk.
Speaker 2:He could read the phone book and I would enjoy listening to read the phone book but he's great. And I told him because he was brand new, he didn't know what all was going on. I said, yeah. When Kate Long had this vision for doing this, she thought man, this is either gonna be epic, historic and one of the greatest things ever happened or it's gonna be a dumpster fire. And John got so tickled he said, what?
Speaker 2:I said a dumpster fire. And he just said, and then he just started chuckling. You know, even the language and our our our humor, our illustrations, it's gonna be fascinating to pull all this together.
Speaker 1:And you and you have been in the middle of helping plan it all. You're writing devotionals for all of us. Yes. And so and I and that's and that's what we wanted. We wanted you to be our gift to this movement, but to help us connect it to our church.
Speaker 1:And so that's exactly what's happening. And so it's even gonna To me, it's gonna factor into next year's planning about how do we impact our world for Christ. Well, one of the ways we do that is through actually flourishing as the people of God. That's that's what draws people to him when they see that. And so, it it's all just being woven together in a tapestry right now in a
Speaker 2:beautiful way. And we've got a a weaver coming, a Christian weaver from Germany. Her name is Weber, which actually is Weaver. Yeah. She's coming to help provide just some artistic creative expression to to this.
Speaker 2:God is doing a new thing. Yes. It's Awesome. It's messy, it's decentralized, it is in some ways post denominational but it's global and it is going to look and feel different than probably what has been hitherto but a sense very much the same thing.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:So what's been fascinating to us for you to have been for the last decade helping lead this new ascent movement and now more recently for you to be really the catalyst for us to even be pursuing flourishing and to see how similar these are in in terms of breaking down a lot of old barriers and a lot of old paradigms, a lot of old mindsets and and not missing this new thing that God is that we have so graciously been invited to be a part of.
Speaker 1:It's It's amazing. It's exciting. And so and so you're going. Cindy and I are going. Katie, Hodges and Ryan are going because you and Katie and I have been the representatives representatives of our church from the really from the pastoral ministry side
Speaker 2:of I the I would be remiss if I didn't say pastoring. And Kim would gone Yeah. But she's in Utah playing in a pickleball tournament during that time. She actually has back to back tournaments in Utah And that she's playing. Or she would've been
Speaker 1:going For to those who don't know, Kim, when when I was in Colorado the other day, Cindy and I were, we were at the Stigers and you were y'all were the Lovinghams. I was in this little shop in Durango and it and they they had these little towels that you kinda guess you hang in your kitchen and had all kind of just interesting sayings. And one of them said, no, I don't play pickleball all the time. And then it went dot dot dot. Well, actually, I do.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. I started to buy that and give it to Kim. Well,
Speaker 2:she in fact, this morning, as I was leaving to come to church, she was putting her, ball machine in the back of her cart to go out just to practice. She's she's got a she's got 200 pickleballs and a machine. She's good at it,
Speaker 1:man. And and it's one of the reasons I when I play with her, I can't return her service.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. I had to address No. No. But I just felt like it was important to mention that.
Speaker 1:But she's been to OCC.
Speaker 2:She has been to OCC
Speaker 1:many times. Awesome. And, and we, Cindy and I, we're actually flying into Rome. We're going to stay at the Aberdeen, where we always stay for a couple of nights.
Speaker 2:And Maria.
Speaker 1:Get up to, Montefalco. We're not really sure how we're gonna get there yet, but it looks to me like there are ways to get there. So we'll figure that out when we
Speaker 2:get there. Train system in Italy is actually very good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So
Speaker 2:there's places probably by train.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've decided not to rent a car. So anyway but so with all that said, this whole journey has been very, powerful, interesting. It's it's it to me has enriched the life of our church in ways we would have never imagined, I would say.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And and I think it is pulling together so many different threads in the life of our church into something that is really starting to take shape and make sense for us. And so thank you, Kurt, for all you've done for us.
Speaker 2:And and again, we're we're gonna be talking a lot about the in fact, Wednesday night at the table. Folks, if if you can come Wednesday night.
Speaker 1:This podcast is sponsored by First Lamb's Origins.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry. So come Wednesday night at the table because we're gonna continue this conversation about listening to God
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And and and talking to God but then responding in obedience to God. And and we feel like this is all part of the flourishing journey for us and it's gonna develop some things in us, some thoughts and paradigm and and desires that God is gonna use to to impact our community I think in the days ahead. But we're having global impact because we're leading the way on ascent, on flourishing. First Baptist Church Arlington has been given the opportunity to help be trailblazers in both of these areas. And so we're trying to respond faithfully in the moment to to God's call.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. It really is. So, yeah. We'll be praying to that end on Wednesday night at the table. So we hope you'll be there for that.
Speaker 1:And midweek is in full swing. Just so you know, there are all kinds of things happening. The fall is is has launched. We've got, our prayer breakfast on September 19, September 25. We have a church wide golf tournament where you can invite a guest to It's got an evangelistic feel to it.
Speaker 1:As I said, Rafael Anzenberger from Canada will be here on the twenty sixth to preach. And so just a lot of things happening in the life of our church right now. We're pretty excited about it. We've got
Speaker 2:three search teams that are looking for people to come join our staff and new people are here yesterday again. Yes. So many first time guests. Yes. And I mean, running the the gamut.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's just exciting.
Speaker 1:It is. It is. And, you know, for me, it's been great to be able to be out and about. I was at, Howard Payne last Wednesday, preached in chapel this week. I'm preaching at DBU.
Speaker 1:I was at Baylor all week the week before that, and then ETBU the week before that. So I've been in, Your
Speaker 2:Baylor involvement a little more intense.
Speaker 1:Was more intense. It was a whole week long
Speaker 2:all day. Those places. You taught a doctoral seminar at Baylor. It's little different. It's not apples to apples.
Speaker 1:But it was really it's been good for me to be engaged with these students and see what God's doing through them. And in every one of my stops, I've talked a little bit about the flourishing study, just to introduce it to them. And I've I've been interested in how the students have responded. Numerous students have come up to me afterwards to talk to me about it. Wanna know how do you find research on this?
Speaker 1:Where where do we go? So people are getting interested in all of as they should. And I'm really grateful that we're a part of this. Okay?
Speaker 2:Again, it's bigger than any of us know. Both Byron and Tyler were in Arlington this past week. Yes. For a whole conversation. It was a big counseling seminar.
Speaker 2:And so Bill Nichols texted me Yeah. And just said
Speaker 1:Did he go to
Speaker 2:it? Yes. He brought
Speaker 1:me a book.
Speaker 2:Want to Yeah. Yeah. So Bill Nichols said, hey, I'm fix this is flourishing, I'm going to a seminar that Tyler Vanderbilt and Byron Johnson are leading, what's up? I said, it's crazy, isn't it? That's awesome.
Speaker 2:And I just said I'm so glad you're in the mix, you're in the middle of all that because it has such broad application and this is for all people. And again, the academic angle of what does human flourishing look like in the academy and researchers can get as involved as they want to. But now the church and people of faith are also gonna be able to participate and benefit from that.
Speaker 1:Well, talked to Bill Sunday morning and he was telling me that he went to hear he heard Tyler. I had forgotten about that conference. We were we were, not able to go. But, yeah, it's it's it's incredible all the tentacles right now where all this is going, you know, and unanticipated, I would say, but so much like God. So anyway
Speaker 2:And he let us get in on the Ground Floor.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's awesome. So Well, thank you, Kurt. Blessings. Thank you all for joining us, and somebody will be back next week. I'm I'm not really sure who, but but there will be someone here for coming in.
Speaker 3:Thanks for listening to the Tell Me More podcast today. You can subscribe to this podcast on your app of choice, or you can visit us at fbca.org to find out more information about the podcast and our church. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Have a good day.