Singing Scripture | Jesse Roberts | Episode 23

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, this is Grant Lockridge and Jared Tafta. On the Across the Counter podcast, we're create space for real people to have honest conversations. I recently interviewed the lead singer of Poor Bishop Hooper. It's him and his wife. I interviewed just Jesse Roberts and it was a super interesting interview and I kind of wanted to hear Jared's take on it. So, jared, what you got for me.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Hey man, I wasn't actually able to be on this interview, I was unavailable, but Grant locked it in and I was just excited because Poor Bishop Hooper is kind of an inspiration to me. Jesse and his wife Leah started recording from my understanding with a musical background, to have a song for every song and it was just cool to hear kind of how the pace of life and family also inspired them to keep following through on recording. So it was a good listen. You know, it would have been better if I could be there, obviously.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Just for the record, this is a band that I actually listen to. I'm a huge fan of theirs and it's like the perfect thing to listen to when you're studying or reading or doing something like that. You need some good Christian background music. That's like the best. Poor Bishop Hooper is the best for that.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Yeah, and it's actually like straight scripture. So not only did they record with Psalms as inspiration, but like their actual, the songs are just scripture, melodically playing throughout your house and, like you know, if it's background music, like you're just having God's word wash over you continually, which is a pretty cool outlet and it's interesting to me that we don't have more. It's weird that it's unique that you would have a band that is just recording some modern twist on just using God's word. Like it's odd, that's a unique thing, not a really common thing in the Christian faith. So I don't know. That's interesting to me. What about you? That's huge.

Speaker 1: 2:28

I just love it. It's just. It's really. It doesn't have that normal Christian music flair to it. I have a playlist on Spotify that's called Christian Music. That Doesn't Suck, and they made that playlist.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Christian Music that Doesn't Suck.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Yeah, you just get those same Christian songs that just sounds the same and they're playing the same bass line and in the key of C and they're just rocking and rolling and it's 80 bridges and that sort of thing and it's poor. Bishop Hooper completely gets rid of that. So I really like them.

Speaker 2: 3:07

My wife is a fan of Christian music. That doesn't suck. You can almost hear it as soon as the first few chords are played. That's his radio, or that's switchfoot.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Not switchfoot, but just casting crowns. Yeah, don't be knocking switchfoot, I'm not knocking switchfoot.

Speaker 2: 3:25

It's just, you just know. It is funny though it's like comfort food Occasionally when a casting crown song comes on that has been playing every day on his radio since I was 12. It is nice sometimes to just go back and eat grandma's casserole.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Or listening to Steve-as-Kermin Jackson. He's pretty good.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Say that again.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Steve-as-Kermin Jackson.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Steve-as-Kermin Jackson.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Otherwise known as Stephen Curtis Chapman, but without further ado. Jesse Roberts from Poor Bishop Hooper. Hi, this is Grant Lockridge on the Across the Counter podcast. Today I'm interviewing Jesse Roberts from Poor Bishop Hooper. And Jesse, just tell me a little bit about your personal journey and how you got started.

Speaker 3: 4:18

How I got started doing music or how I got started with Jesus.

Speaker 1: 4:21

How you guys started with Jesus. Okay, that's what matters more for right now.

Speaker 3: 4:26

Yes, sir, I was raised in a small town in Central Kansas in a Presbyterian church there, and so I was introduced young by my parents and was involved, greatly involved, through the church community where I'm from and but really took to a camp out in Southeast Kansas growing up as a kid and I worked there for all four years during college and there through a community of believers, particularly, I would say, when I was 21, like after my junior year of college, I think that I gave or I acknowledged Jesus not just as a man and as God but as. Lord. He got me right around when I was 21. So that's, but that's the high altitude view of how I came to know the Lord Raised in it. And then, somewhere along the way, gradually and in also large steps too, had had moments of Him captured my heart fully.

Speaker 1: 5:28

That's really cool. Before we started recording, we were talking about your prison ministry and how you got started playing your music in prisons, which was super interesting to me. Just tell me a little bit more about how you got into that and how that's impacted your life and theirs.

Speaker 3: 5:48

Yeah, so my wife and I she's from a small town in central Kansas as well, and we both, as we started doing this music more and more, we started seeing opportunities to serve underserved communities with it. I had been in a kind of a touring rock band for four years before I got married and we basically passed over anywhere small. That's all about tickets and t-shirts, we had the agent and the manager and the lawyer and all the stuff like kind of rolling, but it was. You go to big markets and you hit the same places and it's very business-minded. And when we started sharing music live, particularly through an experience we call Golgotha, which is a 14 original songs around the stations of the cross, we started doing that. We started to see that there was opportunity to share it in places that were maybe not normal tour stops and wanted to not only share it in abnormal places but also in places that we felt the Lord calling us to, and so I don't even remember how the first conversation happened, but it was, hey, I wonder if we could. I think we had a friend who had done some music in correctional facilities and said, hey, this would be really beautiful there, and so the first time we did it. It was eye-opening. First of all, it's amazing how it being in the correctional facilities, it strips away a lot of the pretense of church music, particularly in kind of some of these larger non-denominational settings where the production value is very high. You go in there, you maybe have 20 minutes to set up, maybe you use a bunch of their equipment because it's less equipment. You have to check in through entry. All the lights are on, there's no pomp and circumstance. The guys come in and you just start talking about Jesus and singing and do your thing and then get to have a relationship and pray with people and does it have a fog machine, no fog machines. But it was amazing to see the response of these guys and I remember the maybe it's the second or third facility we ever went into. There was a couple hundred guys in the room and afterwards we had some space. We actually brought a friend of ours from here in Kansas City who had been detained, who'd been incarcerated in that prison years before, and he's hey, you're going down to El Dorado, can I come with you, of course? So he came with us and after we were done with the music side of it, which was about an hour, he got up and spoke a little bit and the spirit was just doing mighty things in the room and there were probably I don't know, it's numbers, whatever 80, 90 guys got up to either receive Jesus or ask for prayer. So it's our band of four and two other guys we brought with us who were trying to minister to these, all these guys, and of course you have the CO, you have the correctional officers standing in the back. Hey, you have 23 minutes exactly and then everyone is gone. You can't go over. The janitor doesn't get us to keep the lights on a little longer. It's like when it's 745, it's 745 and so on, and so we were just scrambling to be with everyone and be intentional and pray and talk and have a relationship and then, at the same time, try and bless as many people as we could, and knowing that it's all, the Lord was doing something and we were just trying to be a part of that. And when it was over, I said Chaplain Harris that's the chaplain there I said is that normal? Is this a normal response from these things happen, because this is only like the second time we'd ever been in. And he said, oh no, usually it's no more than a handful of guys who want to actually engage or come down or whatever. I'm like, wow, okay, what was it? And he said there's nothing beautiful in here. And when you bring beauty through this music and through the artwork, could we give these books away to anyone who wants them? It's got this beautiful artwork in it. It's all just telling the story of Jesus, from the garden to the tomb. So the sacrifice. And he said when you mix beauty with the truth of scripture, it's powerful. He said, people can't deny it. And that's what happened. And ever since then we've just tried to share that, that mixture of beauty and truth through the music and scripture and art with Golgotha, particularly in a bunch of live settings, wherever the Lord is leading. So we find ourselves in random places rural towns, high school like theaters, all the way up to like big mega churches and whatever else, wherever the Lord has it, and we just pray a lot and say, god, do you want us to go here or not? And in turn he has brought us into some really unique spaces that you would net an agent if we had one, but never book.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 9:59

Yeah, but he's provided in every sense of the word and in every step of the way.

Speaker 1: 10:03

So I'll tell you what that's so refreshing to hear, just like getting back to the roots of what it is. Just beauty and truth together is what makes Christian music if you want to label it but music about God just that much more impactful and meaningful. Just taken out all the emotional responses and just bring it back to just beauty and truth. I think that's really cool. So do you prefer playing in the prisons or do you like more of the just touring on the road? But it sounds like prisons is the coolest thing you got going on. Honestly.

Speaker 3: 10:44

It's wild and it's really, it's really sweet. A lot of times let me think of how to say this we sow seeds and we till and we might not see the harvest. Sometimes you get these glimpses of the harvest.

Speaker 1: 11:00

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 11:01

And we won't know maybe ever, but definitely not on this side what our efforts are doing and how the Lord is using him, how the spirit is cultivating some of that. And, like I was saying earlier, first time this one drummer came in with us to a prison, the first time he ever came, he said why are we doing it anywhere else? Like, why would we wait? We shouldn't waste our time? Yeah, first of all it's a lot harder to get into a lot of them. It's the process and things change last minute or you show up and oh, they can't let you in for an hour later. Normal, just things happen. But secondly, there's it's easy sometimes and the Lord hasn't called us to just correctional facilities because we know people who have that calling. Okay, my life's calling is to go and serve in this one prison or in multiple prisons. And we know this great guy, johnny, here in Missouri and he does prisons all over the state like almost every day of the week, all year round, and he's amazing ministry he's doing and we're actually excited. We're going to go into one facility with him here in Missouri in a couple of weeks. But that hasn't been our direct calling, but it's definitely part of it, if that makes sense. And it's easy to look at the correctional facility and say whoa, like there's boisterous response, there's audible people like engaging during this thing. It's very clear the spirit's moving and doing things. And then the next night we're in a, let's say, a very loft community, in a, in an established church that has a lot of people who just sit and listen. It's easy to say that one hat one was better and the other one's not, but we trust the Lord's moving in both. And my wife always says no one tells a bride she's ugly like the bride of the Lord. The church is beautiful and worth our time and worth serving, and so we, we don't want to omit that for the sake of oh, it feels cooler or it's more fun. However, there's definitely like a. There's a different energy that goes in when we're going into the facilities to minister to the guys or ladies. We've done some women stuff too, so so what's?

Speaker 1: 12:53

I'm just curious the like songwriting process you guys have is it, do you put lyrics first and then I know, with the you wrote a song for every song, which was so cool to see. But is it? Obviously you're working with a song and it has lyrics and you're condensing down those lyrics in the best way you can make them fit into a song. Do you write your lyrics out? Do you write your lyrics out first and then make music to it, or how does it work?

Speaker 3: 13:27

Yeah, lee and I's process is pretty unique. I shouldn't say that it's. It's unique depending on when and where and what's happening. So for Grogatha that one I was talking about before, that we share in a lot of live settings, we wrote that it's that's 14 songs and they're all based directly right out of the scriptures of the passages based on the biblical stations, the cross, that one, we went out to this little camp that we met at, actually, and took three days and wrote all those songs in three days. It was wild, it was a spiritual download. It just came and we both looked at each other when it was over and, like whoa, that worked out. That was wild. Thank the Lord for giving whatever it is, and we thought it was just going to be a good. Friday service for our own church and here, 10 years later, this will be the 10th year that we share it this coming Linton season. 10 years later, it's become something totally we did not expect. But for every Psalm differently of course, is that we have the very. the goal was to stay as true to the text as we could yet still like crafting and creating and holding beauty, because we know a lot of people who are a good amount of people who've done just straight. Like you, sing straight the scripture. I'm going to pick ESV, I'm going to sing it, and that's wonderful and we're for that. But with the Psalm stuff, what was interesting is that we're looking at it and we're really having to trust the Lord because with the Every Psalm project we put ourselves in a bit of a box saying that we're going to release one every week for 150 straight weeks and when we did that it'll allow it again. You talk about like stripping away pretense. We made it so we couldn't second guess ourselves. Like production decisions had to happen. They had to happen relatively quickly. The songs had to be generally simple and we had to trust that if we were reading that Psalm, that if there were certain parts so let's say some of the longer ones if it's a 50 verse Psalm, we're like we're probably not going to get to every one of these verses or the song is going to be 10 minutes long. So, lord makes we trust that you will guide our writing to be to at least communicate what we feel like this song in its entirety is communicating. There were definitely times where it felt like you have to sing these words even if it's about Horeb and Maraba and like these places in the Old Testament, sing them Okay. And there were definitely times that it felt like this chunk of four verses is the lifeblood of this Psalm and you can just set on those and that's okay. And so when we really started getting into it, it became clear that we had we couldn't spend a ton of time getting in the weeds, because we like to really research when it comes to writing out of the Bible. So, whether that's reading commentaries or cross-citing everything through Old New Testament, whatever this one, we thought we just had to really spend time in that Psalm. Now, if it touched another place in the Bible, obviously we'd read those things, but the goal was not I need to know every possible thing so I can get the right angle and the right perspective, but instead I'm just going to read this song, this Psalm, 20 times and pray a lot and then write it because we don't have time to do anything else, and I think the result is really natural feeling and simple, and I think it worked really well for what the project was, and so the songwriting, of course, for that was very different and praise God. There were definitely seasons through that three years where I was tapped out. I had no creative energy and it just so happened huh, the Lord provided that my wife was always like fire, hot writing in those seasons where I wasn't, and vice versa, there'd be times where I'd come down from the studio and be like Leah, I just wrote three in an hour. They all came super fast and she's like, yeah, I haven't written any in two weeks, like I've got nothing. Right now I'm just spent. And so the Lord really cared for us with that. And I don't think we could have done it unless we were a team, both writing. It was such a monstrous undertaking that it worked out well to have two writers and we would often work together, but obviously we did all the recording together, most of the producing together, but then the writing. Sometimes she would have time to write where I'd be with the kids or picking them up from school or whatever it was, and it worked out well that there was. We had touch points, both of us separately to jump in and write stuff.

Speaker 1: 17:29

They definitely sound, at least to me, just super genuine. So I like that idea of just we're going to do it in a week and we're going to pray, we're going to read it a bunch of times and we're going to pray through it, because the key thing there, I feel like, is reading, obviously, but just an absurd amount of prayer and I got it.

Speaker 3: 17:50

I have to trust the Holy Spirit that he knows better than I do and he knows that he knows the word better than I do. And if he's saying sit in this pot for whatever reason, even if it doesn't make sense to me, I'm like, okay, I have to. And there were surprisingly few number of the Psalm songs that we stopped or started over. Usually that first idea that came was like this is the right idea. I can think of a couple, particularly for me, where maybe I was not in a good place spiritually or in my heart to do it, but I like I got to get this done, but I need to keep working. And it became a work thing and I can remember six or seven of those throughout the 150 that I started and then I would take it down, do a demo, bounce it, take it down, listen with Leah, or she'd come to the studio and we'd both be sitting there listening and be like no, that's not right, I don't know what it is, can't tell you why. And then in that moment I'd be like yeah, I was striving, I was like trying to force it, and so we'd scratch it and I'd like calm down and we'd start over. The one that comes to mind, actually, which is one of my wife's favorites, is 145. So we had done it was the very last one we'd done. We did them mostly in chronological order. Obviously they came out chronologically, so we generally did, but oftentimes particularly Leah would jump forward or just so she was we're not doing the same ones and we'd be kind of all around her. Or you wake up in the night like I need to read Psalm 113 right now, oh yeah. And then it's like something would come, but 145, we'd done them all and I had like a simple idea for 145, but it was the last one and I was like I don't want to do this one lame, I want to do this one really well. And so I was like pushing a little bit on 145. And I got to. I'd done all the drums, bass, the keys on it and the acoustic tracks, so it was like all the major pieces of it were done and it was a little bit feeling it felt a little highly produced, higher than or the top end from production standpoint, and I lost all of the tracks through a crazy little computer glitch. They all disappeared and I was really hoping to get it done by the next day, because I felt for and it's cool seeing the Lord's timing afterwards but the Lord was calling us like, hey, make sure you get this done by whatever day. It was in August and so put us a couple months ahead of time. But and I said okay and like, and I lost it all. And I was like sick to my stomach, you're losing this massive file of all of these tracks. And I'm like, oh no. And so I met with a friend of mine. We walk in discipleship on Wednesdays and he's, he looked down. I was like dude, I just lost hours of hours of work and he's maybe the Lord's telling you something, that kind of thing. And I was like, okay. So that afternoon I went back, or that evening, because Leah was up there with me, I went back and I just tracked it live, just stood in the booth with the guitar, tracked the vocal and the guitar at the same time. One take live. I sent it to Leah. She was like that's infinitely better than the demo you sent me. I changed a few things here and there, just played it, just actually like I had the Bible out, I had my lyrics out, I just sat there and sang it and played it and it was way better. And she now that's one of her favorite ones now. And so I'm like, okay, I got to trust, even when I lose all of the files. And I'm like, oh, I want to puke. That was so much work down the drain and we had never had a not a single computer issue, lost files, anything, the whole 150 until the very last one. So okay, maybe I got to redirect. Yeah, that's a cool story, Vida.

Speaker 1: 21:19

That's wild. So you said that you were involved in discipleship on Wednesdays. That was actually something I was talking about with my last guest, about actually female discipleship. But what does that describe to me the process of discipleship and kind of what that means and how you participate in that or maybe do that? Yeah, so a bit of backstory.

Speaker 3: 21:43

My wife and I have been married almost 10 years. We moved to Kansas City from Lawrence, kansas after we got married and got involved in a house church system through this wonderful man of God leader here in Kansas City, and so there was a bunch of people doing house church stuff and we were here within the first two months we were here. I don't know, we were part of this little house church in Midtown, kansas City, baptized four or five non-disabled people, non-christian guys, in a kiddie pool in the alley behind this guy's house. That's really cool, and I was like I had never seen anything like that. I've been in institutional church stuff a little bit more yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:22

Presbyterians not baptizing people in kiddie pools?

Speaker 3: 22:26

probably, yeah, in the alley behind the house and then like barbecue and having a beer and doing whatever, celebrating. And so we were doing that and I just remember thinking this is I haven't seen anything like this. And part of that system that was very intentional was that we have to be meeting with people, sharing life, both so in the home church context in kind of that small community size 15 to 30 size and then also individually with people. Both. Someone has to be leading you in the Lord and you have to. The idea is you're leading someone else in the Lord, as Jesus commands go and make disciples. So what does that mean? You can't. It's hard to do if you don't spend time with people. It's hard to do if you don't have intentional moments with people and it's hard to do if those moments aren't set aside and regular. And so ever since we've done that and we've still we're still doing home church ministry Been doing it for 10 years Really love the setting, the small space. I think it allows for something that the larger gathering does not. We love the large gathering, don't get me wrong on that and we're still a part of the ministry here in Kansas City that does. There's around 20 home churches who meet once a month. We all gather together Three Sundays a month. We gather in our homes and then in, in and amidst those gatherings, this weekly ones, we highly encourage everyone involved in the home churches to be having one-on-one or small group type regular conversations so that I know Grant, I don't know what's going on in your life because I don't talk to you enough. I don't know what's going on in your life because we don't we're not having touch points other than a Sunday morning gathering. So how do we change that? We spend some time together and I like to walk, so we, I walk with a lot of guys here in town and in in seasons where I'm needing direction or or reproach, the like, someone to tell me off. It makes you think of one of the Psalms and I'm having problem with the number. I can't ever remember the numbers. But yeah, I mean there's a lot of those, all the numbers for the ones or not all, but a lot of them and it just talks about how that it's a good thing for a man to like basically strike you, let a righteous man strike me. It's a kindness. Yeah it's oil for my head and so we want that's so counterculture to where we live and how we live. Now in America, no one gets to tell you wrong about anything. And yet we're saying no, submit that, submit to that. And so I have close friends and then people who are I've been walking with for years, people who I've been walking with for not a song, who were doing both those things, some younger, some older. We love the multi-generational conversations. If we can get them. I want to sit the feet of older men and tell, have them tell me when I'm doing things wrong. Yeah, that's just wise yeah please Lord, put those men in my life. Yeah, the disciples of stuff is beautiful, it's beautiful, we love it. Yeah, I don't know if that answered the question at all.

Speaker 1: 25:13

It's honestly what I think needed to be said and what I needed to hear, because me and my wife actually just visited a house church. We're members of a pretty large congregation multi-site church in downtown Greenville and we just visited one of my buddies house churches and there were so many cool things going on there. There was a couple of weird things that we are a little uncomfortable with, but just the aspect of having a community that is small enough to where you actually know everybody and you have your guys, that maybe one guy, maybe a couple that you're discipling and people that are actively pouring into you and if you don't show up or if you don't do what God's called you to do, they know about it and they're going to get you. That seems so awesome and such a different way to do church, something that is there like sermons at your house church. I'm just curious.

Speaker 3: 26:25

So it looks very different. For a long, for many years I preached conversationally 45 minutes to an hour with conversation minutes, but it was all text. You just go down the line. I mean Matthew one, matthew two, Matthew three, matthew four, or chunk by chunk, whatever. So yeah that for many years now we're in a situation where we're passing the leadership load more, so different couples are leading or individuals are giving the torch each week. Just from a prep perspective that's far less burden. But it's really interesting when we think about that, because we're all for the and there's a lot of large kind of corporate looking churches who have very active intentional small groups.

Speaker 2: 27:07

They don't call them house churches, but whatever their house churches they meet every week.

Speaker 3: 27:10

They love each other, they care for each other.

Speaker 2: 27:12

There's no doubt.

Speaker 3: 27:13

Yeah, again, we're not. Again, hear me, we're not opposed to any of that. It's interesting when we, you know, I remember when we first came to Kansas City, I was talking to this guy, craig, who brought us in and he said, okay, we expect, let's say, a generally mid-sized church of three or 400 people. There's what a pastor maybe like a part-time worship leader, a part-time children's director and a secretary yeah, maybe there's one or two other smattering staff in there how many realistic relationships can that one pastor care for? Can he care for 300 people, be it their funerals, be it their weddings, be it visit them in the hospital? He said no, and he said that's why all these pastors are getting burnt out and they can't handle it and whatever it's like, yes, they get paid. They literally don't have time in the day to care for everyone's needs. And if you see it modeled, we see it modeled with Jesus. Yes, he speaks to the crowds, yes, he has that crew that's bigger, that follows him around, and then he has the 12, and then he has the three. So it's like what if we just modeled it after that? Okay, you have a small-ish group of people. You can actually know what's going on in their life. When he's sitting there saying like John, this is your mother, take her on the cross. He's taking Mary. He can trust them to each other. That's a huge deal, but he knows him, he's not interested in some random guy. He doesn't know, Some random dude he knows him really well and they've walked together for years, and so these are those things that can happen when you're in the small community. This is a cool testimony from Nava. This is the home church collection we're a part of now. There was a crew who was fostering these kids. This isn't in our house church, but in one of the other ones that we know them. They were fostering these kids. They came up for adoption. The crew was like the parents who had been fostering felt clearly from the Lord like we're not supposed to adopt these kids, but we don't want them to leave. We want to care for them. We don't know how, and in the same time, another family in the home church, out of nowhere from the spirit, adopt these kids. It was calling them to adopt the kids. So all of a sudden they've been. They've fostered these kids, I think, for a year and a half or something. The family who had been fostering them, the people who adopt them, they know them really well because they've been walking in home church for a year and a half. So they've been fostered by this family. They get adopted by the other family and now they're old foster mom and dad are like uncle and aunt because we live with you for a year and a half, but now this is our family. We already know their kids. We know them. It's beautiful. It became this like really great testimony of like how the Lord can work in that, because the reality was they're like we feel clearly the Lord saying don't adopt these kids. We don't know why we want to, but we shouldn't, but they shouldn't, they couldn't, they had some barriers in this other family. Now we are supposed to very clearly. So that's where it's like the ability for the home church to care for people's needs, like right there then in there I remember we had a guy come. Sorry, I'm just rambling now testimony.

Speaker 1: 29:59

No, I like it.

Speaker 2: 30:00

I like it by the word of the testimony.

Speaker 3: 30:02

Yeah, the this guy came first time he ever came to house church and we're praying and we're asking like, hey, how is everybody? What do you need? We pray for people's needs, try and fulfill people's needs. Yeah, and he's man, not to be honest, I got car problems and I can't get to work and I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my job. Yeah, and we're like how much the cost he's got in the mechanic. It's gonna be like 600 bucks, and so we just passed the hat and paid for right then and there like here's 600 bucks, we get it done and he was floored. He's what in the world? So of course he like comes back, changes his life, all this stuff and he's not let. Now, loves the Lord. What if you'd walked into wherever the likelihood of an institutional like brick and mortar church Gathering in it with a building, whatever you showing up, and even if they even hear that need, the likelihood of them meeting that need is slim because of what all they have to care for and still.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Yeah, it's not why.

Speaker 3: 30:56

Yeah, yeah and people abuse that system. We've probably seen that Bunch of times, but it's cool. It's cool when there's like hands and feet. I have a good friend here in town who always talks about it as a Battleship, or aircraft carriers and fighter jets. He's got the big battleship and the battleship is important. It's like prominent. It's there in the community. Everyone knows it does huge endeavors, it does massive conferences, it does these things to encourage the church. And then you have the fighter jets that get sent off from the aircraft carrier that are supposed to only bomb one little place. You're your fighter jet in your neighborhood. Do your house in your neighborhood, take care of your neighborhood. That's all you're called to do, don't? You don't need to be dropping bombs across the world with your internet presence or? Yeah, they oughta do your small thing. A little fighter jet, you could. Your mobile, you can move fast. And then you got the battleship. You can't move fast, takes a long time to get going. Once it's going, it goes its direction. But it can pack a big punch. But there's different entities and we need them both.

Speaker 1: 31:49

So that's super cool, just to hear. That's something that is really important to me on this podcast. It's just figuring out how different denominations and different churches Can interact and work with each other. So that's really cool to for you to say that different roles of the battleship and the fighter jet because I know how I know a couple different house church people that are leaders of house churches and they there there's definitely this underlying sense of bitterness towards, at least to start, they've repented, they they're, but there's that all the big church has a bunch of lukewarm people and I don't like this and I made this house church and it's way better and boo on the big church and Like your heart behind of just it happens at traditional church, at the bigger buildings, bigger denominations, but it also we have our role to play as a house church of just being small, being nimble and being able to Take care of our specific neighborhood.

Speaker 3: 32:58

Yeah, and I man, I admit their moments. I've repented of the same thing back in my early 20s, wasting all this money there's, all this, looking how much air conditioning bill is on that place. So that's when. Then I remember having a friend. He was older guy. He said just wait till you have some kids, man, you're gonna want them to have a playground and run around on. When I'm telling you that kind of thing. So it's funny, we gain wisdom as we age.

Speaker 1: 33:20

Praise the Lord, yeah hopefully we do, because minor I'm 20, 27 now and where the I Guess you would call them Passers essentially elders of the church or their house church or whatever the just They've grown a lot but the sense of like bitterness towards other Churches is not great. That's what I told them because I'm I really am on team like I love house church but my wife doesn't necessarily grow, at least I think, in those types of environments. She needs more traditional. We're non-denominational, so it's not traditional but she needs just a more structured thing and I'm very not structured, so I really enjoy just things happening. You'll be able to see the spirit move and just see it like some people, like a personal, say something and then somebody will basically finish the other one sentence and it like is weird synergy and I don't understand what's going on. Yeah, which is so cool. And hearing you, just another testimony of that same thing, of where just people are working together Like that and loving each other that well, it's just super cool and Is a testimony to just your specific community. So I'm glad that you shared that. What was the kind of umbrella Term of that house church? I guess it's a network you were describing.

Speaker 3: 34:53

The one we're involved in now. Yeah it's called Nava. It's here in Kansas City in a VAH and it, like I said, 18 home churches, 20 home church I don't know exactly how many in the metro area and Once a month we meet, corporately, gather, and we've gone through seasons. Actually, a year before COVID happened, the Lord told the leadership to remove from a building and start just going around. So a year before COVID even happened, the Lord was preparing this team of leaders to get into the. So at that point we did every other Sunday, so one Sunday, and we were going around all around the metro area meeting in other people's churches for three months at a time. Yeah, and they would bless the staff there. So we would be at a, we'd be like a Spanish speaking church up in KCK, and then two weeks later We'd be out in lease summit at a Nazarene church or three months later, and then three months later would be at like this traditional, like very prominent Presbyterian church here in Kansas City. Yeah, and then three months later be somewhere else. So we did that for a year and a half before COVID and we then, of course, looking back, it's that was the Lord preparing us. Yeah, it didn't feel really any different to go to once a month meeting in even different, unique spaces. And now we meet once a month still in, as all of the home churches gather in Midtown, kansas City, and Three weeks out of the month in our homes, so it's great.

Speaker 1: 36:10

I'm curious how? Because one of the big rebuttals that I've gotten of just talking about house church because I really think it's like awesome, of how it obviously depends on what's being taught is a big deal. Sure, is there heretical things happening, but the big rebuttal I've got People have brought to me is how do you make sure that the teaching there is sound like Because it's a network? Is there like a different leadership structure? Yeah, so not anyone and everyone is Lee.

Speaker 3: 36:48

There's a lot of relational crossover, yeah, before you're getting like handed the house, church leadership role thing. Yeah. Interestingly though, this whole like defending doctrine type mentality, I think it's interesting that when we think about the early disciples, they spent a bunch of time in Jesus and Then they were like go out and do it.

Speaker 1: 37:06

Yeah, it's not. You don't need a lot of defense to it.

Speaker 3: 37:10

No, and we had a guy. I remember this came up early, early days. We were to the church. We were part of doing home church stuff in at that time which doesn't exist now in its same form. Anyway, they were tied with this church up in Columbus Ohio called Xenos. You ever seen us? No they are. They are like hardcore about one-on-one discipleship and Teaching the Bible, like that. They just they read and say the Bible a ton and it's one-on-one discipleship. So, and they started with two guys in the 70s or 80s and it you can map them from those two all the way down. The people they've discipled and it's it's the same place Ohio State University and there's thousands of people and they're anytime they're Gathering of home churches gets bigger than 300. I think they just add another Gathering so they don't build buildings. I got some like half as little tiny strip ball where they have 250 people or 300 people or whatever it is. Yeah and they just add another service Because they're big on, we're not trying to take over, we're trying to take over for the kingdom, but their thing. I remember meeting some kids. They came down so we would send people up there. They would send like young guys down our way just to meet and cross over and learn from each other and stuff. I remember meeting some guy. He'd been a Christian for six months and he was discipling two people and you know before that he's like oh yeah, I was a drug addict and yeah, I've been safe for six months and a lot of people had to convert. I questioned there like wait a second, you know how do you even? Do you know the word Well enough to teach it to someone else who just came to Christ or whatever? And the guy was like we just we look at, we've read the Bible together a lot of times. I don't know what the answer is, but we read together and if I've learned something from the guy who's discipling me, then I like I'll tell him. And if I don't know, I just asked the guy who's discipling me. The next day, when I see him and I'm and they're like what if he doesn't know? It's he just asked the guy discipling him. But if you think about it like trickling down in that way To defend doctrine, are you gonna get moments where someone like maybe answers the question wrong. Yes, do we trust that the Holy Spirit is the one who's guiding Anyone who's seeking the Lord above, above any teacher, above anything you watch online, above any preacher who's been to seminary. It's like we have to trust that God is calling us to himself and the spirit can guide and the spirit doesn't screw up Right yeah, if we look at the word he and enlightens our minds to wisdom in the word. If we keep reading the Bible, even if we have things that are maybe off, will they eventually Do you get a get on there, get in the right stream? I believe they will, if the people are really hungry to know the truth. And so if there's a kid who's been only been a Christian for six months he's literally never read the whole Bible and is discipling someone else, there's a lot of people who, like you, shouldn't do that and I'm like throw them in the deep end together, let's see what happens. And as long as they're hungry, they're actually hungry for truth. Great. Now have we seen that young, particularly young men get thrown into leadership who are like zealous and passionate, maybe too early, and not have some of that like care from Stability, care and stability from leadership unto them, so that ends up burn them out or hey, they get some funky ideas and, yes, I've seen that too. So don't hear me like we fully and I went to seminary, I think it's great get to get training, yes, good training, but I think that it's. We would be beside ourselves to be too cautious Around who gets to say what or who gets to teach or who gets to lead someone else, when, if you want to think about, like early New Testament, the Wild West of these guys Just listening to the spirit, not having the Bible, they had the Old Testament but even then they didn't have copies of it. Wasn't the same access that we have. Yeah we have much more information that we can turn to and access than they did, and no one is saying those guys shouldn't have been doing that, they didn't have enough training. Yeah, it's like it was what it was, so so how do you explain?

Speaker 1: 41:04

Not explain. But what do you do with the passage of what is it second Timothy? Of what elders should be and that sort of thing, of this shouldn't be new believers and that sort of stuff. I think it's second Timothy.

Speaker 3: 41:17

I could be yeah, and here's the thing like we hold to the truth of the Bible. So you got if it's saying specific stuff or it has to be a man of one wife and his kids have to be respectful. Yes, yeah, so that again is like in the novel context. There's a thing called LTS, which leaders are house. Home church leaders go through which is called life transformation school. But it's this big, long process and you go through that and then there's a bunch of other training and equipping and you have to be in Relationship with other people who are maybe like in that elder spot. So all these home church leaders are getting so they know before yeah, they know. Yes, exactly so.

Speaker 1: 41:50

That's so valuable to what's what? That's so valuable to actually know Person. Yeah, obviously, if you're a church, you hire somebody that you think's nailed the interview kind of thing. But if and they've been walking with you and you've been their elder, teacher, leader, pastor, whatever you want to call it and and you've been walking them with them and see their growth and see their flaws and see their failures and be like that guy needs to lead, yeah, well, and it's interesting, you talk about hiring people for church, nava.

Speaker 3: 42:26

I love. One thing I love about Nava is they, when they hire, it's only in-house. Yeah, they never bring people from out of the community into the community for a job. Yeah, because it's all built on relationship. The thing is faithful family on mission, like prayerful family on mission. So we're family and if we're family, we're not gonna hire some guy for the worship thing that no one knows. Yeah there's a level of trust and relationship that we have to keep, and so that's been really beautiful too, and so if they're, if they need something, they pray a lot about it, and they pray that within the community it would be provided. And so far, for the last time in many years We've been there, it's happened. Lord just provides it the right time, and maybe it looks a little different than they thought. Hey, we need someone for this, we need someone for that. It always comes through relationship, yeah that's instead of the like job application on the internet thing. That's really cool. And again am I saying that, that the Lord can't move and work through that.

Speaker 1: 43:17

No, yeah, no, I definitely can. You don't know the heart of man, but it's. It really sounds like your heart's in the right spot. I've just I don't want to say any of that's wrong or any of that's not the way to do it, but this is how I'm leading my family. Yeah, I love that approach. That's something that I've been at least trying to be very careful about is to be like hey, the way you do it is just like wrong and I have the answers and see, I've Read the Bible, but it's I have to, like the other guy has to.

Speaker 3: 43:51

Man we were. Last year. We were up with this really fantastic guy, father Simon. He's a monk up in Indiana, yeah, and st Mine rad. This is really great monastery. It's a gorgeous monastery up there and we went and share Golgotha in the in this like big cathedral. Yeah and, of course, very interesting because he's a younger guy and Leah, a woman, was in there leading this thing for these monks and a lot and other people who came and Just it really intriguing. We had a lot of people who were like you shouldn't do that. Yeah they're Catholic. You understand that? Yes, we understand, and we just spent a couple days with him and it was beautiful. Are there things that we disagree on?

Speaker 1: 44:33

Yes, yeah, sure.

Speaker 3: 44:34

Are there things that we're like oh man, you guys have such potential, and. And then there are other things are my whoa, I am Convicted at the way that you do this, that and the other. That is amazing. You are all out for the Lord. That's amazing. So it's beautiful. We like hold it hand-to-hand. And again back to that thing that my wife's always talking about the bride. The bride is beautiful, you know, and I'm not gonna slander the bride of Christ, I'm gonna hold my tongue.

Speaker 1: 45:04

Thanks for listening to the across the counter podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars, wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, y'all.