Personal Renewal in the Liminal Space with Terry Walling

Are you seeking clarity and growth in your spiritual journey? Then this is a conversation you won't want to miss. In our latest episode, we have the pleasure of engaging in a truly thought-provoking conversation with the acclaimed author, Terry Walling. His book, "Unlikely Nomads," has stirred a wave of renewal among individuals on a path of faith. We delve into the transitioning phase of the church and how this time of uncertainty could be a catalyst for personal and corporate transformation.

As we navigate this compelling discussion, Terry reveals the importance of allowing divine interruptions, leading to greater spiritual clarity and healing. We explore how the noise of the world often drowns out God's voice and how retuning our ears to His voice is crucial for spiritual growth. The conversation takes a deeper turn as we address the dangers of consumer and celebrity culture in the church and the need for a new approach.

In the final part of our conversation, we shine a light on the role of stillness, solitude, and surrender in our relationship with Jesus. We discuss the potential dangers within the ministry and emphasize the importance of being with Jesus before engaging in ministry for Him. If you're a pastor or a church leader grappling with the transitions within the church, this conversation will provide you with valuable insights and practical advice. Join us as we uncover new paths in faith, spiritual growth, and transformation.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

You're listening to the Reconstructing Pastors podcast. I'm Ruth Lawrence in.

Speaker 2: 0:11

And I'm Kirk Romberg. We're recovering pastors talking about what it looks like to make sense of our calling and community expression on the other side of deconstruction.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Our hope is to create a safe space to explore the bigger picture of the church, both the present state of the American evangelical church and what the future may hold for those who are searching for a better way.

Speaker 2: 0:35

We're really glad you're here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Well, we are so excited for this episode of the Reconstructing Pastors podcast because we got one of our favorite people with us today, Terry Welling. We're so glad that you're back. We've got you back.

Speaker 3: 0:53

It's so nice to be back. I'm saying to myself we're doing this again. This is amazing. I've never been on a repeat podcast except for Mark Sayers. So you're, that's some decent company. There you go.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Can I just tell you that, just to encourage you, that your episode that adds not long ago actually is our most listened to episode, and I think we talked in that time about this book that you were about to bring out. You brought it out now we want to talk about that in just a sec, but I think the book is unlikely nomads and I think it tapped on something that so many people are feeling right now, which is why I think it's the most well listened to episode for Reconstructing Pastors, and I had to. Both myself and Kirk had so many people reach out to us personally thanking us for that episode. They said things like, finally, someone kind of said what I've been feeling for so many years. I think it just adds words to some of the pain, some of the tensions, some of the issues and some of the hope that we all feel too as we travel forward to see what Giza is doing in this chair. So thank you, terri. That was a long introduction, but we have lured you back.

Speaker 3: 2:25

Well, you can do that any time you want. Having struggled my whole life with approval, Just keep going. That was just really good.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Why don't you start us off? We'd love to hear how it's been going with the book. I know it's come out. It's only been about a month or so, but yeah, tell us how it's been going.

Speaker 3: 2:44

A little shameless promotion right there, all whiteed out, but that's oh, look at that. Yeah, you too can get a free copy. It's gone really surprisingly well, and I don't mean that like in a false humility, I just Sometimes you write a book and you don't really know completely what. If it's going to actually really touch a need. It might be a need within you, or it might be just one that's in your small tribe, but it feels like it's touching a nerve, just like you said, ruth, and that's the fact that I can't believe. Somebody kind of brought all my thinking or thoughts together, put a label on it, gave me a way to start thinking about it. Remember leadership's communication, and sometimes when we don't have words, we don't have in some sense a way to actually lead process or continue to move forward. So it's been really warming. I would say that'd be a great deal and I'm thankful. But it also then illustrates the need that's out there, and I hate to call it a niche, but what I know, I've seen, and lots of people have begun to see, is that there's just this roaming tribe out there. That is not actually people who have just kind of got disenchanted and left. No, there's people out there who are hungry for something different and more and yet don't know where to go, don't know how to process it, don't know how to move forward. And probably my number one commitment I mean number one response from people and then it issued then in my commitment to stay with us for a little while is the hurt, the isolation, that sense of not being able to belong anymore, that sense of even loss of identity. All of that has been the common thread. I've heard from people I thought I was completely alone, or I know I wasn't alone, but I don't know where to go next to find community. So you know, I just think that it's indicative of what the book talks about.

Speaker 3: 5:14

The book talks about the fact that we're in a major transition time in the life of the church and I think one of the things I would, you know, really what's really helped me is to understand what we're going through. In light of that, not just understand our circumstance, but understand the circumstance we're in is actually you're not making it up, we're in an in-between time, we're not going back, but we don't know which way forward. That's the place, that's the experience where God does some of His greatest work. But, like I wrote in the earlier book stuck on personal transitions, that moment in time we want out. It's like everything so undefined, we want out but God wants in. We want it to be over, we want the next model, we want how to do it, we want all those things that kind of put us back in control.

Speaker 3: 6:19

And yet transitions are all about trust, dependency, hearing God's voice in new ways. So people aren't making this up. This is actually what's going on and we're moving from one major era of the church to the next. So you know, all of that, I think, has been part of why, potentially, the book has resonated with so many people, because it's really putting words to what really is truly going on.

Speaker 2: 6:51

Yeah, that to me doesn't feel I'm sure Ruth would agree like a surprising experience that you're having A lot of resonance, a lot of positive feedback, probably a lot of gratitude. We've heard people say, wow. I was in tears within the first, within the introduction. My wife was one of those and Ruth was one, and I found myself discapitated immediately. But I so thank you, thank you for your contribution and thank you for applying actually decades of learning and experience and practice into something you probably never expected 20 years ago you would be writing.

Speaker 3: 7:40

Oh no, oh no. I mean, my classic line is you know, you throw something against the wall, you draw a target around it. You say I meant to do that. Yeah, there was. I never saw it coming. But in some sense, in a leader's development, that's what is called convergence. When God uses you and I'm not saying anything about me, I'm on a journey to but when God uses you to make a unique contribution and you know, my small contribution, hopefully is to actually open a door for a whole group of people that we're calling the unlikely nomads to walk through so they can actually themselves move into what God has for them and the church move into what God has for all of us.

Speaker 2: 8:28

Next, what I was gonna say is well, you set us up brilliantly for the second section of your book, actually, and which is all about postures, which, when I turned the page, honestly, to that section, and even just reading that word, felt like something that was washing over my soul, because what I was reading wasn't okay. Here's what you do next in terms of you know, here's the next model that we should be shooting for, or here's what, how you should fix this now transitional problem in your life, how to fix the discomfort, the uncertainty, the temptations that go along with that, the loneliness, the isolation. You don't fix any of that. Instead, you challenge us to lean further into it and to do so, to lean further into what God has in this time. And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about postures and the value of postures in the liminal space that many people are finding themselves in today, where they can't go back to where they've been, they're uncertain about what's ahead and, in the meantime, there's some exhaustion, there's weariness, there's uncertainty.

Speaker 3: 9:48

So, yeah, Let me camp just for a second, not long, on what you just said, though, because I think, when you turn the page over, say, the first four chapters are answering the question why? Why should we look differently? Why should we go through this journey? Why should we become an unlikely nomad? What's the big deal? Well, the big deal is we're in a major transition and time to change.

Speaker 3: 10:19

So the next section, the postures, are about the how Well, how do we approach that period of time and my great fear in writing, to be honest with you, as having been a boomer and Lord forgive me, I've sinned but having gone through that whole period of time when the answer has always been the next model, the next method, the next way, the next thing to do. On and on and on that, even though you saw it as something we're watching over, I saw it as people are gonna go. Oh no, we're going down to a deep hole and I don't know where we're headed with all of this. But the postures take us deeper. If we're going to go to a new place, we gotta go first to a new place within ourselves and with him. And the reason is voice recognition and the reason is eyes to see, because right now we're not picking up his voice like we need to and we're not actually following him like he wants us to. So the postures are a set of actual ways we can position ourselves to better have eyes to see and ears to hear what the spirit could be doing inside the church. So in America everybody wants the answer and then they can actually discard it. Once I got the answer, then I can figure out how. It doesn't fit for me, it doesn't work for them, it doesn't do this or whatever, and I'm gonna wanna do my own thing. But the postures release our control and let Jesus start moving us into the place where he can do his deeper work in us.

Speaker 3: 12:10

Remember, personal renewal precedes any corporate change. That principle is. I'm not very smart, that's my one principle in my entire life and the reality is he's gotta do the change that we're hungry for first in us. That's why it's a journey, and so the first posture is interruptions. You've gotta come to the point that you're. If you don't come to the point of acknowledging the fact that Jesus has the right to interrupt your life, then we're going nowhere. To start kind of a deal, but in his interruptions, like he did with Abraham, like he did with Moses, like he did with Peter in the interruptions. All of a sudden come the opportunity to begin to see differently and hear differently.

Speaker 3: 13:03

So what I try to cover in that posture in particular is that ability to allow God to actually resume control and allow God to actually take us to a new place where we don't know where we're going.

Speaker 3: 13:22

And that's like I say in the book, that's just like what Abraham believed pack your bags, leave, and interruptions are I use a picture of a backpack in the book interruptions are actually the sorting out. You've got a backpack and you've got to dump it all back out and there's some things that you don't put back in the backpack because the journey is going to be different and there's some new things you've got to put in. So he clarifies values and he works on healing and he goes after your paradigms. Those are all the things that happened in that first posture of interruption and that is the beginning. It sets up then the rest of the postures and it gives us a chance to be able to understand that God is doing a new work first in me, because if he doesn't do a new work in you, he can't do a new work through you.

Speaker 1: 14:25

The place we find ourselves in this transition. There is a work that needs to be done, and I'm curious as to what you think that work is. Like. What do you think coming out of the church? Like what do you think some of that work would be? And then the other thing I'm giving you two questions in one year, but the other thing that my ears picked up on was the fact that we can't hear his voice and we need to retune our ears to his voice, and I'm curious as to why you think that that's true too, Like what's happened to our hearing as the body of Christ and to get us to that place, you know.

Speaker 3: 15:11

Yeah, you know this can sound a little bit crazy and you're probably a little heresy, but do you think John, the apostle John, was hard of hearing? Just throw that out to the listener. No, I don't have any reason to think that. Well then, why did he lay his head down on Jesus' shoulder? Here's my honest thought. I think he wanted to hear the heartbeat, he wanted to make sure he heard Jesus' voice. He wanted to make sure he wasn't listening to himself. He was listening to the one he chose to follow. So let me kind of nuance that a little bit.

Speaker 3: 15:49

It's not that we don't hear. I think what it is is how bad do we want to know that it's for sure Jesus talking? Are we willing to actually lean in and recognize that he is actually talking to us? So that whole process of hearing and voice recognition I could build a whole case. And it's obvious there's so much noise in our world right now, there's so much voices in our world, plus our pathology and all that kind of stuff is coming in. But I really think in some sense Jesus is actually saying I am still talking, but how bad do you want to know what I have to say? And that's what a transition and an in-between time does? He interrupts all of the things that we feel, see and know and says do you want to know what I see, what I feel and what I know in order to move forward? So I answer the second question first the other way.

Speaker 3: 17:04

If I even remember the question because I'm getting old, we're going to go through a paradigm shift. You don't finish well without a series of paradigm shifts. You just can't and you don't. And if you look at people who finish well, you see that. And the church itself doesn't keep moving forward if it doesn't continue to grow in its understanding of who it is and who our God is. So one of the key things with interruptions is a rewiring of our thought process, not new truth, authority of scripture.

Speaker 3: 17:43

But if I go all the way back to your question, here's what I think the day of natural abilities is over. Why are we going through this? Because we don't have the spiritual authority we need to lead the church forward, especially as leaders, and it is through the depth of character and God taking us deeper in intimacy and us surrendering to Him. That's when, all of a sudden, and like I said, I always announce my heresy, but I don't think it's heresy. That's when all of a sudden it becomes apparent that we're hearing from him and he can trust us with his presence. That's what spiritual authority is the presence of Jesus on you, and you don't even know you have it In the days ahead. Here's the change, ruth no longer can we lead the church by our natural abilities. In the days ahead, we must lead the church with a greater depth of spiritual authority.

Speaker 2: 18:57

Well, it is sobering because when we get used to a certain construct and there's an assumption, a false assumption I believe that this is the way it's always been and the way it's always going to be there's not really a need to develop a sense of intimacy, dependency, voice recognition, aw Tozer said about maybe 50 years ago. He said my concern with the church in America is you can remove the Holy Spirit from the church and the church will just continue to go on exactly the way it has. And those were prophetic words and I think, if that was true in 1970, whatever how much more have we gone down that same path? It's almost like when you this principle, this posture of interruption, is getting off the hamster wheel and realizing that I'm still breathing, I'm still alive. But now what do I do with myself? Is the anxious tension? Find another hamster wheel, jump on it, start spinning.

Speaker 3: 20:10

Yeah, yeah, and that's what we do. That's what we do. That's what we do and we chase yesterday's answers, but we're not going to handle tomorrow's problems with yesterday's renewal. It's just not going to happen and we could actually keep repeating, or we can start moving forward and really plateau and arrested development is where the US church is at. It's not only plateaued now, it's in official decline.

Speaker 3: 20:48

So the reality is not just you and I. Okay, well, maybe spiritual formation is the next thing. No, spiritual formation is being actually raised up by God to say there is an inherent issue here that we got to face. I can't give you my presence when you keep running it on natural authority and natural skills and natural abilities. I will not give you the authority to a man or woman who doesn't actually want to go deeper with me. So the interruption then, see, then starts leading us into these postures of stillness and solitude.

Speaker 3: 21:34

So people and surrender people can can have asked me are these in an order Teresal? I do number one, then I do number two. You know these are all working together. They'll surface at different times, but they're all trying to go after what it looks like. And here's our keyword to align ourselves with Jesus once again and the new work he's doing. Alignment is the key. So one of the things I say in surrender another word for surrender is alignment.

Speaker 3: 22:09

But the prize of surrender is revelation. When we actually choose to say I want more what you have to say than what I have to say. When we fall before him. It's Jesus in John five, going away and actually surrendering to the father and the father showing the son what he's doing. So the surrender posture is all to say, ok, I'm one, going to stop. That's interruption. And now I'm going to actually fully embrace the fact that I need you. You don't need me, I need you. And the reality is in surrender. This is the urgent question that actually starts to drive some people crazy. Wait a minute, I've surrendered. No surrender to the point of desperate oh, that's a little different. I'm desperate. Surrender to the point of Moses saying back to God we're not going anywhere if you don't go with us. That kind of surrender.

Speaker 1: 23:28

Yeah, I love that, terry, and I think you know I'm thinking through some of my own journey, I think, as you're speaking, and I think with the interruptions it's almost like we have to, like Kirk said, with the hamster wheel. We've got to get off everything so programmed and there's so much consumerism and we just tip up and we hear things, we hear preachers, and there's so much of that in the mix and I'm not saying that that's all bad at all, but there's so much of that in the mix is almost we've forgotten to know how to tune into the voice outside of those spaces and so it's in some ways God's gift to us to interrupt us. So we're kind of being retrained to hear his voice. But that feels uncomfortable, I think, for a lot of people and scary. It's like what you know I can, I can actually just hear God for myself, or God will speak outside of the confines of what I'm used to. So I think that that's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 24:35

And then the surrender part I was thinking about how I think like we've talked about this before. I think we talked about it in our last episodes and I think that a lot of people, like you just said, will think that. Well, I, of course I surrender my life to Jesus. I'm not talking about it and we do the whole thing. I actually wrote a poem after our last podcast episodes on. I won't share it with you privately, but it was actually that.

Speaker 1: 25:03

This type of surrender isn't this. You know it. Actually there's something about it that says whatever it takes, whatever it takes to get rid of all of that stuff, I will give up everything to follow you. And I remember thinking and this is just a little personal thing, so this isn't a narrative on the whole thing, but I'm a preacher and is one of the big parts of what my, my ministry used to entail and one of the things that I feel really like I've wrestled with a lot is the consumer nature, the consumer nature of what we've come from and also a bit of the celebrity nature. I just, I just think that and I remember in the, you know, within this last year or so, I remember really having this kind of wrestle with God and I remember saying to him I would rather never preach a sermon for the rest of my life than collude with that celebrity culture and beef up that consumer culture and that, like I said, that's just a personal thing for me.

Speaker 3: 26:29

No, but you know what Ruth, that rudely interrupting, that's surrendered to the point of desperate. I want this to the point that I will give up my kingdom, give up the thing I'm good at, give up the thing that even employs me. I will give up whatever it takes, because I'm so hungry for you again and your presence and your voice in my life. You know one of the things I tell and it's true, those of you who've been in the game for a while ministry wise. You can get so good doing ministry, you don't need Jesus. That's where the US church is at. You go to pastorscom, you go to this, you go to that. You got everything you need. You pick this up, you listen to somebody's podcast and you repeat it bang, you can be so good, you don't have to surrender. And Jesus says nope, gigs up, no, I'm only going to actually give my presence to the people who want it the most. And for you who are high drivers, this isn't either or, but this is a flip.

Speaker 3: 27:54

In Mark, chapter three, jesus said to the disciples come be with me, then go minister for me, and then you'll have watch this, boys and girls the authority to drive out the demons. There is that priority order of being with him that starts to produce a different kind of ministry for him and that, I think, is the absolute key of the future. If we're going to a new place and we're going to do new things that we don't know how to do. He's going to give his presence to the people that are trusting him, that he's leading the church into something that's actually brand new, and I actually believe that. I mean it's not that it won't have parts of what we already know, but I actually believe it'll be a table more than a pulpit. I actually believe it'll be church out in the open versus church that's hiding behind walls. This is new, hello. This is going to be new, and to me, that's the greatest hope and that's the greatest thing that can scare all of us who've been walking down the ministry track for a while, and that's why we need get ready for this. This is a great transition.

Speaker 3: 29:17

Stillness, sit with it. If I was going to give you a word to define the posture of stillness, now, just sit. What do you mean? Just sit, sit, quiet. I mean, you know I'm really serious about this when I started it with an eagle song, started this chapter with an eagle song learn to be still, be still To sit for a while. Wait, I got to pre-note sit.

Speaker 3: 29:51

Allow me to just love on you. And how about the joy of just us being together, not for your next sermon, not for your next Bible study, just be with me. The practice of stillness, and this stillness paired up with solitude, these two start to create this sense of okay. You know, one of the things I do is I coach leaders who go on sabbatical. They come to me and they say I'm going to go on sabbatical, they're going to let me go for three weeks. I just what are you talking about? Three weeks, that's just like nothing. Well then they say, well, how long should I go? I go minimum six months. And they just laugh. And they laugh and they go whatever. Well, typically they don't get, you know, they get only like maybe two months or whatever. And they come back and here's the one thing they say I stopped and I didn't realize how hard it would be to rest, harder than I thought.

Speaker 3: 31:12

And then the thing that scares them is, once they stop and they start actually experiencing rest, it's hard to actually rev up the engine again, to get going again.

Speaker 3: 31:24

That is us totally unaware of what's going on inside our soul. For many, the reason there's burnout is it's actually the soul begins to kind of shut down, take over. If you're not going to care for me, then this is going to have physical implications that's what burnout really is but those. The posture of stillness, then creates this ability to start deconstructing some of the things you know in order to start embracing some of the things that you need to know, and I just covered two of them right quick there, but I know we got you know this is an eight hour podcast. So the bottom line, though, is the stillness then creates that capacity to truly not get afraid when you start deconstructing the things you put all your weight on, that no longer are going to be the things that hold us up, the unlearning, so both of those then start to almost cause this thing to even out, and then we start moving into other postures that start to potentially help us figure out, not what do we do, but how do we fully approach and embrace this time.

Speaker 2: 32:47

It sounds incredible. And especially, you know, I've read through the postures and I'm sitting here listening to them and it's easy to, you know, compartmentalize even the postures. But you're right, they're all integrated and they're not just for Sundays but for every day, and there's even a posture of interdependence where we learn how to do these things together. And to me, you know, it's easy to think, okay, well, how long do we? What? A week, you know, should that be good? A month, you know, and what I hear you describing is really a decompressing and a deprogramming that is allowed.

Speaker 2: 33:32

And even the healing, Ruth and I, one of the things that we have talked about in the course of our own journey, is just the need to heal from the past.

Speaker 2: 33:39

Because, you know, maybe the metaphor of a hamster wheel isn't the kindest thing, and yet when you get off it you realize, wow, that kind of is exactly what it was.

Speaker 2: 33:48

It's this kind of this rope repetition that's just in your face constantly. As soon as you're done, you're in for another round and they're actually at least in my opinion is a dehumanizing effect that it has on the soul, and I think about the ancient Israelites when they were being brought out of Egypt, and may not be the best comparison, but it's the one that comes in my mind at the moment is, you know, God didn't have just a brief period of time for them in the liminal space that there was probably about. Every theologian that I've read would say that they needed to relearn who God was. And that's true. Especially surrounded in a culture where there's so many false gods, they kind of had to relearn who they were and maybe for some of them, for their very first time, that they had been saturated in this dehumanizing system and God reinserts new rhythms into their life to become human again and even to heal.

Speaker 3: 34:46

It's very, very true You're not gonna learn new things until you unlearn old things, and that is a very excruciating process. I'll show you how old I was our old I was. That almost makes me feel like I'm done. I'll show you how old I am. I remember sitting in church when they introduced spiritual gifts and it was like everybody was just going what is this? Oh my God. I mean I went to Baptist church spiritual gifts oh no, we're going to the devil. You know it was just like, oh my gosh. I mean now you go, what are you talking about? But you know what?

Speaker 3: 35:33

I watched the whole Baptist church unlearn the whole concept of what it meant to be the priesthood of all believers which they taught, and be able to relearn the gifting of each of us as men and women who were part of the body of Christ. And now that's fully, most full embrace. I know we still got the deals with the tongues and everything, but the bottom line is that unlearning is the only way that we embrace then the new learning, the new way, and you know that whole idea of a paradigm. We now can see the same situation in new, fresh ways. That's why the posture of unlearning is so important. By the way, jesus will lead you through this. He wants you to get through this more than you want to get through it and, by the way, he wants you to know his answer much more than you want to know his answer. Because one of the things I say, the only thing worse than not knowing what Jesus wants you to do, is knowing. And all of a sudden comes now, I can't do that, and who's going to pay for that? All those questions come flooding back in. But it's interesting.

Speaker 3: 36:59

What I did is I positioned unlearning next to integration, once you pull the pieces apart. Now the challenge is the reassembling of those pieces into what I call an integrated life. No more silos, no more compartmentalization. What if I told you mission and discipleship are the same thing? What if I told you that the way you justice and understanding this issue of race is the same thing? You can't look at this thing as separated. It's moves into now a new understanding of who he is and how these things start to fit together. That's integration.

Speaker 3: 37:47

And the final posture was this idea of interdependence. And it's this. You don't get to clarity alone. You're not going to figure this thing out alone. It will only be in the context of authentic community that we figure out the really hard things about who we are and actually who he is, about what he's doing in us, in order to figure out what he wants to do through us. So that's why, in the days ahead, we're not talking a small group, we're talking an authentic shared life, done in the context of living that life and figuring out more and more two things. Spiritual formation is two things who he is and who we are, who he is and who we are, back and forth. They understand and doing it out in the open so that our neighbor doesn't no longer think that love thy neighbor means inviting them to church. Love thy neighbor means actually watching me struggle to love them, them identifying that struggle and understanding. I guess maybe he really does love me. He's trying, she's trying, she's there.

Speaker 1: 39:20

One of the things, harry, that for me was like a profound revelation was when I realized that loving my neighbor and witnessing and all of those things actually was the same as discipleship for me and actually people who didn't know Jesus God will use to disciple me and that changes our whole thing, like the way we suddenly it's a we, not a me, and you, it's a we are in this together and you can actually love people really well within that, when you know you're not the only one giving, they're actually giving back to you and they're shaping you and God is using that whole situation to better each other.

Speaker 1: 40:09

And so I think I love what you say there about you know the interconnectedness and the interdependence as well, and as we, as we, I feel like we could talk forever with you. But as we just wrap up, I'm just curious if you've got any encouragement. I know that your book has encouraged people in this space already, but for our listeners, if they find themselves in this, in this big transitional space where you know, we know what it's loaded with, is is being loaded with isolation, is being loaded with her, it's it questions We've got. We covered that in the last episode that we had with you. But I'm just curious if there's any encouragement that you've got for them, any large encouragement to fight, you know, even to find those spaces where they can not be siloed, you know.

Speaker 3: 41:09

Yeah, I think my big encouragement, you know, is what we've talked about almost in the intro. You aren't making this up, you aren't alone. This is actually God at work, kind of that realization that you're going to be tested over and over as the enemy whispers the lies. You should go back to Egypt, all that stuff. The reality is it's, it's actually happening and he's in the middle of it with you. That's the first one. I think the second one is that Jesus is actually leading. So you're not first making this up and Jesus is actually, I think, actively reengaged, and not that he wasn't, but he's reengaged us as the shepherd leader. I have never bought the idea that shepherds aren't leader, but the reality is he is now taking over and you don't have to actually fall into the trap of having to dream up what you should do for him. Instead, it's backing away from that kind of pressure we put on ourselves and, second, it's just allowing him to actually lead you.

Speaker 3: 42:35

And this is why I love John V so much. I return to it all Every moment of the day. Return back to practicing good old brother Lawrence, practicing his presence every moment. Why is that so important, terry? It takes your eyes off of destination and puts it back on journey. Take your eyes off of where we're ultimately going and ask him God, where do you, jesus, where do you want today to go? Cause what I've found is that rhythm starts to build a greater confidence. Though I don't know where I'm going, I know now who I'm following. I'm not following the culture, I'm not following. You know what they're saying on Facebook. I'm not following this. I'm not following. I'm following him. So my encouragement is he is leading, let him lead.

Speaker 3: 43:36

And then the third thing is you will find others. If you keep on this journey, if you have, you'll get eyes to see others that are starting to go through it too. You will start to recognize people and see that he is actually touching others around you. And what do you do next? You say, hey, would you like to get coffee sometimes, would you like to just come over my house for a meal? What are you learning? Here's what I'm learning. What are you seeing? Here's what I'm seeing. And my point is eyes to see gives you eyes to see. So once you choose to see it his way, you'll start to recognize there are others who are actually doing the same thing. And the reason you can't see them now sometimes is because of that surrender thing. Surrender and you might begin to start to see it in a whole new way.

Speaker 2: 44:52

Terry, when, as we wrap up here, I just thank you, because what we're hearing is, it feels like the father's heart coming through a spiritual father as yourself that there's freedom, there's permission, there's grace, there's mystery and discovery. These are all good things that the soul longs for and craves for, and I can imagine gifts that he has for us in this space that can't just be obtained if we skip ahead to the next thing, whatever. So thank you for that. That will last me for a while there For our listeners. As we wrap up, we just wanna say, terry, thank you for again joining us, thank you for your input and investment in our life rather than me and the people that we know and love, and also wanna make sure that people are aware that they can buy your book on Likely Nomads on Amazon. Also, your website at LeaderBreakthroughcom Breakthrough is B-R-E-A-K-T-H-R-Ucom, but you're also starting your own podcast and that's called the Nomad.

Speaker 3: 46:10

Chronicles. It comes from actually the reality of okay, so how do we do the journey and what's it look like when others start joining in. So we're gonna not only go into the book itself but talk to others who are going through this and give some help and advice in terms of how you relate to the current church as well as the new. So, yeah, we're gonna see where it goes, but it's basically coming from the need that I wanna do everything I can to help people stay the course and finish well, so Well thank you, Terry.

Speaker 3: 46:51

You bet.

Speaker 1: 46:54

Thanks for listening to the Reconstructing Passes podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and review.

Speaker 2: 47:08

And if you're interested in leaning into this conversation further, we'd love for you to be a part of a special online community coaching space called Reconstructing Pastors Cohort. For details, visit our website at bridgeandrinocom. See you at the next episode.