Transcript
Speaker: following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members -only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
Speaker: Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The normal goes a long way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Speaker: Introducing something new to normal goes a long way, but first I'm Jill Devine, your host, and along with me, my millennial mentor, Ryan Finler. And there's been something that's been happening when I attend worship on Sundays, and this is probably something that happens to other people.
Speaker: when you're listening to the message and there is a yes moment. That's what I'm calling them. Yes moments. And you have to say it just like that. But it's when you hear something and it's going to be different to everyone, but that one thing you just want to stand up and either say yes or amen. You know what I'm talking about, Ryan? And please do that in worship.
Speaker: It gets us fired up on stage. It gets me fired up. So we always welcome audience participation. We're just Lutherans. And so people don't do that quite as much. I'll ease into it. So in thinking of this, I thought, well, great. I am going to take these yes moments and turn them into podcast episodes between you and Pastor Chuck and Pastor Jim are teaching pastors here at Messiah St. Charles. And maybe it'll resonate with someone else.
Speaker: And the very first yes moment that I want to highlight is yours. You preached not too long ago. And I will say as a, um, I'm not going to, I can't pronounce it. It, the sermon was the healing of the lepers at Capernaum, Capernaum. Okay. The healing of the lepers at Capernaum.
Speaker: At the beginning of the sermon, you said that you were wrestling with two questions. And at the end of the sermon, you brought that back up. The two questions, how will the gospel stay relevant in a changing world? And how will the local church stay relevant? And so you covered the gospel part, which I will link the entire sermon on our show notes.
Speaker: but then you tackled the local church question and that's where my yes moment came in. So you had said,
Speaker: that Jesus was approachable. And you did some research with this. Is it a company? What is it? Mission Insight. Can you tell me about that? So going to this, my grad school, we get some really cool free tools and resources. One of them is this thing called Mission Insight. It's an organization that
Speaker: Essentially what you do is you put your area code or you put your church address into this system and you can set, I want to know demographic, cultural, whatever info going out.
Speaker: at a three mile radius, five mile radius, or I kind of drew a map that I thought represented where most of our people here at our church, you know, live in our area. And I wanted demographic info. I wanted, you know, what this company does, they compile census data, survey data, a bunch of scientific studies that have been done, right? And they give you all this info about your neighborhood.
Speaker: how much money they make, how big the houses are, like family -wise, I mean, how old the people are, their jobs, their education. So it's, I mean, it tells you the story of your neighborhood. So I,
Speaker: really wanted to know what it said about our neighborhood. And our particular neighborhood is St. Charles. It's a suburb outside of St. Louis, Missouri. And so when you put the information out to the congregation, you said that what people in our area are looking for
Speaker: are warm and friendly encounters. And now most people that know me as an Enneagram type 2 are shaking their head like of course she said yes at that because that is what I
Speaker: crave, it's what I'm all about. There has been such a stigma about entering churches and not feeling like you belong because you don't know everything. And so I just wanted to talk about that for a little bit. That's my yes moment and I was hoping to get a little bit of your feedback on it.
Speaker: Yeah, so the study said that this is our neighborhood's preference, right? So it listed all these possible preferences people would have for a church. So traditional style, organ worship, contemporary style, modern worship, worship in, you know, a type of building, worship. I remember it had all these different preferences, right? That measured what people would be looking for in a church, you know, and
Speaker: So first thing I looked at was worship style, right? Cause that's a big one, especially in our church body, there's kind of this conversation. Do you keep the old school worship that people have been doing for hundreds of years or the more modern temporary worship that you're seeing, you know, kind of exploding onto the scene the past 20, 30 years. Well, people's preferences there, only about 50 % of people had a particular worship style preference.
Speaker: So it was noteworthy, but it wasn't number one, preaching quality. Now that was high up there, but that also was number one, that was number two. So quality sermons matter to our community.
Speaker: which to me as someone who now has a chance to preach, you know, I know that, okay, our people are looking to be fed from the stage or looking to be fed on Sunday mornings. And that makes sense because we have a highly educated area. That's something else that I learned in this study.
Speaker: Most of the people in our community, they're making at or above the median income. So it's a little higher income in our area. A lot of college -educated people. So yeah, of course, they're gonna look for engaging sermons. But even above that, right, your core things, the music preferences, the preaching preferences, warm and friendly encounters came in at number one. 86 % of people said that that was something they were looking for.
Speaker: And so it made me realize, I think the line that I said in my sermon was the conversations I have off the stage matter as much as the conversations I have on the stage. And, you know, sometimes when I work here at a full confession, I have had Sundays where I've walked in and I hear the band practicing.
Speaker: And the music, I walk into this building and there's this part of me that almost wants to leave, that's just not feeling like being here in front of other people, right? The thought of hiding in my office sounds very attractive at that time. And as an extrovert, right, I know that means I'm not in the best place, right? I normally love being around people, but even I have days where I just want to hide away and be left alone.
Speaker: I don't wanna show up to church and have to put on the church smile and have the church conversations and how you doing? Do you have a good trip last weekend? Write some of that. I don't wanna do it, but man, what this study shows me and honestly what God puts in my heart every time I feel that is people are hungry for the presence of a person who cares for them. And so even when I'm not feeling that God might be calling me in that moment to be
Speaker: the person that says hello to someone walking in the door, or there's a student, a high schooler, or a middle schooler that shows up to church that I haven't seen him forever, and maybe they're noticing is, am I gonna talk to them or am I gonna ignore them? And so, if I can give someone a warm and friendly encounter on Sunday morning, then I'm doing exactly what our community needs me to do. And so,
Speaker: It's a convicting statistic and it's one that challenges me in those moments when I want to run away and hide in my office to be a comforting, warm presence for people. And I can agree just from the stories I've heard that it's when they experienced a warm and friendly encounter, that's what sticks with them. And I want to mention that the way you tied this in with scripture really did make sense.
Speaker: it is that, I'm gonna paraphrase. So the leper was not someone that Jesus would typically approach, or that's what you would think. Like, you're beneath me. He actually wasn't even allowed to be close to him. The laws, the purity laws of the day would have required Jesus to maintain a certain distance from this guy. I think the distance was 16 feet.
Speaker: And so you see in the story, this leper knows this law, he knows he has to maintain this distance and yet he approaches Jesus, knowing that he could maybe get in trouble for breaking the law or he might be scaring someone away, but he gets close enough to Jesus to be able to touch him. Which to me said, man, this leper must have found something approachable about Jesus.
Speaker: That said, you know, maybe in his mind, he thought, I know I'm supposed to keep my distance. I know I'm supposed to be separated out. I know I'm supposed to be living this isolated life, but there's something drawing me to this person. And right in this story, you see Jesus. He doesn't back away. He doesn't say back 10 feet away from me, please. He touches the guy and heals him. And, um,
Speaker: What you don't get in that story is that the touching of that leper actually would have cost Jesus his own purity. It's a weird thing to talk about because we don't talk about it. We don't have purity laws today, but for Jesus to touch that person, that unclean person would have made him unclean. And so you're not just seeing.
Speaker: Jesus' approachability and the way this man comes to him, you see Jesus saying, I'm not gonna let the norms of today get in the way of me being the kind, loving, human presence that this person needs, right? The presence of touch and the presence of his words. I'm like, man, I want my life as a Christian, I want to look like that. I want to be to the leper what Jesus was to the leper.
Speaker: the way that it's put like that. I mean, you think how many years ago that was? What was it like? Two thousand. Two thousand. And how it still applies to this day.
Speaker: And it's all, you know, I do sometimes still get scared to talk about being a Christian or what I'm doing or don't talk about God too much in front of the wrong people. And I have to be reminded like stories like this, that no, you do what is on your heart and make that happen. Before we wrap things up, I did wanna know,
Speaker: Did you, when you did this research, did you look at different cities in different states and, or did you just, I'm just wondering like if somebody is not from the St. Charles area and they want to see what's happening in theirs, is that possible to do? Yes, well, yes you can. No, I did not look at other areas. Okay. But from what I know of our,
Speaker: at least our country's culture, I'm gonna guess that this is probably true in a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of areas. And it comes down to this idea of, the way I word it is you've gotta earn the right to be heard in your community. And so if a church wants to be heard, they first have to be trusted and they first have to be known, right? If we're this group of people saying that we care about you when you walk through our doors, people are gonna notice when they're not cared for and when they're not seen.
Speaker: And you, I'm sure, know people in your life who the person who cares for you and loves you and treats you well.
Speaker: and think of a person who doesn't love you and doesn't care for you and doesn't treat you well, those two people can say the same words to you, but that person that cares for you, you're going to listen to them and you're gonna give them benefit of the doubt and you're gonna hear what they have to say. And so to me, I think a church is at its best when it's constantly thinking about, and Christians, we're at our best when we're thinking, how do I earn the trust of this person? Through genuine warmth and genuine care.
Speaker: That's not something you can turn into a system. That is not something you can make a program for. That is something that requires heart change from people. But I've never regretted making someone feel seen. And myself, I have been in churches where I have not felt seen and I didn't go back. I'm a faithful
Speaker: believer but right I remember a church I was a part of for six months even the people I thought I could connect with right I there was just never that warm connection and eventually I found somewhere else to go because that need to be known personally wasn't met and that's not a selfish need right Jesus came down as a person
Speaker: with a body and a mind and with words and with the, the, the calming power of touch. And he used the human experience to connect with people. And so, um, it's not wrong to value that. If you're someone looking for a church and from a church's perspective,
Speaker: Man, what a great calling. When you don't know what to say, Jill, I would tell you, as you're learning more about your faith and learning who Jesus is, I think maybe there's this challenge of, I gotta have the right answers. If I'm gonna be a witness, I gotta have the gospel words. But they see it in your warmth. They see, I'll say this.
Speaker: I see the gospel through the times we've had conversations and through your encouragement to me. We just had a conversation before we were on air. You encouraged me in that moment. That's what being a witness of the gospel looks like. And so you've already got that. Thank you. Well, I'm thankful for people like you that will help me answer my questions and help me challenge myself. Thank you for
Speaker: talking about my yes moment that you gave me. I really do appreciate that. And there will be more yes moments. You might have a yes moment with someone. So I invite you to come on and bring your yes moments. And we'll just keep saying yes. Yes, yes. I really gotta start listening to our servants really in depth now, you know. Don't sell the pastures. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, thanks, Jill.
