Pastoral, Plodding, & Productive

He said to the first stone cutter, Hello, friend. May I be so bold as to inquire what you are about? The stone cutter with slumped shoulders and dull eyes briefly looked at the merchant and said, What am I about? I'm cutting stones. That's all there is to it. The merchant, not finding this information to be of any help, approached the second stone cutter, who looked like an intelligent man. He had no dust on his clothing. His uncalist hands were making many marks on the stone, and then erasing them. He would hum and grunt and mutter to himself, shaking his head. The merchant said to him, "'Looks like you're putting a lot of thought into cutting these stones. What may I ask, are you building?' The stone cutter, with a look of frustration at the interruption of this conversation with himself, snapped. "'What was that? Building? It's not as simple as all that. I'm the most knowledgeable stone cutter that you've ever seen. There's more to stone cutting than building. There's technique. There's the study of the study of the stuff. stone, there's the nuance of the whole thing. I've studied under the best stone cutters and read the best works on stone cutting. I don't have time for building. It's stone cutting that makes the whole thing work. The merchant quite frustrated at this point, still not having attained the basic information he was looking for, abruptly asked the third stone cutter. Man, whatever are you building? The third stone cutter looked up from the stone he was cutting and smiled. His face and hair were covered in dust. His bright eyes shining like stained glass looked at the merchant. He said, excuse me, sir, I couldn't quite hear you. What was it, you said? The merchant,

the basic information he was looking for, abruptly asked the third stone cutter. Man, whatever are you building? The third stone cutter looked up from the stone he was cutting and smiled. His face and hair were covered in dust. His bright eyes shining like stained glass looked at the merchant. He said, excuse me, sir, I couldn't quite hear you. What was it, you said? The merchant, taken aback at the look of this third stone cutter, being so different than the others, paused a moment. What he saw surrounding the stonecutter was towering stacks of the most beautiful carved stone he had ever seen. What is it you are building? he asked again with some amount of awe. The smiling stonecutter's chest rose in pride, as he said, sir, I am building a great cathedral to the glory of almighty God. The Kings Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world. Well, welcome to the third episode of the Kings Hall podcast. I'm here with Dan Berkholder and Brian Sovey. We are in studio. Last time on the episode, we did a little bit of what Brian said is my favorite work. That's the demolition work. That's right. And I concur, doctor, I concur. We were demolishing the dominant model for building a successful church that has presided over the last century at least, and we called this the big, fast,

doctor, I concur. We were demolishing the dominant model for building a successful church that has presided over the last century at least, and we called this the big, fast, and famous church model. It's the 15,000 member multi-site campus with celebrity pastor-driven churches that exist in an edgy city, and they get major book deals that hit the New York Times bestseller list, even if the church bought 250,000 of those copies. More of a sports arena than a church, the edifices this movement produces are typically just Christian strip malls. And Dan, you said it, shantytowns. That's what they are. They're shanty towns. And they've got a ton of brand marketing power and money behind them, but ultimately they produce surface level content. They have flashy social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers. They have the massive production cost of a TV studio behind them. Their pastors are well respected by the intellectual elites, and cultural-producing gatekeepers at People magazine, The Dispatch, or MTV. We believe that demolition work is necessary because despite the many implosions we've seen from Big Fast and Famous, and boys, we've seen them, haven't we? Many, many such examples. Many such examples. Yet their methodology over the last decade

Big Fast and Famous, and boys, we've seen them, haven't we? Many, many such examples. Many such examples. Yet their methodology over the last decade continues to hold a particular allure for present generations. Here's the glaring reality. This model has utterly failed to produce redwoods, Christians, with their roots sunk deep in biblically rich soil, and producing spiritual plenteous fruit that lasts for generations. Instead, what we have is a church who's hoard itself out to the apostate culture. By virtually every biblical standard of growth, impact, or faithfulness to the scriptures, the big, fast, and famous church model has been relatively worthless. It's as disposable as last year's latest, greatest, and now obsolete smartphone. the question that we want to ask today is, what do we build in the place of this big, fast, and famous church that we've been demolishing? We want to spend this episode starting to look at the blueprints and architectural designs. We want to envision construction plans, and we want to seek to build the new Christendom as we do so. So as the old stonecutters creed says, those who cut stones must envision cathedrals. And that's exactly what we want to do in this episode. We want to build a grand vision for the new cathedrals of Christendom, and at the same time, we want to perfect the art of cutting stones in our local places. It's going to take both types of work,

or achieving celebrity status in an overnight blur, but we are building the kind of households and communities that are still productively contributing to this new Christendom 500 years from now. It's a legacy model of faithfulness. So gentlemen, I want to start today by unpacking the first of these. We talked about big fast and famous. We talked about big, centralized power. And now we're really talking about decentralized and local. This reminds me of something that Alex de Toccovo said in his book, Democracy in America. He said that America's strength lay in the robust people who were productive, they were property owning, they were well educated, and they were self-governed. To the power of the nation rested, not in a centralized government, but in its people. So one of the problems with the bigness model is the centralization. So I want to ask you guys about that. First of all, we talked a little bit about it in last show. But again, why is centralization like Babel such a big issue? Yeah, Eric, the first, you know, the thing that comes to mind when I think about centralization is something like Babel. And that's that at the bottom instinct of these massive big fast and famous centralized models is an instinct towards building empires in the name of some brand or some person rather than the Lord Jesus Christ. Right. Right. So there's this instinct

fast and famous centralized models is an instinct towards building empires in the name of some brand or some person rather than the Lord Jesus Christ. Right. Right. So there's this instinct where, and you can see, you can see how easy it would be because a lot of these churches and organizations rely on men who are tremendously gifted in some area, whether they're tremendously gifted communicators or, you know, they, and then they start collecting, like, people to essentially polish their brand. So they then go recruit and, you know, pay big money to get a huge professional band and all that sort of thing and surround themselves with excellence. Let's get a $100,000 website. Let's, you know, get an army of staff that helps me polish and write my sermons. And ultimately, it's easy to see how initially what was like, man, this guy's really gifted. He's going to make such a big impact for the kingdom. He's going to lead so many people to Christ. And, you know, good things like let's honor our leaders and honor our elders and easily morph into, hey, let's actually build a brand glorifying this one human being. And then let's glorify the brand built to glorify this one human being. And, you know, it's just so easy and so human to see how that process might unfold. Yeah. And I don't want to rehash our previous episode. But for example, when I was going to church at a Baptist church in the 9th,

human to see how that process might unfold. Yeah. And I don't want to rehash our previous episode. But for example, when I was going to church at a Baptist church in the 9th, 90s, I had a group, it was like a search committee of some sort that actually went to Willow Creek, Bill Heibel's church, to observe their model to try to replicate it. Oh, yeah. And the thing is, you can't franchise churches successfully. I mean, to my knowledge, in this, in this way, in this way, unless the thing you were exporting is what we're about to propose. Right. Which is essentially not man based. It's not based on a man. But Bill Heibles in his Willow Creek model is not exportable. It's based on the man himself. And so it becomes very fragile. Yep. Because it's so foreign to Christianity as you see like Paul telling Titus, hey, I want you to go to Crete. And I want you to raise up elders in that place. That was what he was doing. Yeah. And here's what you're supposed to instruct them. And here's the pitfalls and warnings and everything like that. That's the kind of church model that we see in. acts actually worked out and in the Pauline epistles and such is is that sort of franchising, if you will. And it's just Christianity. Don't depart from the word. Stick to sound doctrine. Make sure that, you know, wolves are going to come in and false teachers. Make sure you oppose them.

Make sure that, you know, wolves are going to come in and false teachers. Make sure you oppose them. Don't give your enemies any room to bring a charge against you. Things like that. Whereas this sort of big, big, fast, famous model like a Bill Hebel's Willow Creek. They tried to bring it back to my church that I was attending at the time. And it obviously did not work. They can't do it. Like you said, we've all been there, right? I remember, and I won't name names, but there was a church plant. and Utah is kind of like the graveyard for church planters because two or three percent evangelical or Protestant Christian. Everybody goes and they say, we're going to go convert the Mormons. And because they've read a few apologetics books on Mormonism. And they're like, wow, Mormonism is crazy. It would be easy to. To convert these people. Don't they know that the entire thing's made up? And you're like, yes, but you don't understand. That's not how it works. You can't just come and convert the Mormons with one apologetics book in 15 minutes. You know, so we saw a church plant come in a town a couple years ago. And it was coming out of the big James McDonald movement. And this was pre James McDonald, you know, turning out that the church was funding his like bear hunt taxidermy. Well, hold on. That part is okay. It was the him like hiring. hiring a hitman. Oh, yeah. And he hired a hitman. That was the thing. Refuge Church, if you want to provide bear hunting, you know, like, I would consider that. But I'm the executive pastor. I guess I have to agree. Okay. Well, yeah. Was that actually legit, though? He hired a hitman?

raisin brand. You know, he's turning, you know, tell your neighbor, ain't the Lord good. You know, that kind of thing. And the same thing happens. A lot of young guys listen to a ton of Mark Driscoll. And then all of a sudden, they're like little Mark Driscoll's running around on stage. They sound just like him. But it's always a budget version. Because these celebrity pastors, a lot of them are tremendously gifted communicators on the level of famous actors. Right? They have that kind of skill. And but similarly to famous actors, they're an inch deep. You know, a lot of these guys. They don't have moral fiber. They're not pastorally qualified. Churches were just like, wow, this guy can get a lot of people here quick. Let's give them $250,000 a year. Yeah. You know, and let him do whatever he wants for his, in exchange for his, his preaching to build the brand. So it's like when you centralize power that way, and when you, when you, when you centralize the, the mission of the church to a gifted communicator's brand, it's always going to be inherently fragile because that church then becomes only as durable as that guy's staying there and not openly disqualifying himself. Yeah. Which you'd think would be not very high bars. Turns out it's a pretty high bar. Turns out it's a high bar. You know, I think about it too, like in the sports world, you think about football teams, you know, Broncos fan. And you think about what the Broncos did with Peyton Manning. Well, they built their entire team around him. So literally like one man,

you think about football teams, you know, Broncos fan. And you think about what the Broncos did with Peyton Manning. Well, they built their entire team around him. So literally like one man, probably one of two, three best quarterbacks of all time made the team work. But the minute he left, it was like, we're jank. Yeah, we're rebuilding. Yeah, we've been rebuilding for seven years. You were now on a rebuilding phase. It's fine. We're on our third rebuild after rebuilding. We just call it rebuilding and then it's fine. But I think a lot of teams, and in a lot of other sports, you can use this example. You look at, you know, maybe even like Urban Meyer when he was with Florida. Like he can plug and play quarterbacks and the system is there and they keep working. Bill Belichick, the Patriots, not quite what they were without Tom Brady. But anyway, the point being, it's not all just riding on the back of one guy. So, Dan, I want to ask you about this. We talk a lot about anti-fragility. So one of the principles of anti-fragility. So one of the principles of anti-fragility is actually decentralized power. So what I want to ask you is when you talk about the local church and decentralization, what things are we actually talking about boots on the ground, local community? What are we actually talking about with decentralization to the local church? And how does that impact how we're going to build Christendom? Yeah, that's a good question. So let me define anti-fragile first, just to make sure that we're talking the same language. Yeah. This is a term coined by Nassim Taleb, however you say his name, in his inserto series. It's probably in his book,

anti-fragile first, just to make sure that we're talking the same language. Yeah. This is a term coined by Nassim Taleb, however you say his name, in his inserto series. It's probably in his book, anti-fragile. But anyway, he said that he was looking for a word that would be directly opposite of fragile. Like, what is the opposite of fragile? He's like durable, isn't it? Because Kind of resilient, but not quite. Yeah, right. So the example I give is like, you know, Eric has a really sweet off-road setup, Toyota, something or other big tires, right? And Brian has a, a, a Ford Escort. And you could take them both off-roading. And Eric's truck is going to be more durable, but eventually it's going to break. And he said, that's just not the right word. And so he came up with this term anti-fragile to mean when something is opposed, such as rough roads or whatever, the thing actually gets stronger. It has an opposite effect, similar to like weightlifting, where you are encountering resistance and the result is you actually get stronger. And so when you're comparing that to the decentralized local church, what do you see happening in times of crisis? That's really the benchmark, right? So we just talked about James McDonald at Harvest. By the way, I've been to that church. Have you? Yeah, my buddy in college took me there. So this is early 2000s.

really the benchmark, right? So we just talked about James McDonald at Harvest. By the way, I've been to that church. Have you? Yeah, my buddy in college took me there. So this is early 2000s. And it is, it puts our local mall to shame. It is a monstrous church or it was. I don't know what it. I'm I'm sure it's still there. But. And so this in times of crisis, say your lead pastor does some really wicked stuff and all of a sudden it gets closed, right? That's a time of crisis. What happens when there's a national catastrophe or a local catastrophe? Where should people look? They should look to the local church. Or even even a more boots on the ground example. Say you get some tragic news in your family, health news or something like that. What is, where are you going to go for that to help? To have help. And it's the local church. And you're not going to get that in the same way from these big centralized models. You're not going to get that because the very power of the body of Christ being so decentralized is that there are communities of people that are actually the hands and feet of Christ that are serving one another. And when you have a top down model, it completely decentralized.

Yeah, I think that's huge. One of them, Brian, I want to ask you about this is say like in the Moses model, people always talk about the Moses model. And I think traditionally they mean like one big guy doing everything. Yeah, yeah. But what's interesting about that and even the way it gets used, right? Moses' father-in-law comes to him is like, look, you need to decentralize a lot of this power. That's right. Right? You need to delegate the authority. You need to have lots of heads of households. So I want you to unpack this for us because what I'm getting at is when we talk about decentralized power, we're saying not one big guy. Yeah. But in the local church, we're saying strong households. Yeah. We're talking about lots of local, faithful pastors who maybe you'll never have a 15,000 member church. Yeah. So just, yeah, what does that look like? Let's build this out from the ground up. Because when we say decentralization, what we're talking about is really, the Christian body, like Dan said, being the Christian body. We're saying that, and you can look at the Christian body writ large. You know, Paul says there's one body, many members. And in that section in 1st Corinthians, he's talking both about the church as a whole, that if you were to picture the whole universal church, not all our hands, not all our feet, not all our mouths. And that's true. And it works on that level. So you can look at the whole church and say, yeah, there's a lot of diversity in this unified thing. Well, that also works. for the local church. God also doesn't make local churches where in the local church, everybody is a mouth. Paul is clearly talking with, you know, an eye towards application to the smaller version of the universal church,

Paul is clearly talking with, you know, an eye towards application to the smaller version of the universal church, the local church where there's a gathering with pastors and deacons and families and men and women and young and old and lots of different gifts. So within the local church, Paul envisions that there would be this diversity and decentralization of the ministry. Yeah. Where every individual member is performing something. function. So I think what Paul gives us there is a model that should be true of both the big, the whole church, and the small picture. So when you look at decentralization, it could apply to single individual human life. That there should be, you know, it's if you have a single point of failure in your entire life, then you're probably not, not walking in accordance with biblical wisdom, right? If all of your eggs are in one basket and if one thing goes wrong in your life, therefore you're just done. now you're probably not walking in accordance with wisdom in a family. If all of, you know, if one family member does everything and everybody else just gets around and looks and claps, which is basically what the megachurch does. It's like dad is the megachurch pastor and he does impressive things and everybody's like, yeah, go, dad. That's not how a family works. Yeah. Local church. It's not how a local church should work. Decentralization means that, uh, activity, power, gifting, talents are distributed across God's people, and they're all doing

how a local church should work. Decentralization means that, uh, activity, power, gifting, talents are distributed across God's people, and they're all doing lots of different things. And so there's no single point of failure. You know, it's like in the, and I think it's important to say that when you start centralizing things, you don't immediately see failure day one, right? Like if your church starts to slowly morph towards it, you know, having this celebrity model where you were kind of a normal church and then you get a new pastor and, you know, over time, it starts to be like the brand of this guy. And it's easy to default to that. Easy to do. Super easy to do. It's not as if the next day everything's going to fall apart, right? Yeah. It reminds me of in the mid-18th century, in the 1740s or 50s in Ireland, the wealthy landed gentry introduced this new crop. And it was the potato. And it became so popular over the next century that the potato, that the potato, this one variety, this one variety of potato became known as the Irish Lumber potato. That was what it was, the Irish Lumber. And things were great. It was like, here's some cheap carbohydrates, lots of calories. It became a huge part of the diet of the poor because it was shelf stable through the winter months. They could just, it's easy to keep a potato. You just, it's hardy. You put it on a shelf in the right temperature pretty much. It's going to be fine. It's not like a tomato. You know,

It became a huge part of the diet of the poor because it was shelf stable through the winter months. They could just, it's easy to keep a potato. You just, it's hardy. You put it on a shelf in the right temperature pretty much. It's going to be fine. It's not like a tomato. You know, you can't put a fresh tomato on the shelf necessarily and have the same result. You got to can it. You got to do something else. Dry it out. But 100 years later, you know, into this thing, all of a sudden in, I think 17, what was it, it was 1845 or 17, 1845, I think is when it was. And this little fungus, fungus-type organism attacked the potato. And it was a tomato slash potato blight. And this little organism all of a sudden started wiping out the entire potato crop. it was, you know, these Irish lump of potatoes were particularly prone to it, started spreading through Ireland. And pretty soon, it was almost a decade, it was seven years, the potato crop virtually failed because of this one little thing, little microorganism got in there and spread. And the result was something like a million people either starved to death or died of mountain nutrition related diseases. And then another million people had to flee the country to United States or England, to the big cities, just to try and not. starved to death. And it was like there's an error on two levels. One, a monoculture. You have one type, there's a single point of failure. It's all the same crop. And two, it became such a large part of

hundreds of different types of emphasis because the mothership is fundamentally weak. Yeah, because if it's all in one place, I think of just like a target, if all your goods are stored, your money, whatever it is. If it's all stored in one place, well, you just hit that place and then everything falls apart. We see this with a lot of pastor. You see it also, though, in the literature federalists and anti-federalist papers that were written around the founding of the country was there's always been this temptation to, we can be really big and powerful if we centralize all the power. And so you had a lot of founding fathers saying, no, we actually, we actually want to disperse this among the states. Yeah. And so that there isn't this behavior. chemeth. Well, it's because what is the instinct there? The instinct is wanting to be God. Yes. That's the instinct. It's the instinct of Babel, of wanting to say, look what we can do. Look at the glory of man. Yeah. I am going to become a godlike figure. And the fundamental error of that is that the church has a God, and it's Yahweh, and the church has a head, and it's Christ, and we are his body. where the joints and ligaments nourished and knit together with the growth that comes from Christ, like Paul says in Colossians. So it's like centralization as a human instinct, and this is true in government. It's true in tyrannical fathers who become, you know, poisonous patriarchs of their family instead of godly patriarchs. It's true of megachurch pastors. It's true of even little churches

government. It's true in tyrannical fathers who become, you know, poisonous patriarchs of their family instead of godly patriarchs. It's true of megachurch pastors. It's true of even little churches with 100 people in them with, you know, a pastor who wants to be God. When that happens, the reason it doesn't work fundamentally is because they're not. not God. Only God is God. Did you know that you could be getting twice as much of the Kings Hall podcast? That is right. If you go and sign up for our Patreon at kingshall.org, click on the support the show length, and there's some ways to do that, including our Patreon. We release an after-hours show that is exclusive to our patrons there with every main episode. And there we give toasts. We talk about all kinds of things related to the show. We've covered things like Christian Graveyards, War, Eric Kahn's birthday, all sorts of glorious things there. We'd love to have you join us over on Patreon or the other ways to support the show there on kingshall.org. We get more of what we support. So remember that if we want high-quality Christian media, we need to vote for it with our dollars. So thanks to everybody supporting the show. And we hope that you guys will, more of you'll jump on board this week. Let's go ahead and get back to the show. So, Eric, I got a question for you. Maybe you can help. You know, looking at a megachurch is still as pastors,

show. And we hope that you guys will, more of you'll jump on board this week. Let's go ahead and get back to the show. So, Eric, I got a question for you. Maybe you can help. You know, looking at a megachurch is still as pastors, elders, elders, ruling body, and you have a small church like ours, a local church as pastors, elders, ruling body. What is the difference? Fundamentally? Where is the authority different than? If it's all centralized, supposedly, and in a megachurch, it's all centralized at the very top, what is the difference between that model and essentially what we're proposing. Where is the power differential? Yeah, I think a lot of it sometimes, and I'm not super familiar with what the authority structure. I know Mark, like say Mark Driscoll, I know that he had like Elder and then, you know, elder led church, basically. So plurality of eldership. I've heard him talk a lot about that. I think sometimes the question is functionality. How does stuff functionally work? Yeah, not on paper. Not on, yeah. So a lot of times, I've noticed this with. a lot of like the patriarchal dad types. Like if dad is a really strong individual and sometimes really competent, his sons can be very weak men because dad always does everything. Right. He may even do it well, but he's not the kind of guy who's good at saying, you guys need to have your moment in the sun. You guys need to be trained up to do this work. So I think that's kind of the part of the culture that's not on paper. Maybe it's not in your bylaws. Maybe it's not in your church

your moment in the sun. You guys need to be trained up to do this work. So I think that's kind of the part of the culture that's not on paper. Maybe it's not in your bylaws. Maybe it's not in your church constitution, but it still plays very big. Do you think it's like a delegated authority, the authority then is what you're saying? I think that's part of the answer. I think some of it too, though, is, I mean, look, Paul dealt with the same thing with, they had a certain structure in their church, but the congregations in Corinth still wanted to elevate celebrity people, right? Again, it's like centralization. That's still our tendency. So I think if we're being wise, what we do is we say, okay, we actually have to actively as like elders, pastors in our churches, we have to actually push back against that tendency. Yeah. Right. You. You want to make a celebrity and we're saying no. We're actually going to keep delegating and keep structuring the church so that multiple people have different functions, roles. So then where do you think when you're delegating, who are you delegating to? I mean, that's the important question. I think. So how do you make sure, how do you insulate yourself as a pastor? Brian's the preaching pastor every week. He had a tweet, go big. He's celebrity, right? How does he make sure that he is continually delegating? this authority of raising the level of the people around him. Where does that primarily live then? I mean, that's a good question. I'd be interested here what you guys think. But I would say a lot of it is having

I'm just trying to chew through this a little bit. I think one of the emphasis is, and we touched on this last week, is the primary importance of families, of durable houses, of, of like you said, taking men that are in the church, surrounding yourself with godly men, raising the level of men, because the, I mean, the family is the very foundation of society, of human society. It's civilization itself is based on the husband and wife and them loving one another and raising godly offspring. So, so Brian, what have, what have you done with the, what have you done? No, what have you done with the church to try to encourage these sorts of things, even on just like a regular. Sunday week-to-week basis that are more family-centric instead of just bring in as many unbelievers into the church as possible. What sorts of things have you done to do that? Well, I mean, what we're talking about, and I think it's really insightful that you guys pointed that it's not a systems issue only. It's not because on paper, Mars Hill Church had a plurality of elders. Mars Hill Church, at the time of its implosion, had something like 60 to 70 elders. And in one, I had an acquaintance. I have an acquaintance who was an elder at Mars Hill, and he was actually personally fired by Mark Driscoll. And he was personally fired by Mark Driscoll for, as an elder, basically saying, bringing this

was an elder at Mars Hill, and he was actually personally fired by Mark Driscoll. And he was personally fired by Mark Driscoll for, as an elder, basically saying, bringing this critique along with other elders, that Mark, you are functioning as if we're a Moses model, where Mark had himself, and there were like one or two other guys in this inner ring that were, they were functionally in charge of the entire thing. And they had 60 or 70 elders, you know, on top of that. But those guys basically had no real authority, no real honor. And their responsibility was basically limited because, you know, you can't give somebody responsibility without corresponding authority. So if you don't give them that authority, their responsibility is an illusion because they can't actually make decisions lead and do what needs to be done as a leader. And so, you know, if you look at it on paper, the difference, the gap between the paper and the reality was casmic. I mean, it was Grand Canyon-esque. So it's not enough to just have the right systems. It's not enough to just have the right doctrine. And what we're really talking about in decentralization of power and in fighting against Big Fast and particularly that famous model. And the thing is, the reason that we like fame is because it makes the big and the fast thing happen. Yeah. Right. The famous person is the one who makes the big and the fast happen. What you really need to do is leaders need to make sure. And when I say leaders, I mean,

Yeah. Right. The famous person is the one who makes the big and the fast happen. What you really need to do is leaders need to make sure. And when I say leaders, I mean, husbands in their home with their children and their friends. I mean deacons and elders in the church. I mean men in their businesses. I mean mothers, mothering their children and, you know, interacting with other women in the church. We need to outdo one another in showing honor. We need to cultivate a culture, cultivate a culture inside of the church community that essentially is obsessed with giving honor to others, with not viewing my neighbor or my brother or my fellow elder as a competitor for a fixed pie of glory and believing the lie that glory and honor is a zero-sum game. We're all competing for honor. And there's this fixed pie of honor and glory. And if Eric gets some glory and honor, it means that I get less. And if Dan gets some honor over here and someone's like, hey, good job, Dan. In this counseling situation, the church, you really help this family. Like they're just night and day different. after you sat down and counseled with them. And then all of a sudden I have to interject and be like, well, I told Dan what to tell him. Yeah, it was me. It was really me. Well, Dan learned everything. I taught Dan everything he knows. Gay. Yeah. Because what I'm doing is I'm acting like,

well, I told Dan what to tell him. Yeah, it was me. It was really me. Well, Dan learned everything. I taught Dan everything he knows. Gay. Yeah. Because what I'm doing is I'm acting like, oh, if Dan gets some honor, then all of a sudden people must think I'm nothing. In, in reality, the kingdom of God is not like that because at the, at the heart of the kingdom, we have this father who is all glorious. He is infinitely glorious. And he doesn't run out of honor and glory as he bestows it on his creation and on his creatures. So there's not a fixed pie. There's not a fixed pie. Big fast and famous in its hypercentralization actually ends up making a person God. And that God really does have a fixed pie of glory. And it's very small. And he wants all of it. And that's the problem. So the culture from the ground up has to be built on a pastor, a father, whoever, you know, all of these men. actually wanting to elevate everybody around them and actually wanting for my brother and my neighbor and my church to succeed in not I'm going to win and everyone's going to see me win and they're going to be so impressed with me. Yeah. No, that's the, that's the kingdom of hell. That's the reek of hell. That's just hating and hating one another. Nobody loves each other. Nobody honoring one another. And so really, when you get into the reason that all failures of law are going to be failures of love somewhere because the law is summed up in loving God and

own. Yeah. And I remember thinking like, this is all about, it really actually built a network. So they saw how big Mark got. And then you had all these other pastors who were like really wanted that too. And so it actually accelerated the love or fame. celebrity, et cetera. So I think that's one thing. The other thing I was going to say that's tied to it is, for me, a lot of this comes back to the very definition of pastor. So pastor is the Latin word for shepherd. And we start to look at scripture and there's lots of parables. There's lots of examples that we could look to. Yeah. Because the agrarian shepherding model is throughout. Essentially, shepherds are, you know, they're shepherding or exercising care over people's souls. And so one of the things that you notice is the, you know, the tendency to leave the 99 and go after the one. There's intensive care, but it's also incredibly inefficient. So I was thinking this a couple of years ago. I went with a friend in Wyoming to do some calving. And, you know, it's miserable work. I was there for like a week and a half. You know, cows are giving birth. So you got to go out in the middle of the night and check. All hours. Yeah, it's basically. It's like snowstorms or freezing to death. It's just crazy. And in Wyoming's nasty weather. Yeah. I think we were doing it. early spring. So very, very cold. A lot of snow on the ground. One of the things that struck me, though, is my friend, as I'm watching him work, like, he'll spend an inordinate amount of time

early spring. So very, very cold. A lot of snow on the ground. One of the things that struck me, though, is my friend, as I'm watching him work, like, he'll spend an inordinate amount of time with one calf. And he would, you know, if a calf was struggling, he'd take it to the barn. They'd be bottle feeding it. And I remember saying to him, because, you know, I'm from the corporate world. I've been in basically like intellectual work, but factory style industrial time clock. And the beauty of this is the agrarian world does not work on a time clock. And you realize, I asked him at one point, I said, you're spending a lot of time on one animal. And he goes, well, yeah, that's my job. And I'm like, you stay up all day, every day for like a month. And you get like two hours of sleep at a time and you still got to care for your family. And I said, man, these animals are a pain in the butt. He was like, yeah, but isn't it great? And it was convicting because I was pastoring at the time. And I remember thinking that model of pastoral care. Like, the Lord looked at it. that and said, that's what I want my pastor. That's what I want. That's what I want for my pastors. Yeah. And then you look at the celebrity CEO pastor. And I think it's not only not the picture, it's actually an affront to God and disgusting. It seems like totally contradictory. So I want to ask you guys about that. You both pastored for a long time. You know counseling. Can the big fast and famous celebrity pastor, all this, this bignness.

you guys about that. You both pastored for a long time. You know counseling. Can the big fast and famous celebrity pastor, all this, this bignness. can it jive with the model of a true pastor from scripture? It's possible, but not, it won't happen. It won't happen because of the issue of it being centralized. So you can even see for a time with Mark Driscoll, just listening to the rise and fall of Mars Hill, there are men that come on and say, yeah, if it wasn't for Mark and his teaching and whatever, it ends mostly in his words, the air war that produced some of that fruit. And then you have men that are growing together at that time, but ultimately it falls apart. And if you think about pasturing in the way that you described, right, you've got a weak animal. What's the goal is to strengthen that animal? Yeah. So that it not only just survives, because if you just have cattle that survive, you can go to any third world country and see cattle that surviving. You see their ribs. Yeah. I don't want my cow to have visible ribs unless I'm butchering it. I want them to be big and fat and strong and healthy. Yeah. And so that's the goal of shepherding is to have healthy sheep. And you can't have that with a centralized model. And so the way that, even the way that you set up Sunday morning worship is really important for the way that you're feeding your people, because that's really important because you're, you're not just performing some sort of act like in a big, fast and famous model. Yeah.

for the way that you're feeding your people, because that's really important because you're, you're not just performing some sort of act like in a big, fast and famous model. Yeah. You're not performing some sort of act, some dog and pony show to just get people in the door. What you're doing is you're actually laying out a feast for your people to eat and to be strengthened by the word of God, by singing Psalms, Him. and spiritual songs to one another by bringing your children into the worship service so that they can worship as God's people so that we're not saying, hey, little children actually don't come to Jesus. You know, so that's how we're trying to shepherd around this decentralized sort of model is by intentionally making the sheep going after the one stronger. Think about it like the difference between a shepherd with his flock of sheep that he knows and he knows their number and all of that. They know his voice. Yeah, they know his voice. And then a factory farm with 15,000 sheep. And the main goal of the factory farm is just the profit of the owner of the sheep, right? And this is actually a distinction that God makes in Ezekiel. I think it's Ezekiel chapter 34 or 35. You might correct me if I'm wrong. The abusive other sheep and shepherds. God, Christ rebukes. the shepherds of Israel because they were shepherds, but they were shepherds who just used the sheep.

it feels like pastoring. You're like, you got one, it tends to be that one, you know, five or 10 percent of the flock for in any given season requires more care. And this is just people. Like sometimes your kids are sick, sometimes they're, they're well. And the sick kid is going to be the one that you stay up at night with. Yeah. I'm not complaining about our church right now. This is how it works. This is reality. This is reality, right? And the reason that you're spending time with that 10% in any given time is because you love them, you want them to succeed. And you understand that if they succeed what that means, man, what this means is massive. If I help one dad, be a better dad, overcome his, you know, terrible childhood, didn't have a good father. And if you come alongside as a pastor and you help one guy who's addicted to porn, not being a good dad, not being a good husband, and you shepherd him biblically to repentance and faith in Christ, not in you, but in Christ, to the obedience to the scriptures, you have just changed the next 10,000 years of human history. Wow. Because you've helped that one guy be a better dad of three or five or six or two kids who are going to go have kids. You're reaching out and you're actually putting your hand pastorally on generations of people. And Big Fast Famous wants to use the generation in front of them to get worship. They don't want to push faith and obedience downstream. And that's why decentralization, we use the term decentralization because that's what it is.

the generation in front of them to get worship. They don't want to push faith and obedience downstream. And that's why decentralization, we use the term decentralization because that's what it is. It's that I'm pastoring one person and this other person and this other person so that they can go make more healthy people and make more disciples and make more healthy families and produce fruit that I would never produce myself. Yeah. And it's, therefore, it's a force multiplier, a massive kingdom force multiplier. Yeah, I think about it like it's the difference between having like a monocrop and having like, you know, these 10,000 acre, you know, farms that are all government subsidy. Yeah, exactly the same genetic, no genetic diversity. Yeah, it's that versus like the Amish model where you have 120 acres. The irony, as we've talked about, is that the Amish are actually quite productive and make good money and don't need subsidies. And the corollary is a church with 200 people. Yeah. That is really healthy will produce so much more fruit than a megachurch with 1,500. That's right. When a lot of them are unregenerate and they're not pastoring biblically. And it's just basically a brand. Yeah, and it's interesting. The last thing I'll say about that is just that is, I think one of the reason, they're not just cute stories, but that's one of the reason the Lord made the world a certain way. He hardwired it a certain way. And then he gives us all these parables, stories, et cetera, about, you know, pastoral ministry and life being like that. It's not like a factory. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting. The last thing I'll say about that is just that is, I think one of the reason, they're not just cute stories, but that's one of the reason the Lord made the world a certain way. He hardwired it a certain way. And then he gives us all these parables, stories, et cetera, about, you know, pastoral ministry and life being like that. It's not like a factory. Yeah. It's utterly not like a factory. Brian, one thing you mentioned, I want to ask you about this. You've said in the past that the big church model actually isn't big enough. even if you've got 50,000 people in your church, we're still called to reach the world. And so you've said what we want is a decentralized world swallowing type entity, not an elaborate sandcastle. So I just want to ask you, what do you mean by this? Why is this so important? Yeah. So if you take that mothership model and you say, let's let's just say lakeside church or whatever Joel Osteen's church is called, I think they've got maybe 50,000 people. It could be more than that. You know, they're at this big stadium. of a church. And, and then you go big whoop. Texas has how many people? The world has how many people? Big whoop, 50,000. Well, number one, that's not big enough. And number two, its bigness in a sense is actually hindering the actual bigness of the church. Because think about this. At a church like that, let's say you even got a good church. Like, let's take Joel out of the equation.

At a church like that, let's say you even got a good church. Like, let's take Joel out of the equation. Let's say you got a solid Protestant and Reformed church, and you got it to 20,000 people, all in one room. Yeah. And I'm not going to be like, oh, that's a sin right there. There's a hard numbered limit on the number of people that can gather. But I do look at that and I say, well, what's happening there? We've probably got an elder team. Let's say they even had something like 50 elders, right? 50 elders of these 20,000 people or 50,000 people. And it's like, well, instead of that, you could have had 150 churches. that spin off from that, each with their own elder session, you know, all coordinated in a region. And they're going to be spread out. You're going to be seeing a hundred times more gifts being exercised in God's church. Because all of a sudden, instead of how many guys can really preach at a 50,000 person church in a given year? How many guys can, you know, functionally pastor in that environment? Not that many, really. Christ's vision for swallowing the world, which is his vision, by the way. I mean, the stone strikes the statue that represents human empires, that statue turns to dust and blows away. And then that stone becomes a mountain and swallows the world. That's Daniel's vision, right? The kingdom of heaven is like three measures of flower that a woman leavened until it was all leavened. It's like, the goal really is to take over the whole thing. And it's not going to happen with how many nations are there. And then one church

It's a top-down thing. And we think this way all the time in politics, if we just had the right guy, we could get rid of abortion, we could lower taxes, we could do extra. No, it's because the people actually want that stuff. That's why we have the politicians and the policies that we have. And so it's going to take the people that actually worship the holy and living God that go to church on Sunday and sing psalms, him spiritual songs to one another, go home, disciple their kids, love their wives, make businesses, live like Christians with a brotherhood, making partnerships, communities. That's what actually changes thing. A 50,000 person church, you're right. It is so limited. 50,000 is about all you can do, and it doesn't really function that well. No. What you need are 50,000 people in small churches that are making culture ultimately in glorifying the holy and living God. that's actually going to change the world. And that's how it's going to happen. It's inevitable. It's really easy. Like, what can 50,000 people do? They can watch a movie. That's about it. But that's functionally what the church service can be kind. And I know they're saying, and again, I don't want to say big, like, small is inherently holy or big is inherently unholy. But it's just not even that impressive because there are limitations. 70,000 people that go and watch a football game. Right. 50,000 people gathering one place on a Sunday is not unusual in a country. It's interesting, too, though, in those models, like C.J. Mahaney was big on this.

70,000 people that go and watch a football game. Right. 50,000 people gathering one place on a Sunday is not unusual in a country. It's interesting, too, though, in those models, like C.J. Mahaney was big on this. But I don't know how big their church was. We'll call it 10,000. But functionally, what they actually had to do was have small groups, which were like small churches. Yeah. The problem with that model is you're asking a small group leader to pastor and he's not qualified. Right. But they still have to break it down. And I think a fundamental issue here is sociologists, secular sociologists, actually found this out. It's like one of those. gravity type. This is how the universe is hardwired. Yeah. Past 150 people, you can't really know them. Oh, yeah. It's like impossible. It's impossible. So they say even in military units, 150 people, you're like, I'll die for them. You get bigger than that, and it's like, I don't really know that guy. I don't care either. I mean, I know, like, intellectually you can know. Yeah. But you can't love them the way that you love your wife or that you love your brother next to you. So it even seems like, and I guess what I'm getting at, even the size, like we can pretty much look at numbers and say, look, if your church is 10,000 people, there's no way you can be doing that. So here's what we need to do. We need to be honest with our megachurches and actually name what they are. So megachurchase pastors aren't pastors. They're bishops. They're not pastors. They're not shepherds. They're bishops, right? They're not shepherding many individual

like we can pretty much look at numbers and say, look, if your church is 10,000 people, there's no way you can be doing that. So here's what we need to do. We need to be honest with our megachurches and actually name what they are. So megachurchase pastors aren't pastors. They're bishops. They're not pastors. They're not shepherds. They're bishops, right? They're not shepherding many individual people. They're attempting, they even say it, I'm a leader of leaders. I'm a pastor of pastors. Well, let's just be honest and say that you're Anglican or you're something, you're, you're just establishing a really informal baptisty bishop, right? And then you're trying to influence a bunch of leaders to go in. So let's be, that can actually work. That can be fine. Let's, let's, let's go ahead and say that there are going to be leaders in the church that influenceually lead and pastor many pastors. Let's, let's be honest about that, what that actually is doing. And then let's not say that they need a pastor a 20,000 person church. Let's let's let them, you know, be a leader of leaders and go around and coach and mentor. Or let's, you know, let's have them pastor a normally sized church and then, you know, lead in an influential way in a region amongst multiple churches, like almost like a presbytery or something, you know, like that. And in that way, you can have a guy that has, he's a 10 talent guy. He has outsized gifting. God did that. God does that all the time. God is not like, God's not a socialist. We've said it before. God gives some people one talent, some people half a talent, and he gives some people 15 talents. And he did that.

God gives some people one talent, some people half a talent, and he gives some people 15 talents. And he did that. Yeah. And it wasn't immoral that he did that. And so sure, let's let the 15 talent guy be a 15 talent guy and go turn a profit on it. Let's let the one talent guy be a one talent guy and go turn a profit on it. But let's just be honest about what we're actually doing instead of pretending like, I'm just a, you know, local church pastor guy. Oh, how big is your true? Oh, 25,000 people and, you know, no, I mean, let's be, let's be honest. And let's say, let's honor guys that are, you know, I can, can think of some influential godly pastors that have an outsized influence on lots of other pastors and they, you know, within their presbytery or within their group or within their denomination, they're a leader of leaders. And lots of other pastors, younger guys, are getting help from them. Praise the Lord. Yeah. Praise God for that. But let's do it that way. Instead of having that guy say, bring all of your people to me. You guys can all be small group leaders. I'm the pastor. No, past, you know, like, and this is why I think guys like John Piper could have protected themselves early by by intentionally planting more churches. I'm really encouraged to see what, you know, for example, Christ Church is doing right now with particularizing their downtown campus, with their down, not campus, their downtown church. This is Doug Wilson, Moscow, Idaho. And

technology, which has made them incredibly stable. One of the things Rory Groves talks about in his book durable trades, technology is inherently volatile. It's intended to be that way. So if you bank all your chips there, you see a lot of change. And one of the things is, because of technology, like Mark Driscoll, could get as big as he got. Yeah. The downside is he could fall as fast as he fell. And so what we've seen with industrialization and technology is the rises are quicker and so is the fall, they're quicker and bigger. Yeah. So my question is, why is this mindset of plotting just being faithful in the daily small things and being content with that? Why is plotting so closely connected with stability? One reason, Eric, is that think about the question, how long does it take to make a godly man? How long does it take to make a godly man? And I'm saying, how long does it take to make a pastor? How long does it take to make a guy that you would tell everybody in the church go be like that guy. Couple decades. A couple decades. It takes a long time. They cook for a long time. How long does it take to impart a culture to someone? A while. A long time. It takes a long, long time. So when you're seeing fast growths of organizations made up of people, fundamentally, even if they're there for a good reason, they're not cooked yet. They're not matured yet. And you're likely in this organization, not all of a sudden, like,

So when you're seeing fast growths of organizations made up of people, fundamentally, even if they're there for a good reason, they're not cooked yet. They're not matured yet. And you're likely in this organization, not all of a sudden, like, take a Mars Hill church in Seattle. It's not as if Mars Hill all of a sudden attracted 20,000 really healthy, mature Christians. No. No, man, they had people coming. Because Pastor Mark was, the error was good often. He was preaching against the big idols of the day, you know, whether on purpose or on accident. He ended up hitting the target with that. And so lots of guys were showing up and being like, yeah, I'm looking at porn. I'm, you know, got my girlfriend living here. We got three kids. And I don't know if I'm going to marry her. And then they got punched in the mouth. They became Christians. But even so, even six months in, they'd have. had six months of good preaching. Yeah. They weren't done cooking yet. So when you grow fast, you just have to understand that that growth is not mature. It's not mature. When you go to prune a fruit tree, you're cutting what person, you know, Dan, you can speak to this more. How much of the growth are you, the new fast growth are you cutting back every year on a fruit tree? Yeah. Well, so on grapes, it's radical. It's, it's over 90% of the previous year's growth that you're cutting off on a grape. 90%, yeah. Yeah. So 90% of the new growth of the new growth is. Stuff you have to cut. Cut it off. Yep. And it depends on if you're spur pruning or cane pruning. You know, I won't get a nerd now. But on a tree, I mean, I've got an apple tree in my yard is big. It's a standard tree, which means that it's got a lot of vigor.

Yep. And it depends on if you're spur pruning or cane pruning. You know, I won't get a nerd now. But on a tree, I mean, I've got an apple tree in my yard is big. It's a standard tree, which means that it's got a lot of vigor. And I, every year, cut a wheelbarrow load of branches off of the thing just to keep it at a manageable size. because what will happen is that it grows too much vegetation and it doesn't fruit. Or the fruit's small and sour and not good. And it'll fall off. And it'll fall off. and it gets diseases because it's weak. Anyway, so yeah, you have to trim a lot. And so we've experienced this before, just periods where you get a lot of new people into the church and all of a sudden, you got a lot of problems. And there's a lot of that shepherding that needs to happen. And a lot of it is pruning. It's preaching them out of the church. Oh, man. Or discipling them out of the church. How many times have we sat in my office or your office and looked someone in the eye and told them something that is just radically uncomfortable? No, you may not be a member of this church until you go back and try to reconcile with the husband you unbiblically divorced 10 years ago. Yes. Stuff like that. Yeah. And they don't come back. They don't come back. They do. Sometimes they repent. And they submit to the pruning and they turn and repent and they turn and repent and they produce fruit. You get a different kind of growth. That's right. In that situation. Yeah. But it still takes time because they have to heal. They have to heal. They have to recover. They got to grow. Okay.

Yeah. But it still takes time because they have to heal. They have to heal. They have to recover. They got to grow. Okay. everything I was doing was wrong before, I guess, I have to change everything. Yeah. And it still takes time. It's just slow. Yeah. You get these, you know, that's why big, fast and famous, their goal is to get a lot of growth. Our goal isn't to get a lot of growth quickly. Our goal is to get a lot of growth over the next 40,000 years and play our part in that. Like, that's our goal. We want to play our part faithfully in Christ, increasing his kingdom massively over the next 40,000 years or so. You know, just to even. He told Abraham 1,000 generations, 1,000 times 40,000 years. Let's say we got 37 and a half left. Okay. You know, so that's what we, that's the kind of big that we want, but we want it slow. And we're willing to preach people out because you have to understand this principle that God is built into the fabric of reality, that fast growth is almost always immature. Yeah, I think that is such an important thing to look at. Dan, I want to ask you about this is when you look at business, So one thing I noticed when working in the firearm industry, you've worked in the same industry, we're on these cycles every year, new products, new, new, new, new, new, new, new. One of the things that struck me was Beretta. They've had some new products over the years, but they're one of these unique companies that they're always looking for the legacy product. Yeah.