Being a Faithful Church Member vs. Being a Faithful Disciple

Matt: Thank you so much for joining us again on the PS podcast. We're excited to dive into our vision series a little bit more today and to interact with with Wes and talk about some of the direction that our church is seeking to embody and seeking to live into. So Wes, you were in week two of ⁓ vision series this week. Do you mind kind of giving us a one or two sentence review of the first week and then diving into what we talked about yesterday?

Wes McAdams: After a sermon is over, have you ever wanted to make a comment, ask a question, or listen to the preacher say more about a particular idea? If so, this podcast is for you. My name is Wes McAdams, and I'll be sitting down with one of my fellow McDermott Road ministers to discuss comments, questions, and thoughts that have come up after the sermon is over. Welcome to P.S., the Post-Sermon Podcast. Thanks so much for listening to P.S., the Post Sermon Podcast. To find out more about this podcast or about the Church of Christ on McDermott Road, you can visit our website at ccmcdermott.org slash P.S. If this has been an encouragement to you, we also hope you will rate and review the show wherever you're listening, as well as share it with a friend. Because we believe sermons are not just for Sunday, but for our whole week and our whole life. Yeah, sounds good. So we said last week that our vision statement for McDermott Road is to present everyone mature in Christ and to put that in a little bit more simple terms and to talk about our day-to-day practice. Our mission statement is simply helping people become more like Jesus. And so this week we talked about how, how do we do that? Like practically speaking, how do we help people become more like Jesus? What are the priorities and what are the practices that we try to emphasize at McDermott Road in order to accomplish our mission, in order to help people become more like Jesus. And so we focused on two different texts. The first one was 1 Corinthians 13, and we talked about what our priorities should be, faith, hope, and love. And then we talked about our practices. We sort of looked at Ephesians, Ephesians 4, but really there's so many passages we could have looked at. but we talked about how we need to have practices of spiritual training, is spiritual disciplines, but also support and taking care of each other through all the ups and downs of life and service and serving not just one another, but serving our community. And through these priorities and practices, we become more like Jesus and we also help other people become more like Jesus.

Matt: Yeah, I'm glad that, you know, we are not only looking at what we're hoping to become, but also talking about the way in which our church is hoping to partner with people to help facilitate that transformation. And it's something that we're all working towards together. You launched your sermon by describing kind of a dichotomy that a friend of yours had experienced. Do you mind unpacking that a little bit?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, he talked about how this church that he had attended for years, how he felt like it was all doctrine and no love. And then he said, but the church I'm attending now feels like it's all love and no doctrine. And one of the things that I said to him was actually sometimes we forget that love is a doctrine. It is the chief doctrine. And so love for God and love for one another and love for neighbor, that's what Jesus says it's all about. that sums up everything. And so sometimes we pit those two things against one another, sort of the heartfelt or even the action, the serving other people over and against the idea of teaching and the things that we're supposed to be learning and knowing and saying. And really that is a false dichotomy and it really is both. And we have to remember that love itself is a doctrine. It is the chief doctrine. And so we have to prioritize love and a church that doesn't prioritize love, that only prioritizes knowledge or information or learning and teaching all the facts. Well, those facts may be true and may be good, but as Paul would say, if we don't have love, then none of that matters and we gain nothing. If we're not a loving people, then we're not actually practicing Christianity. We're not actually following Jesus.

Matt: There's so much there. As you were talking on Sunday, it got me thinking about how much of this conversation, one, stems from church experiences that a lot of us have had, but also, two, some of the influences just from secular thinking, this idea of, I think, therefore I am, or I this idea of the rational somehow, or one.

Wes McAdams: Yeah.

Matt: Not only does the rational trump what we would describe as the emotional, but to begin with that there's a separation between rational and emotional in the first place, right? That somehow love is defined to the realm of the heart and doctrines defined or confined to the realm of the head. And that's just kind of a really difficult assumption to overcome, I think.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, and you know, I like to think about that because the Greeks really sort of separated those ideas of our thinking capacity and our feeling capacity. But in Hebrew, it's really the same word. And so like from a Jewish perspective, from a Jewish mindset heart, it really it's not the same as our our thumping organ in our chest. It's more like our guts. But all of that happens in our heart. All of the thinking, all of the feeling, all of the internal processing, all happens in the same place. And it's not these very separate distinct categories. As much as we try to convince ourselves that it is, we're really sort of lying to ourselves sometimes when we say, no, this was not my feeling. This was my logic. This was my reasoning. Nonsense. It's all mixed up there together. And sometimes we do what we feel like doing. And then later we rationalize what we were trying to do. And so, yeah, so sometimes we try to make ⁓ thinking and thought and rational, logical types of things, make those a separate category of what's really important. And so we confine ourselves to, or we prioritize learning and information and facts and knowledge. which again are important. And then we put in a separate category, a lesser category, the idea of a feeling, the idea of emotional things, the idea of sentimental things. And we think those things are less important. But really all of those things should be tied up together. And our motivation and our reasoning is both logical and emotional. And we are a holistic being and we have to pay attention to all of those things. And all of that is affected not just by the facts and the information that we learn, but also the things that we do. And so when we serve or when we just see someone who is in a situation that pricks our heart, that moves us with compassion or pity, we become more like Jesus by putting ourselves into situations where we are interacting with people who are having a horrible time. And so when we care for the sick, when we care for the hurting, when we care for the homeless, when we care for the people in our community, maybe who will never become followers of Jesus, so it's not just about, we need to teach them about Jesus. Yes, of course we need to teach them about Jesus. But we sometimes, we discount how much we are becoming like Jesus by serving people, even if those people themselves, never become Christians. I hope they do. Like, I hope we can bring them to Christ. But sometimes we dismiss how important it is for Christians or for churches as a whole to serve the community and to just do good, to just make a positive impact in people's lives. It's good for them. It both glorifies Christ in serving them, but it also helps us grow more like Christ. simply by rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty and loving people in very practical ways.

Matt: And so one of words you or phrases you used in there is that things are tied together by love. know, things are, you know, love is both the motivation for and ultimately, hopefully what comes out when we when we do all those things. Can you kind of, you know, talk to how you use First Corinthians 13 as a as a way to speak to the need for love to be integrated in all that we're doing?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's very practical. It's not just again, it's not just this warm, fuzzy feeling that we have in our hearts. When I was a teenager, my mom used to always remind me she's a love is not a feeling. Love is an action. It's something that we do. Yes, it does. Like you said, it motivates what we do, but it also is is is the very action that we do. It is serving people. That is love. So we love people in what we do for them. It is not just caring about what is in their best interest, but it is actually doing what is in their best interest. Our example for love is Jesus. The cross-shaped love of Jesus, the cross-shaped devotion of Jesus, the way that he devoted himself to his father and to people

Matt: you

Wes McAdams: in a way that was self-sacrificing, that was self-giving, that's our example. That's how we know what love is, is because he gave his life for us. Like that's what teaches us love. That's who teaches us love. So we learn love by seeing the king get down on the floor and wash the dirty, nasty feet of the people who would use those feet that very night to run away from him. knowing that they would run away from him, he washed their feet anyway. He showed them what love looks like by doing that, and then ultimately by giving his life. And so his self-giving love teaches us what love is and what love looks like. And so having that example in our mind and our heart in everything that we do, and then saying, okay, how can I do for my brothers and sisters and for my neighbors and even for my enemies,

Matt: you

Wes McAdams: what Jesus did for me. I was an enemy of God. I was an enemy of God and he laid down his life for me. And so because of that, motivated by the cross, by the self-giving love of Jesus, how can I imitate him? And every time we imitate him, every time we find a way to serve someone in the name of Jesus and because of the example of Jesus, we become a little bit more like him. And so we are being trained. So regardless of what happens with the other person, we can say, you know, like if somebody, they scorn our love, they say, ⁓ you know, that's so foolish, that's so silly. Why do you do that? Or I don't care, or I would never become a Christian. In some ways that matters because their soul matters, their life matters, absolutely. But in other ways, it doesn't matter. Like we love anyway, like we love them regardless of how they respond.

Matt: you

Wes McAdams: because we are in training, like we are trying to become more like Jesus. And so by loving people with the example of Jesus in mind, we are becoming more like Him and we can do that regardless of the person's response. In fact, sometimes it's even better for our spiritual development if they don't respond well, if they don't do anything for us. And so we should never as Christians sort of give up and say, wow. If that's the way you're gonna respond to my love, then I'm just not gonna love you anymore. I'm not gonna do anything good for you anymore. No, like even more so we should love people like that because we are becoming like Jesus because that's exactly how Jesus was treated. Jesus came to his own and his own received him not, but yet his love, his light was not extinguished by the darkness. And we need to do our best to try to imitate that kind of love.

Matt: Yeah, you were speaking about imitating people and imitating Jesus. And I'm no linguist and I've not really thought about this much more than just what you're just saying. it's almost striking how imitate and the word intimate are pretty close together in the English language. And sometimes we, in the Old Testament, we have the picture of God as lover. But that's not always a language that we use.

Wes McAdams: That's interesting. Yeah.

Matt: for Jesus, know, Jesus is Savior, Jesus is Teacher, but this idea that Jesus is the one who shows us love, think most of us would be kind of uncomfortable even using the phrase, you know, Jesus is the true lover, right, the true embodiment of that love, but it's what we're called to strive after for sure.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, and it does. It changes every relationship. It changes our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. It changes our relationship with our neighbors. But this is the example even that Paul gives of marriage. Like this is what should shape a husband's love for his wife is the love that Jesus has for the church. And so the way that Jesus is lover of the church changes and shapes the way that I'm supposed to be lover of my wife. And that has to be our constant mentality, like in every area of our life, if our goal is becoming more like Jesus, and that should be our goal, then we have to look at every aspect of our life and say, how am I imitating his faith? How am I imitating his hope? How am I imitating his love?

Matt: Absolutely. Before we transition to kind of how we're hoping to apply this as a church and talk about those three S's a little bit further, I'd like to read a section from a book by John Ortberg. And he's speaking about a person that's been at a particular congregation for a long time and someone who is committed to this body, but maybe the body doesn't necessarily have expectations of is gross. I'd like to read this real quick. says, Hank was not changing. He was once a cranky young guy and he grew up to be a cranky old man. But even more troubling than that was that nobody was surprised by his lack of change. The church expected that Hank would affirm certain religious beliefs. They expected that he would attend services, read the Bible, support the church financially, pray regularly, and avoid certain sins. But here's what they didn't expect. They didn't expect that he would progressively become the way Jesus would want him to be if he were in Hank's place. They didn't assume that each year he would be more compassionate, more joyful, more gracious, a more winsome personality. They didn't anticipate that he was on the way to becoming a source of delight and courtesy who overflowed with joy. And man, I find that kind of a compelling indictment sometimes on the vision that we have for what we're doing together. And I'd like to just get your thoughts on that, sir.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, I think that's exactly what happens when we prioritize other things. When we prioritize church attendance for the sake of church attendance ⁓ rather than prioritizing faith. ⁓ that is not, again, not just affirmation of certain ⁓ truths, certain truths about gospel. Faith as in a commitment to following King Jesus, to say, I am committing myself to be his disciple, to be his learner, his student, his apprentice. Like, I want to apprentice after King Jesus. Like, if that's our expectation, if that's our emphasis, if that's our priority, to say, that's who we are. And if you're not doing that, if you're just showing up, then you do not hold the same priorities we hold. That's not what we're here to do. We are not here to provide you a Sunday morning activity that makes you feel better about your life, that provides you with some sort of fire insurance for after you die. We are not here to sort of help rekindle the nostalgic feelings you had about going to church when you were a kid. There's all kinds of reasons people come to church. The only right reason is so that we can be matured into little Jesuses, little people that are more and more like Jesus. And we're told throughout the New Testament what that looks like. Paul says in Galatians 5, we know what it looks like. Here's the fruit that a person is actually following Jesus in the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Not you come to church every time the doors are open and you put money in the collection plate when it goes by. Those are not necessarily... the fruit of the spirit. The fruit of the spirit is a changed character. And we have to be churches that emphasize that and that even discipline. And when I say discipline, I don't necessarily mean like kick somebody out of the church, but we hold people accountable to a changed life. Like I should expect that if somebody's a new Christian, that they are gonna be a cranky person. But I should also expect that if somebody has been a follower of Jesus for years and they're still treating people poorly, even if they're showing up all the time and even if they're putting money in the plate and even if they're quote unquote a faithful church member, just because you're a faithful church member doesn't mean you're a faithful disciple and somebody needs to call that out. Somebody needs to say that's not okay. It is not okay to not be transformed and you are resisting the work of the Spirit. And so everything that we do should be to help people be transformed. And we need to think about, I don't think we think about it this way. And we don't think about our songs this way. Like singing songs for decades every Sunday, coming together as a body of believers and singing to the Lord and to each other should result in us being more loving, more joyful, more peaceful, more patient, more kind. And if it doesn't, then we're just checking a box. We're just punching a time card and that's not okay. We need to call that out in ourselves and in others to say, if we're not becoming more like Jesus as a result of our worship, of our praise, of our fellowship, then we're not doing it right. We're not doing it with the right intention. We're just showing up and we need to call that out in each other. I love that quote.

Matt: So this idea of presenting everyone mature in Christ is really what we're all working towards. And so you outline those three things that we're trying to hold everybody accountable to at our church. We want each person to be involved in those three aspects. Do you mind just walking through that one more time, the three things that we want everybody to be involved in?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, so the first one is spiritual training, and I think there's so much that falls in this category even though we don't typically think of it this way. We don't think of everything we do in the assembly, in the Sunday morning worship assembly, as spiritual training, but I think we should. I think we should think of our collective prayer, our collective singing, our breaking the bread together, our sharing the cup together, the communion. Everything that we do is spiritual training. Sitting and listening to a sermon is spiritual training. Like we should be saying, I'm a student, I'm an apprentice of King Jesus, I want to become more like him. And I want to, I want this worship service, however you want to phrase it, to help me be more like him. It's not just that though, Bible classes, like that's why we emphasize Bible classes, not just for kids, not just for children and youth, but also for adults. Like we are students. We need to learn more. Like we need to learn more, no matter how much you know, how long you've been doing this. And I think there's a place in the church, and we don't do this very often, but to get progressively more challenging, progressively more difficult. Like we shouldn't just be doing the same Bible stories over and over and over again ad nauseum that we've been doing since we were kids. Like we ought to progressively be talking about deeper things and more challenging things and... And really looking into the text more, again, not for the purpose of just information gathering or fact memorization. We're doing this for spiritual transformation. And so there are all kinds of spiritual disciplines that we need to practice both in our individual life. Like it's hard to do solitude, a discipline of solitude or a discipline of silence or a discipline of fasting together collectively, although you can. But there are practices that you need to be doing individually and practices that you need to be doing collectively. And so when we come together, I think it's really good for us to think about the fact that this is like going to the gym together. Like we're going to the spiritual gym together when we go to Bible class or when we go to worship and we're allowing ourselves to be shaped and molded by the text and by each other and by the praise and the worship. So that's the first one. The second one is support. that there is something to all of the one another ring that the New Testament tells us to do all the love one another and and care for one another and bear one another's burdens that you can't do these things on your own you have to do these things together and we're all at different stages of life like Some people have been Christians for a long time. Some people have been Christians for a short period of time. Some people haven't even begun that journey yet. Some people are near the end of their journey. Some people are parents and some people aren't parents and some people, their kids are grown and some people, their kids are at home. Some people are grieving. Some people are rejoicing. And when the body, the diverse body of Christ cares for each other, they help each other grow. They, the the people doing the caring and the supporting, they grow more like Jesus, and the people being supported and being helped, they grow more like Jesus. So we are building, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 4, we are building the body up in love. We are building one another up when we support each other. And so we have all kinds of ministries here, some formal and some informal, for caring for each other, supporting each other through all of the various... ⁓ ups and downs that we go through in life. And then the third one is service. And again, we become more like Jesus when we serve, when we use our time, our talent, our resources, our money to take care of people both inside the church and outside the church, when we just do good for other people and we do it in the name of Jesus. And because of the example of Jesus, because of the reign of King Jesus, we become more like him by serving and through serving. And so we think every Christian, every member of our congregation, we want to be involved in all three of those. We want you to be involved in spiritual training. So you need to be coming to worship. You need to be going to Bible classes. You need to be in some sort of a Bible study. You need to be involved in support. You need to be helping your brothers and sisters and being helped by your brothers and sisters and then service. We want everybody to volunteer for something because by volunteering, by using your time and resources for the sake of other people, you are becoming more like Jesus. So all three of those aspects are really important for spiritual transformation.

Matt: As we think about, you know, as a church trying to help people become more like Jesus, we got a question about a particular cross section of our congregation. I'd like to read the question here. It says, what are some specific ways that young adults, recent college grads or young marrieds who aren't ready to start a family can practice spiritual training, support and service here at McDermott Road? For my recent engagements with this age group, it can be hard to transition. from youth group or college ministries where adults are organizing and structuring things for them to becoming fully launched adults who participate and contribute to the body. They have the desire, but the struggle is practical. And so I think it's a great question. It's one that we've talked about a lot as a staff and are concerned with as well. Any initial thoughts on the question?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, and I would love to hear your thoughts too, Matt, because you've been more involved in this ministry, particularly than I have. But yeah, it's difficult. I think it's difficult at any congregation. We've struggled, I think, to build a group of young people and minister to that age group. I think we're getting better and I think there's a lot of really, really exciting things happening. We've had several area-wide devotionals for and just get togethers for this age group in particular. And I think some really exciting stuff is happening with our young professionals group here at McDermott Road, but it's a very difficult time of life. I think that especially when you have such a great youth ministry and there's so much that's done for you as a ⁓ youth. Then when you graduate high school and you sort of have to take that next step and it requires a lot of initiative on your own. Like you have to do a lot on your own and you have to start volunteering for things and you have to start doing things that nobody organized. You have to do the organizing. And so yeah, it's a really difficult stage and we're really trying to do a lot of work in that. But yeah, I think we still have a long way to go in that.

Matt: you Yeah, I think it's a great question. And, you know, we're former youth ministers at different seasons and, you know, love youth ministry, but that doesn't mean that we also can't acknowledge its shortcomings at times. And it's always supposed to be a supplement to, you know, what's happening at home and hopefully also instilling in its participants the desire to take ownership of their own, you know, walk with Jesus. And so There are always ways we can improve on that level. But the first thing I would like to say about our young adults is I'm really proud of them. I'm really proud of them for wanting to be involved in our congregation. And I know it is really easy to find things in this world frustrating. And it's also easy to find things in church life frustrating. a lot of young adults choose to take the posture of criticizing from outside of the body instead of being plugged into the body and trying to make it what it needs to be. So thank you to all of our young adults for staying committed to each other and staying committed to our church and recognizing that there's still a lot of room for improvement, but they love the people and you can't do the Christian walk without the people. So I really appreciate that. I think in terms of the transition, mean, just as many multi-generational opportunities that you can create, I think is really important. I think all three of those things that we outlined apply to this age group, maybe more than anything. Find a way in a life group, know, find a way in one of the heartfelt friends group or brothers, keepers groups. And it doesn't have to be all with people your age. think that's a great way to build additional congregational connections in addition to what you're doing as a young adult ministry. think finding opportunities to serve is another one of those. You're going to build connections if you serve in children's or you serve in youth or you're on the greeting team or you are working audio visual. I mean, there are ways that you can serve and connect that are not only beneficial to your own faith journey, but your congregational connectivity as well. so, yes, there are obviously things that we can improve on our end and we're committed to doing that. But it is also, like you said, takes a lot of initiative and we appreciate each of our young adults for taking that initiative for sure.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought out that intergenerational aspect because it is such an important time of life where you're leaving childhood and you're entering into adulthood. And really the only way to do that well is to find people that are older than you that are further along on the journey. And I don't think that should start with that that particular. chapter in life. You should be doing that when you're a teenager as well, but especially when you are entering into young adulthood and before, if you know, for instance, that you want to have kids, one of the best times to learn how to parent is before you have kids of your own. because once you have kids, everything changes and you're probably not going to have time to really learn from other people. So you're going to be in the thick of it. But before you have kids, spend some time. make some friends that have toddlers, make some friends that have kids that are in elementary school and volunteer to help watch them. I've been so thankful that there have been young adults, even married young adults who don't have kids yet, who babysat my kids when they were young, but it's also good training for them. If they know that they're gonna wanna have kids one of these days, spend some time around somebody else's kids and learn from them, learn from, ow.

Matt: You

Wes McAdams: don't really want to do that. And I don't really like the way that they're doing this. This doesn't seem to be working out real well. I'm to try to do this other thing different. At that point, of course, everything will just be theory and your theories will someday go out the window. But it's so important to spend time with people that are further ahead on that path than you are and learn from them. Sit with people that are that are retired, know, volunteer in lots of ways, both, again, informal ways, but also in informal ways. Like go to the nursing home. Like this is a great time of life. I also like to say that, you know, we need some young people that are not married and maybe aren't even sure if they want to be married to go do dangerous things for the Lord that they can't do at another stage of life. Or maybe that they just end up getting married and having 2.5 kids and living in a house with a white picket fence, because that's what I'm supposed to do. I think sometimes we need to tell young people, no, we actually need, we need some Christians who will be like Paul and stay single and go to a dangerous part of the world and share the good news about Jesus. We need young people to do that. We encourage young people to go fight for their country. Well, I would encourage some young people to go fight for Jesus. Go share Jesus with the world and go to places where you have to wear the armor of God every single day because it's dangerous. and people with a wife and kids or a husband and kids, they can't do that and you can. And so, yeah, it's a really exciting stage of life where I don't think what they need is another youth group. They don't need youth group 2.0. They need to enter into this unique, this unique chapter of adulthood that will never come around again. And they have a really unique opportunity. both to do some things that can't be done at another stage of life, but also to learn some things that this is really their opportunity to learn those things. And again, yes, like you said, we want to provide those things and those learning opportunities for young adults here, but we also want to encourage them to take the initiative to figure those things out too.

Matt: Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom in the different communities that require mission right after this age group. I think there's some great wisdom there in terms of faith development and progressing in faith. As we wrap up, I kind of wanted to hit your last kind of concluding thought and then let you preview next week. You talked about

Wes McAdams: Yeah.

Matt: inviting us to consider our priorities and practices and being reflective about three things, being reflective about how we're becoming more like Jesus, how we're helping one another to become more like Jesus, and how we're helping our community to know Jesus. And as you think about that and have a chance to speak to that again, how do you think we go about being reflective about those topics in a healthy and beneficial way?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, that's a great question. I think some of it can be done introspectively where we can just look at our life. And sometimes there's markers. We often say things like, struggle with this, like a particular sin. We say, I struggle with this. Sometimes I don't think we're being honest with ourselves. Like, yes, you commit that sin, but I don't know how much you're really struggling with it. Like struggle implies a fight. Like, are you actually putting up a fight? And because the Spirit of God dwells in you, you ought to be making some progress. That doesn't mean that you're never going to go back to it. It doesn't mean that you're never going to commit that sin again, but it should mean that we're making progress over time. Like we're actually getting better. Like there used to be a time where I committed this sin on a daily basis. Now it's more like a monthly basis. And I hate that I come back to it again, but I'm... it's becoming less frequent than it used to be. Like I struggle with it less than I used to struggle with it. Doesn't mean that it's not constant. Doesn't mean that I don't feel that temptation, but it means that this is getting better. Or maybe even particular things like we talked about kindness and love. Like, are you growing kinder? There are ways to sort of measure that, to look at your life and say, know, how often do I say something rude that I have to go back later and be like, hey, I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Hopefully it's less frequent than it used to be. Hopefully you're saying rude things less often. How often do you get into a fight with somebody because you said something you shouldn't have said? Hopefully that's happening less and less over time. But we can also ask other people in our life. I think we should have trusted relationships with people in our life that we can ask and say, you know how I sometimes struggle with this? I'd like you to... kind of help me to see if I'm making progress on that. Am I improving on that? So we ought to be able to look at our life week over week or especially year over year and to be able to say, are things actually getting better? Am I becoming more like Jesus? Am I more loving, more joyful, more patient? And some of those things are immeasurable. They're not quantifiable, which makes it difficult. But we ought to be able to look at our life and say, Am I being more generous? Like what does my checking account look like? What does my bank account look like? I giving more away than I used to? Am I, you know, am I flying off the handle more than I used to and really examine those things? And then if we still are drawing a blank, you know, maybe ask people in our life to say, hey, I... I'd like some feedback. you think or what areas do you think that I could improve on? Or maybe just one, like give me one area that I could improve on or where do you see Jesus in me? Like where do you see me getting better or getting stronger and becoming more like Jesus? So we need to have those kinds of relationships where we can have those very difficult questioning conversations with people in our life.

Matt: I that's great. think it's more practical as we can make it. I mean, one of the examples that somebody gave me one time was identify the two or three places where you feel like you're most likely to get upset. So for me, I know that that's anytime I go to the pharmacy, I hate the pharmacy. It's just always so slow or it's interacting with.

Wes McAdams: Mm.

Matt: You know particular lines or different than you know, I mean it's just knowing ahead of time that hey that can be a spiritual practice for me today can be an opportunity for growth to to to lean into that so as we're coming into Vision series week three. What do we what do we have coming up?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, so next week we're going to talk about some of the, we're talking about the parable of the sower and the different sorts of soil and what that means for us as individuals and what that means for us as a church. What are some of the obstacles that we face? What are some of the challenges that we face in helping people become more like Jesus? What do we need to be watching out for? What are some of the dangers, the enemies of the mission of helping people become more like Jesus?

Matt: That sounds like a worthwhile study for sure and looking forward to that. We hope that if you are in Plano or you're able to worship with us online that you will do that. We would love to get to know you and to be in community with you. So thank you so much for listening to the PS Podcasts and we look forward to seeing you next week.