BTS: What do we mean by real church?

Hey everybody and welcome to the first ever episode of what we're probably going to change the name of many times, but for now we're just calling it every time.

Yeah, we could change it every time.

That would be pointless, but fun.

A lot of fun things are pointless.

So we're gonna call this His Hands Church behind the scenes for now or H H C B T S.

The more letters, the better.

I think I think that's how it works for doctors.

It works.

It does work for doctors.

So this is what this is in a nutshell.

I'm Justin McTear.

This is Nathan Fowler.

Say hi, Nathan.

Hi, Nathan.

Oh, you did that thing.

Okay.

So well done.

So uh Nathan and I are in leadership roles at his hands.

We don't have titles.

That's not that's just not part of our culture, but um, but you know, for lack of a better term, I'm I'm the pastor of the church.

Nathan leads all of our worship.

Uh so worship pastors, you get like a descriptor.

I'm just a pastor.

I don't even get that.

I'm just a blank pastor.

But uh, but but you know, Nathan and I have been part of his hands for for 10 years, really almost since the beginning for both of us, and we've been leading it now for the last three years.

And so we're pretty passionate about this church and about what it's what it's about.

Yeah.

And so what we want to do with with this particular uh part of our podcast is to just pull the curtain back and and give give everybody a behind-the-scenes look at uh what his hands is all about, and every single episode we're gonna we're gonna do something really simple.

We're just gonna take a question that we get asked a lot, or a question that maybe we think is really relative and relevant to what we do, and we're gonna answer it.

There's no script, there's no uh, you know, we're not this is something not something we've practiced, which I'm sure you'll be able to tell.

Yep.

So we're just gonna we're gonna dive in.

But but first, I have to say this.

I'm just gonna say this when we get it out.

Uh Nathan has a a cup of coffee that is sitting I do is in and Nathan it's it's almost finished, sadly.

It is?

Yeah, I'm just no that that that completely and totally changes my mood.

I'm so happy now.

Oh, I can't I'm so excited because uh I have this I have this thing and don't oh see, he just took a drink of coffee and it made me nervous.

So Nathan's a slurper of coffee.

He just he slurps it, and he's one of these people that believes you may have just even heard that.

He he'll go he'll go into this whole thing about how that's the right way to drink coffee because it aerates the fumes and uh I don't know where it is.

It just always sounds like you're making it up.

I do forget that I do like it's a force of habit now, and so I'll catch myself around you going for a sip of coffee.

Oh man.

And and it's when your face changes, I just feel like oh, oh, I'm so sorry.

I just don't even mean just the anticipation.

Like when you're when you bring the coffee to your mouth and I know it's gonna come, I'm so sorry.

There's something like I sh I shrink inside and I I like clinch my fists.

It's not it's not my fault, it's not a uh intentional thing.

I have I don't know what it is.

It's like a disorder where if I hear the sound like food sounds chewing really loud or slurping, that's the worst.

Uh it it I want to punch something.

That's instant rage.

Loud chewing, I'm with you.

The fact that your coffee is is nearly empty means there's way less of a chance that I'm gonna punch you in the face during.

There's one sip left.

I say what here.

I'm not I'm not even gonna slurp it.

Yeah, get it out of the way.

Okay, good.

Now we're done.

It's gone.

My coffee's done.

Yeah.

No more coffee.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now that that is out of the way, um, let's jump into the first question.

The question we've decided to start with is what do we mean by a real church?

Sometimes you might hear us talk about his hands, and the word real gets thrown out around a lot.

Um, and so if you hear us talk about how we want to be a real church, or we want this church to be real, what what do we mean by that?

And I'm just gonna throw that one to you and let you start.

Um what is it what is that what does real church mean to Nathan Fowler?

Yeah.

Um real church for me, like it's kind it's layers deep, and it's a I feel like it's a process too, because I still even catch myself sometimes doing stuff like behaving or speaking away in a way where I'm like, that really seems like I'm trying hard, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't know, like I'm trying to impress people with something or or whatever, um, or look smart.

I'm always trying to look smart, and then that has a it's weird how when you try to look smart, you end up looking stupid.

Yes.

Not you personally, I wasn't saying about you.

I mean that's exactly what I'm saying.

And I catch myself doing that kind of stuff, and I I just remember like it's it's not it's not worth it, it's not effective.

But when I think about real church, I think that that word gets used a lot.

Um and sometimes I feel like it's just marketing or it's just buzzword or hype or whatever.

Yeah, it's real is kind of a trendy word.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really trendy word.

Uh in fact, like it's even even see where like fast food in the last decade they've made a big point to be like, it's real chicken now.

And we're like, what was it before?

I ate a lot of that when I was a kid.

And there's still some, you know, supposedly white chicken nuggets that I'm going, I don't know if you're telling me the truth.

It's just well, my follow-up question would be you're 30 years old, why are you ordering chicken nuggets for your strips?

I I'll say it's for it.

You graduate, you get chicken strips now.

I'll say it's for my two-year-old, but I pop an extra nugget.

That's being a dad, you know.

You order your kids only eat.

I've even ordered the six count when I know they'll only eat four.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Um, but so yeah, it's eat like it's become marketing almost across the board, not just in churches.

Um, but I think it's about backing it up and really doing it.

Um, really being there for people, really being open, um, to where it's it's part of the culture of the whole organization.

Um, it's part of the culture of the whole church family, I guess I should say, because organization can imply just whoever works at a church.

True.

Um it's one of the things I I I you know, I was talking to uh uh uh someone I met today at lunch who's telling me how he's oh I have a friend that goes to his hands and I work with, and and he he was beaming about this co-worker and uh uh he works with Chris, you know Chris.

We have a lot of Chris's here.

Chris Freeze.

Chris Freeze, oh yeah.

That was not that was like not the Chris I was thinking of, but I love Chris Freeze.

Quick trip.

Yeah, quick with quick trip.

And uh he was telling me how much he loves Chris, so shout out to Chris there.

Um and you could see he had a comfort just already that he was like, Oh, you you go to church with Chris, and like we Yeah, because Chris is not the kind of guy that's gonna fake it ever.

No, exactly.

And so um what he didn't have was this sense of like oh, you know, like there was no pressure around Nathan, like, oh wait, he goes to church, oh he's involved with the church, like I need to like sit up a little straighter around Nathan or whatever.

Right.

Um, because he's picked up from his friend that's part of the his hands family that he can be himself around Chris.

Yeah, so he can be himself around me, he can be real.

So it's just as much us being real as it is us lending people the permission for them to be real, yep, is what I keep finding.

But you can't give what you don't have.

So it's a it's a continu it's that process of continually learning to let go of the performance or whatever to try so hard and be real, and that's when other people get that permission.

And I'm finding that more and more in life.

Well, I think you just you you just said a word that I I think is really key, and that's the word performance.

You know, the reality is um we've kind of grown up in church, and so I were you in church your whole life?

Yeah, pretty much?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so I started going to church pretty early.

It was like third or fourth grade, the summer in between third and fourth grade, actually, I'll never forget it.

And uh, and we've seen church change so much in our lifetime.

Yeah, a lot.

And a lot of that's for the for the good.

Change is good, by the way.

Um, you know, it's good to change things up.

Jesus talked about it.

He said, you know, hey, don't be like an old wineskin, don't be this rigid thing that is unwilling to change.

So change is good.

You're not mad about change, but you gotta make sure you make the right changes.

Yep.

And so what I've seen growing up, I've seen church become so much more excellent than it ever was when I was a kid.

Like, like the church I went to growing up as a kid, I have these super fond memories of.

I'm grateful.

That's that's where I first discovered who who Jesus was, and I believed in Jesus and all the Christian words you want to use.

I got saved, I got I got baptized, I did all that there.

So I will only look back on that church fondly, but you did not go to church and expect it to be good.

Like it that just wasn't even a that wasn't even a thing.

It's kind of a little bit, well, it's just church.

You know, they're in the best.

In fact, if it was just, I'll be honest, if like the music was just moderately good, you were surprised, and you'd walk away be like, that actually wouldn't have bad today.

And that was the idea.

Or if or if the if if the pastor told a story that was legitimately funny, not like one of those everybody laugh at him, make him feel better stories.

You know, like uh you you were you were almost like surprised.

Hey, good on you.

Yeah.

So the idea was not, you know, no one ever said these words, but the idea wasn't that church should be a like a good experience or or an excellent experience might be a better word than good.

I'm talking about good like wholesome, but an excellent.

And now that's really changed.

Now you have you have a lot of churches that that put on an incredible production.

Yeah.

An incredible production.

And so there's light shows that that completely that would blow away most touring bands' light shows.

Yeah.

There's musicians that are incredibly gifted, which is good.

You want to have gifted people in the roles they're in.

And uh everything is just amazing.

Honestly, there are churches where where like the the video that they might show for their announcements or whatever is ten times better than half the commercials you see on TV in terms of just its execution.

So that that's good, but here's where it gets kind of interesting because it's sort of like a pendulum.

Sometimes we swing the pendulum too far in our attempt to write the ship.

That just happened.

I just combined two metaphors because you don't use pendulums to do anything with ships.

I've never steered a ship with a pendulum.

I've never steered a ship.

I mean, I'm not.

I'll just say that.

Never steered a ship, so I don't know how it works.

I'm not a nautical pendulum nautical engineer.

So so what I mean by that is is is this um you you want things to be good.

Excellence is important, but sometimes you end up having excellence at the expense of authenticity.

Yeah.

So one of the words that we hear a lot in sort of church world, um, when we'll have, you know, other people we're working with or other churches we're working with, because we work with a lot of churches, we love churches.

Um Jesus loves churches.

And so, you know, you hear the word production.

Oh, we've got a production meeting, and we've got, you know, we we're putting on a production, our Christmas production, our Easter production, and the word production, not a bad word.

Everyone's free to use it.

But here's here's where I kind of want to be my uh sometimes know it all self, and I just have to hold that back and get over it.

Um the the core of the word uh production is the word product.

Right.

And what do you do with products?

You sell them, yeah, you market them.

Right.

And that's what obvious honestly that's that's what ends up happening a lot in church.

It becomes a product.

And so what what's what's happening on stage sometimes is that someone uh someone that's very marketable is selling the product, and and oftentimes, unfortunately, that product becomes the church.

But church is not the point of church, right?

It's not church for the sake of church.

Jesus is the point of church, and Jesus is not a product, he's a person, and you're not allowed to sell people.

That's against the law.

So it I mean it is.

So you can't sell Jesus and you can't market Jesus, and he never did that to himself, he was just real.

You you have to be authentic.

If you want to reflect Jesus, you have got to be authentic because he was always authentic.

You know, normal people loved hanging out with Jesus.

So that so to me, being a real church, a lot of it's just about realizing that uh there can never be sales, manipulation, spin, marketing.

You should not come to church and and be sold to.

You just need to see honesty and openness, and honest and even uh maybe a more important word would be vulnerability.

Yes.

So talk about that for a second.

You know, we we talk a lot together about how important vulnerability is as part of the church experience.

Um what does that what does that mean to you?

Um how vulnerable are you willing to be?

Probably not enough.

No, that's good, be honest.

Probably not enough.

Um I think, yeah, that's one of the things I've really struggled with through life.

I think that's part of like there's been um it's been a huge blessing in a lot of ways to grow up in church.

But then part of it for me that's been difficult is like I want to impress people and I want to earn people's approval.

So it's really easy to slip into um always really trying hard to say the right thing, always really trying hard not to step on anyone's toes to make sure I measure up.

And so to be vulnerable is hard.

Um, and it's not it's not necessarily in the like share vulnerable things way as it is just be honest with who I am and how I'm feeling at the moment.

Be vulnerable as part of a performance to get people together.

Right, exactly.

It's it's it's the it's the moment to moment, just you know, when someone needs to talk, it's like, are you am I willing to be there and just give some time to listen and just be there as a friend, or am I thinking about the next thing I gotta do?

Or is this even gonna make me look cool?

Or whatever no one that works in a church ever worries about being cool.

But uh but we that's why like okay, so so you're kind of always allowed to poke fun at whatever you're on the inside of, right?

So like when my wife when my wife was a teacher, she would make jokes about teachers, and and so we we can do that about church, and and the good news is God will forgive us even if we're in the wrong.

Um but like when I was a kid, the stereotypical image of a pastor, you could have like played a game.

Yeah, it would have been is this a pastor or is this an insurance salesman?

And if by the way, if you're listening to this and you're an insurance salesman, keep it up because the world needs you.

Yeah, we that's right.

And I'm not that was not a knock on you, but you know, the idea being pastors were not thought of to be like trendy in the way they dress.

Uh, you know, but now now it's kind of like you could play a game called, is that a a pastor, or is that a 50-year-old record producer who lives in LA?

Um because because it's like I mean sometimes I'll work is that a worship musician or is that a model for the buckle?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And uh no, it's a great, it's a great point because it's it's you you know it's kind of like you you would never dress that way if you weren't trying to be cool.

Because like, no, let's be honest.

I'm I'm 33.

I don't want to wear I not want to wear skinny jeans.

Who wants no one wants to wear skinny jeans?

They're not practical at all.

They're not practical, you can't bend over in them.

And and you definitely, when you're 50 something, you don't need to be wearing skinny jeans.

You shouldn't be dressed like Justin Bieber if you're 50 years old.

That's right.

Bieber shouldn't be dressed like stop.

You shouldn't even you shouldn't be dressed like Justin Bieber.

And we can end the statement there and be done.

But but no, it's it's so it can't be it can't be a show.

And and the truth of the matter is Nathan and I are both we're both guys who stand on the stage.

Okay.

And so so I'll give you a couple examples where I think the the be a real church is sort of played out really practically here.

Uh the the the worship team that Nathan leads.

Uh, and it's a team, by the way.

It's they're they're all volunteers.

These are amazing, gifted people.

I can't believe how amazing the people God brings here are.

But it's the most diverse group of people you can imagine.

Uh it's diverse in race, it's diverse in age, it's diverse in gender, and it's it's funny because on a on a Sunday, we might have like Alex Bennell up there, and Alex is what, 22, 23?

23.

You know, and he's he's got he's got cool looking hair, and he's always dressed, you know, in he's got joggers, he's wearing joggers, um, but he's 23 years old, and that's the way he's being himself.

He's being himself.

Yeah, but then but then a few feet away from him will be someone like Herb, who is 660 something, I think.

Herb told me that, so I'm allowed to say it.

He's pretty open about it.

I was like, say something.

Let's not get too specific on him.

Come on now.

Yeah, he's in his 60s.

60 something.

And Herb always wears a backwards, like Atlanta Braves baseball cap or something like that, and a t-shirt.

Um, and then you'll have you'll have somebody like Jim on bass, and I don't I don't I don't know how old Jim is, but he's older than me.

Uh probably he could probably be my dad.

And Jim's always got like a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and he's just sitting there with the bass.

And and there's no, it doesn't look like the worship team just got back from a photo shoot.

Yeah, there's no stylist.

No.

There's no there's no stylist in the green room because there's not even a green room, there's no hairspray on hand.

No, and and you know, just another practical example is, and I'm really happy about this.

Um, like our our space seats quite a few people, and so it's probably actually kind of odd that we have a space as big as we have, and uh and the number of people that we have on a Sunday, and there's no camera that's on either the person speaking, myself, or on the team.

That's pretty normal anymore in church culture, especially larger churches.

And that's that's fine.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with it.

But I'll just say this: I know myself, and I know I'll give you a really, really easy example.

Uh last Sunday I woke up on Sunday morning and I just had a straight up pimple on the edge of my nose.

Like I was like I was 14 all over again.

Flashbacks to middle school and high school.

And so I I did the the I did what you do.

You know, I I handled the pimple, but it was this giant red spot on my nose.

And I'm glad that we don't have cameras.

Not because someone would have seen my pimple.

I can handle that, but because I know that in the back of my mind, I would have been focused.

You'd be picking on that.

And I might have been tempted to like, well, it's covered up with some makeup.

Absolutely.

Is there anything wrong with makeup?

No.

It's it's you you follow it to its next logical.

Right.

You start making there's nothing wrong with makeup, but when you start making the decisions you're making in church because of the way that people will perceive things, how is it gonna look?

Right.

Well, how is that real?

Yep.

You know what I mean?

Yep.

And it and we're human beings, yeah, we're not perfect, we're flawed, we're deeply flawed, actually.

Exactly.

But you you put a camera on everybody on the team, and I'm sorry, there's just that extra pressure uh that that you can get over, obviously.

And I think a lot of great worship teams.

I mean, I go to worship concerts and there's cameras on those people, and they are all out worshiping, and they're not performing for a show.

I don't believe that for a second.

Um, but it takes a lot, and sometimes, let's be honest, it can take a special person to not play into that a little bit.

Because it's hard.

And I think it's it's part of knowing ourselves and like, you know, there's we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but part of being real is being real to go, hey, you know, I know where some of my weaknesses are.

If there's a camera on me, I'm really gonna be thinking about making sure I look cool.

Right.

Instead of thinking about the people I'm leading, instead of thinking about the story we're telling with this song that needs to be told, um, or or whatever it might be, because I'm gonna be thinking about, man, I'm I need to suck in my gut a little closer.

It's a it's that battle.

Are you gonna listen?

Are you gonna listen to the voice in your head or are you gonna listen to the Holy Spirit?

Right.

And the truth is, I know when the voice in my head gets louder, it does.

It's harder to hear the and that's where you know scripture says flee temptation.

That's just a temptation.

So I think I I'm glad that we just for us, for me, I'm I'm glad that we choose to kind of take some of those things and go, now let's just set the guardrail way far away from even worrying about that stuff, because it would just distract me.

It would distract some of us.

So it would.

And and so we'll kind of pull it back as we we get close to wrapping up.

But we're not so we're not saying that if you have cameras, no cameras that you're doing something wrong.

No, there's nothing like there's no verse in the Bible that says thou shalt never use production equipment.

And we're not saying that it if you are on a production team at a church and it's called the production team, we're not saying you bunch of fakers, Jesus isn't a product.

This isn't like throwing stones.

Yeah, that's important to say.

Yeah, that's right.

What we are saying is that at his hands, because at the end of the day, we're only accountable to what God has called us to do.

That's right.

You know, I'm not I can't judge another church because I'm not part of it.

God's never told me to do anything with that.

But at his hands, he has called us to, I believe, be unusually authentic.

Unusually vulnerable.

That's why I talk about being a former addict and things like that on Sundays.

To be unusually real.

It's not a performance, it's not a show.

Our vision is to love people to Jesus, not to impress people to Jesus or wow them to Jesus.

And what we have to we have to recognize is that human beings are human beings.

And and every human being, like you mentioned, temptation, has to fight that temptation to stop short of Jesus and place their trust or their excitement in a person or in an organization.

And so there's a lot of people that that get way more infatuated with the life expert or looks like he has it all together, pastor, than they do with with Jesus himself, because that's where the spotlight is, to be honest with you.

Or or even the church itself, like the the point of church cannot be for people to be excited about church.

That's right.

Because that's not it's about a relationship with God.

Jesus.

And so in a lot of ways, what that means is we just have to make sure that I mean I'm gonna use a really analogy that I don't think I don't have any expertise in.

So I it's like the bridesmaid should not outshine the bride.

Or try to.

Usually usually I think brides kind of kind of make that's why you get the white dress and everybody else gets big before.

Um I've never even I've never even been a bridesmaid, believe it or not.

But but no, like if there was a if we were at a wedding and there was a bridesmaid and the bridesmaid was intentionally trying to dress and yeah, it would be off-putting.

You would go, whoa, this is not your moment.

That's not right.

Yeah.

And I mean, ironically, Jesus calls himself the bridegroom, and we're the bride, you know, the church in scripture, but just in this analogy, so I'm completely flipping this analogy around.

But but it's Jesus' church.

Yeah, it's his movement.

And so we can't be like a bridemaid trying to go, hey, hey, look at me, look at how good we look, look at how don't we look cool and training.

Doesn't it are you are you impressed by by how well done this day was or how whatever we just can't do that, and I'm human nature makes that hard.

So that's what we mean by being a real church.

Uh love people to Jesus, not impress people Jesus.

Be open, be vulnerable, and uh don't worry about uh making people think you've got it all together because newsflash, you don't have it all together.

Specifically, you Nathan, you don't have it all together at all.

I can't disagree with that.

I mean, I'm doing pretty good.

But just to give you an idea of how unput together I am as we go, so I went, I worked out this morning early.

Early this morning, I woke up at six, and I was supposed to meet Robertson, my friend, at the gym, and I was so I wanted to text him so bad.

I almost texted him I don't want to come.

But I'm like, no, he's gonna be there.

So I I went ahead and went.

And uh we got to the gym, put all my stuff in the locker, and then uh we went to grab breakfast.

We got to Chick-fil-A to eat breakfast, and I couldn't find my wallet and realized I'd left it at church or or at the gym rather.

Oh, in the locker, yeah.

Yeah.

So I go back and can't find it.

And I open the locker that I had used, and someone else is now occupying that locker.

And I'm thinking to myself, oh no, is my wallet under this dude's stuff?

And do I start pulling his stuff out?

And he's gonna walk in and I'll be like, no, dude, I promise.

This looks really bad.

But I'm just trying to find my wallet and your locker.

I was using it earlier this morning.

Um, and thankfully, before but I almost started grabbing this guy's stuff, and that was running through my head.

But I'm like, it's my wallet, I gotta find this thing.

And so thankfully, I said, Let me just check the stall where I took a shower.

Bad metal picture, I apologize.

But I uh and and there it was right there where I had showered right on the sink, and I was like, Thank you, God, that I didn't have to do that.

Because it got whoever was in there was wearing cowboy boots.

And you don't wear cowboy boots in Georgia unless you're a real man.

Unless you mean it, yeah.

So and if you're wearing cowboy boots to a gym, yeah, you're probably you can you you can definitely beat me up.

So you're probably fit in like real manly.

No, then no, no, no.

I'm not because then we went to Chick-fil-A and it was a buffet today, and I got two flippers.

No, I mean the guy with the boots.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not me.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not, I don't have it all together at all.

I'm a mess.

We're all a mess.

Jesus loves messes.

All right, that's gonna wrap it up for uh for this episode of HHCBTS.

Sam's church behind the scenes.

You guys have an awesome one.

We'll talk to you later.