JimBo Stewart: [00:00:00] Here we are back at it again. I hope you’re ready for the next episode. in the Bob Bickford presidential suite here in Atlanta, getting to record us several episodes, space him out over time. Yeah. And we have some really high quality guest with us here in Atlanta.

Bob Bickford: We do Jimbo. This is the AMS replant practitioner lab 2022 edition.

And we have one of our guests who has joined us during this event. In previous years. And in fact, he is one of the, founders, creators developers of the very first. initial replant practitioner lab. It’s none other than Kean

JimBo Stewart: cook here and cook, not Keenan cook. not Kenan

Keelan Cook: cook. I get ke quite a bit too about Kean, not

JimBo Stewart: ke I was waiting for that one too.

We were a text message thread with somebody else the other day. And I think he said your name wrong three different times. So I think, right. Yeah.

Bob Bickford: You feeling a

Keelan Cook: family name? Is it a no, not at all. Not at all. So the story behind my [00:01:00] name, my. Mom used to work at a bank. And apparently one of the kids that used to bring in his mom’s like deposit or something, his name was Kelin.

And so she liked it and asked him if she could use it. And that’s where my

JimBo Stewart: bank came. Wow. That’s

Bob Bickford: awesome. You’re named after a kid who ran Aaron’s for his mother that’s that’s

Keelan Cook: the bank, that’s it? Yeah. So what anti cl

JimBo Stewart: Or, or it wasn’t his mom that was just the front. And he was actually working for the mom could have been that, that could be it too.

That’s a possibility we could go with that story and then it. Sounds a little better. Yeah. Cause I like that version. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Kean is one of our favorite missiologist for a while. He was the original missiologist on the bootcamp, the OG missiologist we have since added to missiologist to our repertoire.

So you’re not the only one anymore deep bench. Now, man, we got a deep bench. So we’ve got, and one of ’em has two doctorates, as double doc

Keelan Cook: Josh dryer. And that is too rich for my blood man.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah. And, and, and here’s, if you get to know him, here’s what you’re gonna learn. Not only [00:02:00] does he have two doctorate, he has four master’s degrees and one of them is an aeronautical

Keelan Cook: engineering.

Sounds like he’s got a problem, honestly. is this guy just like collecting the things or

Bob Bickford: double do, does he’s he’s a faithful listener. He is. So he has a thing. He says he. I think he says it just took that many degree or something many for him to get it.

JimBo Stewart: Oh, he, he is, he is brilliant. And then we added a third missiologist recently, Dr.

Casey, the chin Williams. I call him that Casey and I have been friends for, uh, over 20 years and he has the best Jay Leno, chin who, uh, I’ve ever seen. And so disguises it well in a beard, he hides it in a beard these days. Oh God. . no, Casey’s also a faithful listener and I love him as well. So now that we have three methodologists, we wanted to take this opportunity to have you follow up one. Just update us. [00:03:00] Mr. You were at UBA in Houston. You have now entered academia.

Keelan Cook: Yeah, that’s right. So I recently six, seven months ago, my wife and I picked up stakes from Houston and we moved back to, uh, wake forest, North Carolina, where Southeastern Baptist theological seminary is.

And I’m now serving as the associate director there for our missions center of the school. And I’m on faculty as a missions professor now. So that’s awesome.

Bob Bickford: And there’s also a podcast, right? That

Keelan Cook: you do. Yeah, we do. We have a podcast there. It’s called the scent life. Yeah. Uh, and it is, it’s basically kind of missions for people in the trenches.

Yeah. Is really the purpose of that one.

JimBo Stewart: Nice.

Bob Bickford: If the one that I listen to when I’m washing my car outside on a Saturday, there you go. I like that. That’s a niche. I I’m gonna listen to that podcast when I’m washing the car.

JimBo Stewart: Excellent. I, I like that. I don’t. I mean, and what is that? Is there a reason that that’s when you choose.

Bob Bickford: I think I’ve listened to all the other podcasts for the rest of the week [00:04:00] and that one’s my Saturday washing my car podcast. So you

Keelan Cook: have like a day for each podcast,

Bob Bickford: pretty much like a day for my clothes, my shirt, you know, Roast beef on Mondays, you know, fried chicken on Sunday.

Keelan Cook: You give anything. He is orderly,

JimBo Stewart: keep things where they belong.

Keelan Cook: That’s it? Yeah. Every podcast, a place. There you go.

JimBo Stewart: so Casey, when he was on with us, we were talking about, Michel understanding a diverse context and. He brought up something we really loved where he talked about one of the errors that a lot of guys make is they start with methodology. And in, whereas he said, instead of starting with methodology, what we should start with is theology, let the theology then be paired with missiology of our context and let that inform our methodology.

So as the. Original missiologist to the bootcamp. What is your, do you concur?

Keelan Cook: yes. [00:05:00] yeah, no, that’s so that’s that’s right. we have this habit of. Doing whatever works in the moment mm-hmm and then trying to find biblical or theological justification for it, what shocker. Right.

And that’s exactly backwards to what we really need to be doing. We need to be ground in what scripture tells us. And it’s the biblical witness. That’s that’s the, the soil from which our method should flow. Yeah. And, now it’s to be fair. It’s. more of a circle it’s, gonna, once you move in one direction, it comes back and it shapes and informs better the way you understand mm-hmm the biblical witness.

And so it’s, it’s more of a spiral in the way that we would do that. But yeah, that’s absolutely right. You need to move from scripture, from text. In the context instead of the other way on that one. So one of

JimBo Stewart: the modern movements amongst young guys is to be very theological, right? So, whereas some people may make the error like Casey was talking about is starting with methodology.

Mm-hmm is there [00:06:00] an error of. Just theology or too much on theology. What would that error

Keelan Cook: be? Yeah, so I think, I think a better way to say it is probably not that you can have too much theology. it’s kinda like saying too much Bible. Is there such a thing, right? Yeah. It felt weird. Weird saying it out loud.

Um, but your point, I think your point lands and I think the issue is having one without the other. So we were given scripture for a reason. Right. Yeah. and that reason is faith and practice. It’s, supposed to change who we are. It gives us a, an understanding of who God is and who we are, but it also requires something of us mm-hmm and we’re misusing scripture and we’re misusing theology.

If it doesn’t lead to. Ortho PR it doesn’t lead to right. Practice in our lives. And so you’ve stopped short. Yeah. If you don’t get to healthy application.

JimBo Stewart: So one of the things that I struggled with when I was pastoring is I think not the too much theology, [00:07:00] cause that’s not the right way to word that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I realized is I was preaching missions, right? I I’m a love missions. I thought I was gonna be a foreign missionary. and then God called me into replanting. sometimes I wish he still would’ve called me into foreign instead. and so I would preach missions. I would, get people excited about it.

and people were struggling with it and they, they didn’t like, they, they didn’t dislike what I was saying. And they were trying to get me feedback and I couldn’t never understand what the feedback was. They were trying to give me until finally somebody said to me, . I mean, you’ve gotten me really excited about being missional.

Mm. I just have no idea what to do with that. Right. Right. And so I realized I was not give I wasn’t. I was giving theology and theologically informed missiology, but I just skipped methodology and just was like, just figure it out. Just Jesus enough. To do it right? And so one of my mentors, Bob Bumgarner taught me that 85% of people do not have the cognitive [00:08:00] capacity to take abstract thought and turn it into concrete, next steps.

if a pastor’s trying to embed. Missiological culture, the theologically grounded that results in actionable methodology. How, how would we cultivate that culture into a church?

Keelan Cook: Yeah. So culture change in a church, man. If I, there are a lot of questions I get asked a lot. And how do I change? The culture of a church is probably one of the top four or five that I get on a regular basis.

I mean, this is replant bootcamp, right? So we’re all sitting here having conversations about how do we, how do we turn a corner in a church? Yeah. How do I get

Bob Bickford: these people to, right.

Keelan Cook: Yeah. How do I get these people to X? Yeah. and, the simple answer is, wow, you need a culture that does that in the church.

Your culture’s not there yet. Well, how do we, how do we turn a corner on it? so there’s a bunch to that issue, but one of the things that I think we’ve really gotta step back and think about for a minute, is that, desire. And affections of the heart have [00:09:00] a whole lot more to do with culture than we often want to say, when we’re trying to come up with a way outta something.

So the answer that people are looking for when they ask the question, how do I get people to do fill in the blank is usually. What program can I Institute, what book can I give them? what’s the magic way. I could word something. Yeah. That makes them want to do so they’re, they’re looking for some kind of concrete, usually knowledge based step.

JimBo Stewart: If I just had the right vision statement. Yes. Then that’s it. If I could just get that right mission statement, then everybody’s gonna become missionaries that’s

right.

Bob Bickford: About $15,000 to

Keelan Cook: get the right. Yeah. That’s it. That’s it, there are a number of places that will take your money and give you the mission statement.

Yeah. And, and for some reason frequently, unless it’s met with, new desires in your church, it’s really nice to turn into anything. Is it. Yeah, but how do you get somebody to desire something? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that’s the right way to consider this. How do we, so let’s take, you know, there’s any number of issues.

We want our church to [00:10:00] be ascending church. We want our church to be involved in community outreach. We want our church to fill in the blank. Anything we’ve come up with after we’ve done this renewal process, what you want them to go grow a love for. What you’re after now, this issue, it’s, there’s all kinds of ways to talk about growing desire, but there are two, at least that I think are really worth mentioning.

And it’s two that kinda anybody could start with. Right. so one of those is, uh, what I tend to refer to as an integrity of message. so here’s what I mean by that. Cause that’s a really weird way to put it. you want to make sure as a church that the message you are sending is the same, no matter where it’s coming from.

Mm. So that’s what I mean by integrity. Like, so the message coming from the pulpit is the same as the message coming from the water cooler. otherwise what you wind up doing is you send, dissonant messages. You have it speaking in one direction, one time and another direction the other time, and actually contradict each other.

And so you [00:11:00] think, oh, we’re saying it this way, but you’ve got something that’s eroding that very same message speaking in a different direction. Uh, and so if you can think through how to align those. messages to where they’re all saying the same thing. Then you have that unified voice in the church that’s necessary to start developing, the affections of your congregation.

You help them start seeing a love or developing a love for a thing. I think that is a, a real big piece of it.

Bob Bickford: It reminds me of a conversation that I have with my wife on a regular basis. And my life is really into like eating clean and organic and, you know, Farmed a table. And she, you know, we order, you know, pampered chickens that are, you know, guarded by a great PI dog and, you know, all of these switchy things.

And so I’ll tell her something like, you know, Yeah, I really want to eat healthy and then I’ll have a bag of potato chips. Yeah. And she called me out on it every time. Yep. And, and so here, here’s the deal. Like I love, you know, I love the potato chips, [00:12:00] but then after I eat ’em I feel really crappy. Right.

Right. So sure. And she, she she’s like a food fairy, honestly. She’s listen to this. She’s she, you listens every week. So she’ll call me out on this. She’ll come in. I I’ll be in my office and, and she will have listened to this. She’ll come in and raise an eyebrow at me, but she throw bag of chips. Yeah. Well, she’s not gonna throw a bag of chips on me, maybe kale chips, but there you go.

But she’ll, she’ll just call that out and go. If you really want to. be this, then you have to do something different.

Keelan Cook: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. when I talk to people about message integrity in a church, I tend to, in most churches you’ve actually got kind of at least three, but I’d say typically three lanes.

That you really need to think in, as far as your messaging is concerned, you’ve got kind of a high level, or I’ll say a macro lane, you’ve got this smallest level, call it a micro lane, if you will. And you’ve got this mid lane that kind of sits in the middle. So here’s what I mean when I say that macro level is communication [00:13:00] messaging that you send out that can kind of hit the whole church at once.

I think broadcast messaging, this is your pool pit and your corporate worship service. This is the website. It’s a newsletter that you may send it’s social media, that’s coming outta the church. So that’s kind of all broadcast level macro O level conversation. Most pastors think that that space is sufficient to get a message across mm-hmm , that’s where most everyone turns, but there’s two other levels to messaging in a church that often go neglected and very often send a contradictory message.

Your mid-level. Think Sunday school classes are small groups, right? This is groupings of people in the, maybe a youth group. It’s groupings of people in the church that aren’t the whole, but they’re usually led by somebody and that somebody is gonna be giving a particular message about something. And so if you are trying to develop a desire for outreach, we’ll say, and you are preaching on it on a regular, and then your Sunday school teacher every week is speaking against why it’s important for you all to be out doing evangelism.[00:14:00]

Yes. They’re hearing him or her as much as they’re hearing you and they’re hearing him or her in a more intimate setting than they’re hearing you. And they

Bob Bickford: have relational. History with often in a replant. Yeah. Or the 30 year, Sunday school, teacher’s got a whole lot more small history and influence

Keelan Cook: than you do.

Yeah. There’s more chips. Yeah. And, uh, and they’re spending them and getting more for their money than you are with your sermon every week, even though you feel like mine’s the weightier message. Right. and then that final level is, water cooler talk. Right? It’s the one on one at micro level. Think about coffee in the foyer.

What kind of conversations are just happening interpersonally between people in the church, or if you will, uh, lunch after the sermon on Sunday. Mm-hmm right. Like what happens in that moment when, you know, two or three people go out to lunch after this service? if we are mindful of all three levels, One, we try to understand what’s happening in each, but then we work to align them.

We, we start seeing some [00:15:00] momentum develop because we’re saying the same thing in all three lanes and you can start developing a desire around something. So

JimBo Stewart: how would you do that? How I, because I can’t control what people say after church and go to lunch and I can. Try to control what my Sunday’s group teacher says, just all down.

stop it. But, but I can’t, I mean, I can’t, I mean, I can, I can, we can talk about what you’re gonna teach and mm-hmm and those sorts of things, and we can align all of those things, but What do you do to try to make sure that all

Keelan Cook: those things are aligned? so I think step one is figure out what in the world is happening at each of those three levels.

Mm-hmm so that’s step one, right? Is I know,

JimBo Stewart: I know that for sure. What happens from that macro level is not enough because when I was a pastor, I would feel like we’ve announced this upcoming outreach event, 1700 times, right? That’s happening this Saturday. And then I would be like, Hey babe, are you good for this Saturday?

And she’d be [00:16:00] like, what’s this Saturday. Yeah. And that didn’t like, yeah. Be like, what do mean, have you not heard anything have just said it’s like an application point in three sermons. It was like, it was in the announcements and it was everything. Right. And so you can’t communi keep things. Yeah, you can’t get to know what’s being said on the, in the middle and lower level, but then how do you influence and, and help make sure those are aligned.

Keelan Cook: So when it comes to that mid tier, It’s really important that you develop the kind of relational capital, this, so this is not a quick fix by the way. A lot of people, when we talk about culture change, you’re looking for some kind of silver bullet’s right. It’s only provide on replant bootcamps, quick fixes.

Oh, I’m

JimBo Stewart: sorry. I’m the raw grow

Bob Bickford: tip quick pit quick, uh, fixers

Keelan Cook: that in fact that could be all slug line, right? Food tips, and quick fixes you go, that’s it. Replant boot camp. Come here

JimBo Stewart: for your quick. Nothing about replanting. Just yeah. Right. Food

Keelan Cook: quick fix. So there are no silver bullet solutions here, right?

Yeah. Like you’re not gonna sit down and you’re not gonna have one [00:17:00] meeting with your Sunday school leaders and say, now you guys need to make sure you’re saying the exact same thing. I’m saying that’s a real fast way to mutiny in fact. And replant. Yeah. so you can’t do it that way. So

JimBo Stewart: say that one more time, because right there, you guys that need to hear that.

Yeah. For

Keelan Cook: those in the back, you can’t walk into your Sunday school room. Full of Sunday school teachers and say, y’all got to just do what I want you to do. That’s not gonna happen. Yeah. there you’re gonna be met with resistance that way. So instead, you’ve got to one develop the kind of relationship with them where, where they will speak freely with you about what they’re speaking freely with about in their Sunday school class.

Yeah. And that’s hard, but it, it takes some sweat equity here. It takes them some transparency on your part. It takes giving them a clear vision of your hopes and desires for the church as well. So the first group. When you’re trying to speak a message that you need to develop desire with is in fact the leaders of that middle tier.

Yeah. If you can start developing desire there. Now there’s a couple ways to do that, right? One way is getting them on board with, with vision. The other [00:18:00] way is through attrition of leaders. Maybe some of these people need to be sunset at some point. And sometimes we gotta deal with both of those things.

JimBo Stewart: Well, so as a guy who was named after a mobster would you say sunset? What exactly do you mean? I’m talking about cement and shoes, man in the bay? No blessed

Bob Bickford: in the side of the Lord are the death of the Saint. And so you’re just, you’re saying. Make some folks

Keelan Cook: bless this has gone to a dark place. I was, I, I was really just meaning, find a way to get them outta the Sunday school and roll.

That’s all. That’s it. That’s all I was talking about.

Bob Bickford: quick, fix this. I mean, come on.

JimBo Stewart: I know a guy I always believed

Keelan Cook: at that. Right. He fixes things. yeah, so there’s some, sometimes you may have to have a moment where you need to change. Some of the people in those roles. Now there’s a whole ball of wax around that one.

That’s tough too. Right? Like how in the world do you, do you transition out people that are in middle to your leadership, but there’s something important about understanding that the stuff coming outta that lane really matters. If [00:19:00] you, as a pastor, think my main corporate service is gonna wash over whatever’s happening in my Sunday school classes and it’s church.

Yeah, you are mistaken.

Bob Bickford: Let me just give a practical tip here. This was a mistake that I think I made in the re in the replant that was really hard. So we, we had a lot of that going on in our mid-level. Mm. and they, they would tell me, so they got honest. One of the things you said was really key. You gotta get to the place where they’ll tell you what they’re actually doing in Sunday school.

Yeah. So my folks were, were already there. Right. And they were saying, well, we just kind of catch up on all the gossip for about 30 minutes. And then we might read the, the Bible study. Right. And so what was happening is the, the changes were increasing. The gossip was increasing and the Bible study was, yeah.

And so I thought, well, let’s just shut this down and bring everybody together for a, study. And that was a disaster. Sure. Because it was, we took away their, platform, their turf, their domain. some guys I’ve heard talk about that. [00:20:00] Well, we just need to shut all the Sunday schools down and bring everybody together.

I think in some cases that’s good. Sure. In our case, it wasn’t. So I just wanna add that caution, but you’re really talking about a group of leaders who are entrenched in paradigms mm-hmm and I would also say this they’ve been discipled in the culture of the church Baptist culture, Sunday school culture writer, but it’s

Keelan Cook: been a deficient discipl thing.

That’s right. Right. Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And to, to be very clear here, let me underscore this again. I’m not saying in some draconian Sensen control the message in Sunday school. Mm-hmm mm-hmm because what that’ll lead you to do is try to clamp your hands around it. And when there is resistant snuff, it, and that actually is gonna work against your cause.

We’re talk. I mean, if we’ll remember, we’re talking about developing desire. Right. So this is about persuasion. This is not about I’m going to, in some totalitarian sense, come over and use my positional authority to tell them what [00:21:00] they’re gonna say. That’s not what we’re after here, you’re on a mission with that level of mid tier communicators in your church.

To let those be your, your first ambassadors for what you’re hoping to do. Mm-hmm and that’s hard that they’re, they’re often, already very committed to what was, yeah, but we’re talking about persuasion here. We want to pull them into a setting and a situation where they all, they start to desire and in doing so They start to become that advocate.

Mm-hmm in a sense. So one of the things that I think is real helpful here, there’s a lot of, I mean, there’s tons of research out there on learning and learning theories and some of those kind of things. And some of the most recent research that I’ve ran across, just in my own personal study on this.

Deals with experiential learning. And, one of the quotes that I found very significant, in some of that research here recently, it’s in a book called transforming theological [00:22:00] education. So it’s actually talking about the academy, but it it’s got a ton of. of play in the church as well.

referring to this idea of experiential learning and the, the fellow, the guy that wrote it, his name’s Shaw. So Shaw says this, people are more likely to behave their way into thinking than think their way into behaving. All right. Say that one more time. Right. So people are more likely to behave their way into thinking than think their way into behaving.

Okay. So what would that look like? So if we’re talking to integrity and message, that’s one thing. The next thing that I, I really think is important is this idea of experiential learning in general, Earl. So we want our message saying the same thing, but we also want people to, Develop desire by doing, and we’re all familiar with the phrase learn by doing right.

but we tend to be really weighted in the states toward this kind of head knowledge, cognitive way about thinking through things. And so when we find a problem, we think the solution is knowledge. And so we wanna pour [00:23:00] knowledge on it and we want to go find a book or we want to go find some method or some training program.

Something to that effect. And if we can change the way people think, then we’ll change the way they act. So thinking is upstream of acting in the way that we tend to put this stuff together. But most good research on learning theory right now says that’s actually the

JimBo Stewart: reverse. So

Bob Bickford: like when Jesus sends his disciples out two by two, you

Keelan Cook: got it. Okay. That’s exactly right. Yeah. So if we reverse our order in the way we think about things, we don’t just learn head knowledge by doing mm-hmm

We also develop our affections by doing mm-hmm and there are a ton of places where we eyes that that application is true in our own life. How many of us started a thing in fear or anxiety? that we actually loved starting. Well, like we loved doing after we learned how to do it and started doing things like swimming or riding a bicycle or something to that effect.

Bob Bickford: Okay. I think I’m walking down this trail [00:24:00] with you. Okay. And I I’ve heard you talk about some things before, which I think, well, let me run down this trail and, and I think we’ll old, you’ll probably say yes, I amen. But, um, there’s been a lot of talk about, you know, the old Baptist, Program of visitation.

Mm-hmm go the door, knocking on doors, that sort of thing. And if there was a thing that I hated most in autistic life, it was Tuesday night visitation. Sure. Right. Cause it was just like, are they home? They’re not home. It’s dinner. They think you’re a Mormon, like, et cetera. Right. I mean, this is, you know, but what we’re seeing though, was the discipline of going and speaking someone about their life and sharing your Jesus story would sometimes lead to an experience where somebody would.

have a conversion experie mm-hmm , so would come to faith and then those people would come back and be incredibly fired up. Yep. Right. And so one of the things we say, but we don’t give a vehicle to do is share your Jesus story with somebody And when somebody does, and then somebody comes to Christ.

I, when they come back, I mean, they are fired up. Right. [00:25:00] So we’ve lost that, I think as, as a

Keelan Cook: people. Yeah, I think that’s right. And so you’re nailing the head. I think evangelism and outreach is one of the areas where it’s clearest to see this. I think in the way we do churches, because so, uh, here we are, we’re in a fresh context as a new pastor replant, church plant.

Whatever right. I’m here. I’m new. This church needs to be evangelizing more. I’ve never met a guy that said my church evangelizes too much. Right. So

JimBo Stewart: we, we should be

Keelan Cook: doing this more. Yeah. and so what does he do? He pulls the church together and says, we’re gonna care about this a lot. Everybody come here on X date and I’m gonna teach you three circles.

I’m gonna teach you four spiritual laws. I’m gonna teach you something. Right. Okay. Yeah. And so, and they’re all good. Yeah, absolutely great tools. And we pull everybody together for two or three hours at the church building and we walk them through the materials at best. We have them practice on each other.

Right. Mm-hmm at best. and then we free them to do whatever they would would do and nothing seems to happen. Yeah. [00:26:00]

JimBo Stewart: And

Bob Bickford: then give been people a thousand dollars gift card to home Depot. And letting ’em buy whatever they want and then they never use the tools. No,

Keelan Cook: the that’s exactly what it is. And, and the, the thing about it is we started with the knowledge of how yeah.

And the knowledge of how doesn’t develop necessarily the desire to do. Mm. And that’s really what we’re after. So instead, what if we reverse the way we did that? What if we, in the fashion of old visitation said, yeah, you know, we’re actually gonna take you people and we’re gonna stick you in front of some strangers, and we’re gonna have you talk to ’em and we’re gonna have you talk to ’em about Jesus, and we’re gonna do it in such a way that, you know, some of ’em aren’t gonna be interested, but there’s gonna be one.

Just by odds that actually has some questions to ask you and they start asking back and you’re gonna now suddenly develop a desire real quick to know how to do mm-hmm because you’re gonna [00:27:00] say to yourself, oh, I have now experienced not being able to answer questions about my faith. Mm-hmm and so.

They’re now gonna come to a training about three circles with a very different experience in mind. Mm. Because they’ve had that simple act of trying to do that. Develops a desire for the knowledge later. Maybe when it comes to trying to develop culture in our churches, we need to think in a love by doing way.

Instead of if I just teach ’em tough, they’re gonna feel confident enough to go do it on their own.

JimBo Stewart: I love it’s it’s it makes me think of when Clifton says we do block parties, not to get the community to come inside of our church, but to get our church to go out into the community. Mm-hmm yeah. And it’s, I I’ve taken that line and use that with so many churches to say, I mean, if you wanna do black party, that’s great.

I did block party. I, but let’s define the win. Clearly here, right? The win isn’t. How many people can we get to start coming to our church? The win is, are you getting [00:28:00] your people actively into the community? Are they having conversations? Are they praying for people? Are they sharing the gospel with people?

and getting it actually into action, man, there’s so much we could dive into here. We have run past our time to dive much further, but we’ll bring you back and talk more about this, this idea, cuz this is, this is not an easy topic to tackle in one episode. Absolutely.

Keelan Cook: We appreciate you coming on.

Certainly man, it’s always a joy love being with you guys.