JimBo Stewart: [00:00:00] back at it again. Bob, I hope you’re ready for another episode of the replant bootcamp. So keep the train on running. And, you know, I think you might have preemptively talked your cowboys out of success because this is going to come out, you know, a little after we record it, uh, there will be a Cowboys game between now and when this goes.

But the last Cowboys game that we. At the time of this recording, are aware of. They beat the Giants like a junior varsity

Bob Bickford: They beat them like they stole something. To borrow a line from, I remember the Titans.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t watch it, but I saw the score. And I, I thought, is that, I mean, how do you in the NFL lose 40

Bob Bickford: Well, Jimbo, I am not convinced that this is evidence of the Cowboys greatness as much as, The it is could be evidence of the Giants. Patheticness

JimBo Stewart: It is for sure evidence of at least that.

Bob Bickford: I

JimBo Stewart: I don’t know what it says about how good the [00:01:00] Cowboys are. I’d like to see what the Giants do with the rest of their season. But here’s the deal, that’s what I’m telling you. If you’re in the NFL and you lose 40 0, you don’t score a single field goal.

You are not good.

Bob Bickford: Yeah. Well, um, I’m gonna go ahead and make a prediction. I think the Cowboys are out of it by week five.

JimBo Stewart: Okay, alright. So we’ll see, but this past weekend, prior to this recording, was a really great… Football weekend. So LSU won, Arkansas won, the Saints won, the Jags won, the Cowboys won, and most importantly, Alabama

Bob Bickford: Yeah, yes. And who’d they play? They played Texas? They played Texas. Well, so why did they schedule?

JimBo Stewart: Texas is back, baby!

Bob Bickford: usually an SEC team, like, Schedules, a beauty school team or like a, you know, Ruth’s beauty college,

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, I mean, they’ve had some cupcakes

Bob Bickford: or lala tech or, you know, some, some of those like, who is this and why do they have football [00:02:00] kind of a thing?

Yeah. Right.

JimBo Stewart: Well, I mean, that’s, that’s what LSU did this last

Bob Bickford: Yeah. Arkansas, the same thing. Kent state. I mean, you know,

JimBo Stewart: I can, I, you know, I think Alabama had a cupcake week one. Okay. and so then this was like, you know, they’re outta conference, you know, let’s make it a game, but, you know, we’ll destroy ’em anyway.

Bob Bickford: Yeah, no.

JimBo Stewart: And they didn’t just lose by like a field goal. They lost by, they didn’t lose 40 to zero.

Yeah. But, they did lose by 10

points.

Bob Bickford: Hey, tell you what, anytime Alabama loses, it’s a good day for me. And I, you know, apologies to Josh Wally. Josh, you know, sorry, buddy. we will never root for Alabama.

JimBo Stewart: you know, and I was gonna talk trash on his social media, but I went and looked and he posted, you know, something about Alabama and then was like, Hey, come to church tomorrow morning.

And Jesus duked me. And so I couldn’t, I didn’t feel like I could talk trash, but he did see, Ryan Durham re Planter

of the

Bob Bickford: year

JimBo Stewart: Apparently is a Texas Longhorn fan. He posts something about. Longhorn’s

winning and all I did was uh, I liked the post and Josh Wally commented, uh, I see you [00:03:00]Jimbo.

So,

Bob Bickford: Well, we love our good friend Josh Wally and we know he’s listening. And so I, Josh, I hope you’re having a good week and you’ve recovered from the

JimBo Stewart: I, I, look, I hate, I don’t know who Alabama plays. The weekend prior to this were being released but You know, there’s a game between us recording and it’s being released I i’m just gonna predict alabama’s gonna just destroy I don’t care who it is.

They’re just gonna destroy it because they’re gonna be so mad And they’re gonna come out and absolutely destroy it. But if they lose i’m calling it nick savin’s

Bob Bickford: Yeah, there you go, or he’s going to get fired, who knows. Hey, Battle of the Boot.

JimBo Stewart: the boot yeah is so the battle of the boot will be After this comes out. So we, when this comes out, we will be prepping.

We’ll be trash talking all week. Uh, and the battle of the boot will be coming up. I’ll be in Arkansas with my family watching it and then we’ll get to reveal the winner, of our bet and make good on our wager in Oklahoma.

Bob Bickford: pajama top or hog hat. What will it be? It’s going to [00:04:00] be interesting to see.

So we’ll have pictures. We’ll post them on social media and we’ll look forward to that.

So yeah, um, this is, uh, we’re in Birmingham tonight. So it is the first of the final three, uh, replant. Yeah. Gigs for me, as a official replant team member. Yep. And so we’ve had a great time. It’s been good to connect with some folks from Nashville, my new home that I’m heading to, and, uh, yeah. And some good folks here, Alabama.

So come

JimBo Stewart: Nashville. So your last chance to catch Bob on the farewell tour, uh, will be in Well, speaking of the seasons of you leaving and seasons of football, let me talk to you about my least favorite season, Bob.

Bob Bickford: Let’s do it.

JimBo Stewart: You know, of all the seasons, one of my favorite things I heard seasons, uh, recently Andy Addis at the Replant Summit, my favorite quote, he said, Talked about when we get overworked.

We do all these things. We just say, well, it’s just a

Bob Bickford: season.

And

JimBo Stewart: said, let’s stop saying that. Yeah, it’s a season. It’s winter and Narnia and it’s freezing and Christmas never

Bob Bickford: comes.

JimBo Stewart: and we tell you there’s a [00:05:00] season that is less appealing to me than even. Winter and Narnia.

Bob Bickford: And what is it Jimbo? Oh, I’m with you.

JimBo Stewart: Look, I don’t, I dunno if this just brings P T S D or, or what it is, but election season is the worst. my roughest seasons as a pastor were, were election season. The last two election seasons kicked my tail. and I mean, just so many things got attached to it and like it was so divisive and, it was just really, we were in a very.

especially politically more than even anything else in, and so, man, I, I mean, I felt like everything I said got politicized and turned into an extreme view. Like, if you said anything, it was like interpreted as some crazy extreme view of what Of against whatever they were for. And it’s like, that’s not even, I mean, like, I mean, through it, look, the rumors about me through election season, Bob, is that I was, uh, I mean, I’m not going to like all kinds of insane things that you’re just like, [00:06:00] are you, are you mentally okay?

That, that, that that’s you, you came to that deduction from that.

Bob Bickford: Yeah. Cause you, I mean, you’re, I can’t imagine you, you know, being over the top. I

JimBo Stewart: Not when it comes to politics, you know me like I am a political like I, I don’t even like talking about politics. and it’s probably why it’s why I wanted to do this episode is election season is coming.

And if I could go back, some people have asked me if you could go back to the beginning of when you started replanting, what advice would you give? And just for me, in my own context, I literally would go back and be like, Hey, probably don’t relaunch and change names during an

election season.

Yeah, I mean, like, don’t, just don’t do that.

Uh,

Bob Bickford: Get this, you had, now it all makes sense to me. Yeah. Because I remember the episode on how not to do a name

JimBo Stewart: It was awful.

Bob Bickford: there was like miscues and fumbles and the bus shot off the road and the wheels flew off. Oh, it was so bad. And you voted and unvoted and re voted

and now I get it, Chimbo. Brutal. And

JimBo Stewart: mean, [00:07:00] and that’s just one part of it.

I mean, it’s like everything I did got attached to these political. If you did a, if you did a color map of how everyone in my congregation voted and then you took any issue going on in our church at that time and you did a color map, it would be identical, on different sides. And so it’s like everything got turned into politics.

Here’s what I want to do, Bob. I want to jump through a couple of things, helping guys think through how to navigate wisely in, this season, because political tensions that often permeate society can easily seep into our congregations very easily. They threaten the unity that we as Christians are called to uphold, and so…

In this episode, here’s what I want to do. I want to explore how pastors can handle election season with wisdom and with grace, promoting unity without sacrificing their convictions. So first I want to start with unity. unity is the, is this, I think this is what the devil loves to attack in this season is unity.

and so how do we think through that? unity within the body of Christ is a really big deal. I mean, you read the Bible, this is what Jesus prays for in the high priestly [00:08:00] prayer. So many Pauline epistles address this. And so one of the things I think you have to clarify is unity and uniformity are not the same thing.

And unity in the body of Christ is theological, not ideological. so here’s what I mean by both those statements. Unity, not uniformity, meaning, our unity is, We are unified in our theological understanding of who God is, and our understanding of who that means we are, and our identity in Christ, and as the body of Christ, and what it means for us to be on mission for Christ.

That’s where our unity is. That plays out different in everybody’s lives based on their gifting and their context. And so we’re not uniform in that we don’t all play the same roles, right? Ephesians 4, 16 says when each part plays its role properly, the church builds itself up in love. Not everybody plays the same role.

So we have different roles. We’re not uniform, but we are unified, but it’s theological, not ideological.

Bob Bickford: Right? So one faith, one Lord, one baptism. Yep. All [00:09:00] those sorts of things. yeah. I think this, here’s the challenge for this is when someone rises up and says, well, real Christians, will vote this way.

JimBo Stewart: Oh, that’s the worst.

Bob Bickford: Right? And so that, that makes it very, very difficult. to then have a conversation and you’ve automatically put someone who votes differently, on the, you’ve basically questioned their salvation. And you, and so now you’ve taken something that’s very complex and you’ve it

JimBo Stewart: Basically, it’s question or a, party, or a person, or something like that, and so,

you,

you’ve taken something that’s incredibly complex, and you’ve just, you’ve oversimplified it, and everybody has to be like me, and vote like me, and think like me on everything, and that’s not

Bob Bickford: not true. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, Jimbo, we probably should say this at this point, we typically think in a binary choice, either this or that.

And in our election system, it is primarily binary. This, this party or that party wins. But [00:10:00]there, there are alternative options. Right. People, this, when they go to the ballot box in November of 2024, Jimbo, they could write your name in or my name in, right? So there are other options. And, and I think that that may be a little more helpful, to, to remember that there are other options.

Now we are not in a, we are not in a system right now in, in terms of our, government system, our party system where you’re going to get probably a third party. Yeah, for a number of years. I think eventually Jimbo, it will happen maybe when my kids are my age, maybe when my kids are a little bit older in my age, we might see a third party candidate win.

and we have seen some third party candidates spoil elections, through, you know, through my lifetime, especially in something, um, in some of the years, when a third part of somewhat viable third party candidate rose and peeled off some votes, we may see that this year, who knows. But, You’ve just got to realize that that we’re treading on a little bit dangerous ground [00:11:00] when we say that, that real Christians will vote this way.

Now I, I could, you know, I would imagine some people are listening to that and they get real frustrated because they’re thinking about a particular issue related to, to this or that. And I don’t, you know, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, uh, enumerate those issues right now. But here’s what I would say.

If you’re mad at me for saying this, What I would say is, you and I probably agree on the, the key issue that you’re mad about. Yeah. Right. And so before you get mad at me and sending an email and say, you’re glad I’m leaving namm. Um, yeah,

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, if we can get through this podcast without an angry email, that’s going to be a

win.

Bob Bickford: It’s gonna be hard. So, uh, I just, I want to be, I just want to be careful not to, not to fall in that trap that we, we say Real Christians vote this way. Right, right. So it’s, it’s just. but there are convictions that Christians have about things that matter that play out in the political process that I think that biblically, the view of Christians is, you know, this, right?

And so if I can just say [00:12:00] that and be there, I, you know, I think that would probably be good.

JimBo Stewart: Well, I think, yeah. Just, I, my thing I have always said is, is the biggest banner of your life has to be your identity in Christ. Sure. And it can’t be anything else. Uh, including your sports team.

Which is why I can love an Alabama fan. Right? I mean, I can, because that’s how powerful the gospel

Bob Bickford: the gospel, Jesus told us to love our enemies.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah,

Bob Bickford: I mean, and pray for those who

JimBo Stewart: I can even be brothers in Christ with an Alabama fan. I’m not gonna say I would. I’m not even goes far to say you can’t be a Christian to be an Alabama fan.

I know some and I love

him.

Bob Bickford: come right up to that line.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah

All right, so here’s the next bullet point I want to hit is embrace the wisdom in your

timing. you know when you are implementing change you have to Calculate a lot of things that are going on including the culture of your people and what’s going on And and so during an election season when emotions are already running high Division’s [00:13:00] already more pronounced.

The enemy already has a foothold to try to divide your congregation. It’s wise at that point to exercise caution as you think through and maybe avoid introducing significant that could further disrupt the congregation’s harmony. focus on nurturing spiritual growth. Take this as a season to focus on unity around our theological identity, not our ideologies.

Um, and so, like for me, I’m actually, like, our, our relaunch, vote to be a new name, and a whole plethora of other things I don’t want to go into, all, like, ended up in election seasons. And… And that’s where I legitimately would go back and be like Jimbo don’t do that

Bob Bickford: Yeah, Yeah,

It’s

JimBo Stewart: already going to be a hard enough season.

Don’t don’t add something that can become fodder for Disunity, uh in that time. So just think through like What you’re leading through and, you know, if you have a completely homogeneous like congregation and they’re all going to vote the same way and nobody’s divided, then go for

Bob Bickford: it. [00:14:00] Alright, yeah.

JimBo Stewart: But that was not my context.

And, and so it was like everything I did got attached to the election. And, even though I wasn’t trying to do any of that. And so, just. be wise and how you navigate those things. And and just I think the question to ask is, will this help cultivate unity within our body? Or could it possibly disrupt that if it could possibly disrupt it?

Can it wait? Can I just wait? Can you be another side of this election season? And then I’ll move towards that. and let me just do some things that really help us focus on unity right now.

Bob Bickford: Right, cause the fight, you could be getting into fight and disunity and conflict that is not really the result of a feeling or a belief about the issue that you’re…

Trying to decide and move forward on your you’re getting the baggage of frustration from X, right? From, from the political season from behind. So it, when you shared this point, it reminds me of we learned at some point in our parenthood, [00:15:00] do not take your children to the restaurant when they are tired and cranky and haven’t had a nap because they will go nuts.

JimBo Stewart: Well, let me tell you a real life

Bob Bickford: story. All right.

JimBo Stewart: So Trip, our oldest, when he was an only child, great kid, I mean, super compliant, super chill, was like the perfect restaurant baby. We could just take him, put him in the high chair, give him something to

Bob Bickford: eat,

JimBo Stewart: and I mean, just, we could do whatever. So, Audrey and I decide one night… You know, we want to go on a nice date.

There’s some things we want to celebrate and we want to go out. And so we decide we’re going to go to a nice restaurant. We’ll take trip. We’ll put them in the high chair, into the table. Everything will be wonderful. Nope. Trip woke up and chose violence. It, it, Bob, it was so crazy. Like he literally, he literally grabs the silverware off.

the table and just chunks it across the restaurant, hits a guy in the head, like, and this guy is looking at me like he’s going to murder me, and,

Bob Bickford: He was gonna choose violence too. He was

JimBo Stewart: going to choose violence, and all this stuff’s happening, it is so [00:16:00] bad, we had already ordered our food, but it wasn’t there yet, and it was too late to cancel it, and, so I was just like, Adria, take him to the car.

I will get it to go.

Bob Bickford: Yeah.

JimBo Stewart: It was rough.

Bob Bickford: Yeah, I don’t do that.

so

JimBo Stewart: think about your timing. Are you gonna end up maybe getting beat up in a restaurant? I mean that could happen

Bob Bickford: Yeah

JimBo Stewart: So let’s talk about social media during an election season. I mean really social media In any season, I was reading a book recently, by our friend that’s been on the podcast, Trevin Wax, called Multidirectional Leader.

And he talks about how on polarizing issues, we have to be skilled as leaders. At addressing it from different angles. And he gives an example of John Stott and some others that when they’re within one context, speaking to a certain group of people, they’ll speak about an issue in a certain way. We’re in a different context and not that the.

Content changes, but maybe even the tone or way they talk about it, a severity of which they hit an idea, would depend on [00:17:00] reading, reading the room, understanding who they’re talking to and understanding the dynamics and the life and the context where they’re talking to. And that’s a skill. That’s a good skill to have as a leader.

And as your congregation, as you’re leading your congregation, you should think through those things. But when it comes to social media, you can’t do that because all the context are out there. All the contexts are reading everything that you’re writing, everything that you’re seeing. And, and so, you have to navigate social media much more wisely and nuanced than you do in person.

Bob Bickford: Yeah, social media is flat.

you can read a word or sentence or structure and You can think, man, what does that mean? And what did they mean by that? And, you know, I wrote a post several, probably a couple of years ago, I think it was during COVID about how to pastor people in their social media. So we’ll link that in the show notes, but it’s very difficult.

and part of our. you know, culture as NAM employees is to, stay in our lane and to not use social media in a way that [00:18:00] creates confusion because we have to work with a lot of different folks. And, and so the, the post in particular that I, wrote about talks about when you have somebody that’s just posting and.

It’s creating tension in your, congregation. how do you lean into that? How do you have the conversation? And I actually went and kind of, and, and dialogued. I had a, congregate who was posting things and people were coming to me going, Hey, are you seeing this? And so I was able to interact with them.

And so it gives you some practical handles. So you might want to check that out. We’ll have that in the show notes.

JimBo Stewart: Well, part of it is being 85 percent of communication is nonverbal,

Bob Bickford: percent

JimBo Stewart: Which means you have, at best, decreased your effectiveness at communication

by

85%.

percent

when you post something

on social media. Like, you’re not going to be able to… Adequately get across your tone or your context, what you’re trying to say.

So just, I mean, outside of election season, I think social media is just a bad place for a real robust

Bob Bickford: dialogue. Yep.

JimBo Stewart: and so just be mindful of what you’re posting out there. Be wise. Try to, I mean, my thought is like, I never want to distract from the gospel. I never want to distract from my mission. I don’t ever want to [00:19:00] create division between me and you because of something that is not ultimate. Right, like I’ll let there be some division between me and you on some theological things that are serious. but I, I just never, I never wanted to create barriers. On accident because I wasn’t clear in my communication.

Bob Bickford: Right,

right. And so, you know, you wouldn’t, necessarily post which, how the best chicken fingers.

Chick-fil-A or Cane’s or

JimBo Stewart: Oh I’ll down on that hill.

Bob Bickford: Okay. right?

JimBo Stewart: Ra raising canes for

Bob Bickford: sure.

You know what, Jimbo, I’m with you and I, the Lord’s chicken is good. but then raising Cane’s move north and I’m just, there’s something about that Crispy crunch.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah.

there’s still not one in Jacksonville. There is one in Tallahassee and Gainesville. So I think, I think Gainesville. So not too far from me, but all right, let’s move forward because there’s some things I want to make sure we hit at the end and I want to rush you too bad.

so leveraging social media and then here’s, here’s the deal. you’re a

lot better at this than I am, Bob, because of my [00:20:00] PTSD with election seasons. But how do you, how do we best equip our congregations to think through the role of government and to be discerning voters, as they, and not ignore us, like, so what I’m not, so we’re not saying ignore the election season, we’re saying don’t let it become a distraction.

Don’t give the devil an extra foothold. Make sure you’re focused on unity and not uniformity. and those are all kinds of things that kind of skirt around it a little bit, but how do we lead and pastor our people? Well, in this,

Bob Bickford: yeah, this is, this is a challenging one.

I think you have to go to the scriptures and equip them to understand the role of government. So I think it’s Romans 13 and, and, And Daniel chapter two, I think talked about how the fact that the Lord institutes and raises up leaders and he takes them and he raises them up for a specific purpose.

And so, there’s some mysterious divine interplay between the Lord’s sovereignty and our participation that we could get a R. C. Sproul

and, you know, John Piper [00:21:00] and Tim Keller, you know, and I’m mentioning some theologians who are no longer with us. Right. But we could. If we could somehow have received instruction from them, they would talk about this mysterious interplay between God’s sovereignty and man’s participation.

And so if we approach it as a believer that if our candidate doesn’t win, then all is lost. Or if the other one wins, you know, if my, my candidate wins, all is great. we’re not approaching it with an understanding of God’s sovereignty. And so. what I would say is you’ve got to find a way to equip your people to understand our hope is not in elections or elected individuals.

And so there’s a theological component. And then there’s also just this practical component to, to help them understand the role of government in particular, how our country is structured it and it’s limited, right? The executive branch has a lot of power and they can do a lot of different things. But they don’t have ultimate power because they’re in check by the legis.

They’re checked by the legislative branch and the legislative branch is in check by the executive branch. And [00:22:00] both of those branches are, held in check by the judiciary, right. Uh, and the judicial branch. And so, yeah. So we have this really interesting slow and cumbersome and challenging form of government that actually was put together for that specific purpose to make wild swings.

And craziness. Hard to, to do. Right. And so yeah, we are, we have been in, we’ve been recipients of, kind of the, the stalemate or, the struggle of that because ideologically our, our parties and our, political players are in such different pages. that we have hard swings for four years and then, Maybe eight years and then back four years.

And so we’re kind of back and so, but the ultimately what happens is the work of the previous administration, particularly in the judiciary has limited what the legislative or the executive can do in that short timeframe. And so we get this kind of static, type of type of deal. Now help your people understand that from a civics [00:23:00] or kind of a government point of view that all is not lost.

And in the grand scheme of things, four to eight years is really not that long of a period of time. It may seem like it, but it’s not, and God is still on the throne. And then the last one, Jimbo, the last point that we want to talk about is how do you help in this? This is a kind of a sub point of equipping.

It’s cut to be kind of its own. How do you help your folks be discerning voters? And so. So one of the things that I really wrestled with in the past couple of elections where I would have young folks come to me and say, who in the world do I vote for? Like and so they would be, they would be looking at it as I’m voting for this person, And so I would say we need to broaden that a little bit. You need to think about you’re voting for a person, yes, but that person belongs to a party and that party puts forth a platform. And that platform has derivative policies that come from it. So what you’re actually voting for [00:24:00] is a platform and policies.

So let’s talk about that, right? What is the platform of that particular political party? What are they about? What do they want to do? What do they say their major emphases are? How do they want to address the problems and the challenges that we face as citizens of the United States? Then what policies naturally flow from that platform?

That’s what you’re voting for. And so look at that and discern that and ask yourself, do these policies that come from this platform that belong to this political party that’s put forth this person, are they promoting the common good? Are they seeking to address the issues in a way that we feel are right and just?

And try to make your decision based on that. And as I explained that, it still was hard for people. Because we kind of go back to the elementary school election, right? It’s all about popularity and who do I like and who do I think, you know? And it’s not, you know, I mean, that’s what it really feels like a lot of times.

And so that’s really the way our [00:25:00] political process too, is we try to make the other candidate look horrible. And barely do we get any conversation about politics. platform and policy, but that’s where you really should focus because I think that understanding the previous point about the limitations of the different branches of government, you really need to look at the policies and platforms and ask yourself, do I believe which platform

and policies that will derive from that, that are derived from that, that platform?

Which ones do I believe will address the concerns and the conditions that need to be addressed?

JimBo Stewart: Well, I don’t trust any of them. And so I’m writing in coach. Oh, go tigers.

Bob Bickford: you go.

JimBo Stewart: Because I have decided that most politicians are basically like Alabama football fans in their pompous and they are arrogant and they’re used to getting what they want in their way and they beat up on the little guy all the time.

And so hook them horns, go coach. Oh, and let’s just vote them all out.

Bob Bickford: Well Jimbo, we are in Alabama and I hope that our hotel room is not bugged because I’m [00:26:00] not sure we’re getting out of here after that long statement. So uh, the Crimson Tide police may descend upon us.

JimBo Stewart: So, uh, the, the Crimson Tide police may descend

upon us.