How to Deepen Discipleship in Your Church

Collin Hansen
This is Gospelbound. A podcast from The Gospel Coalition for those searching for resolute hope and an anxious age, wherever you’re listening from. welcome. I’m your host, Collin Hansen. And I’m glad you’re here for today’s conversation

What ails your church? I mean, hopefully the answer doesn’t come too quickly to you. I mean, hopefully your church is the picture of health where everyone’s growing in love of God and love of neighbor. Or maybe your church has a discipleship disease. If so, then, JT English can help with his new book deep discipleship how the church can make whole disciples of Jesus published by b&h English serves as the lead pastor of storyline fellowship in Denver, Colorado. Previously JT served as a pastor at the village church in Flower Mound, Texas, where he founded and directed the village church Institute, which is committed to theological education in the local church. JT sees churches worried about being irrelevant, worried they’re asking too much of busy people. Many Christians seem to think that the church has gotten too deep. Well, JT couldn’t disagree more, as you might guess from his book title. He says most churches aren’t nearly deep enough. He writes, this, people are leaving not because we have given them too much, but because we have given them far too little. They are leaving the church because we have not given them any reason to stay. We are treating the symptoms of the wrong disease. This deep discipleship is about giving people more Bible, not less, more theology, not less, more spiritual disciplines, not less more gospel, not less, more Christ, not less.

Now, the good news is that deep discipleship does not require massive resources, a large congregation or an enormous ministry staff. It starts with not apologizing when we ask Christians to make commitments. So JT joins me now on gospel bound to discuss Sunday School in small groups, travel, baseball, active learning and commissioning culture. JT, thank you for joining me on gospel bound. Man, I am so glad to join you calm. Thanks for having me. It’s an honor. JT, what’s your evidence for diagnosing the church with a discipleship disease?

J. T. English
Man, that’s a good question. Well, what’s funny, as I wrote this book two years ago, of course, I think the evidence has been piling up over the last few years, which is a whole different conversation, I would have a lot more data. But the reality is, I became a Christian, I want to say later in life later in my life, I’m only 36 now, but I came to faith in college. And I got really involved in campus ministries and local churches, where I was going to school and man, from that moment on, I began to realize Christians don’t know their Bible very well. And the Asian people who claim to know love and follow Jesus, they became my best friends and I again, I kind of came from a post Christian secular home, and realized I’m basically at the same starting point that my brothers and sisters are, and they’ve been in youth groups and ministries and churches and their pastors, kids, they’ve been a part of this their whole life, and they haven’t grown. And so even from day one, I began to see that and then as I got involved even more, I’ll never forget, I was having a conversation with my pastor at the time. He was a faithful pastor. He’s a good man. He’s not a villain in the story. He was participating in the kind of angelical economy that had been created for him. And I went to him he was doing our premarital counseling for my wife and I, and I, I was so far removed from kind of the Christian subculture bubble. I didn’t even know what I was trying to ask again, I’m brand new Christian, and I just say, hey, I want to learn, I want to grow. And he said, that’s, that’s great. I’m expecting him to say, be an apprentice of mine. I’d love to teach you the Bible. I’d love to have you come on, you know, alongside me here at the church you can you can lead a Bible study you can preach from time to time was a small church. And he said, Oh, you want to learn, you want to grow, that’s great. You need to go to seminary.

And it was at that moment that I realized something is broken here. I have to leave the church in order to lead in the church. That’s not the way that Jesus set up His church, we should be able to grow as disciples of his in his body in his family of brothers and sisters. And don’t get me wrong way. I loved my time in cemetery cemeteries are I mean, I, I would leave classes and think to myself, why are we not giving this meat to people in the local church, I then would go to church on Sundays and just hear Christianity like a diluted version, a diluted version of what I was learning in school, and I’m not saying Greek and Hebrew, I’m just saying the Gospel of John, or Romans, or the gospel of grace, the doctrines of grace. And so I will leave my seminary classes thinking to myself, how do we get this into the life of the local church and that really became kind of the, the, the birth pain so to speak up the village church Institute.

Collin Hansen
What explain this distinctive Christianity so maybe somebody who’s listening might be in a church like you’re describing

They’re from before, and they really don’t know the difference. They don’t really know the benefit. And they don’t maybe don’t even realize that the spirituality that they’ve inherited is shallow and generic. So give them a taste for something better.

J. T. English
I mean, the reality is we have the richest tradition in the history of the world handed down to us, from the prophets from the law, ultimately from Jesus and his apostles. That that is ultimately the solution to our broken world. But often, we’re just playing pop culture, Christianity. And that’s really what I’ve been what I inherited, I inherited, I came into this evangelical subculture, a cultural Christianity that is far removed from what Jesus hands down to us in the scriptures. But then even what we’ve received from the brothers and sisters in the church who’ve gone before us, some of my favorite classes in school were things like church history and thinking about how the Reformers or the early church fathers and mothers taught distinctively Christian tree. So just to give an example, like the doctrine of Christ gives life, I can’t think of the last time when I was kind of going through these conversations through school that I heard the doctrine of Christ clearly preached and taught from a pulpit, or from a home group or from a small group. And so what I believe happened, I don’t really have specific data for this, but the reality is, is so many churches were experiencing unbelievable growth in the 90s, early 2000s, whether you’re thinking about the church growth, movement, even the young, restless reformed movement, I think of the village church, and here you have young men and women trying to lead a church and they adopted a philosophy of ministry that had a fatal flaw. It said that community and discipleship are synonymous.

Community and discipleship are not synonymous. I do want to be clear community is necessary for discipleship. But just to be in a Christian subculture does not mean you are following the way of Jesus. And so what we want to do in these communities is give people distinctively Christian thoughts, ideas and way of living. And I think that’s what I was trying to do in deep discipleship churches how they can do that.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, tell me a little bit more about the goal. I mean, a lot of potential answers here. You can say this is deep discipleship, we do this because it’s ultimate that worship of Christ. Or we could say, you do this because the other kinds of Christianity get wiped out and increasingly post Christian hostile environment that we see across the West. Right? What is the goal of deep discipleship.

Unknown Speaker
man?

J. T. English
So when I first started writing this book, I was actually on a Brief sabbatical at Lake Tahoe and I talked about this in the book a little bit like Tahoe is one of the deepest natural bodies of water that we have. And I remember I was actually I was in a hotel kind of overlooking in this incredible, I did some research on it, because I was procrastinating writing the book. And one of the articles said, nobody’s been to the bottom of this thing. Like it’s, it’s so deep that you it has the depths of it have not been explored. And then you start thinking about how much deeper waters are there in the world, and you think about oceans and seas. And then again, just in God’s providence, Habakkuk 214 came to mind where the prophet is writing Israel in exile, and he says, he’s giving them hope, hoping their exile that one day, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord is going to cover the earth, the way water covers the sea. I just remember that, you know, you just have those, those nugget moments in your life where you’ll never forget. And I’ll never forget this moment because I thought to myself, what is it like for water to cover sea, water doesn’t cover sea, water is sea. And what the prophet is giving us in our exile into Israel in theirs is the good news that one day the knowledge of the glory of God is going to cover everything. So I began thinking about this might this philosophy of discipleship match the nature and character of God? What is the goal, the goal is the is the belief and understanding that God is an inexhaustible well of beauty and goodness, and riches and treasures, that we will never explore the depths of, for example, 5 billion years. So now Lord willing, Jesus has returned by then, and we’re in the kingdom, celebrating resurrection and enjoying one another in the kingdom. And we still have not exhausted the beauty of God, the riches that are in Christ. And so a deep disciple or a church that wants deep discipleship, once that now, why would we want to wait for eternity to know it to begin to explore the beauties of God, we want to start doing that now. So the goal is God.

Collin Hansen
Well, now, you’ve given some hints at this, but I want to know, what is the deep discipleship program? In two minutes? Go ahead. Oh, man, two minutes, two minutes or less?

J. T. English
I mean, it’s really about I don’t have a playbook. It’s about asking the right questions. I think the two most important questions that if you’re a ministry leader that I would encourage you to ask and answer. The first is stop asking the question what the disciples want and ask the question, what do they need? If you’re not giving a disciple what they need? They’re not getting it anywhere else. So deep discipleship has these learning outcomes of Bible, Bible literacy, theological formation, spiritual disciplines interwoven together to make a rich, robust and deep disciple

The second question is stop asking the question, how do we keep Christians? That’s not a bad question. I want to keep Christians in my church. But the better question is, how do I grow them? Do I have a plan and a path for them to intentionally grow in their walk with Jesus? So two questions that every pastor should answer or ministry leader, what do my disciples need? And am I giving it to them? And then number two, how are they going to grow in what they need?

Collin Hansen
Good job. I think I think you actually kept it under. That’s pretty impressive. Have you ever done that in a sermon? I’m always five minutes over.

Now, you know, when we think about discipleship, a lot of us think about parachurch organizations. That’s what makes you so concerned about the role of parachurch organizations and discipleship?

J. T. English
Yeah, I love parachurch organizations, I’ve spent half of my ministry career either in them as a Christian or working for them in my vocation, so I’m not against them. But the reason parachurch organizations exist, for the most part is because the church has failed her primary task of making disciples. For example, I love Bible study, fellowship and the mission of Bible Study Fellowship. But I, I would far prefer 500 or the women who call Storyland home, in my church, learning the Bible together. The reason BSF exists is because the church was failing the reason seminaries exist is again because churches were largely failing. And again, that’s not to say those things shouldn’t exist. I’ve, I work for those organizations. So enjoy them, support them and want their missions to continue. But not at the it’s time for the church to take her rightful manter mantle black back in making disciples and using parachurch organizations, not as the primary like the main course of discipleship but as the accessory is the appetizer as the as the thing that you might go to learn Greek and Hebrew if your church can’t do it. But if you’re if your church isn’t teaching you the Bible, and you’ve got to go to seminary to do that we have a major problem and that angelical ism.

Collin Hansen
Do you have a long term vision for how storyline might be able to do some of its own seminary level training? Like if somebody comes up comes to faith in your church grows through these programs and discipleship could even continue into formal or semi formal ministry training, all within your same church?

do I get?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah,

J. T. English
I think every pastor or ministry leader needs to be thinking to themselves or answering this question for themselves. Can I create a pastor out of a non Christian all in the life of the local church, we used to call it pagan to pastor at the village. And that was our vision. We there was a Starbucks in the parking lot of the village and I would I would regularly talk with Matt, I hope that gets to pastor there for 20 years. But I said I hope the next pastor of this church is a non Christian over at Starbucks. We have an evangelistic culture where where they’re going to hear the gospel, respond to it, start attending church faithfully find this to be their family, and it had environments here that that are going to grow them into being the next pastor of this church. I don’t want to find the next pastor of storyline at Southern Seminary. I want to find them here in Arvada, Colorado. And that’s not to say that it won’t come from Southern I love Southern I love doubt. I mean, again, this is not an either or it could be both. And but if I’m not being faithful to think about how am I raising the next pastor or ministry leader, executive team up here, then I’m failing in my task. So we’ve started to do that. So just Just what I want to give people calling is a sense of like this can actually happen. So I came to storyline in the middle of a pandemic. My first 50 I came in week one of my pastor and his storyline was was Easter of 2020. So like it was, it was a mess. 15 sermons into the abyss is what it felt like, you know, like nobody in the room I’m talking to I’ve not met a single member from storyline and preaching. And they in the midst of how we’re going to build this culture of discipleship here. In the village, we were wondering the same thing. I start the training program, we’re praying for 15 people to do it. And 59 people sign up for the first year. So what I want maybe the most important thing that anybody who’s in ministry leadership could hear me say right now is that you have to start raising the bar for people they want you to. Don’t apologize for it. So we did that. Here. We started the storyline Institute and storyline is far smaller than the village we have about 800 adults who attend regularly about 1000 people, including kids give or take, which is about a quarter of the size of of the village. I was wondering, maybe we are going to have 10 or 15 people. We have 600 people involved in deep discipleship environments this year. 100 of them are involved in a year long storyline, Institute, learning, biblical theology, systematic theology, spiritual formation. And it’s not just young ministry leaders who want to go into ministry. There’s a woman who’s 88 years old, was reading Herman bobbing, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Craig Bartholomew, Michael Gove, and she’s doing doctrinal statements. And she every week called this is not a joke. She comes up to me with tears in her eyes, and she says, Why has nobody told me this before? I’ve been in church my whole life. Why has nobody told me this before?

Collin Hansen
Wow. That’s great. Right. That’s really encouraging this. People are getting a sense here for why I love this book, and why I found it so refreshing. Now I’m gonna I got a couple questions here that are designed to be deliberately provocative. So I appreciate you. I appreciate you playing along here. Alright, question about a person waiting for Sunday school or small groups? Yes. You’re supposed to trash one of them. JT, Come on, help me out.

J. T. English
Yeah, the reality is, is we both these, these two elements in life, the local church are not competitive. They should be complimentary in different seasons of life at home groups, small groups, missional communities, every column are entirely appropriate. They’re not appropriate for my family. Right now, with two young kiddos, it’s really, really hard to do actual discipleship, when we’ve got 48 kids running around our house, and I’m just trying to avoid insurance claims from you know, a kid jumping off the roof or something like that. I need childcare I need to be my wife needs childcare. And so, pastors again, I would encourage you to be thinking about this, specifically, the people who most often are neglected in a simple church, small group only environment are women, your women are not being discipled the way that they need to be. They’re the ones who are being who are who are taking on the burden that you’re giving them of childcare or hospitality and hosting. Again, we’re talking in normal normalized terms here, the best thing you can do is offer them a structured and predictable environment with childcare afforded. That’s what we do here at storyline. But that doesn’t mean that home groups aren’t important to see these two, Jen Wilkin. Gosh, it’s not her quote, but she says it regularly when we teach this she says if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail, if all you have is HomeGroup. So you think that’s the solution to everything. But the reality is, is everything’s not a nail, you need to have other options for people.

Collin Hansen
Yeah.

Next one will up the ante a little bit here. bigger threat to the church, critical race theory or travel sports? Oh, man, hopefully blockable I’m gonna get canceled for this one right now. I mean, here’s the thing, I’m going to get people getting mad at me for this. I think it’s travel sports, I really do. As the next generation goes, so goes the church. And if the next generation isn’t in church, we don’t have a church.

Well, there was a was a reason I was asking you that question, I thought you might be inclined in that direction. And it’s not to dismiss all kinds of concerns, including aspects of critical race theory, but simply to say, I’m not sure how the deep discipleship model is consistent with a family pace that has them away from their church on a regular basis, and has them just run ragged with practices and games and things like that with one kid or multiple kids. I’m just not. I mean, in my roll off there, I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work.

J. T. English
I think you’re exactly right. There’s, I mean, what we’re experiencing culturally right now is, parents are awakening to the reality of the world that their kids are inheriting. And there’s concern about it, and I think rightfully so. But what you’re talking about is probably the greatest concern is we’re preparing kids for lives, they are not going to lead. And we are not preparing kids for the life that they are going to lead. And a lot of them are gonna wake up when they’re 20 3040. And wonder what my parents thinking, you know, I’m five foot eight, and I thought I was going to be, you know, 140 pounds, and all I did was play football. And again, that’s not to say, I love sports, I grew up playing sports. But if you’re not preparing your child for the real life, they’re going to inherit, and I think the best place that that can happen is the life of the church. That’s where Jesus is preparing people, for the world they’re inheriting, then you’re doing a grave disservice to your to your family.

Collin Hansen
Now, let’s, uh, you’ve made it through that round. So let’s, let’s transition here into talk about active learning. What does that mean? What it how does that fit a deep associate? Because I think it’s worth clarifying that your program does not, is not about basically just sitting through a bunch of lectures.

J. T. English
No, no, that doesn’t work. We to, you know, one of my favorite shows is the office. So I always think of Toby when I think of HR. But we had an HR presentation once and the person who was presenting said, the basic stats are, if you hear something, you’ll remember about five to 10% of it a week from now, if you hear it and write it down, you’ll remember 20 to 30% of it. But if you hear it and write it down, and then teach it to someone else, or are apt to articulate it, you remember so much more. And that was true for me. Even as I learned to teach the training program in the institute. I learned more than I learned in seminary because I was finally having to articulate what I thought I had already learned. And so an active learning environment has four key elements. The first is some kind of pre work, whether that’s reading Calvin, or doing an inductive Bible study, and that creates a kind of dissonance for people that is really helpful to then show up and talk about it with a group of people a small group element environment, what did you What do you think about what Calvin says about the providence of God? That’s what we’re doing in the institute right now. And they they’re forced to kind of wrestle creates more dissonance for them than we have a teacher at large group teaching session, where they’re there, they’re able to relieve some of that tension through through a teacher who’s thought about these issues? And then finally, we always ask them, Who are you going to teach this to? Are you teaching this to your fourth grader, your sixth grader, your husband, your spouse, your grandma, your neighbor, missionally, whatever it might be. And we never want people just to be consumers of information, but ultimately vessels of, of transformation to other people. And honestly, column this is something I’m struggling with right now is it as a new pastor is the primary learning environment in the life of the church, the sermon, which I have a very, very high view of God’s word going forward, is technically a passive learning environment. So I’m trying to think through what are ways that I can prepare God’s people to perhaps read the text beforehand, maybe talk about it in their groups beforehand, so that when they come and we’re in Romans chapter 321, this week, they can be prepared to interact with it in a way where it’s not like, what is this about? And what are we learning. And so I want I want all of the environments in my church to be active participants, because God doesn’t call us to, to simply be an audience, but to participate.

Collin Hansen
Now, in defense, a little bit of the home group model, I suppose that’s why a number of the simple church approaches do focus on sermon discussion and application in the home groups, right. And that’s exactly and that’s what we do here at storyline, we have a curriculum that we send out. But the challenge with that,

J. T. English
I don’t want to I don’t want to push on this too hard. But just we’re biblically illiterate. And so if we’re putting biblically illiterate Christians in a group with other biblically illiterate Christians, we’re not growing our knowledge, we’re simply pooling our ignorance. And so that’s why I’m not against home groups. But that’s why when you put home groups alongside active learning environment, so like, the best thing at the end of the year was, we’d have 100 people graduate from the institute. And you know what they would go do next, they go lead home groups, and we can have a great deal more confidence in the quality and content of the discussion of those home groups than we did previously.

Collin Hansen
Yes, good point. That’s good point. I’m pretty sure I’m glad to kind of ask that follow up there. Now, you may have already covered this, but I still think it’s helpful to ask this in a pointed manner, you can go back and change one trend in church discipleship in the last 15 years. What would it be?

J. T. English
Oh, man, only one, huh? I’ve got a got my laminated list over here.

Collin Hansen
I’m gonna force you to do one. And then if you can do one, then I’ll give you a couple more.

J. T. English
Now, I’m gonna keep it simple. I mean, people know that this is probably what I’m gonna say, based on what I’ve said so far. But it was a move, move away from learning environments in the life of the church. I mean, we’re away from Sunday school. Yeah, some kind of Sunday school environment, training, training institute, whatever, whatever you want to call it and your your denominational or ecclesial background.

And here’s the thing, like, again, I’m not I love the church, I think people can hear hear this and think JT is being critical. The reason I’m saying these things is because of my deep, deep, deep, deep love for God’s church. But I just think like when you look about what we’ve experienced the last let’s just say five years in broad like broad evangelicalism. We’re we are we are reaping what we’ve sowed over the last 30 years of discipleship trends. Yeah, yeah, I had.

Collin Hansen
I think if you’d gone back, and it was one point in 50 years, and you’d play it out some of those trends and say, what might it look like? If this continues? I think it might look like the kind of biblical literacy and therefore the kind of weakness to be able to stand up in a changing culture. During the same time the willingness to get blown with all kinds of different trends that promise quick solutions that’s right to that problem. I think that’s exactly what you’d expect by people who have been conditioned to expect entertainment from their churches as opposed to deep discipleship.

I’m talking here with JT English, author of deep discipleship, how the church can make whole disciples of Jesus help us by bnh. A couple more questions here. What do you mean JT about a commissioning culture?

J. T. English
Yeah, this is probably one of my favorite chapters to write in the book. But even more than that, it’s all my favorite things to see. Be the fruit of, of the institute that we did at the village and Lord willing here at storyline is one of the criticisms that I that I think can be leveled at this philosophy of ministry. Like if you’re listening to this, you might say to yourself, well, JT, aren’t we just creating smarter Christians? Is that really the goal? And I’m not opposed to that man. I don’t think many evangelicals walk into the room and they think, man, they’re all the intellectuals walking around like we really being a smart Christian. I’m not opposed to that. Want more of them.

But but it’s not just for the sake of growing and knowledge is also wanting to grow in love of neighbor, which is what Jesus commissioned us to do. So let me like put some flesh on this. So we would have a 36 week Institute, systematic theology, biblical theology, spiritual formation. And again, this is these are this this representative swath of the church, you could not get into that environment unless you were leading somewhere else. And so there was a couple Mike and Deb Jones. I’ll never

Forget them. They were famous at the village for serving in kids ministry. They served in the two and three year old room. And at the time that they were doing the training program in the institute, my son was in that class. So every Wednesday night, we’re doing deep Trinitarianism or Christology on Winston, they’re learning, they’re learning how to pray Trinitarian prayers, they’re, they’re learning the story of Scripture. Over the course of that year, I would go then hand my son off to them on Sunday morning. Why? Because we were commissioning them to take what they were learning to other environments in the church. One of the main places we miss sending people is actually into our church Ephesians chapter four, that the work of ministry is, is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, even in the life of the church, not just in the community or internationally. But they’re in a church, their body of believers gifted to serve their community. So we’re giving them this deep discipleship, they’re showing up in their two and three year old classroom. And over the course of the year, my son, who’s just learning to talk like he’s, he’s barely speaking, when you start saying things to me that they heard on Wednesday night. Class, he’s three, it’s not me having to go to that classroom. And so like you’re you’re trying to do is you’re commissioning people to take what they’re learning to the environments, God has placed them. It might might be their neighborhood, it might be their cubicle at work. And so the phrase that we used, and I continue to use now is we want to train everybody we send, and we want to send everybody we train. That’s good.

Collin Hansen
I love that. Oh, man, that’s good.

Now that we’re kind of building toward this question, I think you even alluded to it earlier, but at how would you write this book differently? After COVID-19?

J. T. English
Probably use COVID-19 as an example of disease. Yeah. Tell me what you mean about that? Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know calling I’ve given this some thought. I don’t know that I’ve come to like a real firm conclusion of how I’d written it differently. But honestly, I felt like I wrote the book with a sense of urgency, I would I would be more urgent now. I thought I was raising like the alarm bell and kind of raising the red flag of Hey, guys, we’ve got a problem I would have I would have been far more urgent in the in the disease. I think I was a little in hindsight, gentle in how I was talking about, I’m really concerned about the trends that we’re seeing at evangelicalism. And so I think I would have maybe just just hit the bell harder, which which trends, which trends, you’re talking about Bible illiteracy formation, we can no longer not sure I’m going to say this the right way, be charitable on how you hear this. In the Gosh, again, I’m overstating some things, but I think churches used to rely on the fact that culture was not an anti discipleship culture. And by that I mean, like forming us in different ways, we kind of could assume it’s neutral, we can form them. And the reality we’re facing now is our people are being discipled in ways that are antithetical to the gospel antithetical to the nature and character of God. And so we have to, in some sense, be doing deformation for them and re formation to them. And that wasn’t something I saw as clearly two years ago, that man over the last two years, it’s just evident that our people are, are being discipled in ways that it’s hard to undo.

Collin Hansen
And not from just one direction, or from one perspective, that’s the problem is that it’s, it’s all encompassing, there are so many different ways that they can go. Right? So yeah, if you’re, if your church does not take responsibility for that discipleship call, then you’re going to, you’re going to reap the whirlwind. That’s right.

J. T. English
To put it simply, I mean, it, let’s just say, let’s say in a simple church model, you’ve got the most think about your most committed people, you’ve got somebody who’s come in for maybe three times a month to Sunday services for 90 minutes or so. Maybe they’re showing up for two hours to a group on Wednesday night, maybe they’re serving somewhere. There’s not a lot of people who are more committed than that, like that’s that for a simple church model is is representative of like those of your leaders. Those are the people you’re like, you’re seeing them almost every week, and they’re they’re engaged and involved. You’re talking about six hours a week, maybe maybe they’re watching six hours of their favorite cable news channel or listening to a podcast, political podcast, or they’re watching Netflix for 14 hours a day. Like they that what we’re up against is enormous, enormous of how our culture is discipling people. So that’s what we’ve got to raise the bar.

Collin Hansen
So it’s a great way to sum it up. Now. I’m going to jump here JT final three. How do you find calm in the storm?

J. T. English
Hmm. You know, I was at a conference last week and just had a good there was a good word from a pastor, the best thing that you can give to your people is you being with Jesus. And so I’m just trying to find and it was really hard during the pandemic. I mean, it was we were all just running ragged, just trying to make the next decision decision fatigue, anxiety, adrenaline challenges, and so I’m just trying to get in the rhythm of being witchy just surviving we can. He is. He is absolutely right me says you can do nothing apart from me. Stay Me remain here. Abide in me. Where do you find good news today? JT, your podcast?

Collin Hansen
That’s the first time anybody’s answered that. Yeah.

J. T. English
I think I find good news with my kids. My kids are six and four right now. There is nothing that I like more than walking in the door after a long day at work and elder meetings and staff meetings. And just hearing Daddy, come here, like it’s my little girl and our little princess dress running up to me. Like, there’s so much beauty in this world. We just have to stop and see it.

Collin Hansen
I love that answer. My kids are six and three and newborns. So that’s fun for fun for me as well. JT, what’s the last great book you’ve read?

J. T. English
I’m actually read this one twice. I just read the coddling of the American mind by Greg unchain and Jonathan Hite. It’s an older book, it’s not new. I read it two or three years ago, and I revisited it for some stuff we’re doing. And that’s a really good book. If we’re thinking about politics, both for left and right and canceled culture and free speech issues, and and ultimately, their thesis is we used to have a culture that said,

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And then words actually gonna make me stronger. And we’ve adopted a different mentality of safety ism and words actually doing violence and the reality is no, like, we want to engage with ideas because they make our ideas stronger.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Well, extra credit JT for a checking off a friend of the friend of the program, and big fan, big fan of Jonathan Hite. So he’s great. He really is checking, checking that off. He’s done a couple of appearances on here. So all right, we’ve been talking with JT English, check out his new book, deep discipleship, how the church can make whole disciples of Jesus, I call it a new book, and it is still new. But 920 2020 Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So I don’t always go back and do ones that are not exactly new releases. But I trust as people have listened here, they understand how consistent this is with the message that we continue to promote through this podcast of how of just the the urgent need and the opportunity before us to be able to, to raise up disciples who will flourish in Christ. Even in a changing world. There’s a lot of hope there. So JT, you’ve helped church leaders, I think here, to be able to, to actually have a sense of a program, you know, a mentality that they can actually implement in their churches. And I really appreciate that. Thank you, brother. It’s been an honor to chat about it a little bit. And that’s our hope. Our hope is that it would have been 10 years the church was known for, for building deep disciples of Jesus. I think if you’re a ministry leader, listening to this, that’s, it’s possible and through the Holy Spirit to the preaching of God’s word, keeping your eyes on Jesus and abiding in him. It’s real, it can happen. Thanks, JT.

J. T. English
You bet.