[00:00:00] So what does this mean? What does this mean for our church potentially that Christianity is no longer in decline? I think it means, if anything, that there seems to be a generally more positive and open view of religious life in America. Perhaps. Which means maybe don't assume that certain groups of people have written you off, which I do think happens in the church all the time. You think, well, they won't be interested in what we're doing or what we're offering.
[00:00:29] But you might be surprised. Welcome to episode 440. Sometimes we need to just grab a cup of coffee and talk church. That's what Jesse and I are doing today as we discuss Lifeways 12 Church Trends of 2026 in order to spark some ideas and reflect on how to best communicate with the people we're trying to reach. So grab your coffee and join us today on The Reclaimed Leader. Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker. And I'm Jesse Skiffington.
[00:00:58] We're two pastors in the trenches who are passionate about church health for greater gospel impact. We share the ups and downs of ministry, strategies that worked for us. And some that didn't. Best practices and practical tools for church leadership. The goal? To help all of our churches flourish. Let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. Jesse, it's so good to be here again with you.
[00:01:25] We are really close to real time. Actually, this technically is real time right now. We were a few weeks ahead and, you know, this is what happened. Spring break happened. Spring break, Easter and Holy Week and everything. We talked about it for the last couple of weeks, but we recorded those episodes before Easter. So how was your Easter? How was everything at Marine? It was wonderful. You know, it's always fun to get to. I mean, of course, it's the heart of our story, right? Jesus lived, died and rose again and good news and all that.
[00:01:55] And so it's a wonderful celebration, but it's also, I think for me, it's just, it's a chance to speak to people who aren't always there. And I know that's true for a lot of us as pastors. It's like, let me just share my heart and maybe God will do something with that in someone's life. And so like you always say, give them the mac and cheese. I mean, we get to preach the gospel on Easter and think about the implications of eternal life, of resurrected life. I mean, it's a profound thing.
[00:02:21] So anyway, so yeah, enjoyed it. Had a great time. I enjoyed time with my family after, and I don't know. How about for you? Yeah, same. I mean, it was great. Holy week was great. It was a very strange Holy week for us because on top of all the usual services, we had two big funerals that were right in the middle of them. It's just how it happened. Normally we try to avoid that. They couldn't be, couldn't be avoided. So it was a bit of a roller coaster of a Holy week.
[00:02:45] I will say one of my favorite parts was on Palm Sunday. I basically told the congregation, I pretty much gave an invitation to receive Jesus. And I said, if anybody decided to do that, to let me know. And, uh, and I had a woman, a single mother of two reach out and say she accepted Jesus that day. We had coffee this last Monday and getting to hear her story. Um, it's just like, you know, I mean, that's why I became a pastor to totally do things like that.
[00:03:13] You know, so it's like, those things are so cool and life giving. And now, you know, we had some time with family and we had our spring break college visit trip, uh, for my oldest son. And, uh, it was great. I, you know, now I'm in this phase of, this is actually the time of year for us because we're on the fiscal calendar. And this is how we sync up all of our elders and deacons and everything, our congregational meeting, everything all happens now or it happens June 7th.
[00:03:42] And so this part of the year is always my least favorite things to do. So we have to put the budget together. We have to do personnel reviews. Um, we have to, our church nominating committee has to do all of their work and get all the new elders and preparing for the congregational meeting. It's all this stuff. I really don't like to do it all, all at the same time. It's the worst.
[00:04:05] Yeah. You're going to go for it. And you got to change your thinking, Jason. You got, I have to, I heard, I have to, I have to, I have to, I just want to hear you say, I get to, I get to, I get to, I get to because I have to.
[00:04:16] Um, no. Um, but then I was thinking too, like, this is also a good time. I don't want to have my head buried in the sand and in work. Um, I want to make sure that, that I'm kind of walking around eyes up, paying attention to what God has. And so it made me think of where we're as a church. Funny enough, tomorrow night is the NFL draft. I'm sure you're paying close attention, Jesse. Uh, don't need to. We're champions.
[00:04:44] For us as Raiders fans, uh, we're very excited that finally, at least something happy will happen. Now I will say this. If we draft anybody other than Mendoza, you're going to have to call and check on me. I'm just throwing that out. Are you guys the number one pick in the draft? Yes, we're the number one pick. How do you not know that? Come on, because you're too busy winning Superbowls. We took one of your coaches and we're going to get Mendoza. Okay, good.
[00:05:12] So, um, but then I was thinking about, you know, like the kind of fun part of the draft. You think about the draft war rooms and evaluation and coaches, you know, as we're in the college recruiting process with my son, you know, you go to, you get some exposure, but really what the coaches want to bring you into their school and see you firsthand. And, uh, and then select the best players to sort of be on the roster to accomplish the mission of the organization.
[00:05:40] And so I was thinking about this as I came across an article about church trends in 2026. It helps me consider our roster, if you will, as a church, our staff, our systems, our programs, all the different kind of players in what we're doing. And to evaluate what we're doing. And it helps, it helps give me something to sort of bounce things against when you get one of these lists. So I really appreciate them. I appreciate the folks that put these together.
[00:06:07] This one we're going to be riffing off of for two episodes, uh, was done by Lifeway. Uh, and it, uh, came out in January of the 12 church trends that they were seeing in 2026. And so I thought it'd be good to just kind of talk about it. It was a article written by Aaron Earls, uh, 12 ministry trends for 2026. And I think it could be helpful in this post Easter pre summer timeframe to expand our thinking as we start. Kind of discerning what God has for us next.
[00:06:37] So, um, what, what do you think? We'll kind of, we'll kind of jump into that. I want to thank everybody who's been with us listening. We got a lot of new listeners and, uh, want to welcome all, all the new folks. And in case you don't know, you could find us. We do have a website, reclaim leader.com. And on that, you could subscribe to our newsletter that comes out about twice a month, once or twice a month. We'll do one. Um, that kind of has a link to some different ideas to the different episodes.
[00:07:04] And, uh, you also kind of be on our contact list as things come up. And, uh, again, you can catch our podcast anywhere you find podcasts, subscribe to it, listen to it. Uh, Jesse and I love doing it. We've been doing it, uh, since fall of 2017, which is just wild to think about. It's crazy. 440 episodes in. So, well, that word right there in the title, Jason riffing dot, you know, that's our favorite thing.
[00:07:30] I mean, thinking about just being able to talk shop as church leaders and think about what's going on. What are we looking at? What are we paying attention to? And what does that mean for us as leaders and for our church community? So I love it. It's probably my favorite thing that we get to do is just talk shop together on what we notice and what's going on. Well, this is how it all started.
[00:07:49] And so I want to encourage pastors, uh, if you're driving, uh, maybe you can't do this, but everybody else grab a cup of coffee and just join us for this conversation as we're thinking through these different trends. All right. Uh, now I will. So today we're going to do one through six and then next week we'll do seven through 12. I will say I didn't always resonate with all of these. And I think it's good to kind of talk, talk about that because, uh, something someone else sees may not be something someone else sees.
[00:08:19] And I had a, I had an issue actually with this very first one. Okay. Let's go. Um, the first one is Christianity is no longer in decline in the U S. Now. That's a really big one. Right. I see why you can make that argument. So I'm not, I don't want to make it sound like I'm disparaging, um, the article at all. I just, um, I think I, I think about, I need more information.
[00:08:47] So here's, here's how they put it in the article. One of the more recent shifts in the newfound stability of Christianity in the U S after decades of decline, Christianity has leveled off. And the religious religiously unaffiliated had plateaued according to recent studies from Pew research and Gallup. Sure. Yeah. Now they acknowledge not all trend lines are positive, but the overall direction of religious identification in America looks different than it did just a few years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So I could see that.
[00:09:16] Uh, on the other hand, I, I think it's probably a leap in my opinion to say Christianity is no longer in decline. Hmm. I do see a lot of, and we've talked a lot about this, but a lot of hunger for getting to know Jesus all over the place. And interestingly, this is also echoed in others, other of these trends. Hmm. Uh, so I don't know. What do you think?
[00:09:46] Do you think that's possible that Christianity is no longer in decline? Well, I mean, no longer. I mean, it implies, of course, that we've been in decline since the 1950s, right? We know those trends, especially in our, you know, denominational church settings. That's been our trajectory for a long, long time. And so no longer in decline, if there's a sort of a, a trough plateau at a bottom layer, you know, I don't know.
[00:10:08] I don't know if there's something to jump up and down about, but, um, I think when we were talking about, remember the great de-churching and all those conversations we were having, there's something of a settling out with the rise of the nuns, the N-O-N-E-S-s, sort of that's kind of leveled out. Atheism is not growing. It's sort of stabilized around a certain percentage of the population.
[00:10:28] So it kind of, it seems like things have kind of settled out, but I think what the concern of the great de-churching was what happens when the baby boomers come toward the end of their life? And will we start to see another decline because that, that group still makes up a pretty significant portion of, you know, regular church attendance and, and, and giving and, and those kinds of things. So I think that's a hopeful thing, but also, you know, let's wait and see. But in the meantime, why not root for that?
[00:10:58] Cautiously optimistic. Cautiously optimistic. So the question, the sort of follow-up question I want to ask for each one of these is, so what does this mean? What does this mean for our church potentially that Christianity is no longer in decline? I think it means, if anything, that there seems to be a generally more positive and open view of religious life in America, perhaps.
[00:11:20] Which, which means maybe don't assume that people, certain groups of people have written you off, which I do think happens in the church all the time. You think, well, well, you know, they won't be interested in what we're doing and what we're offering, but you might be surprised. You might be surprised that there are more people probably than we think that are willing to have, or actually really hungry to have faith conversations, even if they don't share that faith.
[00:11:47] Because there's a curiosity around, you know, what do you guys believe and why? Because they're searching on their own. I definitely feel like there's so much searching happening right now. Whether, where they all land, I don't know, but I feel like there's, yeah. I think that you're right about that. And that is the implication is that there's a real spiritual openness because there's not a foundation that people are able to build their lives on right now. And it just sort of, a lot of things feel uncertain. So people are searching for what is the purpose, meaning of life?
[00:12:17] What can I build my life on or around? And so I think you're right in that Christianity and following Jesus is one of those things that people are going to explore or look at potentially. There's a lot of other things. And we've seen in other times of kind of great awakening, so to speak, that people don't just migrate immediately to Christianity or come towards Christ. They're looking at all kinds of stuff. And so all, there's lots of other expressions where they land.
[00:12:43] And so hopefully we'll be ready to meet them with the gospel so that they can become part of the church. And so that, that statement can be true. We're no longer in decline, but we're, we're starting to see more people give their lives to Jesus. Yeah. All right. Number two, churchgoers are increasingly attending larger churches while the average church grows smaller. They indicated the most recent fact study revealed seven in 10 congregations have a hundred or fewer weekly service attendees. The average is 65.
[00:13:13] The largest 9% of congregations have about half of all American churchgoers. Hmm. True. It seems like the larger, it doesn't mean you're a mega church, just, just the larger church. Remember the, if the average is 65, larger churches than that tend to have all the rest of the churchgoers.
[00:13:41] I always think about like when they do, oh, the average church size is 65, but you're factoring in mega churches. So what's the real average for normal churches? Well, I need the end versus the average and all that stuff. Yeah. Go back to 10th grade math. That's too hard to figure out. Yeah. Right. I love it. Yeah. All right. What does that mean? Here's why I care about this question.
[00:14:02] I want to ask why, what is it about a larger church that is more compelling for people or why are people driving past churches to get to a larger church? Yeah. Is it because, and probably so, that there's a greater opportunity for different programs and services?
[00:14:29] So, for example, I know a lot of church families, even if they don't switch churches, they'll send their kids to a larger church's youth group. Sure. Because they don't want their kids to be only kids in the youth group. And I wonder if there's something similar going on with the adults. I mean, I don't think that's a huge leap. I think that's probably the case.
[00:14:50] But I'm really curious as to, it feels to me like the number of church people who really are all in on their local church seems to follow this same trend line of decline. And I think it's because of disillusionment and disappointment that things don't ever change or the church is stuck and nobody wants to do anything about it and they just get too frustrated over time.
[00:15:21] Or I also know plenty of young people who have been involved in their church in a long time and feel like they're the only ones who are doing all the things. And they're like, you know, you can't pick us again. And we can't just be this isn't like a life sentence here. Right. Right. Because I feel like no other people aren't contributing to the level that I am, whether it's personally or financially, whatever.
[00:15:51] I don't know. What do you think about this? Yeah. I mean, I guess that tracks, right? I mean, a larger church, one, you get to communicate more effectively out into your communities or draw new people in. And so you think about if people are migrating a lot the last number of years, right? They're moving to new towns and cities and they're looking for churches. Well, the ones that are going to be most visible are the ones that are the largest churches. And they're going to be the ones probably best set up to welcome a guest in and integrate you into the life of the church. So this tracks.
[00:16:20] I mean, I'm not saying it's good or bad. It just makes sense to me that a church of 50 will be harder to find and probably less ready to meet you where you are because they're kind of functioning like a large family. And how do you find your way in? And so, you know, I think there's a lot of factors there. But for those that do find a home in a smaller church community, I think there's an opportunity for a lot of depth there that is good. And so, you know, I'm sure that's still happening there too.
[00:16:48] If I were the pastor of a small church right now, what I would be considering is what is it that we have to offer? Of course, I mean, let's pretend we've already said all the things that we know matter most. Yeah. We're sharing the gospel. We're a community of faith. We have our theology and, you know, ecclesiology and everything right.
[00:17:07] But one thing that I would consider is how do I help people understand the real reward for getting involved in a smaller church and what that could mean for their life and faith? Absolutely. And, you know, in some ways being really familiar with church size dynamics for ourselves so we can help people who come to our churches to understand this is the kind of church we are because of our size. And this is what your experience is going to be.
[00:17:33] So if you're looking to have coffee with the pastor every single week or once a month, that's probably this probably is not the church for you. You know, you maybe could get coffee with Jason once every six months or maybe once a year or something. But a small church, you're going to be known and you're going to have conversations every week with the pastor. Right. So there's different things that each church size offers.
[00:17:54] And I think knowing the strengths of each church size dynamic and maybe some of the things that would be missing from each church size dynamic is helpful to communicate with people and be aware of yourself. So Tim Keller has a lot of good stuff on that. I think we we talked about that before. I'm sure we have. We've talked about everything. You promised we did. But if you Google Tim Keller, church size dynamics is a great article just kind of describing some of the stuff around those things and how we can thrive in whatever church size that God has called us to be.
[00:18:23] Yeah. Number three, Americans are more distrustful of pastors. There's an honesty and ethics survey. Only 30 percent say clergy have a high level of honesty and ethics. 30 percent of Americans. Yeah, that's tough. Not surprising. I mean, my goodness. Could we even count the number of scandals? Yeah. With pastors? I mean. And even those who haven't had scandals, just the distrust is just so, so high.
[00:18:53] But I don't blame them. Yeah. I really don't. But again, what does that mean? Like, what should we do about that? And I think, again, this goes back to I once was lost. That that first step of the five thresholds of faith is trusting a Christian. That we have to work on our trust building. We can't assume what we could a couple generations ago. Yeah.
[00:19:20] That we were pastors or churches were automatically trustworthy. We have to earn that trust by, you know, our integrity and ethics and doing what we say we believe. All of that, which is hard. And maybe it's a little unfair at times. But we always have to keep in mind, you know, how are we in the trust building business with what we're doing as a church all around, you know? Yeah.
[00:19:49] And I think for me, too, the other half of that question is what do you do with the kind of the way that makes you feel emotionally? Like when you hear that, you're like, so when I'm meeting people out there in the world, seven out of ten people think that, like that's disheartening, right? Right. Discouraging because there's so many pastors, you know, 90 percent of pastors are out there being trustworthy and living out their faith and doing their best.
[00:20:13] We're not perfect people by any means, but it's so it's disheartening that a few bad apples, a few bad examples or maybe even a growing number of them really taint kind of the whole of clergy. And that's tough. And so I guess the two things don't be one of those people, but also don't lose heart. You know, I think if people think of a specific example, it might change the way that they think. If they're thinking of pastors in general, maybe they have one sense.
[00:20:41] But if they think of that pastor, particularly you, Jason, or me or someone, that probably changes their calculus a little bit, I would guess. I think so, too. Yeah. Yeah. And I also think this has a direct relationship between, like, how we go about even putting together our Sunday mornings in that once upon a time it was, oh, wait till you hear the pastor's sermon and you're going to come back and you're going to, you know.
[00:21:10] But as we've talked about a lot, when we had Greg Atkinson on here, we've been talking about his book for years about how people have made up their minds in the first seven minutes. And what's that saying? It's saying they want the trust is earned from the parking lot and it's not necessarily earned by the pastor. It's earned by everybody around them. And there's this great quote from this bishop who was asked if, I think it was like some snarky reporter was like, are you, do you consider yourself a good Christian?
[00:21:42] And the bishop said, I don't know, why don't you ask my neighbors? And I love that response. And I thought about, I think there's something of that going on here with this. Definitely. Look at the church's fruit. Look at the quality of the Christian lives of the people inside the congregation before you trust the pastor and the pastor's message. Yeah. I don't know. I just think there's something to that. Yeah, it's good. I think it's important to be, like you said, just aware of these trends too.
[00:22:12] If that's kind of in a general sense, how people are feeling towards us as pastors, it's like you got to know that going in and know that trust building is going to be a significant part of the work. And so I think it's helpful to know that and not start from the opposite perspective where you're just assuming, well, of course people will trust me. It's just not the reality. So at one point we were on some survey, we were down there next to used car salesmen. So I was like, oh. Well, do you know what I think else? And then we'll move on to the next one.
[00:22:41] But I was thinking it's also if you're willing to be, to not position yourself as the hero or that you're perfect in your faith from up front. I think there's something to that as well, that you're a real person who's willing to acknowledge that you have faults and you're not perfect. Use discretion. Don't, you know. I mean, and this is my worst sin, you know. Yeah, that's right.
[00:23:05] But I also, yeah, I think even sometimes for me it's asking open-ended questions and saying, I trust you to wrestle this out for, you know, for your own application. I'm not going to give you the three next steps today that I want you to take. I'm going to invite you to consider what is God calling me to do because of what I've heard today. So I think you can, you know, once we get on a sermon tangent, Jason, it's really in trouble for us. So I'm going to stop right there. But yeah, there's ways to build trust even in your communication, I think is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number four.
[00:23:35] This was interesting. It says few churches are tracking discipleship. That's a trend right now. And findings from their own report, this is Lifeway Research, state of discipleship will be published, or as of the time of this article wasn't published yet, but said that the early findings are that pastors have a vague satisfaction with discipleship happening at their churches, but no real way of determining if those feelings are valid. I could track with that. Yeah.
[00:24:06] I could definitely track with that. Only 30% of churches surveyed said that they have actual methods to track discipleship. Discipleship. Yeah. Conversely, though, I would argue discipleship is pretty subjective. It is a tough thing to track. So I understand why a few churches are tracking it. How do you really track someone's relationship with Jesus Christ? Well, they're indicators. That's why we don't just look at church attendance, for example. Yeah.
[00:24:34] We're looking at engagement across the life of the church and then any sort of personal or anecdotal evidence that we have. I mean, we just had a church event. This is sort of funny. We always look for spaces that we can go that aren't too churchy, that are different, that don't cost a lot of money. We could have some food. Sure. Sure. We went to the Elks Lodge. Nice work. Here in Red Bank. Okay. And I laughed because I had never been in an Elks Lodge in my life.
[00:25:03] And I'm going to be honest, it didn't sound terribly exciting on the front end. It was great. We had such a great time. It was such a great spot. It was really chill and casual and people loved it. And it was just a really fun, casual place to hang out. But the cool thing was I got to just talk with people.
[00:25:24] You know, for most of us, once you get to a church that's even over like 150, you just can't track with everybody and catch up with them all the time. Yeah. And so it was really cool hearing and even meeting people that I hadn't met yet telling me their stories and how they came connected with the church and what Jesus is doing in their lives. And I walked away from that night. This was just this last Sunday.
[00:25:53] I walked away from that thinking, oh, my gosh, maybe we don't have a perfect way of tracking discipleship, but discipleship is absolutely happening through what we're trying to do. You know, we have things we're trying to do to make discipleship happen. It was just really cool to hear that it's happening. But I don't know that there's any kind of surefire way to measure discipleship. I don't know. What do you think? The thing is, yeah, are you a closer follower of Jesus now than you were at this time last year?
[00:26:23] Like, I mean, you could make up some weird questions, I think, to ask maybe. Are you reading your Bible more often than you were three months ago? I don't know what they would be. But I think there are those sort of non-metric measures, right, that are sort of anecdotal, evidence-based fruit, we would say, or whatever, where you go, yes, we're seeing evidence that people are investing more deeply in their faith, serving in the life of the church and in their community.
[00:26:48] Like, you kind of get to have a little bit of these what we might call soft metrics or engagement metrics that are a little harder because there's not—you counted the people, right? Those are—so in some ways it's a feel almost at times. And so, yeah, that's something we're still trying to kind of figure out is how do you get your hands around that? Is it—what are some of the key elements of engagement that we do want to track that suggest the probability of good discipleship, right?
[00:27:18] So it's not a sure thing, but if these things are happening, if they're attending regularly and they're in a group and they're serving in some way and they're serving in the church and in the community around them and they're—you know, if these things are true, then probably discipleship is happening in their life because we're exposing them or creating that environment. So it's a hard one to pin down, but there's some things you can look at. Yeah.
[00:27:44] So, you know, I think the follow-up question is, okay, well, why would we want to track discipleship and then how are we going to try? I was thinking, yeah, it's like, well, I want to track discipleship because I want to make sure that we are doing what Jesus called us to do to make disciples of all nations.
[00:28:01] So how do we make sure we're not just gathering a crowd on Sunday mornings, but that we are creating Jesus followers who are striving to grow closer with him and are growing closer with him? So I think there's a lot of reason why we would want to track that. And I think, again, I don't think any church—I think it's like whatever you feel right for each church on how you're going to track that. But I do believe in trying to track it because, do you know what it does?
[00:28:30] I think even if it's an imperfect system, it reminds you to think of that. And you're also thinking about the people in your church in that way a little more and trying to—I don't know. So, I don't know. I think it's a healthy thing. Sort of what gets measured is what gets done or what, you know, it's sort of along those lines, right? Yeah. Number five, this trend made me—I laughed out loud when I read it. Americans' morality is a mixed bag. Yep.
[00:29:02] Earth-shattering. Agreed. I know. This isn't particularly shocking. Now, I will say at this point, so Lifeway is Southern Baptist Convention, I believe, is their roots. So they had a lot to say about different moral issues in society. Whether you as a pastor or your church would say it that way, I don't know.
[00:29:22] But I think what this reminds us of is that we can't be afraid to say what we believe the gospel calls us to that's aspirational regarding walking the narrow road of Jesus Christ, but being very careful not to demonize behavior along the way because it's a mixed bag.
[00:29:51] So, I don't want to—I'll put it this way. I'm not interested in compromising the truth. I'm also not interested in beating people up over their sins. Yeah. And I think you have to understand the depth and problem of sin before you can receive grace. So that's part of it. So feeling guilty over sin is okay and a good response.
[00:30:19] But living under the prison of that guilt is not what the gospel brings. So, you know, there's a standard. There's a righteousness of God. And at the same time, you know, and God's calling us to the something more to give us life and life to the full. But also, again, not being the behavior police and beating people up over their mistakes, which is easy to do intentionally and accidentally in the life of the church.
[00:30:49] Yeah. And it's kind of a minefield right now, isn't it? Right? It's hard. It's hard to have that conversation well in a world in which there are a lot of different viewpoints on the way that we should live. Yeah. And I do think, I think it makes it very complex for us as pastors. How do we talk about that well and wisely?
[00:31:11] That, like you said, it pulls us towards an aspirational understanding and moves us in a direction, but doesn't beat us into the ground. You know, and it's, it's. The righteousness of God and what he asks of us as his followers seriously. Mm-hmm. Without acting like you're the judge on the throne. Totally right. Yeah. Condemning people where they are and loving them where they are and calling them to something more.
[00:31:40] And those are, those are all things that we have to figure out. But knowing that people are in a whole bunch of different places around their sense of, you know, what is right and wrong and what is good and bad. It makes that more complex, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then lastly, or number six until next week. Americans grow more positive toward the Bible. So interesting. Americans' morality is a mixed bag, but they are more positive toward the Bible than they have been.
[00:32:08] It shows that they are reading it more or at least purchasing Bibles. Those who are surveyed say they read their Bible more often. And I was, you know, I was thinking about our friend David Kling and the Bibles that they pray for to new believers. I was saying there's just a more, there's just an openness to learn. Hey, I don't know if I believe in Jesus, but you know what? I never read the Bible.
[00:32:34] And this is interesting to me to start to dig in. There are so many instances and stories I've heard of people doing exactly that. Now, with all of this openness, and we're going to talk about Gen Z a little bit next time. But with all of this openness, the thing that I keep feeling as I'm reading these trends is people need a lot of interpretation and direction. Yeah. The openness is great.
[00:33:02] But in this information age, people need application and interpretation. Yeah. Because information has actually caused a lot more confusion rather than clarity. And I think the clarity only comes from, okay, well, how does this translate into my life? Well, here's what the church has said over the last 2,000 years. This is how it's been in my life and other followers of Jesus' life. And so what can it look like in your life?
[00:33:31] I think that's the piece that has to do with mentoring and discipleship, right? It's like, how am I personally discipling somebody through the information? Mm-hmm. And of course, God's Word can speak to a heart and lead us in a direction and all those things. And we trust that to be true. But like you said, I mean, there's so much available. I'm sure people are reading, starting in Genesis. It doesn't take very long to get into some really big questions. They're like, what?
[00:33:58] So if people come to you, Jason, what book of the Bible do you tend to point them to as a starting point? Leviticus. Leviticus. Ezekiel. Yeah. No, I always tell them, I say, if you've never read before, I would start with something like the Gospel of Mark. Yeah. Something that's just, what's the easiest one to read where you get the basic information?
[00:34:21] And then if you want to take another step, I'll encourage them to now read the Gospel of John, which has all this theological interpretation around it. Yeah. But I do have them start in the New Testament because it's easy to get hung up on the hangups. Sure. Or just bogged down, frankly, right? I mean, even if they can get past Dinah and all this stuff and like Tamar and hard things and kind of the warfare of the Old Testament and different kinds of things, like they're probably not going to make it past numbers.
[00:34:51] You know, like it's like. Well, I say Genesis is like the most read book in the Bible because that's where it starts. Right. It's great. And you and I, when I do a Bible in a year, I'll find myself, you know, and I get through Genesis because it's story and it's moving and then you start to bog down. Right. So I love that. I do the same thing. Mark is a great place to start and encourage people there. And even in our micro discipleship groups, that's what we start with. We start with Mark and work our way through. So I think that's a good suggestion.
[00:35:18] And then because once you get your head and your heart around who Jesus is and what Jesus means for your life, the other pieces begin to fit into place and maybe a different way than if you don't do it that way. So anyway, good suggestion, I think. So thank you listeners for joining us for our virtual coffee where we basically, this is what we do. Whenever we're in person, we'll go to Starbucks and just talk about ministry and what's going on. And here's the value I really get for conversations like this.
[00:35:46] It's not that any one of these six things was particularly mind-blowing. It's just as we're talking around it, you can sort of things kind of surface and you start getting ideas and things start sparking and kind of percolating about what you're doing in ministry and church. And that's where I find that's the gold.
[00:36:04] That's where some of the best ministry initiatives we've ever done in our church have come from conversations around this stuff that, you know, led to ideas that we didn't really talk about. They were just kind of a chain reaction. So anyway, I hope it's for you too, pastors. Yeah, me too. And just talk and shop, you know, Jason, it's always like, it's encouraging because we're, you know, hopefully bringing a few things to awareness that maybe go,
[00:36:32] oh, I didn't realize that or, oh yeah, that's what I'm noticing too. Or no, I disagree with that. But all that is helping us to continue to think carefully and deeply about the church, our mission, our ministry, and how can we do well at it? And how do we stay healthy in the midst of all that? And how do we move that 30% up to 40%? Come on, we can do it. Let's get that trustworthiness quotient up. Let's go, at least 31%. 31 something, let's move it. Move the needle. Hopefully there's a chance.
[00:37:00] All right, so we'll continue this list next time. Again, if you want to reach out to us, Jason or Jesse at reclaimleader.com. Thanks so much for listening. As we always say, ministry is hard. It is so much better when we do it together.