[00:00:00] We'll start our InterVarsity Bible Studies handing them this card and then we'll say at the beginning of the Bible study or at the beginning of the conference, what do you want to grow in today? And when they pick one that they want to grow in, that just creates a lot more agency and a lot more momentum for their own growth. And we see more conversions when they self-select into one threshold that they want to grow in and then they become aspirational.
[00:00:26] Welcome to episode 444. You're preaching convincing sermons, you have great programs, so why aren't you seeing more results, more people coming to faith in Jesus Christ? Well, maybe it's because you're making assumptions about where they are in their faith journey. Today we welcome Doug Schaub to the podcast to talk about a model of evangelism that actually connects to where people really are. That's today on The Reclaimed Leader.
[00:00:53] Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker. And I'm Jesse Skiffington. 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.
[00:01:22] Jesse, it is a really hot day out here on the East Coast. I mean, we get summer today. It's like in the 90s and then tomorrow is supposed to go down to the 60s. I mean, it's quite the roller coaster that we're on. We always talk about the weather because, you know, we practically live on different planets. You in Washington and me in New Jersey. But anyway, how's it going? I'm good. You know, you're out there in the garden state. I'm out here in, I mean, it's hard to compare. Let's just be honest.
[00:01:49] The Northwest is mountains and water and beautiful. But, you know, no, it's good. I love talking shop. I love being coast to coast. And getting to talk to pastors just about everywhere in between. And being on this leadership journey together and trying to be faithful in the mission and ministry of Jesus in our particular parts of the world or the country or whatever. And so anyway, I'm always grateful for our conversations, whatever the weather is outside.
[00:02:14] Well, today we're sort of getting to one of our favorite subjects and I personally, and that's just simply evangelism or relational evangelism. And, you know, in our church, I feel like it's been such an amazing season of evangelism. And, you know, trying to put your finger on what exactly is the thing that's working is sort of impossible to do.
[00:02:35] I think everything started to shift when just more people in the congregation started owning the idea that their job was to actually witness to their faith. Yeah. And I know that sounds silly, but it's true in most churches. That's just not the gravitational pull. The gravitational pull is to be sort of focused inward. Yeah. And to focus on like my own personal faith growth. Right.
[00:03:01] Not necessarily how am I investing in others and reaching them with the gospel. Yeah. Well, it's almost like, and we'll get to this at different points in the conversation with Doug, but how those have gotten uncoupled. Like my personal discipleship journey, apart from being a witness to the person and work of Christ, those are never supposed to be uncoupled.
[00:03:22] And so what he says at the end, I think of the second one, we're going to get into a couple, but was that if those things come apart, it means something's wrong in the disciple making that's happening. And so there's a lot here beyond evangelism alone that really gets into who we are as the community of believers that are called to be a witnessing community. So I love this, Jason and Doug. He's just tons of fun, man. I'm like, let's sing out with Doug and just have some fun. You know, I love it.
[00:03:52] Yeah. And welcome all everybody, all of our new listeners who are with us and everybody who's been with us on the journey. We're so glad that you're here. And we're actually, we're going to give away a couple copies of Doug Schaub's books. So stay tuned to the end and learn how you can get yourself in the running for that. But yeah, we really appreciate this conversation so much. We're actually breaking it into two episodes because we want to make sure that it's digestible.
[00:04:20] Doug is like a fire hose man in the best way possible. And there was so much to think about in the life of the church and how can we have evangelism on the hearts and minds of the gathered community so that they may be sent. And so, yeah. So Doug Schaub, if you're unfamiliar with him, he's a pastor. He serves as the National Director of Evangelism for InterVarsity.
[00:04:43] And back in our interview, we had way back in episode 401, we had Allison Stump, who is the InterVarsity worker or actually assistant director of regional director. But she's at Monmouth University, which is right near us, and we support them. And we talked about Doug's work, the five thresholds. Doug became a follower of Jesus at Occidental College at the end of his freshman year, 1986.
[00:05:12] I really resonate with that because that's when I came to know Christ, the end of my freshman year, 1992. Man, a lot of years ago. A group of InterVarsity students made a safe place for him, or as he says, one crazy freshman, to explore Jesus. And he's forever grateful for them. After graduating, he worked at UCLA for 10 years, learned how to contextualize the gospel, tried a million crazy things, and most of them failed.
[00:05:39] Since then, he's served as the Los Angeles Divisional Director and as the Regional Director for Southern California. He's a writer and he's a teacher. He focuses on the alignment of the gospel. And he and his wife have served in both Korean-American, African-American church contexts. He's still based in Los Angeles and graduated from Fuller. And he's the co-author of two books that we're talking about over the next couple of weeks, I Once Was Lost and Breaking the Huddle.
[00:06:08] So, he's a father of three, has coached all of their soccer teams. And Doug's personal goal, he says, is to play Ultimate Frisbee three times a week. I mean, that's my kind of guy. There you go. Anyway, let's get to it. Here is part one of our interview with Doug Schaub. Well, we are so excited to welcome Doug onto the podcast. Doug, it has been so cool getting to know you a bit over the last couple of months and hearing about your life and ministry.
[00:06:35] And so many of our pastors already know about I Once Was Lost. And we did a podcast episode, I think it was episode 401, with Allison Stump, who works for InterVarsity. And we were talking about the five thresholds. And it wasn't too long after that, I think, that you reached out. And we got a chance to kind of talk and get to know each other a bit. So, I'm excited to have you on to be talking about this. And welcome to the podcast. So good to be here. Thanks, you guys. Jason, it's been a delight.
[00:07:05] We book exchanged. We were like book bros. And then I have learned so much from you in the last two months. You probably don't know that. But each of our conversations, I went away. And like the next day, I was like, that was gold. So thank you for sharing the wealth, for being generous with what you've been learning. And you're making me a better coach like right now. So I appreciate you. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Tell us, Doug, about your journey, man.
[00:07:35] I mean, let's, you know, just kind of some broad strokes, your faith journey. How'd that happen for you? How'd you end up with inner varsity? Tell me and maybe a little bit about what you're doing now. Glad to. Love it. So I'm a Chinatown, San Francisco kid. I grew up in Cameron House, a Presbyterian mission center in PCUSA. Yep. I'm right there. Let's go. And then at age, fourth grade.
[00:08:03] So all my friends were Chinese growing up. And then I go to Palo Alto. So like white flight, we go down. My parents bought an apartment complex. So we became managers down there. And so I was a classic Presbyterian kid. And what that means is I believed in God. I prayed every day and I didn't really know who Jesus was. And so when I came into college, God was on my top 10 list at number 10.
[00:08:33] And I had the footprints poster on my wall my freshman year, right next to the Miller High Life neon sign. True story. Of course. And I worshiped it both. And I was more devoted to one than the other. And then I signed up for an inner varsity Bible study because God's top 10, right? So Bible study, no problem. And that sealed my fate.
[00:09:02] That one little like contact card sealed my fate. And the Bible study leader and folks befriended me. I remember when Elias made me breakfast. Now, this is sort of funny. I went to school right across the street at my alma mater, Occidental College. I was a seeker in hindsight. Elias lived upstairs in the very house that I live in right now. Wow. And fall quarter, my freshman year, Elias, who lived in this studio apartment, invited
[00:09:32] me up for breakfast. I went up for breakfast. And I just was profoundly shaped by his generosity. So inner varsity did a couple things really good for me my freshman year. Number one, questions are acceptable. In fact, you have to ask good questions. And this was just so smart of them because for a skeptic like me, a seeker like me, it made me more curious. So their Bible study method just opened my brain.
[00:10:02] And I remember I would come home from Bible study to my non-Christian roommate. I would open the Bible study and I would say to him, this can't be true, could it? I was doing like reverse evangelism with my roommate because I couldn't believe the Jesus I was finding. Like I would say to him, like, who's been hiding Jesus from me? I can't believe this guy. He's outlandish. He's so compelling. I want to be like him, but I kind of hate him. And right.
[00:10:30] So I'm like wrestling with Jesus my freshman year. And they did a really good job welcoming a very messy Doug into their witnessing community. And they had already decided there was going to be space in their hearts and their lives for crazy people like me. And I'm not overselling it. I'm underselling how messy I was, but that's okay. That's for another podcast. And it was then May of my freshman year.
[00:10:59] It was the parable of the sower, actually, in the gospel of Mark that haunted me. And I decided I'm going to become a follower of Jesus. So I became a follower of Jesus, May 18th, 1986. And that has shaped my life since. I then became a student leader later on. And I started doing this kind of funny. Someone gave me a Becky Pippert VHS series, a four part VHS series. She had like blue eyeliner.
[00:11:27] And I mean, it was like, you know, very early 80s. I memorized the VHS series. I memorized all her stories. She mentored me in relational evangelism. And that's how I started my sophomore year. So I come back. I'm on fire. I'm doing bad relational evangelism everywhere on campus and just having fun with Jesus. So it's Doug and Jesus. We're buddies. And then we become a student leader, fall in love with my co-leader, Sandy.
[00:11:56] And I've been on InterVarsity staff for 35 years since. That's awesome. Yeah. And, you know, working with young people and sharing faith with college students, it seems like a natural progression since that was. I could see why that was a passion based on your story. And you had a couple of books come out of this experience.
[00:12:23] You know, of course, I once was lost, which has now. Did you say 20 years? It's coming on 20 years. Coming on 20 years. And then kind of a volume two, which I really liked, was Breaking the Huddle. And that was just sort of like, how do you apply this? How do you start to figure out how to use these five thresholds in your churches, which is really, really good. Really helpful. And so helpful. I know that once was lost, it's got a lot of traction.
[00:12:52] It was a big hit at North Point with Andy Stanley. And they did a whole bunch of resources around it. And so, I mean, dude, you write a book and Andy Stanley's using it. I mean. Nicely done. I mean, nicely done, man. But you got the chance to meet him. What was that like? Tell us about that story. This is a funny story. Susie Gray is, if you listen to the Leadership Podcast, which I do, it's Andy and Susie. And I was referred to a friend of a friend.
[00:13:21] So someone said, hey, Susie really likes your book and you should meet her. So I met her on Zoom in 2020, started connecting with her, started listening to her. And the stuff that she was doing with the five thresholds was blowing my mind because she decided to reach the country of skeptics and cynics using the five thresholds electronically. And every time she speaks, I'm like, okay, you're me times a hundred because you've got
[00:13:50] like a PhD in the five thresholds. And I can't like she has algorithms of trust and algorithms of curious. And I'm like, I can't believe how you think, Susie. So I said, Susie, I would like to pay my own way to come and watch you and your team work. Can I spend a day with you? I'm going to be out in South Carolina with EcoPress, actually a couple of years back. It was a short flight from South Carolina to Atlanta. She said, sure, come on out, blah, blah, blah.
[00:14:20] And she's like, oh, and by the way, we'll have lunch with Andy. And I'm like, great, because I'm listening to podcasts. I've read some of his books. And so I spend the morning with Susie and her team. We walk over to Andy's office where they have bought me lunch graciously. And there's Andy. I walk up and I give him a hug. And he says to me, oh, we're hugging. I can laugh it off. I'm a California guy. Laugh it off. We sit down. We have this nice lunch. As we're walking out, Susie says, Andy doesn't hug.
[00:14:49] She said, I've been friends with Andy for 24 years. I've hugged him three times at like a funeral. My kid's wedding. He only hugs on the most special occasions. And you just bypassed the handshake and went right for the hug. I was like, yeah, I'm kind of a California hippie. I want a book called, Oh, We're Hugging Now. That's what I want. I want that book.
[00:15:15] So anyway, if he remembers me, that's what he's going to remember me for. That is fantastic. That's great. Truly, though, I mean, the resources in the framework of the five thresholds has been really transformative for so many ministries. So take us back.
[00:15:33] Take us back to what you were seeing in the 90s and the shift in evangelism that you were seeing or effectiveness of existing strategies. How did you start to shape the thresholds? Yeah. Awesome. So in the 80s, I was handed two faulty mental models. One mental model is slay them with your apologetics.
[00:16:04] Show them how much C.S. Lewis you can quote. And the more mere Christianity, the better. And they will bend the knee at the evidence for the resurrection. So that was faulty mental model number one. Faulty mental model number two was the seeker movement. And we're doing seeker-focused ministry. And both of these mental models let me down profoundly in the early 90s.
[00:16:34] And I tried them to the fullest extent of where those faulty models would take me. So the first to go down was the apologetics and the evidence for the resurrection. That stopped working circa 1991. UCLA. So this is like jaded West Coast California is where I'm cutting my teeth, right? And I go from Little Town Occidental College 2000 to UCLA.
[00:17:02] The country mouse goes to the city and suddenly it's 40,000 and it's time to grow up. And then the second mental model, a friend of mine, a student of mine, April and I co-launched a seeker Bible study. And we had all these people coming and going. Like an average week would be 10 non-Christians exploring Jesus with us. It was a super fun and energetic, crazy group of people.
[00:17:30] And it went 30 weeks long. Now, if you can count from a quarter system, that is three quarters. That means first week of fall quarter through last week of spring quarter. No conversions. And I'm like, wait a second. Like we're leading good Bible studies. They keep showing up. They're having fun. This is not supposed to be the way it is. What is going on?
[00:17:58] Because like in the seeker model, we've done a good job ministering to seekers. They should see transformation. And so this was a profound godly discontent for me. Both of these were a season of profound godly discontent. And the funny thing about me is it was usually in the shower the next day that I'm like, what am I doing wrong, Lord? And I would like replay conversations. And I'm like, how come these are just not going well?
[00:18:26] And then those moments, God was giving me permission to just throw the rule book out. Throw out the mental models I was handed. And like, Doug, try it from scratch. So that was like a very frustrating, very creative time in my life. So I sat down with my staff team. I was the campus director. I had a fantastic staff team. And I said, guys, we're going to spend a day just working on this. The mental models that we were handed stink. Let's try some new ones out. So we're in my apartment.
[00:18:55] We've got dry erase boards, paper everywhere. And I'm like, we started putting the things together. And I'm like, why would no one change in my Bible study? Why for 30 weeks would no one change? We were stuck. What were we stuck on? And then what we kind of discovered in that day was like, they're merely curious, Doug. They have never entered the third threshold.
[00:19:22] Those weeks after weeks after weeks, they were never open. And I had no idea that I was banging my head against this iron door of merely curious. And that was where we literally in the living room that day is where we posited. Actually, I think it's five things. And now we're going to go out and interview new believers. And we're going to interview non-Christians and find out, is this true?
[00:19:49] So we posited a theory, a new mental model. And then we went out just to have a bunch of conversations. And so from that was like 96, 97. So from 97, probably to 2003, we just had a series of rigorous conversations. I would say to people like, take down a threshold, add another threshold, like help this thing hold water. And every time we tried to stab a threshold and kill one, like it came back again.
[00:20:18] And so we realized by the early 2000s, we had something special. Yeah. Walk us through just the five thresholds, kind of like at a high level. What are, and really the assumption is, or the assumption that you are breaking is that when people come to a Bible study or a huddle or a church service, and they're not Christians, it means they're on the brink.
[00:20:47] It means they're, they're just a- They're seekers because that's why they're here, right? Right. They're just a prayer away. And, you know, we just got to get it done. All they need is the gospel and then they're all good. And then they're all good. Exactly. But unpack just real quick, kind of these, what the five thresholds are and how they sort of course correct that idea. Yeah. So the, another old thinking is evangelism, either sharing the gospel or not sharing the gospel. And you've either done it or not done it.
[00:21:16] And that was another mental model that we were tossing out. So a series of mental models. And what we discovered in the living room on that day is the threshold, the five thresholds are like a series of mountains or a series of valleys to be overcome. And so the first threshold starts at distrust, particularly on the coasts. We start in a context of distrust. When they find out that I was the national director of evangelism, they're like, oh, crud is in their
[00:21:46] eyes and their lip quivers. Like all the negative assumptions snap into place, judgmental, narrow-minded, uptight, self-right, like blah, blah, blah. That all comes out. Some of it's deserved. Some of it's not. But we start from a place of blatant distrust. And then we are trust builders. So threshold one is we move from distrust to trust. And trust is actually the starting place of good evangelism.
[00:22:13] It's by, I say like having fun, the F word, having fun with people is actually holy because non-Christians learn to trust you when you play basketball with them. When you drink Starbucks with them, when you watch a movie with them. And then we move to the second threshold. So I've got trust, but they don't care what I believe. And so then in the second threshold, they start out as indifferent and we have to overcome
[00:22:38] the hurdle, the hump of indifference, and then they become curious. And I had a Bible study full of curious people. Do dogs go to heaven? And it's kind of an academic, it's kind of a mental state. Like, yes, I'll have a conversation with Doug about this. And then the third threshold is the hardest. And that's where it goes from close to change to open to change. It goes from head to heart.
[00:23:04] And that now they're like talking to me about their anger issues. They're talking to me about depression. We've moved to like real life. That doesn't mean they're open to Jesus. It doesn't mean they're looking for God. It means they're open and that's mysterious and beautiful. And I love when they finally are like, okay, Doug, let's get real. And I'm like, oh, they just became open. That's a great place to be.
[00:23:32] And let's now, so we've gotten through now three thresholds. And then we enter the fourth threshold and they start out by wandering. They look at Jesus. They look at Buddha. They look at Krishna and they pray to crystals. Drives Christians nuts. Why are you looking at all that stuff? Just look at Jesus. Well, the reason that they're not looking at Jesus is because no one has ever helped them seek before. And that's where we come in. We focus the quest.
[00:24:00] We say, what's the one most important thing that you need to know about Jesus to decide if he's trustworthy with your whole life? And that's the most pressing question. And so we're helping them focus their quest, their search, and then they become seekers. And so there are seekers, but they're after four thresholds. Yeah. And seeking is exhausting. Seeking lasts about three months and then they tap out.
[00:24:26] So it's either seeking unto following or it's seeking unto going backward. And then they enter the fifth threshold. And that is, um, that's the fork in the road and they're ambivalent. They're like, you know, uh-oh, fear, fear of commitment. Or then they become followers of Jesus. And that's where we just, they don't know what it means to follow Jesus.
[00:24:51] And that is actually where the gospel invitation, the gospel summary, the gospel invitation is invaluable. Because at that point, they really have to understand that they have a choice to make. Yeah. Um, so there's different ways to make invitations through each threshold. And actually it's important that pastors, preachers, leaders are thinking wherever they go, what's the good invitation that I'm making today? And how can I help someone pass through one threshold today? Yeah.
[00:25:20] Now we can get lucky like the woman at the well and help someone through all five in one day. But that's Jesus. Yeah. That's so good. And yeah, in those thresholds, I think for our folks, just having eyes to go, okay, where is, where's this person at that I'm talking to? Or where's my neighbor at or my friend? It actually takes some of the pressure off too and go, okay, God, help me to be faithful with this, this threshold that they're in. And I think something, I can't remember if you said it quite this way, but it was something like
[00:25:50] that, that God is doing something in them to help them cross those thresholds, even as you're being faithful to your part in that. And so it's something that God does and we do together. And that's pretty cool invitation. That's the best part about evangelism is when I become a detective and I'm asking, where is God at work? And so my questions, my stories, really what it is, is I'm exploring because the fingerprints of God are already on that person's soul, right?
[00:26:18] My job as an evangelist is to dust off their soul and help them thirst for Jesus, like help them yearn. And the yearnings are already there. I'm just helping them learn about their yearnings. I love after an evangelistic conversation and someone says, wow, I'm learning about myself today. Like, thank you. Thanks for helping me learn about myself. That's what good evangelism does. And the nice thing about the five thresholds is it's an empathetic, it's an empathetic journey.
[00:26:47] And when non-Christians, this is sort of funny, but when people will tell me like, hey, Doug, I taught the five thresholds and someone became a follower of Jesus because they realized that they were stuck at the fourth threshold. And I would say I've been hearing that for 25 years. Curious and open. Now, this is according to Susie Gray. Curious and open are scientifically proven the most attractive spiritual words in America today. Wow.
[00:27:17] Non-Christians want to be curious and non-Christians want to be open. And she has like the algorithm to show that when she offers them curious options and when she offers them open options, they say yes. That's interesting because those two words are big buzzwords in talking about Gen Z spirituality. Curious and open. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about getting tattoos right here. Curious and open. But I didn't have the... What does it spell on your knuckles? Curious. Yeah. Open. Nice.
[00:27:46] Yeah, that's awesome. And then we turned it into a circle. At first, it was just like a linear thing. But then we'll hand this to a non-Christian. And this actually becomes aspirational. So like we'll start our inner varsity Bible studies, handing them this card. And then we'll say at the beginning of the Bible study or at the beginning of the conference, what do you want to grow in today? And when they pick one that they want to grow in, that just creates a lot more agency and a lot more momentum for their own growth.
[00:28:16] And we see more conversions when they self-select into one threshold that they want to grow in. And then they become aspirational. That is so good. Yeah. And who knew? Who knew at that UCLA living room? Who knew that that's what was on the walls, right? That was just dumb luck, you guys. That was dumb luck. Do you?
[00:28:39] So I'm curious now, 25-ish years later, do you see the thresholds still hold up in your experience? I mean, to me, they absolutely do right now with my people in my church. But I'm curious. I mean, you've had a chance to really see this over time. Five Thresholds still, you think, hold up with where young people are today, especially. Yeah, shockingly.
[00:29:08] Like you said about Gen Z, Gen Z loves my Five Threshold. Yeah. They love Curious and Open. Thank God. And so I joined the National Evangelism Team in 2014. And after you write a book, you kind of have to give it away and kind of have to like holy indifference. You can't totally care. Otherwise, you don't sleep at night. So, you know, I wrote it. Then I kind of let it go. So then that was 2008.
[00:29:33] 2014, my boss says, hey, go find out what InterVarsity is using the most. And the more I looked around my world, they were like, Doug, we use the Five Thresholds. So the weird thing was it rose to the top just by the votes. And so then since 2014, I have been more investing in that for all kinds of campus tools. And that's been beautiful and delightful.
[00:30:03] Then I have all these folks from overseas like, hey, can I translate it into Mandarin? Can I translate it into Turkish? Can we translate it? So I Once Was Lost has been translated officially into Spanish, Korean, and British because British and English are not the same thing. So those are like three official translations that have been republished.
[00:30:25] But I would say there's probably 15 to 20 people in different countries who've taken my Five Threshold PowerPoint and translated the PowerPoint into their other languages. I had one last year in Mandarin, and it was a poor translation. A friend at church has a mom who's like super great. So Shannon's mom sits down and says, is this a construction project? Because you have like door jams, five door jams.
[00:30:55] And I'm like, no, this is not door jams. And then she said, are we angry in this one? And I said, no, we're not. Because she's like, because that's what it starts out in the first threshold. We start out angry and then we trust. And I'm like, no, we're distrusting, but it's not an angry distrust. So we were getting lost in translation in Mandarin.
[00:31:17] So I tell that to say it's not only gotten generational staying power, but it's gotten like international staying power by God's grace. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, I love it. Well, yeah. Yeah, so, so neat to see. Well, and something that was rooted in like real time observation of what works and what doesn't work and then trying to be faithful around that.
[00:31:41] And I think, you know, just sort of stepping back and looking at all of our ministries as pastors and going, where are we hitting our head on an iron door? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Godly discontent. How do we, how come it's not working? I've been preaching for 16 years and there's no transformation. Like, help me or find a way to do your will and your work in this place and be faithful. So I love that you are willing to kind of in a certain sense say, let's just put the whiteboards up and see what happens.
[00:32:09] And I've had on my whiteboard for a while now. What is the grown up version of like youth group? And I don't, you know, so for like these 40 somethings, they just want to be in youth group again. All these, and I'm like, so what are we going to do? How do we do that? So anyway, I love that you're that holy discontent gives us permission to have that same sort of mindset. What's working? What's not working? And as you're getting ready, you guys are getting ready for kind of the 20th anniversary edition of this, it sounds like, which is, I can't wait now.
[00:32:38] Put that on the list of things to get your hands on. Pray for us. Pray for us. It sounds like it's going to be, what do we leave out? Because there's so much to say, but what are some things that you're looking forward to with this next edition or things that you're kind of learning that you want to infuse into that? Yeah. The maturing version of it.
[00:33:03] So my team and I have worked really hard the last 10 years to cross cultures with the five thresholds. So what does it look like for the five thresholds in a Native American context, in an African American context, in a Latino context, in an Asian American context? And so then what we've done is we partnered with some great folks in InterVarsity to say, here's some ideas. How does trust work for you guys? What does curious look like? What does open look like?
[00:33:32] And one of the amazing stories in the Native context, I did not know this until 10 years ago. There are tribal colleges in the United States and tribal, there's about 30 of them. They're sponsored by tribes and they're the most underserved campuses. There are almost no clubs on campus. People don't see them. They don't notice. And in the last 10 years, InterVarsity is on six or seven tribal colleges.
[00:33:58] And one of the things that they do beautifully is they have a native drum. A native drum, when they bang on the native drum, you can hear it for hundreds of yards. It has this beautiful echoing effect. And some of our folks have written songs in English and in Navajo about Jesus. And then they'll have a singing circle in the quad singing about Jesus.
[00:34:26] And everyone starts to gather because in native culture, the drum is safe. The drum is community. And that is openness. And that openness happens right there in the quad. And I've only seen it in person once, but it actually did exactly that. Like strangers came up to be with us in our holy moment. They didn't know the song, but they wanted to be part.
[00:34:53] And that like, I could never have come up with that as the third threshold, but that's what was happening in the native context. So that's a lot of what we're going to do is intersperse cross-cultural stories like that. Well, Jason, we are pausing right here to take a deep breath. I mean, that's so good and so much coming at us. And so we wanted to break this into two parts because we're going to get to the next book,
[00:35:20] Breaking the Huddle, in our next part of the conversation with Doug. But really wanted to pause here to just give some space for everybody listening to get their heads and their hearts wrapped around the five thresholds. This is just really valuable to kind of know them at a deep level where you can, you just kind of have them at the ready to go, oh, this might be where the threshold that this person person is on and so meeting people where they are. And so five thresholds, any thoughts or reflections that you're kind of taking away out of this
[00:35:49] first part of the conversation? Yeah, for me, it's just a constant reminder that when we interact with people who display maybe a general curiosity or maybe they're interested in having a conversation about Jesus, it does not mean they are ready to accept him. And I think his example of how he was doing college ministry and he ended up with a bunch of curious people but no conversions. And the reason was because he just wasn't thinking that way.
[00:36:19] And I think as churches, that's true for us too. We need to just be considering what are the ways, what are the rhythms of our life as a church that we are addressing these thresholds in how we do life together? Are we making room for skeptics and those who still don't trust Christians and making room for those who are becoming open and curious? And how do we do that? How do we start?
[00:36:45] And I think there's a million ways we could do it, but we don't get there until we sort of intentionally think about all of these different things. And what are the implications for our life together? Yeah. Well, and then not only having that kind of mindset for ourselves as church leaders and with our staff teams and key volunteers, but kind of giving these tools to our people as well. Because when somebody says, oh, if I can just be a trustworthy person, a good friend in
[00:37:13] somebody's life, that can be something that God uses to move them into that next threshold or to go from distrust to trust and then maybe towards curiosity. And so I think that actually is really empowering for our people, for them to go, okay, that seeking conversation is a unique part of the journey, but there's these other parts where I can meet people where they are and I can meet them in their curiosity or I can meet them in their openness.
[00:37:38] And so part of it is for me is just a reminder to continue to equip our people with this knowledge so that they go, okay, I could help with that part of the process here with these thresholds. Yeah. And we're going to give away a couple of these. So I'm going to give away a copy of I Once Was Lost and Breaking the Huddle. And we'll send them together for whoever wins. And this is how you win, Jesse. You ready? Yeah. You're not allowed to enter multiple times. I'm just saying. But this is how you win.
[00:38:06] So if we're going to do this, just going to do a drawing from our subscriber list. So how do we do that? We have a subscriber list that comes from our newsletter. So if you go to reclaimleader.com and just click on the button that says newsletter, you sign up for the newsletter and anybody who has signed up, your name will be submitted and we'll pick whatever name comes out and we'll send you the book. So now if we pick your name and for some reason we can't hunt you down and give your address, we're just going to go on to the next name.
[00:38:35] And I'm sorry about that, but we're going to do our best. But please subscribe, be a part of it, and hopefully you'll win. You'll be the big winner. It's always fun to do this and just to kind of bless a pastor with a little bit of a surprise. So anyway, pastors, we are rooting for you. I hope this conversation you find really helpful and meaningful. I know I did. And I hope it really helps you to actually do the thing.
[00:39:03] And pastors, you have big dreams of what you're hoping God's going to do in your community. And I do think these are some tools here that can lead to the realization of these dreams. I really do. Yeah. Good stuff, Jason. Yeah. I love it. So can't wait to see who's going to win and pull, you know, I don't know. Do you print them out and cut them up and put them in a hat or how do you do it? That's exactly how I do. In fact, maybe I'll do it on. Let's do it live on air. Yeah, we'll do it live. Yeah. So that everyone knows we're not cheating. To make sure. Exactly right. I like it. All right, man. But all right.
[00:39:33] Hey, thanks everyone for listening. As we always say, ministry is hard. It is so much better when we do it together.