Josh Spinks - Made to Multiply

Summary

In this episode of the Church Talk podcast, hosts Jason Allison and Rob Paterson engage in a deep conversation about spiritual health, the importance of taking time off, and the challenges of church leadership. They welcome guest Josh Spinks, who shares his journey in church planting and his passion for empowering the church to embrace the core missionary task. The discussion covers the significance of multiplication in the church, the role of I Am Second, and practical ways to equip church members to share their faith. The conversation emphasizes the need for a shift from knowledge to action in discipleship, the messiness of the process, and offers encouragement for weary church leaders.

Get Josh's Made to Multiply Bible Study!!

Find out more about e3 Ministry.

Follow us on Insta @churchtalkproject. www.churchtalkproject.com

Transcript

Jason Allison (00:01)
Well, hey everybody, welcome back to the church talk podcast with Robin Jason. We are so glad that you have taken some time today to listen in on a conversation that we're going to have. And I'm really excited about it, but Rob, do you, do you want to share anything about your, your, start of your month of it's not sabbatical, but study leave, replenishing, refreshing, or it, or is it still too, too raw to share that?

Rob Paterson (00:27)
You know what? might be too raw, but I will say this because you know you and I have done a couple episodes really talking about you know spiritual health and even summertime rhythms in ministry and you know just things to do to replenish and recharge. And one of the things I think it was last year even at the end of all my medical stuff, you know with my hip.

Jason Allison (00:30)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (00:51)
It was so weird because I still like I could have come back for July, but I just decided no, like none of the last five months has been at all life giving. So now that I'm actually able to do more things like I'm going to take my July like I typically do. And it was at the end of that or my wife, Bethany said, you know, this is not working. Like, you know, like there's there's too many things. There's too many demands. There's, you know, even when I'm like not preaching, when I'm not in the office, there's just too much stuff.

Jason Allison (00:59)
No.

Rob Paterson (01:20)
And, you know, now just a week in to this July, I'm feeling some of those same stresses and pressures. And so, like, I guess the one thing I would say that I am learning is this. It's never perfect when you take some time off, right? Like, I don't know how it is for you, Jason, but for me, it's at least two weeks till my mind fully disconnects from all the things that it's thinking about related to the church and ministry.

Jason Allison (01:41)
Yes.

Rob Paterson (01:47)
so like half your vacation, you know, or time off is, is spent before you're able to even do anything. and yet even though it's imperfect and it's really challenging and it's really difficult, we still have to do it, right? We can't just say, well, it's not working, so I'm just not going to do it. It'll be worse than, and I think not only for us, but we, in a world where people are so hell bent on.

Jason Allison (02:02)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (02:14)
all the things they have to get done and all of the urgency of life, especially as pastors, as leaders, we've got to model what it looks like to actually say, no, no, no, no, no, I'm going to take some time. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to prioritize myself. I'm going to prioritize my family. If we don't do that, you know, we're going to die quicker and other people are going to follow us over the cliff. So I think for both those reasons, we can't let the imperfection.

Jason Allison (02:30)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (02:42)
of the attempt to keep us from doing it.

Jason Allison (02:44)
Yeah, that's one thing I always say is progress over perfection, right? I mean, it's way better to do something than to do nothing a lot of the time. And so an imperfect time away is much better than not taking time away because you're waiting for the perfect. yeah, those are, I appreciate that. And yeah, I'm looking forward to journeying with you over this next month here and all the ways, cause I know you're processing a whole lot and

It's been a long couple of years just in general in ministry for both of us. And so I'm hitting that stage where I'm actually, I'm feeling like I don't have more to do than I have time to do it, which is the first time I felt that in about eight years. And so it's feeling really good actually right now. And so I'm excited about that.

Rob Paterson (03:29)
This is a good episode idea we need to talk about.

Jason Allison (03:32)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Well, since we do have a guest waiting on us, we probably ought to jump into the topic du jour. But yeah, I'm excited. We get to have a conversation with Josh Spinks. He is with E3 Partners since November of 2018. His passion is to see the North American church embrace the core missionary task.

And his 20 years of pastoring, planting and leading the local church has given him a heart to see the vision come to pass. you went to Liberty, you've got a master's from New Orleans Baptist. you've been married for two years, high school sweetheart. And I mean, that had to be your high school sweetheart because you have six children and that just takes time. And so, and you don't look, you're, you know, you can't be more than what? 35, 40 years old, right? Okay. Close enough. Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (04:13)
Yeah.

Oh, you're kind. 41. 41.

I put a lot of miles on those years. A lot of miles on those years.

Rob Paterson (04:25)
Mwahahah!

Jason Allison (04:26)
Well, Josh, welcome to the Church Talk podcast, man. We are so glad that you joined us today.

Joshua Spinks (04:31)
Man, thank y'all for having me today. I am deeply honored to be hanging out with you guys.

Jason Allison (04:36)
Yeah, well, we had a little, little hunting talk before, before we hit record. so, Josh, living down South, you, you love to hunt. Rob loves to hunt. I love to hear you guys talk about hunting. I don't want to do the work of dragging that deer out and getting up at the butt crack of dawn. I don't need any of that stuff. I'm, good with just, but then again, I also, Rob hasn't shared any, any deer meat with me lately. So, which, you know, that's okay. I know, I know.

Joshua Spinks (04:52)
It's alright.

I hear you, brother.

Wow, wow, you gotta pray

about that.

Jason Allison (05:05)
I'm yeah,

I'm working on forgiveness right now.

Rob Paterson (05:07)
Say the word, man. Drive up, I'll load up a box. You're good.

Jason Allison (05:11)
All right.

All right. We'll, we'll, we'll do that. Maybe, maybe Wednesday this week. well, so we're going to get distracted once again, but Hey, you actually, you just came out with, with a new, basically Bible study, small group study type thing called made to multiply. Maybe as you think about that, first of all, give us a little bit of your story and then let's, let's just talk about what it means to multiply and why you would have written something like this.

Joshua Spinks (05:35)
Yeah, so I was fortunate enough to be raised in a home that we were taught to love Jesus at an early age, understood his gospel early enough to surrender at an early age, hit my teens and the Lord grabbed a hold of my heart in a even a more radical way. at a young age, I started preaching and teaching in the church. And then I do what a lot of kids did is wasn't really sure I was

called by the Lord to pursue anything in the church or I was just called by my parents. So pursued business for a little while. And then, but the Lord made it abundantly clear. He wanted me to love on his church by serving his church in a pastoral role of some kind. And so started doing that. And then somewhere along that journey, God introduced me to probably about 13, 14 years ago movement.

Rob Paterson (06:09)
I'm

Jason Allison (06:11)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Spinks (06:30)
multiplication and how in our context today in the West that is something that escapes a lot of our churches. And so, man, I've just had this passion to see the bride of Christ, the priesthood of believers empowered and equipped to go out and see the kingdom expanded. so started planting churches about 13, 14 years ago with that mindset, with that paradigm. And we haven't looked back.

Jason Allison (06:44)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joshua Spinks (06:58)
Six years, seven years this year I've been with E3 and really helping other churches embrace this paradigm shift. So that's my story in a nutshell. Met my wife in high school. She graduated in May. We got married in July. And then a year later we had our first kid and it was like every two years after that we were having another one until I was like, where are we going to put all these kids? And so we were like, we better stop. So six was enough.

Jason Allison (07:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love it.

Six was enough.

Rob Paterson (07:28)
Wow, that's crazy. So Josh, have known about I Am Second for a long, long time. I have a bracelet that I've worn forever. Actually, I think I've worn out two or three. I got a lot of guys in my church that have just kind of embraced that. My kids have kind of embraced that, which is super cool. But tell us a little bit of the background with E3 and I Am Second.

Joshua Spinks (07:28)
Yes,

Yeah?

Yeah, sure thing. So hey, I'm wearing a bracelet too. And if you need some more, let me know. send you. I got way too many of them sitting on that shelf right there. So I'm happy to send you more so you can wear those out. But yeah, so E3 Partners, I started off as a short-term sending agency. So they would do these short-term trips all around the world. so churches that maybe did not belong to denomination that had a mission agency attached to them, a church could.

Rob Paterson (08:01)
Nice.

Joshua Spinks (08:19)
send their people to international endeavors through E3. And man, this really kind of blew up. mean, this was a need that E3 was able to serve in the local church and E3 was sending trips, you know, five, six, 700 trips a year with just different church groups, different, different. And so we were able to build relationships in countries around the world with indigenous leaders. Well, in about 2010, E3 made a shift

Jason Allison (08:35)
Wow.

Joshua Spinks (08:49)
And they want to move from not just being a short-term sending agency where we sent people for a couple of weeks. We wanted to start sending people long-term to help build strategy on the ground with coaching, with trainings, with mentorship of indigenous pastors and really help beat back lostness on a more profound level. And so for the last 15 years, E3 has been sending long-term. ⁓

Jason Allison (09:15)
Hmm.

Rob Paterson (09:15)
Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (09:15)
missionaries to the field and in the last five years we've seen exponential growth. were 500,000 churches planted in the last five years alone. Now how does IM Second fit into that? IM Second and about the same time that E3 started to make this shift towards church planting there was one of the guys that was affiliated with E3 Partners said what would it look like to just

Jason Allison (09:25)
Wow.

Joshua Spinks (09:40)
take Jesus at his word. If we just lift his name up and watch him draw all men. And so they started off with some billboards around the Dallas area that just said, am second. And of course that caught some traction. And then they started to maybe do these interviews where these people who had a platform, who had influence had just tell your story, right? Lift Jesus's name high. And before viral was a thing, these videos went

viral and so it just blossomed into the ministry that it is today over 200 plus different testimonies of men and women who have a platform who have influence but it was about two years ago where I am second said hey what would it look like if we weren't just to tell the story of the transformation but if we were to tell stories of people living their life on purpose living their life on mission because people are gonna

They're going to participate in what you celebrate. The stories that you tell are gonna be what inspires people. So if you just tell the inspirational story of transformation, then people are like, I want that transformation, I want that transformation. you get people who wanna give their life to Jesus. But Jesus called us to make disciples, right? People who look more like Jesus tomorrow than they do today. And so we made a shift to say, hey, let's tell the story of what their life looks like after the transformation. So you start to see a shift.

Jason Allison (11:02)
Mmm.

Joshua Spinks (11:03)
and I Am Second, and then taking some ownership and responsibility of those people who are raising their hands and say, hey, I not only want the transformational story, I want my life to have purpose and meaning. And so at I Am Second, we're trying to create some digital discipleship pathways for people to go from digitally consuming content that is inspirational, that is motivating to getting them activated in

reality in the physical. So that's I Am Second, and it is under the umbrella of E3 Partners.

Jason Allison (11:38)
Well, and, in the, you know, in, what you're doing with the, with the Bible study and all that stuff, Rob, do you have like a dog going crazy there? Is that you? I can hear him. He's like getting anxious about something. Yeah. He's he's, he's quite the dog.

Rob Paterson (11:48)
I do, can you hear that?

Joshua Spinks (11:51)
It's having a great time, yeah.

Rob Paterson (11:53)
Huh. It's

because Bethany left and he, if it was just me here, he would be fine, but he doesn't know she's gone.

Jason Allison (11:59)
and care.

⁓ yeah. Dexter, what can you say? He's a good dog. So you were talking about Bible study, discipleship. What does my life look like after I've made a decision to follow Jesus? And yet some of the stuff that you've looked at in a Lifeway study has talked about how like two out of three Christians, they just aren't familiar with telling anyone else about their faith.

Joshua Spinks (12:03)
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Jason Allison (12:29)
you know, help me connect the dots here. Why, first of all, why does it even matter? I mean, I'm a Christian. That's all that matters, right? Do I need to actually talk about it? you know, like what does that, does that all lead to? How do, how do you respond to that?

Joshua Spinks (12:42)
Yeah. So man, if you were to read the plethora of research that has come out over the last few years about the evangelicals participation in kingdom expansion, it is discouraging to say the least. You said two out of three, I've read studies that said 98 % do not. The one that I kind of run with is nine out of 10 are not actively sharing their faith and

So this is heartbreaking for somebody who has been deeply impacted by the gospel because somebody told me, right? And so why, first of all, the foundational question, why do we tell somebody about Jesus? Why do we share the gospel? Well, that's where it starts, right? In Romans, Paul sends his manifesto, if you will, to the church.

the churches scattered across the network of churches in Rome. And in 10, 14, and 15, he says, how are they going to know if we don't tell them? How is anybody in the world going to know about Jesus, about this gospel, if we do not tell them? Because the truth of the matter is, more than likely, people are not just going to run and go pick up a Bible and discover it for themselves. They're going to see something in you, or they're going to hear something that you said that's going to

really kind of pique their interest and it's up to you to communicate the truth of who Jesus is and what he came to do on their behalf. Now here's the issue that we're running into. In the role that I serve with E3, I have the opportunity to meet and train a lot of churches from sea to shining sea here in the US and what we're discovering, and I think this is not something that's groundbreaking, right? But what we're seeing is that

By and large, I believe the reason why 90 % of the church is not sharing their faith on a consistent basis is because they don't know how. They can tell you that, I know that my life is different. I know that where I was to where I am today and the change factor was Jesus, but communicating that in a clear and concise way that makes sense to a stranger or makes sense to somebody that is in their circle of influence.

Jason Allison (14:36)
Hmm.

Joshua Spinks (14:56)
man, they are just really struggling. We'll go to trainings a lot of times. the first thing that I'll ask, and once we kind of cast a little vision, I'll say, all right, look at the person next to you. And in five minutes, I want you to share the gospel. And then there's mass chaos. People are trying to share the gospel across these trainings. And then after they're done, I stop them. say, all right, how did that go? And I said, if you got an A +, give me a thumbs up. And rarely do you see anybody in that group of people.

give me a thumbs up. All right, if you got an F, give me a thumbs down. And now no, praise God, not everybody's getting an F, but there's a lot more Fs than there are As. But most people are around the CD area, which is saying, I simply am not comfortable. I don't know how. So if we can help equip the church, empower the church to communicate their story and God's story, that's a good first step. It's just, hey, start there. If you can start there, if you could take an ordinary conversation,

Jason Allison (15:30)
you

Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (15:54)
and comfortably shifted to a spiritual conversation about the beauty of Jesus, that's a good starting space. What did you say a while ago, which I wanted to write this down, you said, progression is better than perfection, right? And so if we can just get a, that's right. So if we can just get them to progress a little bit, right? And so that's what we endeavor to do is like, hey, what can we do to just bring you up to shoulder height and sharing the gospel, right? Can we give you a simple tool?

Jason Allison (16:07)
Yeah. Yep. Progress over perfection.

Rob Paterson (16:09)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (16:13)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (16:23)
Can

we give you a simple, we even do like role playing at these trainings so they can say, hey, it's really not that difficult to talk to somebody about Jesus.

Jason Allison (16:32)
Well, when you say that, like talk to someone about Jesus and share your faith and, and these trainings, like, I mean, are you trying to get people ready to go stand on the corner and preach? like, give me some context. Cause I know people that that would scare the heebie-jeebies out of them. mean, I wouldn't want to do that. Right. But like, when you say like in your mind, what is this idea of sharing your faith? What does that look like in real life?

Joshua Spinks (16:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

For sure. So look, I'm sure that there are some people that have that burning call to go stand in Bourbon Street and, you know, shuck some corn when it comes to preaching the gospel. But you're right, not everybody has that specific calling. But the calling we do have, every last one of us, right, is a calling to make disciples as we go. And so the pattern that we see in the New Testament, whether we watch Jesus and his ministry or we

observe the first century church, the pattern is twofold, right? So the first is through oikos, is what we call oikos. It's a Greek word that means household or your circle of influence. So you go to Acts 16 and we see that Lydia, when she was changed by the gospel, it went first to her household, right? To her circle of influence. The Philippian jailer in Acts 16, right? After, right before he killed himself, he was stopped.

They shared the gospel with him and immediately the gospel went to his oikos, his household. Even Jesus, when he started his ministry, he started calling disciples to himself that he knew or that he had relationship with through John the Baptist, right? And so the first approach to sharing the gospel that you can implement is just with the people in your home, right? Start with sharing the gospel with your kids. Start sharing the gospel with

brothers and sisters, your neighbor, the person you go to work with, people that you have connection with. The second approach that we see to sharing the gospel is a little bit more is what we call a person of peace or a house of peace, right? Is where we share the gospel with strangers. Now again, we wanna do that in love. don't wanna, again, there is a calling for that person on Bourbon Street. However, the way that we see Jesus commission and send out his people is they were doing like a house of peace search.

sharing the gospel with a stranger, right? And so I would say that those two approaches to sharing the gospel is what we need to be equipped to do because that's what's patterned for us in the four gospels and the first century church.

Jason Allison (19:00)
Yeah, I know what the phrase we use a lot around here is the crowd cloud, right? It's the crowd that is represented by the people sitting in your pews. And it's their home, their work, their school, their hobbies, their third places, you know, just all those things. I mean, just when I do this with churches and pastors and I make them.

like list five names on each of those areas, you know, and work through the whole thing and say, you gotta, cause these are just people, like you said, spheres of influence, right? I mean, this is, these are areas. And if you don't realize, most people don't realize that they already have influence. We're not asking them to develop more. saying, Hey, let's tap into, you know, where you already are. yeah.

Joshua Spinks (19:25)
That's right. Yeah.

That's right.

That's right.

God put

you there for a reason, right? He gave you that for a reason. He trusted you with those relationships, thinking, and God's sovereign, He knows everything, so nothing surprises Him. So let me put that qualifier out there. But He put you there so that you would bring the hope to them.

Rob Paterson (20:00)
Yeah, that that's so good. Josh, when you were talking about being in training environments and asking people to share the gospel, it totally reminded me of a time where I was doing this as an assessor at a church planting assessment center. And, you know, part of it is the rubrics always funny because you're given a rubric how to grade people. Did they, you know, did they hit all these boxes? Well, there's this one guy who was like a Ph.D. guy, you know, and he was just like, he's like, I'm like the smartest dude here.

but he missed half the stuff. So the grade I had to give him based on that and really kind of his inability to connect well was a poor grade and he was ticked off and his wife who was also there who was just super relational and really nice, you know, and I'm sure the assessor she had, you know, graded her not according to the rubric. So she got like an A and he got like a C plus and to this day, if we met in an alley, he might knife me because he's like, I did way better.

Joshua Spinks (20:39)
Yeah.

That's right.

Rob Paterson (20:59)
than the score you gave me. So, you know, this may apply or not apply, but when we're thinking just about like all the people who need to be more equipped, you know, is this why you are at least in part wrote made to multiply like and what are you hoping for the people who walk through that study? Like what are you hoping it accomplishes in?

Joshua Spinks (21:20)
Yeah, so I think when we look at the way churches done today in the West, by and large, again, maybe not at your church, Rob, or in the churches that you have, Pastor Jason, but by and large, it's a come and see mentality. Come and sit and learn at the master's feet, right? Now we would never say that, right? We don't think that way. It's just the way.

that we make the sausage when it comes to church here in the US. We pay the best and the brightest pastor to lead this congregation. He is fitted with the responsibility to find the best and brightest associate pastors and staff to help him lead this. And so there is this, not on purpose, right? Not because we're hubris, but there is this elevation of the staff in a church.

And then the person who sits in the pew says, well, I'm not as smart as Rob is, or I am not as approachable or as, yeah. Mysterial as Jason is. So I'm going to really let them take on the responsibility of the church, of the extent of the expansion of the kingdom. And so we've created this paradigm in the West and it's just, it's just the way that it's done. And so.

What do we need to do to shift that, right? And the best way to do it is just to hand off simple biblical reproducible practices, tools that will empower men and women who may not have ever been to seminary, who may not have been in the church for longer than just, I don't know, six months and say, hey, God's called you to this and it's not that hard. So we need to take the bar for evangelism from where we've placed it accidentally.

Take it from up here and put it where Jesus had it. Take the bar for discipleship where we might have accidentally put it way up here and put it where Jesus put it, right? The great commission, so simple, right? Jesus was talking to his disciples. He said, all authority is given unto me both in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go make disciples. How do we do that? All right? He made it real good. And for this Baptist boy right here, he said, dunk them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then he said, the next thing, this is where it gets really complicated, right?

He said, teach them and do what I told you to do. Easy, right? And anybody can do that. Now again, when it comes to the doctrines and the theologies and Christian orthodoxy as a whole that we embrace, that we love, that provide the guardrails for our world views, okay, maybe you need to be a little bit further down the road before you really kind of step into those roles. But as far as just making disciples, helping somebody progress, right? Not perfection.

Jason Allison (23:49)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Spinks (24:03)
You get perfected after seminary, is that what I heard? Because it never happened to me, maybe. But to progress, anybody can be a part of that journey and should take ownership in being a part of that journey. So I don't know if that answered your question, but that's just kind of like how I feel the shift we need to make.

Jason Allison (24:05)
Hahaha!

No.

So the,

yeah, the, so the, made to multiply it's, provides some of those tools. It provides some of those, you know, beginning parts where I could go through it. Then I could turn around and take someone else through it, without going to seminary, without having to, you know, have all that stuff now. So I love that. And, because most people I talk to, you say the word discipleship and it either scares them or they're overwhelmed or they're like,

Joshua Spinks (24:27)
That's right.

That's right.

Jason Allison (24:47)
great, I got to get up early and meet someone for breakfast once a week and have my journal and memorize verses and you know, like, it's an all I mean, I was discipled by a navigator. He was the regional director of the navigators. And so and I was dating his daughter. So every Sunday morning, he picked me up took me to breakfast and we went through stuff and you know, like, and honestly, it was wonderful and great. Like, I mean, it really did help me in a lot of ways. But, you know,

Joshua Spinks (24:54)
Sure.

Yeah.

Jason Allison (25:13)
He's he had time and because he was paid to do this kind of, you know, that. So so a normal person, they're thinking, how do I disciple someone? And that picture is kind of dated in a lot of ways. Nobody has a time. How do you think discipleship is changing today in our modern, you know, postmodern, post Christian time frame and milieu?

Joshua Spinks (25:17)
That's right. That's right.

Yeah, so man, that is a great question. And so if it's okay, I'm going to answer that in two parts. All right. So part one, right? Part one, there's just no getting around the fact that in order to disciple somebody, it requires investment, right? It is going to be really difficult for me to disciple my children if I'm an absent father.

Right? I have to be there. I have to model for them what it is to live in integrity. I have to help them live in integrity. I have to watch them live in integrity. And then I've got to let them loose to see if they'll live integrity on their own. Right? So it requires a time investment. Right? So, and I know in the busy world that we live in today, finding time to pour into somebody else is a huge ask. So can you do that? Is there any way that we could get

creative and clever and find ways to bring people with us on the journey. I mean, that's what Jesus did, right? He brought people with him in the boat. His disciples were always there with him. As he went, they were there. So are there people in your life that you can invite with you on the journey? Hey, won't you come with us to go bowling with the kids this Friday night? Bring your kids with you. We'll have a grand time, right?

And while I'm throwing down strikes and the kids are throwing down butter gutters, I'm going like I'm going to trash talk. I just took my boy's bowl in the other night and like I don't care that he's only 12 years old. I rubbed it in his face that I smeared him. Right. I got to keep him humble. But at the same time, what I'm doing there, there there is a guy that I am pouring into talking to him about what it is to be a dad, talking to him about what it is. So on the journey, can disciple. Now, here is part two. Right.

Jason Allison (27:24)
Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (27:28)
as an institution, the church, right? So we are the church, right? The assembly, the followers, the bride of Christ, we're the church, but we also belong and we organize in these institutions that get the label church because they represent the bride. So it's in these institutions, the church, a lot of time, we tax the time right out of the pockets of the people who come there, right? And so we say, hey, we want you here Sunday morning.

Jason Allison (27:54)
.

Joshua Spinks (27:57)
not just for corporate worship, but you gotta come an hour and a half beforehand for Sunday school. and if you really love Jesus, you're gonna be here half hour before that for prayer time and coffee and donuts, right? And then after that, if you belong to any type of committee or leadership of that church, there might be a meeting after that. And then don't forget to come back for Sunday night because that's where the real Christians get discipled is on Sunday night. Then there's a midweek on Wednesday night. And don't forget about the...

Crochet that we have Saturday morning for this particular silo and the youth this particular silo and before you look at it I mean before you know it your calendar and you know this as a pastor This is why we need sabbaticals right because I mean you are running a social calendar unlike anybody Knows right is a crazy thing that we run and so what happens is is Well, yeah, we're only asking married couples to come maybe once a week, but those married couples have

who need to come once a week. then those, so before you know it, we have taxed the opportunity for our families to participate in disciple making. So I believe there has to be an understanding from the institution that, we need to release these people to go make disciples. And at the same time, the individual, the believer who's trying to live out their faith is saying, hey, I need to find time to make this a priority. And so that's a long answer to a very precise question that you gave. That's just kind of.

Jason Allison (28:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (29:19)
where I see things are today.

Jason Allison (29:21)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (29:21)
yeah, so good, so good. You know, let's just say Josh that somebody really buys into this idea that they want to with their life and with their time make an investment where they live, work, learn and play to, you know, participate in making disciples. You know what would what would you say like if they're like, OK, so I'm doing this right? I'm I'm spending time with people. I'm trying to kind of help them, you know, be more like Jesus today than they were yesterday.

You know, but they're like, how do I know if I'm winning? Like, what does it really look like if someone is becoming a disciple? I remember, you know, 35 years ago when somebody first started doing this with me, as long as I showed up to all 10 sessions, memorized all 10 memory verses and got all 10 stickers, then I was like now a disciple. You know, how would you answer that today? Like, what does it look like if someone's really kind of becoming a disciple?

Joshua Spinks (30:10)
That's right.

So based off of what you said, I did the same thing when I was a kid, right? I went to Awanas and that was discipleship. And I tried to get all these badges and I tried to get through the book so I could be, you cause I'm a lot, I think you were described as OCD and I was like, that resonates with me. I'm like, I have a kindred brother that understands the need to make sure that the clothes move from left to right in color on the spot. I get it. All right.

So you have like a program driven discipleship where it's like, have to hit these benchmarks and then I can move on. Well, that works. But sometimes people just play the game, right? They just know how to play the game to get ahead. In organic discipleship, if somebody is like, hey, I want to do it the way that Jesus did, the filter is always to know if you're winning or losing is always obedience, right? So if I share the gospel with you,

When you say yes to Jesus, all right, well, I'm gonna go a step further because he exercised obedience to truth. And then I start, like the first thing that we're gonna talk about, was like, all right, Rob, well, the next step, what man, you need to follow Jesus and be baptized, right? And if you always say, no, that's not for me, I'm not ready for that, yada, yada, yada. Well, now disobedience has entered in. Scripture clearly states that this is the next step, right? And you're disobeying that.

So at some point, if that disobedience persists, then I filter that out. It's like, well, Rob, me and him will be friends. I'll always be there for him. But as far as me investing that time in him, that extra time that it takes to disciple somebody, you know, I'm going to move on. I'm going to find somebody who continues to say yes to Jesus, not necessarily fill out his book so he can get the check or show up when he needs to show up, but really just somebody who continues to say yes to Jesus.

That's who I want to invest my life into. That's because that is, you're seeing him, right? You're seeing that person transform into the likeness of Jesus through obedience to his word. So I would say that's how you know that you're winning is when you see life altered through the obedience to the word of God.

Jason Allison (32:30)
I love that. So I'm just thinking out loud here, but the idea of the outcome of discipleship, there's a place I would think where every church and every church is to be very different contexts. If they're going to actually accomplish their mission of making disciples in that context, in that location, maybe it's like Rob's up in the middle of nowhere, I'm near a big city.

you know, the kind of disciples that we need to produce, or there's going to be some nuance and difference. I mean, they're still following Jesus. The theology is the same. How would you speak to the idea of every church really beginning to understand the kind of disciples they want to produce and then, you know, taking something like the tool you've created, taking some of it and putting that together to move, you know, their people.

towards becoming the kind of disciples that can actually have an impact in their location. Do you see a problem with that? Do you see that any differently than what you're trying to do? Respond to that.

Joshua Spinks (33:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

All right. And I may respond the wrong way. So just like do a course correction if I'm not running in the right direction. So I would say that, yes, every every church is a completely different context. Right. For example, I had to suffer for Jesus a couple of weeks ago and train a network of churches in Hawaii. I mean, it was it was rough. It was rough. mean, the sun and the wind and the water. I mean, it was just tough.

Jason Allison (33:54)
⁓ I'm sorry.

Joshua Spinks (34:02)
But it was probably the coolest church I ever walked into because like you go into this church and there's the doors there. So just imagine a rectangular, regular looking worship center. But every door down the side opened up so much that there was no walls between the church and outside. And so you had this breeze blowing in. Everybody's wearing flip flops and Hawaiian shirts. And they're like, I mean, it was it was awesome.

And then you go to like a church like I was raised in here in South Louisiana, which was really like, you know, the deacons wore suits, the preacher wore a suit and he had like a handkerchief to wipe all the sweat because he was preaching too hard. and, and so like, it's just completely different. But the principles in the scripture, they transcend, doesn't matter the culture, right? Now the way that we massage it in to those different areas,

is gonna matter, right? But the principles don't change, right? And those principles are, that everybody, here we go, ready for the tagline, everybody was meant to multiply. Everyone was made to multiply, to reproduce what God has produced in them in someone else. And so, and that at the end of the day, like regardless if you're in Kentucky or if you're in South Carolina or if you're in Ohio,

God's given us the commission to multiply, to apply these multiplicative principles to see that the gospel goes forward. Now if we're creating disciples that just want to sit down in church and consume, consume, consume, and never contribute, contribute, contribute, I would say, hey, those disciples are not biblical disciples, and maybe we need to go back to the word together and see what it says there. And then once we...

Jason Allison (35:25)
Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (35:47)
come to the consensus that the Holy Spirit leads us to because of what the word says, then what we can do is like, well, here are some principles to help you empower your people to multiply. And these seven lessons that are in this study are simply about changing a mindset, right? It's like, all right, we need to move from focusing inwardly and how to maintain what we got and start thinking about what does it look like to expand?

The number one client of the church, and I might get some pushback on this and then that's okay, but the number one client of the church is lostness, is lost people. And we have to get the church focused on reaching lost people. But if we're always focused on how do we maintain this social gathering, which is beautiful, I'm not against it. They do some wonderful things, but if we're gonna get that out.

Jason Allison (36:37)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Spinks (36:41)
then the number one client of the church has to become lostness. And then once we start doing that, well, here are some simple ways to start making that paradigm shift. And you can start multiplying disciples that think that way.

Rob Paterson (36:52)
Hmm, that's amazing. You know, I even think like my church is is always for its 20 whatever three year history has been super focused on people far from God, which is is really, really cool. But even now, you know, still as a relatively young church, you know, there's just there are those voices and people who love God and who love the church and who love what we've always done, who are like, but if but if we just.

If we just focused more on us and helped a bunch of us learn and grow more, then we could go back to refocusing on like they think somehow that's the solution. Cause if we were, you know, more obedient, if we were more generous, if we were more like Jesus then, you know, and so let's take a, like a timeout on focusing on all those people far from God so that we can become, you know, Josh is, I mean, as you think about that, and I'm sure that's pervasive, right? It's everywhere.

Joshua Spinks (37:47)
yeah,

everywhere. Only in the church though. It's only like that in the church, in every other profession that is not the approach to gaining understanding. example, now for me, I have worked primarily most of my adult life in the church. So when I start talking about work outside of the church, like in the secular world, I have very limited experience, but have either one of you guys ever had to have

Rob Paterson (37:48)
across the church. man, yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (38:13)
Go get like a real job outside of the church. Okay, all right, so Rob, I see you shaking your head. What did you work before you start up working only one day a week?

Rob Paterson (38:23)
Nice. actually, yeah, I between ministry things sold cars for six months.

Joshua Spinks (38:25)
I was a pastor for 20 years, I get it.

Okay, all right, so man, okay, so in every other line of work, let's just take selling cars. You can study up on how to sell a card. You can read every sales book in the world, but when you go to your first day on the job, are they gonna make you the boss man? No, because they know that you're gonna be able to start to apply all that knowledge as you get experience.

Rob Paterson (38:48)
No way.

Joshua Spinks (38:54)
It takes experience to build wisdom. You might have knowledge going into it, but you need wisdom for selling cars. Likewise, when it comes to the church, I've heard that so many times. It's like, well, we need to build up here and then we can go out there. And that is not at all how God built the world. You learn as you go, you're building this plane as you're flying, right? And so the best experience you can get is not from sitting down and

in taking a whole bunch of knowledge and a whole bunch of seminars and a whole bunch of sermons from our really gifted pastor, the best way you can do is just to take these simple steps of obedience, and Jesus didn't make it complicated, and just go out and do it. And then the more that you do it, the more experience you get, right? But in order for you to be motivated to do it, your heart has to break for the eternal condition of the people around the church. They're lost.

Jason Allison (39:48)
Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (39:49)
And so as

you start to go serve them, then all of a sudden, you know how to show compassion. As you start to share the gospel with them, then you start to see like, hey, not only am I like, your worldview expands. Now, again, I'm not saying that it should expand to where our Christian worldview is compromised, but you start to see like, hey, there are some nuances to the way that people approach life in general.

I don't know if that answers your question, but I think we have to help the church understand it's like, yeah, you're going to get a certain amount of book smart here, but you know, in any job that you ever work, the guy that comes in from college for the first week, he's a real, you know, pompous, arrogant guy until he works for two weeks and he realizes he doesn't know as much as he thought he did. so likewise, this is how the kingdom works. It's like, as you go and you're obedient and acts one eight.

last thing and then you guys can ask another question. But Acts 1-8 says this, right? Jesus is about to ascend and he's sitting there with the 11 and he said, you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you're going to receive power for what? To be my witnesses, right? And hear Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, right? And so God is empowering his church not to sit.

and enjoy, not to sit and consume. He's empowered his church to go and tell, to go and tell their God's story. So that's where the power of God is really on display, is as we're bringing the message to the lost world around us.

Jason Allison (41:23)
Yeah, and I think if we bring this back to the pastors and leaders who are listening, one of the fears that I think a lot of pastors have is they're like, yeah, but what if they don't do it right? What if they screw it up? What if they say it wrong? What if, you know, and yet we forget when Jesus, you know, let's go back to Jesus. You know, what did he do? He sent them out early in his ministry. And then and then what did he do? They circled back. They spent time together talking about it. They broke it down.

Joshua Spinks (41:38)
That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

Jason Allison (41:49)
And they were like, God, you won't believe this. Even the demons really, he's like, you know what? Honestly, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you're my follower and your name's in the book of life. But they had, they couldn't learn that if they didn't go before they were prepared. And so the whole thing was on the job training and, that's what discipleship is. And so the pastors that are waiting until people are ready to go, they're never going to send them. Right.

Joshua Spinks (42:04)
That's right.

That's right.

yes. That's right.

Jason Allison (42:18)
they're going to be sitting there forever waiting for them to learn whatever the next new thing is. And it's in the midst of that going and doing and failing that we actually learn stuff. And yet we're so afraid to let people do that. And so, you know, kind of what I hear you challenging pastors in this is to say, Hey, go send them, let them do things that they may end up doing it wrong at first, but they'll never know if they never try.

Joshua Spinks (42:23)
That's right.

Yeah.

It's so messy. Yeah, is. It is. It's meant to be messy because the beauty of the gospel shines even brighter through the messiness. So a couple of examples, right? Mark, chapter five, the demoniac. my gosh. This dude was nuts, right? Of course he was. He had a legion of demons in him. so, so Jesus cast the demons out and now he is sitting in his right mind, a completely different person after his encounter with Jesus. And Jesus is getting ready to leave.

Jason Allison (42:47)
And yeah, it is so messy. Yes.

Yep. Literally.

Joshua Spinks (43:15)
And the demoniac, no longer a demoniac, the man says, hey, I'm coming with you. And Jesus said, no, I want you to go and tell people what I've done for you. That was like five minutes of discipleship, right? And Jesus turned them loose. And so if the father and the son and the spirit have this process by which to release authority for people to go tell their story, then who are we to stand in their way, to create barriers? That's what Nike Church.

Paul was there for three weeks and then he left them and now they are church. Did he have to circle back? Absolutely. That was his epistle ministry, right? And so there's going to be some need for epistle ministry as you're turning some hotheads loose out on a lost world, but that's okay. That's the beauty of sanctification as like the God uses, God uses his word, his spirit and his church to help mold and make. We're called to be the disciple makers. The Holy spirit does the sanctifying and it's a beautiful process.

Jason Allison (43:58)
Yeah.

Joshua Spinks (44:11)
And yes, it is messy, but I say embrace the mess, know, embrace it, cause that is the beauty of the gospel, even becoming more abundantly clear in our lives.

Jason Allison (44:22)
Yeah.

Rob, do you have anything else? We kind of got to land this plane.

Rob Paterson (44:27)
Yeah, Josh, I'm just wondering, man, like if there's a pastor, a church leader listening in and maybe they're just a little bit weary, maybe they just they're like, man, I used to be passionate like Josh was about seeing people follow Jesus. But I just I don't know if that's even a thing anymore. You know, what's just like a word of encouragement you would leave for them?

Joshua Spinks (44:47)
Yeah, so Jesus loves His church. He loves His people, right? And so I think maybe continue to pray that God would give you the same kind of love for His church, because it's going to take that kind of love to be patient with them on this journey, because it can be frustrating, especially in the world that we live in today that is so busy, so distracting, so many temptations.

And so just pray that God will give you a deeper love. And here's the next thing. And then this will be the last part. I could go on all day just from things that I've seen. But there has to be patience, right? Let's just say I'm pastoring a church of, the average size church in the US today is like 65. So let's just say I'm pastoring a church of 65 people. As I look at that church and I start to make this paradigm shift of.

powering the priesthood to do what she was meant to do. And I have like two people raise their hand. That could be discouraging, right? I mean, that could be a real shot to the gut when you see that. But you got to, and so wrap your arms around those two and then start with those two. And then as they start to go and get their stories, right? As they start to see the power of God on display and then they share those stories with the people they go to church with.

then that too will multiply. And hopefully what it does, it multiplies outside the church as well. And so just take what God has given you, be faithful with those two and move forward and the Lord, He'll multiply, trust Him for that. So that would be my two pieces of advice.

Jason Allison (46:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. We talk about the funnel fusion here where, you know, the church growth movement talks about people being on the outside and they attend, right? And they connect and then they serve, right? But Jesus's funnel was kind of the opposite. He called and he trained and he sent.

Joshua Spinks (46:41)
That's right. Yeah.

Jason Allison (46:48)
And so sometimes we need to embrace both of those because we still have an America, you know, that's why we say funnel fusion, right? But but that's what you just described is those two, right? Those are the ones that have been called so so invest in them, train them and then send them. I love that. I mean, that that is just it's just beautiful to see that happening and so forth. Man, Josh, the the study is called made to multiply. You can get it through Lifeway and I'm

Joshua Spinks (46:48)
That's right.

For sure. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Jason Allison (47:14)
I'm excited to hear stories from our listeners of how they have, you know, use this implemented it, train their people. Uh, our friend, Derek Sanford, he's been on the podcast a few times. says this all the time. He says the church doesn't need any more inspiration, right? They need training. They don't, they don't, don't need any more sermons. They need to be trained on what to do. And, and I just sense that's exactly what you're saying as well. And you're giving us some tools. So man,

Joshua Spinks (47:32)
That's right.

That's right.

Jason Allison (47:41)
Thanks for the effort and the work to even do that. Cause I know that's not a simple thing. especially if you're in the middle of raising six kids, you gotta be a little busy. but thanks man. Thank you for the time. And, I hopefully we can, we can chat again soon. I think, probably got lots more that we could have talked about today.

Joshua Spinks (47:47)
That's right. Yes, that's right.

Well, thank you all. You all have been gracious hosts and thank you so much for the opportunity to share with what God's shown me over the years.

Jason Allison (48:04)
Yeah. Well, to our listeners, we appreciate you and really reach out. We'd love to connect you with Josh and the ministry there at E3 and the book. Feel free to jump on LifeWay website and get it. Get lots of them. Get your whole church going through it. I think it'd be beneficial to everyone. We appreciate you and we would love it if you would take a moment and subscribe and share the podcast. It really helps us and it helps other people get to hear amazing interviews with people like Josh.

Have a great week and we look forward to hearing from you soon.