Becoming a Family on Mission Pt.1
Discipleship, in many ways, is a re-parenting of people, a re-parenting of their culture. People need to understand and experience life in our perfect Father’s family and life in the Kingdom before they fully understand the love of God. Do others experience that when they hang out with your family?
In this episode of the Everyday Disciple Podcast, Caesar and his wife, Tina, share exactly how their family (Team K) grew to include many others as they make disciples in community. When living as a family on mission, discipleship can naturally flow out of your normal family rhythms to include and draw more and more people to God’s family!
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- How “Team K” was born as a family on mission and why it’s a big deal!
- The ways that discipleship in community mirrors effective parenting.
- Why church leaders need to have a family worth imitating as the starting point.
- A heartwarming story of how others have been included in this Team K family.
From this episode:
“It wasn’t long before this team was something our friends (and their friends) coveted, getting invited to a family dinner night with Team K. We always had lots of food, laughter, and encouragement to spread around, and you knew everyone was happy that you were there. There was always an extra place at the table. These meal times, along with our other Team K adventures, were the beginning of a way of life for us—a way of sharing and extending the blessings and grace that God had poured out onto our family.”
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Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Coaching with Caesar and Tina in discipleship and missional living.
Free Discipleship and Missional Resources
Transcript
Looking back at how our life as Team K naturally began to pull others into our family's rhythms, I'm reminded how similar now life is in a missional community, or life is as an oikos, our community on mission, is to that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we realize it's really the same.
Caesar Kalinowski:So even when we move to a new neighborhood, What do we do?
Caesar Kalinowski:We start sending the family rhythms outward to more and more people, and some of them are believers, and some are not yet believers, but we're discipling everyone from unbelief to belief, and that's for us too, and some people are being discipled to trusting Jesus with more and more of their life and his lordship, but we're doing all of this as a family.
Caesar Kalinowski:Tina and I, with our grown children now, their kids, which are our grandkids, some parents, siblings, People of Peace and Friends, our extended family together on mission.
Heath Hollensbe:Welcome to the Everyday Disciple Podcast, where you'll learn how to live with greater intentionality and an integrated faith that naturally fits into every area of life.
Heath Hollensbe:In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle.
Heath Hollensbe:This is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors probably forgot to tell you.
Heath Hollensbe:And now here's your host, Caesar Kalinowski.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hey, good to be back with you.
Caesar Kalinowski:Awesome.
Caesar Kalinowski:Glad you're here as always.
Caesar Kalinowski:I hope you've had an amazing weekend and you're.
Caesar Kalinowski:Just loving life.
Caesar Kalinowski:Everything is going exactly as you hoped it would.
Caesar Kalinowski:Uh, no, I'm joking, but I hope you have had a pretty good weekend and all.
Caesar Kalinowski:Your week is starting off pretty well.
Caesar Kalinowski:Our weekend was great.
Caesar Kalinowski:I finally, I got to take a deep breath.
Caesar Kalinowski:I got to rest a little bit from all of the craziness that is when we do online workshops and training.
Caesar Kalinowski:But, uh, yeah, we're, what a blast.
Caesar Kalinowski:What a blast that was.
Caesar Kalinowski:Uh, I, I hate to say this almost because I might jinx things, but like I feel like it's almost starting to feel like spring around here.
Caesar Kalinowski:I know it's just the beginning of February here, I guess.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, uh, the sun is out, but you know, there's probably more to go, but it's starting to feel a little spring like.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hey, recently Tina sat down with me and we talked about how our family became really a family and mission how Team K was born.
Caesar Kalinowski:Maybe you've heard us talk a little bit about that before in the podcast and How that started to shape how we saw a discipleship and the you know rings of relationship moving out from our family out from Team K and all of that and we did did that ended up being two parts And it, it was so good and it was so well received, I decided I wanted to share that with you.
Caesar Kalinowski:So today's episode is going to be sort of the first half of that talk.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I think you're going to love it.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I really want you to, if you have a family or you are part of a family.
Caesar Kalinowski:Or you know a family, this is for you.
Caesar Kalinowski:It really is.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, some of what we're going to talk about is when our kids were little.
Caesar Kalinowski:Some of it's going to be talking about when they were teenagers.
Caesar Kalinowski:Some of it's going to be when they have already moved out.
Caesar Kalinowski:Like now, they don't live with us.
Caesar Kalinowski:So wherever you're at in this age and stage of life, you can gain from this because really the, the, you'll hear us talk about the core of our family life.
Caesar Kalinowski:is central to how we build out discipleship communities, missional communities, oikos, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Extended households.
Caesar Kalinowski:So I want you to hear that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, I'm going to give you a little heads up, because we were recording this sitting next to each other, you know, live going through into Facebook, the recording quality in the interview is not like this, like, you know, sitting here in the studio with, you know, my face in a microphone.
Caesar Kalinowski:But it's clear, it's clean, it's just going to sound, you know, like we're Two of us a little bit distant.
Caesar Kalinowski:So I think it sounds great.
Caesar Kalinowski:I just want to give you a little heads up on that.
Caesar Kalinowski:I think you're going to love the material.
Caesar Kalinowski:And like I said, this is the first part of it.
Caesar Kalinowski:Listen, enjoy.
Caesar Kalinowski:I'll come back at the end, give you a few thoughts and tell you what we're going to do next week.
Caesar Kalinowski:The life we live and the way we live out and experience the gospel, the kingdom of God, and then invite people into that life to walk in the ways of Jesus with us, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:So they come to know the truth.
Caesar Kalinowski:She sets them free.
Caesar Kalinowski:We talked about that in some of our other training, then the rings of relationship keep moving outward to more and more friends, our kids, friends, the neighbors that we've been, you know, doing life with everyone.
Caesar Kalinowski:Oh, this is life giving.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I got to get my sister into this, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:There's other neighbors that maybe are their people of peace, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:But what's key is that we live at first,
Tina Kalinowski:And we invite others into it.
Tina Kalinowski:That's why, you know, we talked about the rings of relationship going out and the rings of relationship do kind of go off from our family.
Tina Kalinowski:But what we're really doing is we're inviting people into the family.
Tina Kalinowski:We're inviting them into our family rhythms.
Tina Kalinowski:And if we don't have a family worth imitating, then there's not really anything to invite them into.
Tina Kalinowski:There's nothing, there's no way for them to see that spiritual freedom, the relational peace that happens from having a gospel family on mission.
Caesar Kalinowski:And that's super key.
Caesar Kalinowski:right?
Caesar Kalinowski:They need to experience because very often, even as Christians, we're going like, I don't know that like, when I just go to the church building and do a church service, that I'm experiencing a whole lot of spiritual freedom and then relational peace out there.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we're like, sometimes it's the opposite.
Caesar Kalinowski:There's a lot of due to be right.
Caesar Kalinowski:What you do equals who you are.
Caesar Kalinowski:A lot of sin management, talking, coming out of sermons, a lot of behavioral modification that we leave with like, okay, so you heard the message, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:That's how Jesus lived.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now go do this.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's law, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:And so as we start to live the truth of the gospel and the grace and the kingdom life, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Jesus said, when you pray, ask the Father that on earth as it is in heaven.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now we get to experience that.
Caesar Kalinowski:I feel like we do live that way.
Caesar Kalinowski:I feel like we do.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, something to think about.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, there is, uh, you could be a family.
Caesar Kalinowski:Plus a mission, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:You can be a family, you know, like you can have your family.
Caesar Kalinowski:Let's say you're in leadership, right.
Caesar Kalinowski:Or part of the church, you can have your family and then plus there could be mission out there.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so maybe occasionally you engage it.
Caesar Kalinowski:Go ahead.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:But I
Tina Kalinowski:think, I think oftentimes, especially as professional.
Tina Kalinowski:Servants of the Lord, you know, pastors, uh, people who work at church professionally oftentimes feel like they've got their family and then they've got their, their job, their professional vocation and the two don't mix,
Caesar Kalinowski:right?
Caesar Kalinowski:They're kind of separate.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I, I've even heard big national leaders go, no, you do your job, you order your day in life, and then you turn it off at five and you go home, slam your doors and don't let anybody in, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:And it's like, and then what?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like, and so how are you making disciples?
Caesar Kalinowski:Well, we're not really.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:So that's kind of like having a, I have a family.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's very important.
Caesar Kalinowski:Plus I have a mission and maybe it's not vocational, but maybe, you know what I mean?
Caesar Kalinowski:Maybe it's something else.
Caesar Kalinowski:Some people are like, well, I work at the, you know, recovery house or a food bank or whatever, but I don't really, my family's not part of it.
Caesar Kalinowski:So it's like a family.
Caesar Kalinowski:Plus there's a mission.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, you could also be a family is has a mission with a mission, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like we're you and your family once in a while, like maybe you go to another country, you know, go over to, you know Mexico or Guatemala or somewhere in Africa or whatever doesn't matter at some point and you go, that's our mission It's but then when you come home, it's kind of like wasn't that great?
Caesar Kalinowski:I wish we could live that way all the time
Tina Kalinowski:Yeah, kind of like we were talking about everything else, right?
Tina Kalinowski:And because that's a family Business, so to speak, you know, that it does leave us with a longing and it's kind of like living half
Caesar Kalinowski:a life.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so we don't want that either.
Caesar Kalinowski:We don't want to fam, we don't want to have our family and then plus there's a mission out there and they're not connected.
Caesar Kalinowski:We'd also don't want to have a family that with a mission, like that we, we only engage in like as an event periodically, annually, every once a month or, you know, what we want to become as a family on mission.
Caesar Kalinowski:A family that's living on mission, believing their identity, that we are a family of missionary servants.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's, I mean, that's true of the whole church, but let us start with us, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:We're a family of missionary servants who have now been set to make more disciples of Jesus.
Caesar Kalinowski:We're disciples who've been set, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:And just like Jesus lived You know, uh, he's our master, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Just like Jesus, we got, we need to live our life, not just with the words, not just chapter and verse and ourselves and our kids and our other people.
Caesar Kalinowski:Our own family and mission, it needs to be at the center of everything we do.
Caesar Kalinowski:It really does.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so, you know, daily, weekly, monthly, daily, you know, we're all, we're training.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is what Pete and I do.
Caesar Kalinowski:We train and coach people how to live this way and how to make disciples and how to multiply out mission communities, plant churches this way, all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:If it's not happening in your family.
Caesar Kalinowski:It will not happen outside of your family because you talked about it, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Our lives need to mirror what we believe we say is true, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:And here, here's a hard truth.
Caesar Kalinowski:We'll never lead anyone, okay, another group of friends or believers or anyone else, farther and deeper into relationship with God and mission.
Caesar Kalinowski:then we lead our own family.
Caesar Kalinowski:You just won't.
Caesar Kalinowski:If you look at how your family's going, how much your family's living on a mission, you'll never take your church further or your neighborhood group of pals further.
Caesar Kalinowski:You just won't.
Caesar Kalinowski:You won't.
Caesar Kalinowski:Unfortunately too true.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah, missional communities, as we use that term, really are just an extension of our own family and patterns and mission that we live on.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, I don't say it's because, you know, living this way is like this new paradigm and I want you to, I want you to get it right.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is the new thing.
Caesar Kalinowski:We've been doing it for like 15 years, but no, really, this is the way the church function in scripture.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's all we really see in church.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's the way the original church functions.
Caesar Kalinowski:In fact, in the New Testament, okay, the Greek word ocos, okay, is used to refer to households.
Caesar Kalinowski:So whenever it church referred to the church, it said the ocos.
Caesar Kalinowski:That means its so-and-so's house or the ocos in this city or village or whatever, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, which were in essence ocos.
Caesar Kalinowski:What it means is extended families.
Caesar Kalinowski:They function together kind of like around a common purpose and mission, and that might include their jobs together, and some of their staff, and their closest friends, and grandma lives there, and my brother and his kids, you know, or we're all in proximity, but they also started realizing that now that they knew Christ, and Christ had come to this household, that they were going to, together, together.
Caesar Kalinowski:Live on Mission, they were gonna notice they were gonna look, seek to make disciples of the other people that they just running into and You know rubbing elbows with right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like I said, it could be cousins, aunts, whatever, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:By the way, that's why when making disciples Proximity.
Caesar Kalinowski:Proximity is really key.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's so super
Tina Kalinowski:important.
Tina Kalinowski:There's just no way to do this.
Tina Kalinowski:There's no way to, to be the family when you're not seeing people on a regular basis.
Tina Kalinowski:And when you, when you live really far from somebody, it's really difficult.
Tina Kalinowski:I mean, I have a lot of family in Florida.
Tina Kalinowski:I don't get to see them
Caesar Kalinowski:all that
Tina Kalinowski:often.
Tina Kalinowski:Yeah.
Tina Kalinowski:So I can't really disciple them.
Tina Kalinowski:You know, I see them every once in a while and I can share some wisdom and truth, you know, I can follow up with them, but I can't really
Caesar Kalinowski:disciple them.
Caesar Kalinowski:Can you imagine if you only got to see your own kids?
Caesar Kalinowski:I know some broken families, this is the case, and it's not ideal, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:It's not planning.
Caesar Kalinowski:Imagine if you could only see your kids once a week for about an hour and a half, maybe, and you sat together, like, you know, in rows.
Caesar Kalinowski:And you had to jam in everything to do with your family life in that once, that one time, maybe, maybe I'll see you next week.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right?
Caesar Kalinowski:It's like, we kind of use this kind of vernacular joke and like people who hang out with team K that's what we call our family.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, they'll say like, you guys are like blessed and look how your kids have turned out and they seem to really love you, you know, and they've said this for years, praise God.
Caesar Kalinowski:And imagine if they said, how'd you do this?
Caesar Kalinowski:Which they often ask, how'd you raise kids like this?
Caesar Kalinowski:Imagine if Tina said, Oh, well, once a week.
Caesar Kalinowski:For years, we would set up on Sunday morning, these rows of chairs in our living room, and then Caesar would go up front with a music stand kind of thing and some notes, and me and the kids would sit there in those chairs, and we all had our favorite seats.
Caesar Kalinowski:And then he would, he would talk for about 45 minutes or an hour, you know, from the Bible and stuff.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we would pretty much sit in silence and take notes.
Caesar Kalinowski:And then we'd say, see you next week, kids.
Caesar Kalinowski:Man, you'll see a Wednesday and really the truth is people, you know, we used to get together every week But really it's now it's 1.
Caesar Kalinowski:7 times a week and we're having a live stream that because the case won't come out of the room Oh, yeah, how could you raise a family that way?
Caesar Kalinowski:It's kind of making an absurd point to say proximity If you're going to live like a family on mission, and then start to include others eventually, it's helpful.
Caesar Kalinowski:Otherwise, if they have to drive in for everything, everything has to be a meeting, there's only the organics, the organized side, no organics, it's going to be very hard.
Caesar Kalinowski:Because remember, why?
Caesar Kalinowski:Discipleship is the process of moving from unbelief to faith.
Caesar Kalinowski:To believe in absolutely every area of life, which means just like your family on mission is interacting in every area of life, think of all the areas, so are the people that you're going to do life with and those you can invite in, in the perfect sense, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Think about Jesus, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:How much time did he spend with his disciples?
Caesar Kalinowski:It was kind of all day every day.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah, it was and I did some math on this I looked at like three three and a half years is what historians in the Bible shows us Jesus spent with his disciples and I look at how many waking hours and how much time he probably spent with him and I did The math and it was an estimate would be about 30, 000 hours.
Caesar Kalinowski:Jesus spent with his disciples all of life Waking, sleeping, partying, hanging out, doing ministries, traveling, all that, healing people, like, oh, that didn't work, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:And then we look at, like, how many hours would the average church get with their people if they got together for a couple hours a week?
Caesar Kalinowski:And then maybe a midweek, and then let's say they're a rockstar church.
Caesar Kalinowski:So they did once a month, they did two hour Saturday morning training.
Caesar Kalinowski:I, I did the math.
Caesar Kalinowski:It would take something like two 80 years for the average church to get to what Jesus did in three and a half years.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, obviously, I mean, that's just to chew on, but our point is we have to do time with people and we need to give our lives to them just like we do in a family, a healthy family.
Caesar Kalinowski:And proximity is a big deal.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:So, um, I want to tell you a little bit about, um, how our family and how this name of Team K kind of came to be, because it's a big, it's a sweet spot for us.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's a big deal.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, so, uh, when our kids were young, Um, they're all grown now in case you don't know that our kids are all grown.
Caesar Kalinowski:Two of them are married and, and having babies, our grandbabies have two each.
Caesar Kalinowski:And like Tina was saying, Patton was just over last night.
Caesar Kalinowski:He's the oldest sleeper grandson.
Caesar Kalinowski:So he's, you know, the most developed and taught and the most like grandpa, spend more time with me.
Caesar Kalinowski:Boy, was he loving on her last night.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, and, um, when the kids were young, I traveled quite a bit.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I was gone a lot for work, for ministry, different things.
Caesar Kalinowski:And it wasn't for like months and months at a time, but I was gone a lot and come back and gone a lot, come back.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And some of these times the kids treated each other in ways that were the exact opposite of like they were on the same team.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:They acted as if they were like on opposing teams and they would do whatever it takes to see the other team lose and be punished for it.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And stuff like that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And as parents, she and I felt like.
Caesar Kalinowski:We had to do something to help our kids, like, change that and get on the same page, sort of be part of the same team.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, like I said, this was especially important when I traveled late through.
Caesar Kalinowski:Sometimes it would be weeks, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:It'd be weeks.
Caesar Kalinowski:We need the children to be much more of a cohesive unit.
Tina Kalinowski:Yeah, we needed to be pulling together, not
Caesar Kalinowski:apart.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I wanted to, I told them, like, I, you know, son, I need you to, like, take care of your sisters.
Caesar Kalinowski:I, you know, I need you to help without trying to be in charge.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I need you all to help mom with whatever she asked for, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Anyway, Team K was born, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:Tina came up with this way to implant into our kids heads and hearts, our little band of Kalinowskis, this idea of Team K, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:You get it?
Caesar Kalinowski:Kalinowski, K.
Caesar Kalinowski:We told the kids they were part of something amazing.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:Something important.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And that we needed them to understand this and really start to live like a member of the team.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we even had, uh, uh, a little, Oh, where's the sheriff?
Caesar Kalinowski:So, um, we even took, we even took them to the mall.
Caesar Kalinowski:Tina's going to go get a little prop for us.
Caesar Kalinowski:We forgot.
Caesar Kalinowski:Uh, we even took them to the mall and we had, this is back when you can get t shirts made, but it wasn't like now they.
Caesar Kalinowski:They had to be airbrushed.
Caesar Kalinowski:They were airbrushed.
Caesar Kalinowski:They looked like the side of a hippie band back in the 70s, 80s, which this was probably the early 80s and 90s, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:When we were starting to raise our babies.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we had teen K shirts made, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:One for all of us, all in our matching sizes.
Caesar Kalinowski:You'll see that in a second, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:And we would all wear them occasionally at the dinner table or when it was time to do yard work or go out and serve the neighbors or whatever, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:All here columns.
Caesar Kalinowski:Here comes.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is one of the originals.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:There's been new ones made, but this is one of the originals.
Caesar Kalinowski:Wow.
Caesar Kalinowski:I gotta, I gotta move my notes here real quick.
Caesar Kalinowski:Look at this.
Caesar Kalinowski:Oh my goodness.
Caesar Kalinowski:That is the original aqua blue.
Caesar Kalinowski:I wish you could tell this, this light's making it look like a nice blue.
Caesar Kalinowski:It is kind of an ugly teal color.
Caesar Kalinowski:Maybe on the replay.
Caesar Kalinowski:I don't know.
Caesar Kalinowski:Team K.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is Vintage by the way.
Caesar Kalinowski:Our opening bid starts at, uh, A hundred thousand dollars.
Caesar Kalinowski:There's only five.
Caesar Kalinowski:Still get these out with the kids every once in a while.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:There's only five.
Caesar Kalinowski:So we wear them, you know, like I said at dinner or maybe out, or sometimes we'd go, Hey, come on kids.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's team K time.
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, we're going to go out and shovel snow for the neighborhood, you know, for Mrs.
Caesar Kalinowski:Scholl or whatever.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And the kids got it.
Caesar Kalinowski:They were like, Oh, team K, right.
Tina Kalinowski:Yeah.
Tina Kalinowski:And it wasn't just like working times.
Tina Kalinowski:It wasn't just.
Tina Kalinowski:serving times.
Tina Kalinowski:It was sometimes when we just got fun, have fun together, ride our bicycles and do a picnic.
Caesar Kalinowski:It was like a rallying cry at our best.
Caesar Kalinowski:Let's be our best.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, uh, within a few, you know, a few months in doing this, you know, the kids would be like more helpful and Tina could say, Hey, team K guys, right.
Caesar Kalinowski:We've got to pick up toys.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And as corny as it sounds at work and team K became the thing we use to identify ourselves.
Caesar Kalinowski:And our best still is like, we go like, well, listen, team K, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like this Christmas, a lady Tina works with had some great needs.
Caesar Kalinowski:We don't know her all that well, but we prayed and really felt led to kind of help her with some bills and Christmas and all that her and her kids and, and, uh, husband and all, and, uh, out of work and all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:So we went to team K and we said, Hey, team K, and this is extended by the way.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's not just our bio at this point.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we said, Hey, here's the situation.
Caesar Kalinowski:Pray about it, who wants to help as well.
Caesar Kalinowski:And guess what?
Caesar Kalinowski:Team K showed up in a really beautiful, cool way.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so we're able to, you know, make their Christmas a little different.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so, um, that also started to stick and people started referring to us as Team K . Yeah.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And Maddie still do a lot.
Caesar Kalinowski:I mean, a lot of people talk about whole family.
Caesar Kalinowski:They know that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so right now I know you're wishing, man, I wish I was a part of Team K.
Caesar Kalinowski:And you know what you do, it would be an upgrade for you, but you get to be right.
Caesar Kalinowski:You get to be like the people we coach.
Caesar Kalinowski:We just tell them you're all part of team K now.
Caesar Kalinowski:, you know, you're part of team K cause it's like, we see you as family and we're going to do life and we want to call you to your best and all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:So.
Caesar Kalinowski:It wasn't all that long, though, before this sort of team spirit was something that our friends, and our kids friends, and our friends friends coveted.
Caesar Kalinowski:And they, they started really wanting to get invited to Team K Family Internets.
Caesar Kalinowski:It was like a big deal, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:And we always had lots of food and fun and laughter and encouragement to go around.
Caesar Kalinowski:So it was no problem.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, and you knew everyone was happy to be.
Caesar Kalinowski:TNK family dinner, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:And we kind of have some rules.
Caesar Kalinowski:We even do teaching and training on family dinner nights and how we do them and how you make them fun and, and, uh, all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And these meals, okay, these meals that were, they were more than once on me.
Caesar Kalinowski:They started happening all the time.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, along with other kind of TNK adventures and ritual and tradition that we started inviting people in were the beginning.
Caesar Kalinowski:of a way of life for us in a way of starting to share or let me say extend our life in the kingdom and the blessings and grace that God had poured into our family.
Caesar Kalinowski:It became sort of the way we start seeing it.
Caesar Kalinowski:Remember we've said before in our, in some of our other trainings, discipleship is sort of like a reparenting of the culture, reparenting of people.
Caesar Kalinowski:We started saying, well, what if we just started sharing this good news life in the kingdom with more and more people?
Caesar Kalinowski:And our family life started to expand outward.
Caesar Kalinowski:to include more and more people very naturally though because we were living it like this is how our table was this is how when we did chores it was literally we'd have people come over just to hang out with team k to rake or pull weeds or whatever knowing that we were going to have some pizza later and food and maybe some cool beverages and then afterwards we're going to watch You know, whatever, catch up on this show, or I rented this movie or what, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Because we're a family.
Caesar Kalinowski:It wasn't all programmatic, but it was all discipleship.
Caesar Kalinowski:You got to feel it.
Caesar Kalinowski:And it was all like the kingdom and God's grace sort of breaking in, in and through our family rhythms that we're going to do anyway, and we're inviting others into.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, I know some of you are flipping out on this and you go, oh, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Caesar Kalinowski:What about, you know, don't I get time with only, and we'll talk about that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hold on.
Caesar Kalinowski:Don't flip out too much, okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay, our family life was expanding out into the community, you know, in essence, and it was beautiful.
Caesar Kalinowski:We didn't always know what was going on.
Caesar Kalinowski:But now we do.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, our family life was extending God's family life, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:See how our identity flows into this.
Caesar Kalinowski:We started to believe we were God's family and we started seeing everybody else as God's family, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:And trusting him for how to interact with them and who invited all to do all that, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, that's God's original hope and intention for people, for all people.
Caesar Kalinowski:It really is.
Caesar Kalinowski:That their lives and their families would show the world what He's really like.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right?
Caesar Kalinowski:That's why we've been given families.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's why we've been given marriages and kids.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah,
Tina Kalinowski:our family actually becomes a kingdom outpost.
Tina Kalinowski:It's a place where the kingdom of God is now.
Tina Kalinowski:It's now and not yet, but it is now and people can start to taste and see what the kingdom is like.
Tina Kalinowski:Sorry, I get a little choked up.
Caesar Kalinowski:It is beautiful and it's so fun.
Caesar Kalinowski:And there again, these rhythms of our life.
Caesar Kalinowski:What we love to do, what we're doing are just extending out work so it doesn't feel like this burden.
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, I don't know.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right now as we've grown in our gospel fluency, the ability to, to speak and, and see and enjoy the gospel and speak to others in every, all area of life.
Caesar Kalinowski:Wow.
Caesar Kalinowski:That just accelerated people's spiritual freedom.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, and, and understanding and moving from own belief to belief.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is how it's happening.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is how we now still do it.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we're going to tell you a little bit more about the team case story.
Caesar Kalinowski:Uh, tomorrow.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:There is a phenomenal kind of like teary eyed, amazing sort of way.
Caesar Kalinowski:We like to wrap that story up and it'll be tomorrow.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:But for right now, let me, so don't miss this.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we got a lot more teaching on family and mission, but looking back at how our life as team came naturally began to pull others.
Caesar Kalinowski:into our family's rhythms, I'm reminded really how similar now life as a missional community or life as an oikos or, you know, a community on mission is to that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And really, we realize that's the same.
Caesar Kalinowski:So even when we move to a new neighborhood, what are we doing?
Caesar Kalinowski:We start sending the family rhythms outwards to more and more people.
Caesar Kalinowski:And some of them are believers and some are not yet believers, but we're discipling everyone from unbelief to belief.
Caesar Kalinowski:And some people are being discipled to trusting Jesus, even with, you know, more and more of their life and even with their salvation and all of that, of course, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:But you see how that's how it goes.
Caesar Kalinowski:So it doesn't seem like, oh boy, here we go.
Caesar Kalinowski:Got to start, you know, it's a bunch of series of, it's our life.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's the life God has now lived with us and guess what our kids are grown and none of them live here full time in our house anymore, but good news is they're all in proximity, you know, some of them like 10 minutes away, uh, our oldest is an hour away, so we don't see them as regularly.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's tough sled, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:But they're still very much a part of the oikos and part of Team K and they're constantly still bringing friends over.
Tina Kalinowski:Even our son.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hey, listen, we're coming over this weekend and I invited these families over because they just need to meet you guys.
Caesar Kalinowski:And he's had a hard time with work.
Caesar Kalinowski:His pop's just died.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's still the same life, right?
Caesar Kalinowski:It's still extending out.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:And like I said, start to think of making disciples and sharing out your family life as a re parenting of people, repairing the culture because people need to, people need to like see and experience life.
Caesar Kalinowski:In God's family, they need to experience life in a family where God's their daddy and Jesus is their brother.
Caesar Kalinowski:And, and, and the Holy Spirit dwells in us and guides us to truth things.
Caesar Kalinowski:Light and forgiveness and, and, and repentance and, you know, right.
Caesar Kalinowski:This is, this is what's happening.
Caesar Kalinowski:People need to see and taste this.
Caesar Kalinowski:And so this is why living is a family and mission.
Caesar Kalinowski:It's so key because otherwise, what are we inviting people to?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like Tina said early on, are we living lives worth imitating?
Caesar Kalinowski:Are we a family worth imitating?
Caesar Kalinowski:Let me challenge you, um, elders, pastors, leaders, what's most of you, okay, who are going to hear this, watching this right now.
Caesar Kalinowski:Let me ask you, if, if a young couple comes into your church community or whatever somehow, and they're like, we really want to learn how to make disciples, like we're so into discipleship and we want to learn how to make disciples, would the, would the natural response be like, oh, we'll just go hang out with these elders?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like, maybe, you know, you just moved into the area, maybe you could live with them for like a year or so, like, who knows, right, or maybe just really start hanging out with their family, move into that neighborhood, you know, maybe you hang out with them, or, hey, get next to the pastor and his wife and kids, like, like they live on mission, their lifestyle is just discipleship.
Caesar Kalinowski:Right?
Caesar Kalinowski:So, would that be true?
Caesar Kalinowski:Could you say that?
Caesar Kalinowski:Like, the number one way we make disciples is, like, our elders lead us in that.
Caesar Kalinowski:So you think about it, wouldn't it be crazy to say, these are the people in charge of God's family here, this local family, the elders, you know, pastors.
Caesar Kalinowski:How many of them are modeling a lifestyle of discipleship?
Caesar Kalinowski:No, not so much.
Caesar Kalinowski:Boy, that guy can preach.
Caesar Kalinowski:They're really good with the finances.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah, but discipleship's the only mission of the church.
Caesar Kalinowski:Yeah, well, see, see what I'm saying?
Caesar Kalinowski:I'm not gonna push too hard on that.
Caesar Kalinowski:But for those who have the title of pastor or elder, we don't have families worth imitating.
Caesar Kalinowski:If people could not just hang out with us and see the Kingdom come and learn how to make disciples in everyday life and reproduce that, well, then start here.
Caesar Kalinowski:Start living as a family on mission.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay?
Caesar Kalinowski:See, because often the Calvary's kids have no shoes.
Caesar Kalinowski:We need to lead our families On Mission as a model for the rest of our church.
Caesar Kalinowski:We really do.
Caesar Kalinowski:We get to.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:We get to.
Caesar Kalinowski:And a needy world is waiting.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now start to wrap this up as we started living this way.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:As we started living this way.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, there was a bunch of stuff that had to be addressed in our life because we were kind of living our life and our schedule.
Caesar Kalinowski:And this is tough in ministry full time.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, and our calendar and our vacation and our holidays and all that.
Caesar Kalinowski:And there was a bunch of stuff that needed to be sort of placed on the altar, if you will, and there's given to God to reshape and to use as he chooses.
Caesar Kalinowski:That is some of my favorite things to teach.
Caesar Kalinowski:I love getting to teach with Tina and I, can you hear her heart?
Caesar Kalinowski:Don't you just love her heart?
Caesar Kalinowski:Wow.
Caesar Kalinowski:Um, she's the real deal.
Caesar Kalinowski:I married up.
Caesar Kalinowski:I'll tell you, I really, really did.
Caesar Kalinowski:And I, I hope that gives you some thought.
Caesar Kalinowski:You know, and maybe even some practical ideas on how to start re perspectiving and re intentionalizing some of your own family life and just how important it really is when it comes to making disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:I, I promise you there are people.
Caesar Kalinowski:out there.
Caesar Kalinowski:It doesn't matter where you live, what age and stage of life you are, married or single, you can create a family and live as a family and start having people join you in that.
Caesar Kalinowski:There are people waiting for you regardless of what age and stage of life you're in, where you live.
Caesar Kalinowski:There are people waiting and dying for a place at the table, a place at dad's table.
Caesar Kalinowski:right?
Caesar Kalinowski:Our father's table that he's given us to share with others.
Caesar Kalinowski:Hey, as always, before I go much further, I want to give you the big three for today's episode.
Caesar Kalinowski:These are the big three takeaways that, you know, as always, if nothing else, don't miss these and I'll be happy to send you a printable PDF of these big three.
Caesar Kalinowski:Write to your email address, write to you, if you just go to everydaydisciple.
Caesar Kalinowski:com forward slash big three.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay, we do that every week.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's always available.
Caesar Kalinowski:Here's the big three for this week.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay, first thing is, remember, your family is your first mission field for making disciples.
Caesar Kalinowski:Are you bringing a level of intentionality to your family life?
Caesar Kalinowski:Especially in the area of discipleship and spiritual growth that you want to?
Caesar Kalinowski:that you hope to.
Caesar Kalinowski:You'll rarely if ever find a group of people more important and that you'll have more opportunity to make a great spiritual impact on now and in the future.
Caesar Kalinowski:Okay, second, your family was given to you and exists as a kingdom outpost.
Caesar Kalinowski:The greatest picture of the gospel and what the kingdom of God is really like can be learned and displayed through our marriage and families.
Caesar Kalinowski:When others see your love, friendships, your fun, your fighting, forgiveness, grace, it becomes very attractive to them.
Caesar Kalinowski:And that's because they were created to experience God's love in those same ways.
Caesar Kalinowski:Pretty big, huh?
Caesar Kalinowski:And third, when looking at your own family life and rhythms, are there often others included?
Caesar Kalinowski:Would people wanting to know how to follow Jesus and live life fully in the kingdom of God be able to hang out with you and learn this gospel saturated lifestyle?
Caesar Kalinowski:If you think you have room for growth in this, and we all do, please don't hope that things will somehow accidentally change.
Caesar Kalinowski:Get equipped.
Caesar Kalinowski:Start walking with others who have lives and families worth imitating and learn from them.
Caesar Kalinowski:And we'd be happy to help you as well.
Caesar Kalinowski:As always, Tina and I are coaching people and if you have any interest in being coached by us, please check out everydaydisciple.
Caesar Kalinowski:com forward slash coaching,
Caesar Kalinowski:? Check that out.
Caesar Kalinowski:, on that page, there's all kinds of information.
Caesar Kalinowski:You can get ahold of us through there and we would love to be able to walk with you.
Caesar Kalinowski:Now, as you heard, we're going to talk about this next part two.
Caesar Kalinowski:We're going to kind of share the rest of the Team K story, and we're going to talk about some of the things that we had to lay down.
Caesar Kalinowski:Some of the things that God called us to go, you're going to have to let go of this if you're going to include more and more people in your life.
Caesar Kalinowski:Some of our preferences, some of our fears, uh, some of worrying about what people, other people thought and all of that.
Caesar Kalinowski:Anyway, I think you're going to love part two.
Caesar Kalinowski:That's going to come out next week.
Caesar Kalinowski:You're going to love it.
Caesar Kalinowski:We'll talk to you then.
Heath Hollensbe:Thanks for joining us today.
Heath Hollensbe:For more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit EverydayDisciple.
Heath Hollensbe:com.
Heath Hollensbe:And remember, you really can live with the spiritual freedom and relational peace that Jesus promised every day.