Rabbit Colonies and Trojan Elephants w/ Dan Grider

Dan Grider: 00:00:01

You take two rabbits, two elephants, if they're male and female, in 36 months, you'll have three elephants because it takes 36 months to gestation period, or we'll have like, what, 400 million rabbits?

Dan Grider: 00:00:11

I mean, every six weeks, once the rabbits mature, you can have a liver of six to 12 rabbits.

Dan Grider: 00:00:16

So the difference is you've got rabbit versus elephant.

Dan Grider: 00:00:20

And so fundamentally, Jesus lost a rabbit.

Dan Grider: 00:00:22

Culture.

Dan Grider: 00:00:23

He trained and discipled people into multiplying kingdom movements so quickly and, but rabbits are simple.

Dan Grider: 00:00:30

Rabbits can squeeze in a small gap in your fence.

Dan Grider: 00:00:34

I mean, then it can just morph into all kinds of places.

Dan Grider: 00:00:36

Elephants will just knock over your fence.

Dan Grider: 00:00:38

So elephants are clumsy, they're large.

Dan Grider: 00:00:41

They're beautiful beasts, but they're very complex and they reproduce very slowly.

Dan Grider: 00:00:46

And so, the American church has embraced an elephant culture.

Dan Grider: 00:00:50

Now, elephants aren't always huge.

Dan Grider: 00:00:51

You can have a little small elephants.

Dan Grider: 00:00:53

I mean, there's, there are churches in America that are 30 people, 25 people, and they're very small, but they have elephant DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:01:00

They reproduce slowly.

Dan Grider: 00:01:02

They're very expensive to operate, takes lots of buildings and full time staff members.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:01:17

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: 00:01:25

In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:01:28

This is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors probably forgot to tell you.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:01:33

And now, here's your host, Caesar Kalinowski.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:01:37

Happy New Year.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:01:38

It's hard to believe we're already here.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:01:41

The holidays have flown by and I hope you experience grace and love and a closeness that being with family and friends in light of the gospel brings.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:01:51

We have.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:01:52

In fact, as I'm recording this little piece of the podcast right now, we're just wrapping things up.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:01:57

I know it's been like the 12 days of Christmas and I know this about you though, you're already looking forward to the new year.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:05

Either you're ready to be done with last year, you've finished and ready to move on, and or you're excited about what our Lord will do in and through your life and ministry this year.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:17

I hope that's the case.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:18

I hope you really are excited.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:19

Maybe it's both.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:20

I don't know.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:21

Is this the year that you'll grab a hold of your Christian birthright in a deeper way?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:26

Really start to make discipleship and mission the center of your life?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:30

If you're a pastor or leader in your church, are you ready to take discipleship and missional living to the next level next year?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:37

I hope so.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:39

You get to.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:39

We all get to.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:41

Now we have a whole batch of new episodes of the Everyday Disciple Podcast planned for you that will continue to show you how the good news of the gospel and our Christian faith can naturally and confidently be woven into any and every area of life.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:55

Okay?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:02:55

So if you're wanting to explore getting some help setting up a full disciple making framework and you want to grow in your gospel fluency, let's connect.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:04

Let's get connected.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:05

I'm going to give you a link here in a second.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:07

All you have to do is go to that link.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:09

I'll ask you a few questions.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:10

I'll tell you a little bit more about the coaching, hit send, send me that information.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:15

See if this is a good fit, then I can send you back a whole bunch of stuff and a training video that unpacks our entire Everyday Disciple framework for you.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:25

And we'll see if this is a good fit and maybe we can start to journey together with some coaching.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:29

So if you're interested at all, this is your year, it's time to quit kicking the ball down the field and go ahead and check that out.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:35

Send me a little bit of info.

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And I'll get right back to you.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:38

Go to everydaydisciple.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:40

com forward slash coaching.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:42

That's everydaydisciple.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:43

com forward slash coaching.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:46

Now today I want to share a discussion that I just had a couple days ago with Dan Greider.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:03:51

Now Dan is the founding architect of Ignite, which is a vibrant network of churches that reproduce leaders who are leading transformational communities.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:02

And they really are.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:03

He began his work of church multiplication, church planting, all the way back in the late eighties.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:07

So like me, he's kind of getting on in years.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:10

Uh, we've been doing this a while, and in 1990, he planted a church in Southern California that grew to over 1500 in attendance, and it launched, this is the more important part.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:19

It launched nine church plants and campuses over the next 17 years.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:24

Then he went on to reposition a church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to be a reproducing and disciple making movement.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:31

Dan is packed with experience and knowledge.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:35

I know you're going to love that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:36

Here we go.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:38

All right, Dan, thank you for being with me, brother.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:41

I'm so excited for this conversation.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:43

I feel like in some ways you're, uh, definitely a brother from another mother, uh, an old soul.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:49

And when we found each other, it wasn't that long ago and we've just kind of had this little.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:53

micro bromance started.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:04:56

We're having a blast discussing discipleship in the kingdom and gospel and all that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:00

And, uh, so it didn't take us very long, maybe a month to say, I gotta have to get you on the Everyday Disciple Podcast.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:06

So thanks so much.

Dan Grider: 00:05:07

Oh, it's great to be with you guys as men.

Dan Grider: 00:05:09

I just appreciate you, Caesar.

Dan Grider: 00:05:10

Thank you for all you're doing.

Dan Grider: 00:05:12

for the kingdom and, uh, man, we were out in the Pacific North and Northwest and just missed each other and, uh, living out there different times and, uh, yeah, so, but, uh, love what you guys are doing.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:23

We've got a whole lot of relational near misses too.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:25

We're finding people we've known over 20 years, maybe like, you're kidding me.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:34

Well, we're going to get into some pretty cool deep waters here today.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:38

Some, some of the ways you articulate.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:41

kingdom, and leadership, and the way we lead churches, and how it affects our ecclesia, and most importantly, how it feeds into, or doesn't feed into, disciple making.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:51

It's going to be really a refreshing conversation.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:05:54

Just to give our listeners a bit of a context for who Dan Greider is, uh, just tell us a little bit of your story, kind of how you got involved in ministry, and like, kind of how that went, and what you're up to these days.

Dan Grider: 00:06:06

Yeah, well, I, you know, I was a radio DJ.

Dan Grider: 00:06:09

I was, uh, I, I was in radio TV and there was this TV show that came out years ago called WKRP in Cincinnati.

Dan Grider: 00:06:16

There was this guy named Johnny Fever.

Dan Grider: 00:06:18

And so Johnny Fever was our morning drive jock in our station.

Dan Grider: 00:06:22

He came from WKRC in Cincinnati, the real guy.

Dan Grider: 00:06:25

And, um, I was just praying, Jesus, I'd love to make disciples.

Dan Grider: 00:06:28

And he came in with a revolver and a fist of whiskey.

Dan Grider: 00:06:31

And he said, I'm going to do the deed tonight and you're going to clean up the mess.

Dan Grider: 00:06:34

And Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:06:35

I didn't want revolvers and fists of whiskey.

Dan Grider: 00:06:37

I just wanted to make disciples.

Dan Grider: 00:06:38

And I led him to Christ and started discipling him.

Dan Grider: 00:06:41

And, and we started, we started this church and this radio station.

Dan Grider: 00:06:44

And I didn't know you and Johnny Fever.

Dan Grider: 00:06:46

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:06:47

Well, yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:06:47

The, the real guy.

Dan Grider: 00:06:48

His, uh, yeah, Howard Mond's, the actor, but he was, he was the character of Johnny D.

Dan Grider: 00:06:52

Fever.

Dan Grider: 00:06:52

Right.

Dan Grider: 00:06:52

And, uh, this is a station just south of Cincinnati.

Dan Grider: 00:06:55

And, uh, anyways, so.

Dan Grider: 00:06:57

I just was, uh, and that was on the TV, shows on TV, but it was just, it was just one of those things of making disciples.

Dan Grider: 00:07:03

I didn't even know how to make disciples.

Dan Grider: 00:07:05

I was a, I came, I didn't come out of the church.

Dan Grider: 00:07:07

I was, I just kind of came to Christ and didn't know anything about what I was doing.

Dan Grider: 00:07:11

And, uh, and so they told me, you gotta go get a graduate degree, so I got a master's and a doctorate degree, and figured out, I was making disciples at the radio station before I ever really, you know, got all this education.

Dan Grider: 00:07:23

So I had to do something I call detox, and that was, I had to really unlearn a lot of the things I learned.

Dan Grider: 00:07:29

I'm grateful for what I learned, but Jesus, you know, He started a whole movement without the things that we do, right?

Dan Grider: 00:07:37

And it reproduces so fluidly and so easily, and it's like Why is it so simple in the New Testament?

Dan Grider: 00:07:43

Why is it so difficult for me and so many of the other people that grew up in the American church context?

Dan Grider: 00:07:48

I'm not being critical of the American church, but it's like, we're not following Jesus the way Jesus did what he did.

Dan Grider: 00:07:54

I think we're following him in theology and in spirit, and we're, you know, people are being saved and lives are transformed, so that certainly happens, but we're not following his multiplication path, and that, that has some serious consequences to the American church.

Dan Grider: 00:08:09

Tom, yeah.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:08:10

For sure.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:08:11

Sure.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:08:11

So you, you did a stint, uh, pastoring, church planting, right?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:08:16

All that stuff.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:08:17

Tell that.

Dan Grider: 00:08:19

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:08:19

So I, you know, we were back in that area, you know, where we're Cincinnati is, which, and we saw so many unchurched people when we lived in Oregon or Washington and Northern California.

Dan Grider: 00:08:29

So we started playing churches on the West coast because they were just such unchurched areas.

Dan Grider: 00:08:34

We just went there because there was just so much need.

Dan Grider: 00:08:36

And it was really fun because the Holy Spirit was moving in the soul.

Dan Grider: 00:08:41

that was alive, uh, coming, he was coming alive in so many people's lives.

Dan Grider: 00:08:45

And so we started planning churches.

Dan Grider: 00:08:47

We worked, uh, with, um, you know, like a lot of people did with kind of the attractional church, the, you know, the, the church that was, you know, what we call church that sucks less.

Dan Grider: 00:08:58

you know, if you can send this and all the other churches, people say, Hey, I'm your church, such as I'm coming to your church.

Dan Grider: 00:09:05

But that was when we had Christian memory, right?

Dan Grider: 00:09:07

And so even lost people, secular people would actually think of, of looking to Jesus in the church when their lives collapsed.

Dan Grider: 00:09:15

We're not in, we have no Christian memory.

Dan Grider: 00:09:17

That was, you know, that's.

Dan Grider: 00:09:18

ancient history.

Dan Grider: 00:09:19

That was like in the 1990s for crying out loud.

Dan Grider: 00:09:22

And the world's changed so significantly.

Dan Grider: 00:09:24

So we're post Christian memories.

Dan Grider: 00:09:26

So we just can't do what we did in the past.

Dan Grider: 00:09:30

And, and unfortunately, sometimes the American church is still doing what they're trying to recreate the nineties and the two thousands and they're gone.

Dan Grider: 00:09:37

They're just gone.

Dan Grider: 00:09:39

The teens are gone.

Dan Grider: 00:09:41

I mean, it's

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:09:42

interesting because everybody would say yes.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:09:43

And amen to that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:09:45

come this next Sunday, they'll be doing the same stuff again they did for Christmas and, you know, and then getting ready for Easter, exactly the same way as 25, 30 years ago, you

Dan Grider: 00:09:54

know.

Dan Grider: 00:09:55

And so what we talk about in our trainings is we say, you know, the three things the New Testament Church had, you can tell me anything they had besides these three things, let me know.

Dan Grider: 00:10:02

They had had an encounter with the Holy Spirit through the power on the person of Jesus, the resurrected Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:10:08

Two, they learned how to talk about that first thing, and then they built transformed communities of the first two things.

Dan Grider: 00:10:14

I said, if you could think of anything they really had, because the New Testament church in the early days, the first 300 years, they didn't have a Bible, they didn't have buildings, they didn't have church services, they didn't, they didn't, you know, they didn't do sermons the way they, they, so much of what we do, they didn't do.

Dan Grider: 00:10:31

So I say to the average pastor, if you only had those three things the New Testament church had, how would you function on Sunday?

Dan Grider: 00:10:37

And most of them, most of us pastors wouldn't even know what to do.

Dan Grider: 00:10:41

I mean, we wouldn't even know how to start.

Dan Grider: 00:10:43

Because, and I'm grateful that we have what we have, but at the, we use this illustration that says, you know, a master chess player, a master at chess, uh, will train a prodigy by removing the queen off the board, and make them learn to use all the other players, because the queen is the most versatile player, but she's not the most important, the king is the most important, And, and the queen, a bad chess player will overuse the queen.

Dan Grider: 00:11:10

They'll use the queen for everything.

Dan Grider: 00:11:12

If you're in need of the queen, they've got to learn to use the entire chessboard.

Dan Grider: 00:11:16

And so Jesus didn't give us the Sunday morning service.

Dan Grider: 00:11:19

He, I mean, it's wonderful to have a Sunday morning service, but if you can learn to do all the things that the kingdom does, and Jesus does in the kingdom, without the Sunday morning service, you'll have a robust, unstoppable movement, which Jesus started.

Dan Grider: 00:11:34

And, but you ask most average American pastors, how do you do discipleship?

Dan Grider: 00:11:38

How do you teach tithing?

Dan Grider: 00:11:39

How do you train people?

Dan Grider: 00:11:40

How do you do fellowship?

Dan Grider: 00:11:41

How do you do whatever you do?

Dan Grider: 00:11:44

And they almost always say, well, Sunday morning, it revolves around Sunday morning and Sunday morning.

Dan Grider: 00:11:47

It's because it's the queen.

Dan Grider: 00:11:48

It's the most versatile player on the board.

Dan Grider: 00:11:51

but it's not the most important.

Dan Grider: 00:11:52

And so Jesus didn't give us a queen.

Dan Grider: 00:11:54

He taught us the whole chessboard without the queen.

Dan Grider: 00:11:57

And I'm grateful we have the queen.

Dan Grider: 00:11:58

Don't get me wrong.

Dan Grider: 00:12:00

I love church services, but it's a whole different way of thinking when you go back to, which the Holy Spirit kind of led me to rethink a lot of this process.

Dan Grider: 00:12:08

So how did

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:12:10

you?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:12:10

How and when did you kind of make the shift from, hey, we're seeing people come to faith, so I guess we're starting church services, we're planting churches by planting church services.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:12:19

Um, and when did that flip for you to, to realize like, praise God we get to gather and we get to do all those things, but that wasn't never meant to be the goal.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:12:29

It's like, hey, I met a neighbor, I met a friend at the gym or whatever.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:12:33

How fast can I get him to that thing or somebody's that thing?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:12:36

And when did that shift

Dan Grider: 00:12:37

for you?

Dan Grider: 00:12:39

It's a good question.

Dan Grider: 00:12:40

Yeah, you know, I think maybe about this, I don't know for sure exactly where it shifted for you, but we were all kind of that same zone, right?

Dan Grider: 00:12:48

Where, where as long as it was working, we were doing the church Sunday services the way we were doing them.

Dan Grider: 00:12:53

And I'm just seeing the diminishing qualities during kind of the postmodern.

Dan Grider: 00:12:57

early days of the uh, emergent movement, and I started really rethinking, we've kind of, you know, somehow what we're doing is not working the way it worked earlier, you know, and you and I are similar age and similar generation, and you, we remember when it was working, and we remember also what, where we were, what we were doing when we began to realize, It's not working the same way.

Dan Grider: 00:13:19

And, uh, if, if, if we don't really pay attention to what the Holy Spirit's doing,

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:13:24

I think we're

Dan Grider: 00:13:24

going to keep propagating a model and being, embracing a model and not embracing Jesus and what the Holy Spirit's saying.

Dan Grider: 00:13:31

And so do you assess that the seven letters of the seven churches, we need to hear what the Spirit says to the church, the Spirit speaking.

Dan Grider: 00:13:38

And I think I just really sensed the Spirit was saying something that I had to pay attention to.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:13:43

Yeah.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:13:44

And I think for me as well, then, uh, it, it.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:13:47

It was at the same time as going, Hey, this isn't working the way it used to type of thing.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:13:51

I was pastoring in a mega church and it was just up into the right on the graphs, you know, like everything was growing that and those metrics, but at that same time where I realized, but none of my, um, you know, church people on Jesus people are that super into this.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:07

It's not that good a show, you know, have you ever been to a YouTube concert?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:11

And the other thing is that metric started to change for me.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:14

And I started to realize that, um, is what we used to do, it's not working.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:19

Well, when it was working, was it making disciples though?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:23

Cause that's, and was it building up communities that affected all the community around them?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:28

And that's the thing that began to eat at my heart.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:31

And, and, and maybe soul even, and my wife's as well, we're like, we love what we're getting to do, and we're loving that people are coming to know Jesus through it, however, we don't see them integrating that into a lifestyle of this, and therefore, and then becoming disciple makers themselves, we're, we're, at best, we're getting them their afterlife upgrade.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:50

And, you know, they get out a help card and turn him into consumers.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:53

That seems like that's when it's really working.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:56

And I was like, that can't be what Jesus died for.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:58

That can't be the whole thing.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:14:59

Yeah, it's

Dan Grider: 00:15:00

funny.

Dan Grider: 00:15:00

The word that Jesus used for when he talked about heaven was the word Aronos, which means that you drop out of sight.

Dan Grider: 00:15:07

And so.

Dan Grider: 00:15:08

It, it, but he almost always attach it to the kingdom of God, or, or the, you know, he always talked about is he's focusing on the kingdom more than, than the word aos or heaven.

Dan Grider: 00:15:18

And, and so we've taken the word, we've, we've lost the kingdom part of it, and we've focused on the word heaven or aoss and, and it's just.

Dan Grider: 00:15:27

What has happened is by making that fatal switch, it's created a whole culture that you talk about beautifully.

Dan Grider: 00:15:34

And I think that's one of the things I really love about what you're talking about is helping people really rethink, what are our metrics?

Dan Grider: 00:15:41

Jesus talked over and over again, you'll know them by their fruit, you know?

Dan Grider: 00:15:44

So, a lot of people are saved and sanctified, that's the church language we'd use, right?

Dan Grider: 00:15:51

They know Jesus, they're filled with the Holy Spirit, but they're not reproducing.

Dan Grider: 00:15:55

They're hard working.

Dan Grider: 00:15:56

Those church people are going to heaven.

Dan Grider: 00:15:58

I mean, they know Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:15:59

They're, they're being, you know, they're, they're maturing in Christ.

Dan Grider: 00:16:02

Those are all wonderful things.

Dan Grider: 00:16:04

Those are great things.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:05

Chris Long as we're talking about reproduction, I really, and this is kind of, uh, the reason I wanted to have you join me today is I, you used a term in a conversation that we had recently, uh, and you're like the king of analogy, by the way, I just, a metaphor here.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:19

I thought I was, man, I'm sitting at the feet here today.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:21

This is amazing.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:23

But you use a term about the different, and if I bungle this, then that's why you're here to clarify all this.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:29

You talked about some churches are rabbit colonies, but other churches are Trojan elephants.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:35

And I'm like, what the heck?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:36

You know, but once you got into it, once you got into it, I was like, Oh, I want everybody I know who's a believer or let's say a leader, at least in a church setting.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:45

I want them to understand this concept and the differences.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:48

So, so tell us a little bit about being a rabbit colony.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:51

And that's multiplication thing right away.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:53

People probably seen it.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:54

Or Trojan Elephants.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:56

Okay.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:16:56

Tell us about that.

Dan Grider: 00:16:58

Well, actually the, this comes from, uh, George Barna term.

Dan Grider: 00:17:01

So I, so I'm barring this, uh, the, the, the, the, the, at least the original illustration.

Dan Grider: 00:17:06

So Barna says, uh, is in the book you wrote the, you take two rabbits, two elephants of the male and female.

Dan Grider: 00:17:12

In 36 months, you'll have.

Dan Grider: 00:17:13

three elephants, because it takes 36 months to gestation period, or we'll have like, what, 400 million rabbits?

Dan Grider: 00:17:19

I mean, every six weeks, once the rabbits 12 rabbits, and those rabbits, after, after, you know, a handful of weeks, every six weeks, they have another liver.

Dan Grider: 00:17:29

So, the difference is, you've got rabbit versus elephant.

Dan Grider: 00:17:33

And so, fundamentally, Jesus launched a rabbit culture.

Dan Grider: 00:17:36

He trained and discipled people into multiplying.

Dan Grider: 00:17:40

kingdom movements so quickly, and, but rabbits are simple.

Dan Grider: 00:17:44

Rabbits can squeeze through the small gap in your fence, and they can just morph into all kinds of places.

Dan Grider: 00:17:50

Elephants will just knock over your fence.

Dan Grider: 00:17:52

So elephants are clumsy, they're large, they're beautiful beasts, they're, but they're very complex and they reproduce very slowly.

Dan Grider: 00:17:59

And so the American church has embraced an elephant culture.

Dan Grider: 00:18:03

Now, elephants aren't always huge, you can have a little small elephants.

Dan Grider: 00:18:06

I mean, there's, there are churches in America that are 30 people, 25 people, and they're very small, but they have elephant DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:18:14

They reproduce slowly, they're very expensive to operate, takes lots of buildings, and full time staff members.

Dan Grider: 00:18:20

For those 20 people, those 30 people, we know churches that have a budget of 150, 000 for 20 people, right?

Dan Grider: 00:18:26

And, But rabbits, though, reproduce so fluidly and so, and it's every part of the cells of a rabbit is to reproduce.

Dan Grider: 00:18:37

And, and that's why we use illustration kind of parallels the starfish.

Dan Grider: 00:18:41

The starfish does the same thing.

Dan Grider: 00:18:42

But so what we say is, but if you can think of it this way, if you've got, um, in America, There's a lot of places where they still want to have a Sunday morning church service.

Dan Grider: 00:18:52

People say, what time does your church meet?

Dan Grider: 00:18:54

When does your church meet?

Dan Grider: 00:18:56

And so what we say, we create, we say, we don't do elephant DNA, we do rabbit DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:19:02

But for some of our churches, we say we need to put on the elephant suit.

Dan Grider: 00:19:06

And, and, and people come and they say to us, Mark, well, and we call them Trojan Elephants.

Dan Grider: 00:19:12

So it's like, it looks like an elephant, smells like an elephant, but when you unzip it, out come rabbits.

Dan Grider: 00:19:17

And so people come to our Trojan Elephant Church and they say, I came from a church just like yours.

Dan Grider: 00:19:22

You know, you guys sing echo, we sing echo, you sing oceans, we sing oceans.

Dan Grider: 00:19:26

They say, well, you know, you're comparing a worship service.

Dan Grider: 00:19:28

And they say, well, where's all your programs?

Dan Grider: 00:19:30

Where's your men's ministry, your women's ministry?

Dan Grider: 00:19:32

What we say is, well, actually we don't have any of that.

Dan Grider: 00:19:34

All we are is a rabbit DNA culture that still has a Sunday morning service, and we still have a building, and, and that's a different way of thinking and operating, but it's a, it's a genetic DNA change.

Dan Grider: 00:19:47

It's, it's actually, the DNA is the complexity, it's not how you do the service, it's can you change over into rabbit DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:19:56

which reproduces so quickly, and it's a different kind of animal, versus an elephant, which is a very slow reproducing.

Dan Grider: 00:20:03

And that's, I think, one of the challenges the American church is dealing with, because a lot of American churches have elephant DNA regardless of their size.

Dan Grider: 00:20:10

I've seen, I've seen, uh, organic, Missional communities that meet in a microbrewery, and they're smoking cigars, and they're talking about Jesus, but they still have much more of an elephant DNA than they really realize.

Dan Grider: 00:20:24

They're looking, they're hoping to, you know, to open a microbrewery, open a coffee shop, and they're wanting to, which is good, it's good, but they're still thinking much more Even that small organic group, uh, they're still thinking in elephant ways, if that makes sense, versus rabbit ways.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:43

Yeah, it really is.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:45

What boy oh boy, I hope everybody's catching that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:47

And that, that, that, I can't get that visual out of my head, the Trojan elephant.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:52

So it's like, hey, come to our Sunday gathering.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:54

We've, we've got that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:55

We love to be together.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:20:56

But really if you unzip the suit, it's like, but we're, we're producing rabbits here.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:00

We're making disciples on the inside.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:02

That's who we are.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:03

How will you know, like, if you see a church and they would say, Oh yeah, yeah, that's us.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:07

We're the second one.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:07

We're the Trojan one.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:08

What are, great.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:09

What are some of the sort of telltale signs of elephant DNA versus a rabbit colony or a Trojan elephant?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:21:16

What are some of the telltale signs?

Dan Grider: 00:21:18

Well, the DNA answer is, DNA produces, it's perfectly designed to produce what it is, right?

Dan Grider: 00:21:25

So, rabbit DNA does multiplication, they're decentralized, they're organic in their thinking, they think, they just operate completely differently.

Dan Grider: 00:21:37

where elephant DNA thinks very slowly.

Dan Grider: 00:21:40

That's what I'm saying.

Dan Grider: 00:21:41

I've seen guys open microbreweries and coffee shops and still say, well, you know, we're going to invite everybody to our coffee shop, we're going to invite everybody to our microbrewery and we're going to have a service on Sunday and we're going to do these kinds of things.

Dan Grider: 00:21:53

And I said, well, all you did was you just, you know, you, you, you're still thinking in elephant ways.

Dan Grider: 00:21:59

It's a good step.

Dan Grider: 00:22:01

It's a great step.

Dan Grider: 00:22:02

Sucks less.

Dan Grider: 00:22:03

Sucks less, right.

Dan Grider: 00:22:04

And we say the church sucks less because, you know, people come and say, hey, you know, I, I, I, I've left my church.

Dan Grider: 00:22:09

I'm going to your church.

Dan Grider: 00:22:10

Your church sucks less.

Dan Grider: 00:22:11

Your worship sucks less.

Dan Grider: 00:22:12

Your church ministry.

Dan Grider: 00:22:13

And so, yeah, so now the microbrewery just sucks less.

Dan Grider: 00:22:15

So the coffee shop sucks less.

Dan Grider: 00:22:18

And, and while we're going out and we're, we're caring for people in the community and that's, that's great.

Dan Grider: 00:22:22

All those are really good things.

Dan Grider: 00:22:24

But fundamentally, DNA, You can't hide DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:22:28

You can't.

Dan Grider: 00:22:28

And doing a DNA change is more difficult.

Dan Grider: 00:22:31

We call it detox.

Dan Grider: 00:22:33

It's, it's more difficult than people think on the front end.

Dan Grider: 00:22:36

They think we're just gonna, we're gonna change our form and our name and our approach, but we're gonna do the same thing with a kind of a different, you know, coat of paint on it.

Dan Grider: 00:22:47

And, and that's, it, it, it dies very, very slowly.

Dan Grider: 00:22:51

And

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:22:53

what type of, uh, changes with a leader who's listening to this and or has been listening to you or being trained by you.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:01

What, what types of things is a leader who says, you know what, you're, I'm being convicted here.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:05

We definitely have the elephant DNA so, so far, but we want to become a rabbit colony.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:09

We want to make disciples who make disciples.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:11

I think if people are listening to this podcast, that's probably the case for many.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:15

Um, or maybe I'm working or attending a church that's like, Based on that description, that's elephant DNA.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:22

Um, what types of shifts are they going to have to start as leaders, pastors, leaders, elders?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:27

What, what are they, what kind of shifts are they going to have to start making to actually, because how do you change DNA?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:23:34

And can you, you know?

Dan Grider: 00:23:36

That's a great question.

Dan Grider: 00:23:37

Well, here's what you do.

Dan Grider: 00:23:39

You probably can't change the people you already have.

Dan Grider: 00:23:43

That's the problem.

Dan Grider: 00:23:44

Because wherever DNA they are, they're kind of set, if they can relearn.

Dan Grider: 00:23:49

How to reach the next kind of, so they, so what we say is they're going to be limited in what they can do.

Dan Grider: 00:23:55

I just like, right now, there may be people listening to this who are elephant DNA through and through in what they do, but they have such a heart for rabbits.

Dan Grider: 00:24:04

They, they see, they read the New Testament, they've read the Book of Acts, they've been on a missions trip, the Holy Spirit does something in them, and they realize, I don't know how far I can go, but what I can do is I can take I can take what I've got in my DNA and I can begin to reach rabbits and start a rabbit movement, even if I'll never really be a rabbit myself.

Dan Grider: 00:24:24

I can, I can, and there's, there's that transitional, that's a missionary transition.

Dan Grider: 00:24:29

So Paul, the apostle, was the elephant DNA through and through.

Dan Grider: 00:24:33

The entire Jewish culture was elephant DNA through and through.

Dan Grider: 00:24:36

Very slow, very methodical.

Dan Grider: 00:24:38

You had to have the temple, you had to

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:24:39

have temple, temple, temple, come and see.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:24:41

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:24:43

Paul was an elephant guy.

Dan Grider: 00:24:45

He even even gives his pedigree, you know, circumcised on the eighth day Hebrew of Hebrews, right?

Dan Grider: 00:24:50

That's all Elephant.

Dan Grider: 00:24:51

He said, I'm an elephant dude, through and through.

Dan Grider: 00:24:54

But Paul started rabbit movements around the world, even though he still remained and he still was able to use his elephant, DN.

Dan Grider: 00:25:03

When he got into jams, but he was, he himself was a missionary to the rabbits.

Dan Grider: 00:25:08

We would call them the Gentiles, right?

Dan Grider: 00:25:10

And so he goes out and he starts these rabbit colonies and people think Paul was a rabbit dude.

Dan Grider: 00:25:17

He was an elephant dude.

Dan Grider: 00:25:18

It was a missionary into the rabbits.

Dan Grider: 00:25:21

And we wouldn't know the gospel had not been for that, that DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:25:25

Change that he himself didn't fundamentally change.

Dan Grider: 00:25:28

He didn't uncircumcise himself.

Dan Grider: 00:25:29

I don't know how you do that.

Dan Grider: 00:25:30

He didn't un Jewish himself He he just he became a minister To the multiplying communities and that's why the church is the church So the key is you've got to be a missionary into that group that you don't naturally to move to, and it's only people who have that mission, that apostolic missional perspective.

Dan Grider: 00:25:53

So that's what we say, we say, we want to train you and your leader, or we, you know, just like you're doing, you're doing the same thing.

Dan Grider: 00:25:58

You're training them and their leaders, and you're saying, but really, we really want you to start doing something that is incredibly uncomfortable for you.

Dan Grider: 00:26:07

You guys talk about that all the time.

Dan Grider: 00:26:09

That's, that's what you're trying to get them to do.

Dan Grider: 00:26:11

Right.

Dan Grider: 00:26:12

But that's, but that is, that is a more comfortable.

Dan Grider: 00:26:15

Flex thing, then sometimes we think on the front end, and some people are simply aren't willing to pay the price.

Dan Grider: 00:26:19

They, yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:26:19

What they're doing is they're pragmatically seeing the culture change and they're seeing the right thing on the wall, preferably speaking, but they, but they're not sure if they really wanna pay the price to do that.

Dan Grider: 00:26:30

And so a lot of them just, they try this for a while and they go right back into their elephant churches.

Dan Grider: 00:26:37

And Trojan Elephant Church is a complex thing, and I don't know that the season for Trojan Elephants will last very long, because what we tell a lot of our, is that you can't be reproducing elephant DNA if you're a Trojan Elephant Church.

Dan Grider: 00:26:49

It's rabbit DNA.

Dan Grider: 00:26:51

But, you're gonna have to burn the elephant suit when the culture says the elephant.

Dan Grider: 00:26:56

is done the way we've done church.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:26:58

The elephant in the room will have to be dealt with.

Dan Grider: 00:27:01

Yeah, but you know, church always meets and the church always worships, and so we're not talking about worship and we're not talking about meeting.

Dan Grider: 00:27:08

That's not, we're not, we're talking about how the American elephant culture is very different thing from just the, what we would call the worshiping community thing.

Dan Grider: 00:27:18

Yeah, it's different.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:27:19

And I, and I think maybe where you're saying maybe this is going to go away pretty soon here, I think we might be seeing a newer wave of micro elephant churches with the whole micro movement, you know, micro church movement and all that because Unfortunately, I mean, I love that we're starting to scatter, okay, the body out there, and the priesthood's getting more and more roles in that, but a lot of what, and we've talked about this, you and I, and I've talked about it on the podcast before, some of these quote unquote microchurches are really just small elephants, and they will reproduce slowly, and they're actually trying to do a small reproduction of the bigger mama elephant, and in fact, um, let me show you a video uh, where Mama Elephant's, uh, got some people talking and singing songs.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:08

And we'll do that over here in our small elephants, you know.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:10

And I, I'm, I'm interested in how you take those.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:14

And help them get some DNA shift.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:18

I know that's, you know, man, biologically that seems impossible, but they're, but that's where my heart is.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:23

I want to see big and small elephants be able to say, hey, I want that though.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:28

Am I just doomed?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:30

And I want to be careful to not accidentally always paint even the smaller missional type of discipleship focus things with my old.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:41

You know, elephant paintbrushes, you know, because I, because I can, even as you talk about it, I can, I can just pitch her little things, man, that even in our coolest, earliest days of breaking all the molds, I go, yeah, that was still pretty elephant.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:54

Yeah, that was pretty elephanty.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:28:56

It

Dan Grider: 00:28:56

was, and I love that about you, Caesar.

Dan Grider: 00:28:59

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:28:59

And you know, I think you nailed it as well as I've ever heard anybody nail it.

Dan Grider: 00:29:03

What you just said.

Dan Grider: 00:29:04

This microchurch movement is the best indicator of how you get little miniature elephants.

Dan Grider: 00:29:09

Little, you know, they're just little small versions, you know, and what happens is they function in every way.

Dan Grider: 00:29:17

They reproduce slowly, but just because they're small doesn't make them, you know, a rabbit.

Dan Grider: 00:29:22

And so, yeah, they're bonsai elephants, right?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:29:25

So they think if we could multiply the elephants quicker, that's the mission.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:29:29

And you're like, no, it's multiplying disciples who know how to make disciples is the mission.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:29:33

And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:29:35

And so this is how we're doing it.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:29:37

I'm like, yeah, but now I have new language to say, maybe not quite just yet.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:29:41

Now, I'm guessing that leading in uh, new ways or trying, especially trying to lead from an elephant sort of culture to a, you know, rabbit, you know, colony and multiplication like that truly with the discipleship focus takes a different type of leadership and leading and maybe therefore leader.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:04

Now I, I don't think, hey, I'll just say this up front.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:06

Maybe we don't agree on this.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:07

I don't think everybody's a leader in the same way.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:10

I think anybody can't lead things.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:13

But oh, everybody's a leader.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:14

Not in the same ways, you know, we have a pest and that gives some indications But but I know in my own self in my own life I have learned to lead in different ways and in different with different Focuses and with different gentleness and different areas where I'm less gentle because I'm more passionate about and all that So how what let's talk a little about you use the term directional leadership Versus discipling leaders, you know, and leaders who are discipling leaders.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:41

So I'm guessing there's some changes that have to start to take place to make that shift.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:30:46

Right.

Dan Grider: 00:30:47

That's so well said.

Dan Grider: 00:30:48

I think you've really assessed this really well.

Dan Grider: 00:30:51

And I think you're doing this.

Dan Grider: 00:30:53

I think this is our passionate shared heart right here, right?

Dan Grider: 00:30:57

So I created a Juhari window in the book Starfish Movement.

Dan Grider: 00:31:00

And the Juhari window is, you know, so you've got directional leadership going vertically.

Dan Grider: 00:31:06

and you have Discipleship one horizontally.

Dan Grider: 00:31:08

If you have neither one, you, you're in the, in the left hand bottom corner, and that's in the Jahari one, if you can visually, we call that a tombstone church.

Dan Grider: 00:31:17

Now I'm

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:31:18

going to say, like, for those watching, like, this is it in the book.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:31:21

Let me see if I can get close enough to that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:31:22

Exactly.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:31:23

Yeah, I can pause

Dan Grider: 00:31:24

that, take a little look.

Dan Grider: 00:31:25

See, see the very bottom, the art, the rest and tombstone, the the rip, the tombstone there.

Dan Grider: 00:31:30

That's a non directional, non disciple leader.

Dan Grider: 00:31:33

And because of that, that person, we know what that is.

Dan Grider: 00:31:37

That's the American church that's dying.

Dan Grider: 00:31:40

But then if you go north, if you go up and you follow the directional path, but not the discipling path, you get what we call a directional leader.

Dan Grider: 00:31:46

And, and you and I both worked with one directional leader that we share in common.

Dan Grider: 00:31:50

And that person could be the CEO of a, of a corporation.

Dan Grider: 00:31:54

That person is a great leader, right?

Dan Grider: 00:31:57

He was a directional leader, and he didn't have any discipling, really reproducing multiplication.

Dan Grider: 00:32:02

Now, he would say he had discipleship, and this is one of the things, we tend to talk about the term disciple making is what Jesus called us to do, and there's something that the American church does that is an institutional approach.

Dan Grider: 00:32:14

And he was doing those institutional things.

Dan Grider: 00:32:17

He was doing small groups, either they were having, you know, sanctification process, people were tithing, they were serving, and a lot of times we call that discipleship.

Dan Grider: 00:32:25

He was doing that, but he really wasn't multiplying and reproducing disciples.

Dan Grider: 00:32:29

They wanted that, that, that hard working person, but they, but that's what the directional leader does, and we call that the anthill.

Dan Grider: 00:32:37

So when I move from the west coast to the east coast, there are these things called fire ants.

Dan Grider: 00:32:42

I move to the To the East Coast, coastal Carolina.

Dan Grider: 00:32:45

And, uh, they'll, when they, they land on you, they bite you.

Dan Grider: 00:32:48

They, your appendage falls up that see that?

Dan Grider: 00:32:50

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:32:50

They anhill and, and the anthill, uh, uh, uh, queen Ant will produce 50,000 drone s every month.

Dan Grider: 00:32:58

And if you put your foot through that anthill, they'll immediately go back to rebuild it.

Dan Grider: 00:33:02

And so, I, I, I, I, I chased all the, the, the, the fire ants outta my yard.

Dan Grider: 00:33:08

And I looked at these anthills when they were abandoned and they consisted of the bodies of dead ants.

Dan Grider: 00:33:13

And the direction of leader, what they do is they say to ants, go out there and get as many other answers as you can.

Dan Grider: 00:33:21

We're going to make as many answers as we can and get, and get fake ants, get the sand molecules.

Dan Grider: 00:33:26

But then how many people have died in the anthill of the American church given their whole life and their energy?

Dan Grider: 00:33:31

I love this, this quote that Gordon Gekko says in the movie, uh, Wall Street.

Dan Grider: 00:33:35

He says, people get so thirsty, they drink the sand.

Dan Grider: 00:33:40

Those people are, they're trying so hard, they have the best intentions.

Dan Grider: 00:33:44

They want to serve Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:33:45

They want their lives to count.

Dan Grider: 00:33:46

But in those, those anthropo churches, it's like, well, how do I serve Jesus?

Dan Grider: 00:33:51

Volunteer, how do I serve Jesus?

Dan Grider: 00:33:53

Tithe.

Dan Grider: 00:33:53

How do I serve Jesus?

Dan Grider: 00:33:54

Go on a missions trip.

Dan Grider: 00:33:55

How do I serve Jesus?

Dan Grider: 00:33:56

Share your friends.

Dan Grider: 00:33:57

Do I say tithe?

Dan Grider: 00:33:58

Make sure you tithe.

Dan Grider: 00:33:59

And, and so what happens is, you know, but they, they, they're trying their best and they're, they're committed and they're passionate about it, but there's almost no reproduction happening.

Dan Grider: 00:34:09

So then you look at the other part of the journey, Wenda, people leave oftentimes that directional church and they say, we're going to do microchurches, we're going to do, Missional Communities.

Dan Grider: 00:34:16

We want to, we want to do something more meaningful.

Dan Grider: 00:34:19

And they go over to what we call the house church.

Dan Grider: 00:34:21

And that's discipling without any directional leadership.

Dan Grider: 00:34:25

And the average house church lasts two years or less.

Dan Grider: 00:34:28

And what happens is, they're usually people who have left the anthill at the top left, and they come over down there.

Dan Grider: 00:34:34

And Jesus tells a parable of the soils.

Dan Grider: 00:34:36

Three of the soils produce zero, zero, zero.

Dan Grider: 00:34:40

But one of the souls produced 30, 60, 100 fold.

Dan Grider: 00:34:44

That's at the very upper, that's what we called the starfish leader.

Dan Grider: 00:34:48

That's when you take directional leadership and disciple leadership and you merge them together.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:34:52

Give me a real practical, uh, sort of working.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:34:56

a little sort of peek into directional leaders, uh, like you said, that's not a bad thing, but, but we need both, and they need to be directional and discipling, but give me, give me a peek into what are some of the common activities that a directional leader of a church is giving their time to?

Dan Grider: 00:35:14

Uh, Sunday services, uh, staffing, uh, building, buildings, I mean, Life

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:35:21

Crew buildings, the next campus.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:35:24

The next camp, right?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:35:25

Better

Dan Grider: 00:35:25

life.

Dan Grider: 00:35:25

We've said the last 10, in the last 10 years, our American churches have, have raised three quarters of a trillion dollars for buildings only to shrink by 40%.

Dan Grider: 00:35:39

So when directional leaders don't know what to do, they build a building.

Dan Grider: 00:35:41

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:35:42

They, they, they add a campus and it's, it's not because they need a campus.

Dan Grider: 00:35:46

It's a, it's oftentimes a desperate attempt to try and, um, grow.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:35:54

If we build it, it will come.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:35:55

Okay, so, fair enough.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:35:57

Now, maybe this goes without saying, a peek into a leader who's both directional, so I do want to see things move and grow, but he's a discipling leader.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:36:06

What's that leader focused on?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:36:08

What are some of the activities and things that that leader's concerned with day to day?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:36:12

I

Dan Grider: 00:36:12

think that would be Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:36:14

And I think that Jesus found apostles.

Dan Grider: 00:36:18

So it would be Peter, James, John, the apostle Paul.

Dan Grider: 00:36:23

Here are directional leaders, clearly.

Dan Grider: 00:36:25

I mean, you saw all the chaos that Peter and the directional leaders created.

Dan Grider: 00:36:29

Directional leaders, clearly.

Dan Grider: 00:36:30

are a handful.

Dan Grider: 00:36:30

They're not easy to lead.

Dan Grider: 00:36:32

They're directional.

Dan Grider: 00:36:33

But Jesus trained them in the methods of how he did spiritual conversations, engaged them with the Holy Spirit, and taught them how to multiply without drawing them into the temple.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:36:44

What's interesting though, what's so interesting, I'm trying to put a few dots together here in our conversation, is that focus on decentralizing everything, and it's go and make versus come and see.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:36:56

covenant versus the new, but the churches that sprung up weren't like, okay, so how do we, how do we reproduce little temple experiences?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:37:04

Right, right.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:37:05

Exactly.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:37:05

At least, at least they weren't for the first 300 years.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:37:08

Then Constantine came along and he says, Hey, we're gonna go ahead and get back to having a temple and a couple of high priests, and they're gonna do all the work again.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:37:15

You know, so we're gonna reproduce that and we'll, we'll go ahead and decentralize that wink, wink, sort of under one ultimate, you know.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:37:22

control.

Dan Grider: 00:37:24

Well, and I talked about this idea is that, you know, the Jesus gave us, you know, this version one approach that was decentralized.

Dan Grider: 00:37:33

You just did a great job.

Dan Grider: 00:37:34

Constantine comes in and tries to centralize it, tries to, tries to, you know, do elephant.

Dan Grider: 00:37:40

He gave us this elephant DNA and we've been struggling ever since Constantine instituted elephant DNA into the church.

Dan Grider: 00:37:48

You and I, like it or not, we still have.

Dan Grider: 00:37:51

Lots of elephant DNA built into us.

Dan Grider: 00:37:53

I mean we've both been West Coast guys in secular environments And the nice thing about the West Coast is they're like the jet stream, they're a little ahead of the jet stream They're, you know, the rest of the country kind of gets it a few years later, but even though we still have this Elephant DNA built into who we are, and so if we can be, and the people on the podcast listening, can be like the Apostle Paul, be missionaries into the culture, knowing we're probably never going to fully change from our elephant DNA, but if we can have the next generations that we keep starting be rabid DNA, then we have been used by the Holy Spirit in a transformative way to really launch the Church of Jesus and to help the American Church I love what Jesus says in Revelation 1 3, the seven letters of the seven churches.

Dan Grider: 00:38:43

He says, wake up the strength in what remains.

Dan Grider: 00:38:45

He talks to two different churches about that.

Dan Grider: 00:38:47

You've got something you're not completely.

Dan Grider: 00:38:49

Say that one more time.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:38:50

You went past it so fast.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:38:52

Say that again.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:38:53

Now Jesus really

Dan Grider: 00:38:54

says to these churches that, that, that Paul had started, that had been second and third generations after Paul worked there in, in, in the Galatian area in that part of Asia, he said, you gotta wake up and strengthen, you have something still.

Dan Grider: 00:39:09

This is, this is a few years after, it just shows you how quickly when the elephant DNA is so prevalent, people do revert right back into that DNA culture.

Dan Grider: 00:39:21

And they did, and they did, and they got back into elephant DNA, and, and so Paul did what he could, he did a great job, and they didn't have a, they didn't have a lot, but they had enough that Jesus has to come and talk to them, and give them a letter that says, you've got, you've got something to work with, wake up and strengthen what remains.

Dan Grider: 00:39:39

So I think that would be Jesus message to the American church, and I think he even said, he says in every one of those churches, I think in all seven churches, he says, you've got to hear what the Spirit's saying right now.

Dan Grider: 00:39:52

to the church.

Dan Grider: 00:39:53

He's speaking to the church.

Dan Grider: 00:39:56

You can hear what he's saying.

Dan Grider: 00:39:58

Apostles and leaders could actually be starting a transformative movement because it's not too late.

Dan Grider: 00:40:08

It's not too far gone, um, we're, we're not where Europe's at.

Dan Grider: 00:40:12

Europe, the, the church in Europe just collapsed so, so severely that it is coming from a pre Christian culture.

Dan Grider: 00:40:20

We still have something left.

Dan Grider: 00:40:24

What if leaders on this podcast, like you and I, heard the Spirit speaking to the church and saying, I really want to Use what I have in the resources and my influence and to find discipleable green shoots or discipleable You know people who we could we could help them connect into this Not to the institutional church But to really become the disciples of Jesus multiplying Jesus and and do disciple making versus more of an institutional approach of just behavior modification but actually to to start multiplying.

Dan Grider: 00:41:01

With this Gen Z generation and some of the millennials, we're seeing good traction with these discipleable young converts.

Dan Grider: 00:41:11

Yes.

Dan Grider: 00:41:11

And they're so hungry and they're so not interested in, in the institutional church.

Dan Grider: 00:41:17

The Gen Z just aren't signing up for, for what we would call church, but they love Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:41:23

That life we did a research and I thought this was fascinating.

Dan Grider: 00:41:27

Uh, this was for 45 and unders, for 45 and unders.

Dan Grider: 00:41:31

Nine out of 10 of 'em, say if you invite them to church, they, they, the conversation's over no interest, but 6.5% almost, you know, almost 7% of them, if you talk to 'em about doing disciple making the way Jesus did, they would be interested in listening to you and hearing you out.

Dan Grider: 00:41:51

Doesn't mean they're gonna do it, but that's so refreshing to go from, you know, 90% who don't wanna even talk to you about going to church.

Dan Grider: 00:41:58

To almost 70 percent that would actually listen and listen to you about Jesus and about the disciples of Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:42:05

That's encouraging to me.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:07

Super encouraging.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:08

You know, we, we experienced that exact articulation, that exact same experience.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:13

Oh, man, 10, 12, 15 years back when we were in and out of the, uh, Eastern Bloc in Europe, like Czech Republic, Slovakia, and all these areas.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:23

They, they, uh, had They were atheists, like, as a culture, and I think the church is like 05 percent or something like that of the culture.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:33

And many of these, uh, friends of ours that we, we spent years building relationships with, literally, they had almost no God concept, Dan.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:41

Like, not uncommon, we'd hear, but like, well, what do you mean by God?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:44

What is that?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:45

Help me out there, you know?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:42:46

But, they, they never rejected us talking about that and our, the importance of our faith and what faith actually was, cause that, that was a whole concept that they What is it, it's and hoping things unseen what's that you guys.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:00

You hear talking men in the sky, what?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:02

They were super into it.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:04

We can we could sit and drink beers with him and talk for days and days, and we would do these camps and spend weeks talking, and as long as we weren't trying to force something on them, Well, unless you believe this, you know, you're going to burn in hell forever.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:16

As long as we treated them with respect and like, family They never grew tired of talking about it, and the good news is good news.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:23

And so eventually, we'd start to hear things like this, Man, I really hope what you're saying is true.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:29

I would love it to be true.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:31

And you're like, oh man, God's got them, you know, so I think, I think because we're now far enough away from the, like you said, memory, church memory, Jesus memory, you know, religious memory, Christian, you know, all that stuff.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:47

We're now far enough away from it, that generation now is kind of like, hey, I'm looking so hard for where morality, I will have any, do we need any?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:55

What is faith all about?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:43:57

I remember my grandmother maybe talking.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:44:00

I'll listen, you know, as long as there's respect and relationship of trust being built, you know?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:44:05

Yes.

Dan Grider: 00:44:06

People aren't going to make the credibility leap to follow Jesus.

Dan Grider: 00:44:09

Like, you're sitting there in the, in the European block there, uh, or culture there, and you were, you'd been transformed by the Holy Spirit, and you'd learned to talk about it, and just talk about Jesus, because you're very Jesus fluent, gospel fluent, and you learned how to do that.

Dan Grider: 00:44:25

and they were drawn to the communities and the kind of life that you had.

Dan Grider: 00:44:29

It was just, which, that shows the three things that the New Testament church had, and, and those are the three things that, that will, the church will always be built primarily on those three things.

Dan Grider: 00:44:38

If we, if we could take shortcuts in the, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, you know, early 2000s, but those days are gone.

Dan Grider: 00:44:46

Our shortcuts, we can't find the shortcut path.

Dan Grider: 00:44:49

I don't

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:44:49

know though, Dan, I'm going to push back on that again.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:44:51

I think the shortcuts back then were to an easy beliefism, a conversional prayer that was completely man centered, it was about me, and me feeling less guilty, and me, I guess, not burning in hell forever, because who wants that, you know?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:06

Right.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:07

Right.

Dan Grider: 00:45:07

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:45:07

Yeah.

Dan Grider: 00:45:07

I mean, when you look at Jesus None of the things that the American church called and used as metrics were what Jesus used as metrics.

Dan Grider: 00:45:16

I mean, he didn't lead anyone in a sinner's prayer.

Dan Grider: 00:45:19

He himself didn't have a record of anyone being baptized by him.

Dan Grider: 00:45:22

I mean, his disciple obviously did that.

Dan Grider: 00:45:25

And I mean, so the things that we think you have to have, Jesus didn't do them.

Dan Grider: 00:45:30

But the things that Jesus did, we don't do.

Dan Grider: 00:45:33

And I think that's the stark reality.

Dan Grider: 00:45:35

That's, that's the telling piece right there that we've got to pay attention to.

Dan Grider: 00:45:40

Crazy, crazy.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:41

Well, I, and I, I think more and more people are, Dan, and, um, uh, and praise God for your work and your writing.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:48

I mean, you care packaged me up here last week with a mountain of books.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:52

I'm like, man, this guy is busy.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:55

And, uh, and I, I really, I, again, you know, I've been showing a little picture here.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:45:59

I don't, I don't always post, you know, a video of our podcast.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:02

That's not our norm.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:03

Though I think in, you know, coming up here we're going to be doing more of it.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:05

So certainly this episode I plan to put up.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:07

So I've been showing little images and all as we've been going, and I'll put this in the show notes in the show as well, but I really do want to encourage people to check out, uh, your books, but certainly Starfish Movement.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:18

I, I just, I was pouring through it this morning and I couldn't read it fast enough.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:22

I felt like I was just spilling it all over myself.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:25

So I'm going to take a little bit more time here.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:27

in the weeks ahead and I want to encourage others to do the same.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:30

I will have a link for that as well in the show notes for sure.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:33

So, hey Dan, thank you so much.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:35

I could just keep talking to you all day.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:37

The last time we just got together for the heck of it to talk it went for a couple hours I think at least.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:46:42

I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull us off here and just tell you thank you and I look forward to the journey that God has for us ahead.

Dan Grider: 00:46:49

Oh, thank you so much.

Dan Grider: 00:46:51

I say thank you for what you're doing and just what you've written.

Dan Grider: 00:46:54

What you've written has meant so much to me.

Dan Grider: 00:46:56

So, I mean, I just, I, I, small is big.

Dan Grider: 00:46:59

I just love our leaders to, to think through the process.

Dan Grider: 00:47:02

So thank you.

Dan Grider: 00:47:03

And, and by the way, just it's genius, this concept of everyday disciple maker.

Dan Grider: 00:47:07

I think you coined something that, and, and that is so key because, because yeah, every day.

Dan Grider: 00:47:14

Everyday Disciple, because here's the thing, I think that's the sleeping giant of the church.

Dan Grider: 00:47:21

Thank you for trying to awake the Everyday Disciple, because without that, the movement of Jesus is not going to, if it requires.

Dan Grider: 00:47:29

Formerly trans institutional people, the gospel is, is, is not going to progress in, in, in the Western world.

Dan Grider: 00:47:36

It's the Everyday Disciple.

Dan Grider: 00:47:37

Thank you for what you do.

Dan Grider: 00:47:38

We appreciate

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:39

you so much.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:39

Thank you, brother.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:40

What a cool life we get to live, right?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:42

And we desire this for more and more people as they experience the good news of the kingdom.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:47

So thank you.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:49

Talk to you soon, I hope.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:50

All right?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:50

Blessings.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:47:52

I sincerely hope that your wheels are turning and that you've enjoyed Dan's thoughts and analogies for the church as much as I have.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:00

I'll be chewing on this for a while and all these different pictures and handles that he's given us.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:06

Again, I'd like you to really consider checking out his book, Starfish Movement.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:10

I put a link in the show notes for you.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:12

Just head over to everydaydisciple.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:15

com forward slash 471.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:18

That's our website.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:19

That'll take you right to the show notes for this episode.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:21

Everydaydisciple.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:22

com forward slash 471.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:25

I've also put the diagram that Dan mentioned a few times illustrating the directional leader versus the discipleship leader.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:32

It's super cool.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:33

Check that out.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:34

Okay.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:35

And before you go, would you just stop for a second, subscribe to the podcast?

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:39

I'd really appreciate that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:40

That way you won't miss an episode.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:41

We've got so much coming.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:43

You're not going to want to miss that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:44

Other platforms, you just like it or whatever.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:46

You know what you're doing with that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:47

So please do that.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:49

All right, I gotta wrap this up.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:50

We've already gone longer than usual, but Totally worth it.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:48:54

Okay, please join us again next week, and we'll hopefully continue to help make discipleship and mission a whole lot easier for you.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:49:01

It's great doing this together.

Caesar Kalinowski: 00:49:03

I'll talk to you soon.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:49:05

Thanks for joining us today.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:49:07

For more information on this show, and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit EverydayDisciple.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:49:12

com.

Heath Hollensbe: 00:49:13

And remember, you really can live with the spiritual freedom and relational peace that Jesus promised every day.