- Because of that post-christian thing, it's forcing us to become much more nuanced and better at how we explain the gospel within those contexts. - Yeah, I hope so. And I think this is where the stuff from Faith for Exile is that idea of resilient discipleship. - Yes. - Comes in as well, that the resilient disciple is someone who is not just being a church because that's the right thing to do or the good thing to do. - Or even not. - Hiding a church. - Or hiding a church. - Or even it's just a good routine, but you, you go into church as a strong matter of conviction and a deep understanding, this is what I do and even when it's hard. And you have an understanding of yourself in which this makes sense, this is what you're doing. And I think, again, that the West becomes more and more secularized and Christianity is more and more weird and unusual, that helps solidify those who do it because there's no longer any social privilege in being a Christian. It's actually now a social detriment. (upbeat music) - Welcome back everyone to the Shock Observer podcast and it is awesome to have you along with us. And as I always like to say, it's awesome to have a long, whoever my guest is and it's just Tim today, hello. - Just Tim. - Just Tim. - It's what they call me at school. - Just Tim. - Just Tim. - Just Tim. - Just Tim Belake. - No. - Just Tim Belake. - Yeah, walk in the door and anyone important, no. It's just Tim. - It's just Tim. - Where I'm wearing the same. We always look at what we're wearing. We're wearing the same jumper. - We are. - You might not be able to say about our pants with different colors. - Yeah, go on for the classic black and you're gone for the denim blue? - The denim blue. - Can't have a climb. - Can't have a climb. - I don't know. - They're not a Calvin climb. And you are wearing out of that shoes. - Yeah, I am. - I'm wearing on those. - Yeah. I used to be all in on vans, but I use a Adidas running app to track my runs. - Oh, okay. - And-- - So you've been sold. - Well, see, it sucked me into the ecosystem. - You sold out. - Yeah, sold out. Well, it was interesting. I picked out it as out of all the possibilities because of the German background. So, yeah, part of it is just exploring myself and who I am as a German. And so, so I chose out it as, but yeah, we sucked into the ecosystem and potentially you earn points for every run that you do and by doing little challenges and events and so-- - So it's a gamified. - It's a little bit gamified, but also if you buy out of us product, you get points as well. Anyway, if you get to a certain level of the points, you get the app for free. And so, it's really just an excuse to-- - Keep it free, yeah. - Yeah, are you close? - Oh, yeah, no, I've done it for a number of years now. So, I constantly get enough just to click over, but it does mean that now when I need to buy exercise gear or shoes, even casual shoes, my first protocol is, well, if I go through Adidas, partly I've got points that get me percentage off. And the other one is the more you purchase, the more points you get, and therefore, you get the apps for free as well. So-- - It's a clever idea though. - Yeah, I mean, it all works out pretty well. So, yeah, I've been advertised by Adidas, but I'm quite enjoying the ecosystem that I'm currently in. - Have you heard the Adidas and Fumr story? - You have mentioned it a little bit. I tried to find a English version of it, like once in a half, it'd have been written up in a book. - Maybe I'm wrong. - No, no, as in like, there's stuff on it, but it's in German. So, there's a lot of things, as I try and explore, particularities of German history, that the best stuff that's written is in German, obviously, by Germans. And so, yes, sometimes it's difficult to find a English, you know, take on that sale. - Yes, but I think the story I'm referring to is that Adidas was started by Addie Dassler. He was actually out of Dassler. - Right. - But now Addie-- - Good to change it. - Yeah, good idea to change it. But then he started with his brother, but then they had a falling out, so his brother went and started Fumr. - Yeah. - That's really interesting. There's also the story of the 1954 World Cup. - Right. - Hagenine's right. Is it 1954? Yes, I think so. Where West Germany were playing, they were, they called them mighty Magyars. They reckon that's one of the most famous international football teams from Hungary. They had some of the best players in the world, and they kinda changed the face of football going forwards, but they never won anything. - Yeah, okay. - And so they actually, early a couple of years before that World Cup final, they beat England 6-3 at Wembley. - Okay. - And there was a big shift in football because England considered themselves the best in the world, partly 'cause they invented the game and there was a certain way they played. But what they call there is also a Danubian way, which is Austria was a really famous team in the '30s, and then Hungary in the '50s. - Thank you. - And there was a culture around that area of Austria-Hungary, Austria-Hungarian Empire, of a thing of coffee houses, where everyone would go to coffee houses and have a coffee and discuss football. - Yes. - So they think that was a big part of how it changed the game, of how they actually approached the game. It was much more passing football and tactical concepts that came from that time where England was very much like just booted as far as you can, and run really hard, and that'll be it. - Okay, yeah. - So, how do we get onto that? - I don't remember. - 1954 World Cup. - Yes. - Is that West Germany won that, and it was meant to be won by, I might get the beginning this wrong. It could be the 1970, anyway, it's West Germany, versus either the Dutch in 1974, or 1954 against the Hungarians. I've gotta get that right. - But the story is that the Adidas, that's like, came in and said, "Hey, you should try these boots at half time." - Yeah, right. - Because they were losing, and then they-- - Half time. - And went on to win the game, so that's the story. But there's also other things coming out that they probably use PEDs of some kind, like amphetamines of some kind. - Yeah, sure. - Half time to change the game. - But East Germans are very good at that. - East Germans, yes. But East Germany never really did that well at football, or never really-- - Right, but the Olympics, they were very good at using sports and housing drugs. - Yes, definitely, so. I think there's probably, it's even we talked about it a while ago about the Tour de France, and that exposé on British cycling. - Yes. - I think there is more PED use going on in sports than we know of. - Oh, yeah, I'm sure, yeah, yeah. - And even in sports that we don't even seemingly don't have as much of a history in it, I think that's what seems to be coming out. - Yes. - Rumors. - Okay. It's happening, so thanks for wearing our shoes. - No, that's right. - And thanks to the Adidas app. - Thank you, yeah, thank you Adidas. Yep, who still sponsor the German football team? - I definitely do. I don't think they've ever had anyone else make the jersey, the company, yeah. - Yeah, I've been trying to follow a little bit of German football, and I've worked out which one is my team. - Oh, who is your team? - So my family come originally from the southwest down in the Black Forest area, and so my son and I have worked out, they're the closest team that we would affiliate with is Freiburg. - Okay. - So SC Freiburg. - SC Freiburg, yes. So we've been trying to follow SC Freiburg, and I can't remember how they're going at the moment. They had a really good win the first round, and they did not do as well the second round. They played-- - Seasons only started though, isn't it? - They have, yeah, it was second game against Bayon that they-- - That's a tough matchup. - Well, yeah, Bayon is the reigning champ. Well, not actually though, they did not win for the first time last year. But they-- - They play at the start Europa Park? - That is correct, yeah. That's a relatively new park that they got built. There is an interesting documentary on Freiburg on YouTube that I watched that had talked about the culture because down in the southwest, they're much more influenced by Switzerland. Then they are by the rest of Germany. So it actually is not a strong football area of Germany, and so they didn't take their football as seriously as other areas of Germany. But one of the things I really liked about them was that they did have this little football club, but they had an approach which was about just let's just enjoy doing football together. And what has developed over a number of years is a strong loyalty within that club. So they often retain coaches, managers, players even for long periods of time. And they also do not-- They had one coach who took them in and out of the Bundesliga a couple of times. So the first time they went up into the Bundesliga and then they, I can't remember how they were there for but then they got relegated back down again. And in a lot of European and English football, that would have been your marching orders for the manager and the coach because I brought-- that's it, you're out. But their approach because of their quite relaxed attitude towards the game was, yeah, that's fun. Keep on going, let's see how we go next to you. And so they kept their manager, kept their coach and he then brought them back up and he was very successful and champion. But I really liked there was this attitude in the whole town and around this team of just being quite relaxed. One of the original managers, he's quoted there saying, don't ever strive to get to the Bundesliga, like we don't want that. We just want to be really good and low-key here. And so there was this real kind of competitive but not taking themselves too seriously that I really liked. It was quite a relaxed feel. So, yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, I really resonate with the culture here of Freiburg, which is really interesting. - Well, that's one of-- It's interesting, it's one of my favorite. I'm just watching some of the highlights here of Bayern's 2-0 win over Freiburg. Harry Kane, the English striker scoring of penalty, of course. The one of my favorite things about football clubs I've been around for a long time is the standing they have in the community and what they mean to the community. And I like it that you are now researching an area like your family's from there. Like you have this connection to the past and you can almost live that out through the football team. And that's what I really love. So I've said before, I'm a Liverpool supporter on this podcast and they're like, I don't think you could be much further away from a football club than somewhere in England. Oh, there's Freiburg missing a penalty. That's a bit unfortunate in the 96 minute. But there is a-- I have a special connection with that club. Like when they won the title recently, I literally cried. Because it was like I've supported this team for so long and we've been so close a number of times. - What was the connection? What was the original connection with-- - Well, that's interesting. When you're younger, you obviously kind of pick a team some time. Something just happens. And I was looking for a team-- I remember I was probably about 14, I think. And I was looking for a team trying to decide, like I need a supporter of Premier League team. That's really what it was coming to. And the Premier League is so popular in Australia and all around the world. And I think I was just like, yeah, I need a supporter team properly. And it's around that time, we've talked even last week about that kind of self-determination aspect of how you get it to become a teenager and all that. And it was just like, I like this team. They won the FA Cup against Arsenal with two goals from Michael Owen, I think. And then I'm like, that's the team I'm supporting. It was the year where they called, they won a treble. So they won the UEFA Cup, the FA Cup. And I think at the time it was called the Carling Club, which is now the broad name would be at League Cup. Because there's actually two cups in England, at the top level. And from there on, and then I started reading about it, and how there was a big thing with Liverpool, they were very much against like Thatcherism because it was a shipping town. So very, very, what a good working class. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They built a lot of ships, for example, for World War II and any other times. And they had this thing where they were near like, Liverpool were the most successful team in the late '70s, early '80s. Kind of how people see matches united now, in the '90s. And the other thing they had was a lot of success in Europe. So Liverpool, as this seemingly downtrodden, they felt like they'd been left behind by Thatcherism. They had similar things to Usain with Freiburg, that they had a guy called Bill Shankly, Scottish manager, came and took over the club in the late, in no, sorry, mid '60s. And turned them into this powerhouse of just winning lots of titles. Right. And but also took along. There's this thing that Liverpool have is like, the crowd is better than any other places. And they have a stand which is at one end of the field, we call it the cop, where it's just, there's no staggered, it's just from one end to the back. And they have this, there's a footage, if you look back in the '60s, of this teeming mass of people moving all around, like, 'cause it's all standing, singing Beatles songs. - Yeah, right. - Are they waiting for the match to start? And that kind of thing is carried on that the crowd has more of an effect at Anfield, which is their home stadium, than any other stadiums against opposition, or to bring the home side along to get the result they wanted and things like that. So all of that wrapped up. And then there's also one final thing is that they've also experienced two stadium tragedies, one of them being Hillsborough, which is at Sheffield Wednesday Stadium, but it was for an FA Cup tie, but it wasn't against Sheffield Wednesday, I actually forget who they were playing. 96 people died as a result of crushes, and there was a big thing that it was a cover-up, it was under a Thatcher government. So I should say Thatcher was not really in the '70s, but that kind of underlying class war was always there. So then, yes, so a lot of things that came out of Hillsborough were that they covered up what had actually happened, or a grand inquest, which I think they call them in England, probably about five or six years ago, or maybe a bit longer, 10 years ago, said that that was all wrong, like the sun. So Liverpool supporters have a huge thing of not paying any attention to the sun, the newspaper, because it published stories, I should say, about Liverpool supporters acting in a way that was like, oh, it was all their fault. So this whole thing of like, oh, you're always the victims, this is an underlying thing for other football fans, oh, you're playing the victim. So there's that, and there's also the High School tragedy, which is 1985 European Cup in Belgium, where there was a bit of fighting between fans, or tension between fans, and they had this thing back in the '80s, and '70s and '80s, a Halliganism was a thing that was playing out on the terraces of football stadiums, where they were opposing fans would basically have out each other, just fight. And you probably would have seen some movies about that, but they had this thing with club charging, where they'd just go, right, we're just gonna get 'em, and they'd charge across the stands to take on the other fans. And they did that to the Juventus fans, and the Juventus fans tried to escape, and climbed a wall that collapsed. So a number of fans died during that game as well. So I don't know why that didn't make me want to be a supporter, but I like, oh, there's a story here. - There's a history. - There's a history. - Historical, yeah, real story. And so I've been to Anfield, which has been, which is one of the best experiences of my life. - Yeah, cool. - Back in 2005, and talking to Joe, one of our other passes he went there earlier this year, and just to share that with him was just fantastic. Anyway, that's just my link with football. - If you make me think, you're saying that Freiburg have an attitude of like, well, we're just gonna exist. We're gonna be low-key and be here for a long time. And German football has a bit of a thing that the fans really dominate, because fans, German clubs must be owned, have a 50 plus one rule. - Yeah, so the fan went out. - Or 51% of the club must be owned by the fans, or at least the decision-making is made by the fans. And there's a club called St. Pauli. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but their crest is a skull and bones. - Oh, right now. - However, they're kind of like this kind of fringe on the edge club. - Sure, yeah, yeah. - But they're very socially justice minded as well. An Australian player, Jackson Irvine, actually plays for them. But the thing that I really like about St. Pauli is they have a sausage train, which goes along the grandstand and delivers sausage as the fans. And we'll put a link in the show notes. There's actual videos of it. - Yeah, okay, all right, there came to that. You kicked me off on a big long train. - Yeah, big long train. - It's such a shame. - It's such a shame. - I've thought it's awesome. - Yeah, yeah, that was good. Yeah, I found out the 50+1 rules were really interesting. And it came out in particularly, they talked about, well, I'm not quite sure. Again, I'm not very deep in German football yet, but-- - You're getting there, it's good. - Oh, I mean, I have a team. That's where it starts. - Yeah, but one of the videos I watched was they played, it was some sort of finals match, I don't know, which competition against lip-seek. And I think it's not lip-seek, yeah. - Lip-seek? - I'd be like-seek. - Yes. - Who owned by Red Bull. - Okay, and the controversy then came out with the 50+1 rule. - Yes. - Because they technically owned by 50+1. But the members at the time of this video was a couple of years old. There were 10 members, all of whom were on the board. And that was it. And you cannot get a membership to lip-seek. And so there's this whole kind of corporate, oh yeah, we're owned by 50+1% of the members. That has all happened to be board members and is impossible for any member of the public to become a member. And so-- - I think they deliberately did that obviously. - Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. So there's this whole thing in German football about hating be a lip-seek. - Yes, they are the most hated team. - Yeah, because it goes against the whole ethos. - Yeah. - Yeah, you were owned by the members who are owned by the people, the populace, have a huge say in what we do. - And the interesting thing about the Buddha's like a two is that they also were one of the latest leagues. Like, there's the Big Five European League, so you got England, Spain, France, Germany. So I miss one, England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy. - Yes. - They're the Big Five. But they were the latest out of those five to really, like, so there's the kind of story of German unification which was in the 1850s or '60s, I think, around that time. But then the league didn't unify until the 1950s or '60s. - Oh, right, okay. - So there's part of that too that kind of plays into that. And also, it'd be to do with the Berlin Wall and East Germany, West Germany, too. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - But even the West German league didn't unify for a very long time. So I think that plays a part is that we made these efforts to unify, and we're all, this fans, and then RB and Leipzig says, "Oh, we're gonna trick you." - Yes. - And the other thing is that RB, you think it stands for Red Bull, but it stands for something else. - Yeah, yeah, which is deceptive. And the crust is these kind of balls that are kind of Red Bull balls, but they happen to be Red Bull's. - Yes, so that's a whole big corporate takeover. - Well, that's another thing, and you talk about corporate takeovers. Another thing in football now is multi-club ownership. - Right. - Red Bull owned RB Salzburg as well. - Yes. - They also own the New York Red Bulls in America, but Manchester City also have multiple clubs that they own in, I think they own Gerona in Spain. I have to check that, they own Yokohama Merit, no. What are they called? I forgot the name, but this is a new thing now, is that multi-club ownership is becoming a thing and consolidating wealth with certain clubs. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I read an interesting article about that. So if you've heard about Thomas Piketty, who's, he've read a book about capitalism. - Okay. - But Jonathan Wilson, who's one of my favorite football writers, where I read about all that stuff about the Nanubian clubs or Danubian countries in terms of football, wrote an article about, "Can Thomas Piketty save football?" And Piketty talks about how capitalism has gone too far with certain things, and he talks about applying that to football, how the wealth just continues to consolidate and has for the last 20 years behind the bigger European clubs. - Yeah, yeah. - But that, I'll link that article in the show notes, but we can, we can move on talking about, I could do the whole podcast on football. - That's clearly. (laughing) - But you've been reading some books. - I have been, yes. - And we thought we might riff off some of these, a couple of books that we've been looking at, and you had a book club, which is so cool. I wish I could have been a book club. - Yeah, this is a book club that came out of the conference I went to in Chicago. - Ah, yes. - So it's mostly, it's all Americans, except for me. So they very kindly do it late in their afternoon. - We get the afternoon. - So that I can get, I didn't know my morning, which is lovely. And it's, yeah, so they hold a lot of children's ministry people, whether in college level lecturing or being judges, doing children's ministry. And so we're just reading a book together, called. Oh, it's on screen if you're watching on YouTube. - Yeah. - Or can I read it? - Please. - Children's ministry and the spiritual child. - That's right. So this is-- - You think for a children's minister to be looking at us. - Really a children's ministry? I know, so strange. So the conference I went to, every year, they take some of the presentations, they are and turn them into chapters. So this is the book from the previous conference. - Wow. - It ran in 2022, which was online, because it was the weird COVID. - Oh, yes, of course. - And so it was an online conference that year. So, yes, so this is, we're just going through these chapters slowly, we just meet once every three weeks, just doing it slowly, running through the chapters. It's really nice, because I often would run for clubs or meetings, and when you're in ministry, you end up, you do a lot of the leading, and it's rare to be the one just receiving. And so, yeah, you were organizing the service, or you're running the menu, or you're preaching, or you're leading the children's ministry. And certainly in my role at YouthWorks, was running a lot of these types of gatherings together, or networking events, or book clubs, and those kinds of things. And so this is one that I have no, I'm not running, I just get to turn up, and just get to read the book, and be part of the conversation. So it's something really lovely about that, which I'm really enjoying. - Yeah, lovely. Like, it's just nice to be able to have someone to organize, you would just say, just turn up. - Yeah, it's nice to do something that I'm not fully organizing, 'cause that's rare in the amounts of things that I do, 'cause I'm the ass, the role, the issue that I mean, so. - So the highlights of, what is it, children's ministry in the-- - Yeah, so I mean, it's a mixed bag of different chapters. Like, they're all radically different to each other, 'cause they were all different presentations. So today we were reading together, kids today just can't, dot dot dot. And it's all about changing our posture and practices to welcome all children. So it's largely about child management, like group management, kind of things. Like, what are the behaviors that you find in children that are disruptive? - Disruptive, yeah. Like, what are the challenging behaviors, and how do you best approach and deal with those, and the child in your midst? And so they'd talk about the, what's the posture that we can have, and how do we actually prepare ourselves for the children that will come? How do we operate in the room, and the space, and the teaching in our language, and there's all sorts of really helpful things there. - But is that book taking, rather than a, like an educational pedagogical approach, it's more of a Christian or biblical approach? - Well, they, I mean, they're all Christians who are writing it. - Right. - From a variety of different traditions. So there'd be a whole lot of assumptions built in here. Some are obvious, and some are less obvious. There's songs I'm probably missing along the way. There, every now and then there's little moments that realise, oh, yeah, that's right. This person is outside of my tradition. They might just use language that is a little bit different to what I would use, and trying to work out. Okay, is that because we have a different understanding of something going on, or are you just using language that's common in your culture, or your tradition that, not for me? - Yeah. - So, you know, one of them was just all behaviours communicate. It's our responsibility to seek to understand. This requires a posture of holy curiosity, where we welcome children with challenging behaviour. And I just sort of circled holy curiosity and was like, what does that mean? - Okay. - It's not a language that I would use, just because you put holy in front of a word, doesn't automatically make it Christian. I was like, okay, like, what are all the assumptions built into that word? - Yeah, I think just for the authors of this chapter, there's just, it's probably just something that really naturally flows from their tradition. But it's not natural for my tradition to talk about a holy curiosity. And so I just, yeah, I'd love them to unpack that. So there's the kind of things we get to chat about. So this was a really helpful chapter. We talked about a number of different aspects. One of the things I really liked was, there's a definition that they pull in from another textbook. What do we mean by challenging behaviour? And the challenging behaviour they scribe, patterns of behaviour that do three things. Firstly, interferes with a child's cognitive, social or emotional development. And probably if we're thinking about spirituality, put spiritual development in there. So interferes with their development. Number two is harmful to that child, other children or adults. And number three puts a child at higher risk for latter social problems or failure. So it's good to sort of give that bit of a definition of challenging behaviour. And then just under that, they talk about, this is one of my favourite sentences. Our goal is not to simply control children's behaviour, but to join God in calling them into community with God and God's people. - Yeah, so I like that. - Yeah. So I really like when I can identify or when they explicitly state the why behind something. 'Cause I think that's what my mind actually draws towards is, okay, so why are we doing this? Let's focus down on, what's our purpose here? And so therefore that can help guide all the things that we do, don't do, react, et cetera. - Yeah, definitely. - And so I thought that as a why statement is really, really helpful. We're not about controlling children's behaviour, but we're joining God in calling them into community with God and God's people. And so as we hold that together with these definition of a challenging behaviour, interfering with development, harmful to them, themselves or others, or put them at risk for latter social problems or failures, that then helps us to think about, okay, so, okay, now I've got this child in front of me who is calling out or being disruptive or is making a lot of noise or being cheeky or rude or whatever the behaviour is that's in front of me, how do I now think about and articulate the best way to manage this space, whether it be an SRE classroom or a kids ministry room or trying to explain a game or what all those kinds of different things that happen, how do we do that? Well, keeping those things in mind. So it was part of our conversation this morning. - Yeah, okay, 'cause like controlling behaviour would be the easy option, wouldn't it? - Well, sometimes. - Sometimes. But I think if I could just get that behaviour under control, then I can do what I wanna do if I'm teaching or something like that. That's why I'm trying to think is that you would, it would be more prudent, as you're saying, to know the why, because then it changes, in this instance, it changes your behaviour as a leader or a teacher in that scenario. - Yeah, absolutely. - I even had a discussion with my son the other day who's telling me that he likes an approach of one teacher because he feels like he'll be listened to rather than another teacher who says, "No, I don't wanna hear it, just get out of where you are or do it like hearing reasoning." And it sometimes feels like the why might be missing there or the why might be not the best approach. So it makes sense that when I think about when I coach football under eight, nine, 10 boys, 10-year-old boys, there's a time pressure because if you're training and they're mucking around, you're like, "Hey, if we don't have a good training session, then we obviously won't enjoy the game." And maybe sometimes the why is I a white, but then I need to take the time to go, "Why are they behaving, did they have a bad day? Did there something happen at school? Did they get here late so they're upset about that? Or did they not get ready in time?" Like there's all those underlying factors that I wonder if maybe that if we just wanna control behavior, it's because we feel under pressure to get done the thing that we actually wanna achieve. - Yeah, and so we talk about in education, particularly the difference between teaching and learning, which kind of feeds into this as well. And so if my goal is teaching, then all of that feeds back into this idea that, "Okay, I create the lesson. I've got a certain amount that I wanna communicate. I've got this content that I need to deliver." And success at the end of a teaching time is I have spoken all of the content that I intended to communicate. You flip that to say, "No, what's the goal? The goal is learning. If the goal is learning, then actually I don't set the pace. The student sets the pace." And so I've got stuff that I've prepared. I've got stuff that I wanna communicate, but I'm constantly in this conversation with the young people that I'm leading, or adults at our education, but I'm in a conversation with them where I'm constantly assessing, are they hearing what I'm saying? And so I want them to be, the goal is to learn the content, which might mean that I only just stretch the content that I thought would be one week and over two weeks, or we got through it in 10 minutes instead of 30, and I go, "Oh, that's really all we've got all this extra time now." But it's child-led, so it's the student-led kind of idea, because I can communicate all everything that I've prepared and speak that all out, and I can walk out the door, and the kids go, "I've got no idea what he just said." (laughing) He talked at us, or we did activities, but I've got no idea why we did any of that. And I'm sure you have this conversation with your kids. I have this conversation with my kids all the time. So what did you do in school today? Talk about this in geography. Okay, what did you learn about that? I don't know. I sat there for the whole time, and I genuinely have no idea what we're talking about. My concepts just went completely over my head. So, yeah, obviously with a class, it's hard, but for Zali at that point, she did not learn. So the class was not successful for her, regardless of how much content was communicated. Now, when you got more than two, people were in a classroom, particularly when you got 25 or 30, then obviously it's really hard to meet everyone's individual needs any one time, so that's complicated. But it does help us to think through what we're doing. And so when it comes to children's ministry, and we're thinking, okay, no, the biggest aim here is their spiritual development. It's their coming to know Jesus, Lord and Savior, and learning to grow in their knowledge, love and obedience to Him. Then if that's the goal, then I'm gonna be shaping obviously the content. And we talked probably ago about me rethinking about curriculum and those kinds of things, what I want to help communicate over time to them. But this chapter is all about particularly sort of a group management space. So the kid who's disruptive, or the kid that's just sitting there and goes on board, or whatever it is that how do you address that child? My biggest aim for you is your growth in the knowledge, love and obedience to King Jesus. Therefore, how am I gonna behave now? How am I gonna act? How am I going to communicate, welcome all of these kinds of things and help you and help others to do that? And that's my driving aim, not to just get through the PowerPoint that I prepared to get through the content. - Yeah, and does that open up a lot more opportunity for the relational aspect as well? - I mean, it will, it will have to, yes. Which is also why, you know, I know for our church, we talk about long-term low-key relational discipleship. And that's really key. And that has a big impact on size as well. And this is one of the things I talked about a couple of weeks ago is, I'm trying to think for our bigger children's ministries. And by bigger, I mean, there's 25 kids in the room. Yeah, we're not a large, but none of our children's ministry are very large. But even if 25 in the room, if it's just me up the front talking at 25, that's one style, but we don't get to do that relational discipleship with a one person talking at 25. And so what I'm trying to think through is, "Okay, how do I break that down into even smaller groups?" And so small groups is one of the things I really want to explore. And thinking about, okay, how do we do a little bit of content delivery, but then lots of small group time. And that way, those 25, if I split those between, say, four liters, we've now got six kids for a leader. So now we can break that down even further and have smaller conversations where it's just six kids and a leader doing the bit of application and a bit of prayer time, those kinds of things as they think about it. So the relationship is really, really key then because you can actually build that you can listen more. It's hard to take 25 kids' needs into account. It's easier to do six. It will be even easier to do three and it's even easier to do one, except for the fact that you need more liters. So leader recruitment then becomes the Achilles heel of that model. So yeah, that's gonna be it. Another thing is just to think if you're like, okay, how do we actually raise a number of liters who can have these kind of discipleship relationships, their kids? - The last question I thought I'd have on these though is as a seasoned tourist buster. - What way do you approach teaching and learning with holy curiosity? (laughing) - Yeah, I think one of the things I really wanna be thinking about is, I mean, yeah, so many of the principles of our church are built around this, the relational community aspect. And so I wanna be able to try and hold intention. The, there is right content to communicate and there is good community that we are building. And we're oscillating between those two in terms of how do you best grow both of those simultaneously at the same time? I had a conversation with another friend yesterday and she is a consultant for a method of discrimination over in America. And we were talking about a whole lot of things. She had said something at this last conference in Chicago about third place and didn't really know too much about it but she was exploring it and had, she worked at Starbucks and Starbucks had this whole big - They used third place, yeah. - They want their coffee shops to be third places. And so she came out of that and she started, so she mentioned this conference, I've got this idea, I'm thinking about what does it look like. So after the conference, I emailed her the chapter that I've written on this and I said, "Oh, actually, I grew up in this because Stuart Croshaw, "this was his big theory, was grassroot movement theory "and third place sociology and what would it look like "for a church to be a third place?" And we're trying to do the same thing, we're trying to do this children's ministry as a third place, what does that look like? So we had this year-old on conversation yesterday and I was explaining, my contact she was explaining, her contact and we were talking about how, that's our revival, one of the things is we have this teaching time and content moment, where we're reading the Bible, praying together, seeing songs, so we remember verses, we're doing all of those kinds of things, but the chill time is really key as well. So I was trying to explain chill time to her and she thought, "Oh, this is really fascinating, "what was that look like?" And I was trying to explain it. And so, and I think that is, with the, to answer your question, I can't remember what it was, the curiosity. This is the, I'm looking out in both of those times, I'm trying to grow the kids to know and love Jesus in community and it's having both of those together. And that's why I'm really curious about the way that kids develop in community. Because I think for a lot of us who are more evangelical and reformed that we're very good at content delivery and we're not as strong on the relational community building. And so that's one of the things I'm really curious of. And it's what people wouldn't know who noticed who come to our church, sometimes from other churches, or have not been in the church for a while, but they're coming back and they say, "Oh, your church is really different, what is it?" Like I'm trying to put my finger on what's different about the way you do church. 'Cause you can't do it, if you just came for our gathering service time, it's pretty much identical to most Anglican churches, all throughout Sydney, you can go to six other churches when the stones start up our church and get a very similar service. But they notice, but something feels different. What is it, I can't put my finger on it. They say, "Well, it's the before and after time. "It's the fact that there's a meal connected with everything. "It's these relaxed relational discipleship." Is that's what you're noticing. So you try and help them give them language to it. You're like, "Oh, that's what it is. "That's really attractive, I really like that." And that's what I notice about the children is they really like church, they really want to be here. And that's great because you've got this emotional, affective relation connection to the church. And in that church is where they are loved by disciples of Jesus. And those disciples of Jesus, they're helping them to see and understand Jesus and to grow in their knowledge, love and obedience to him. And so, building the social aspect, along with the content aspect together, that's where I think the magic happens. So that they're learning about Jesus from a community that loves them and that they belong to. And so, that's the bit that I'm always curious about. So, I'm curious about, do they want to be a church? Why do they want to be a church? What are they appreciating about church? And sort of hold those in balance. - I completely agree with you that my children don't like missing church, for example. - That's great, yeah. - And it's because of the relational aspect, that they also get older, just even older children to be part of their relationship. They see them, they want to grow up to be them. There's all that influence too. And something that you and I have been talking about is that, something that I've experienced in the last couple of years is adults come into church because of the children's ministry, but not because it's good for them, but because their children want to keep going to it. Yes, and I think that's an emerging thing that I haven't seen before. I'm just interested to see how that keeps happening and what God's going to do through that. - Yeah, and it's easy to fall into an attractional model when you try and do that. And we talk about it before. - I don't think it is attractional. - No. - The relational part is attractive. - Yes, it's attractive, not attractional. So attractional is, I'm trying to run the funnest thing for a kid during a Sunday morning, Saturday night, Friday night, and I'm hoping that I'm cooler than the park across the road. So that's attractional. It would like a Nerf war or something like that. - Yeah, it was one of the things. And so, but that, you're always chasing fun. And you're always chasing, how can I make this the best hour of a kid's week by the activities that we do? And Jesus becomes a bit of an add-on to the site. - Is it the bait and switch thing that we've talked about? - Yeah, it's a bait and switch. - Even with youth ministry, the same thing we've told is ministry. - Run a band night and you get all these things and I just turn up because I want to hear a band play. And then right at the end, you say, oh, actually, I'll just kind of just take two minutes to tell you about Jesus. - Oh, we're Jesus, yeah. - By the way, Jesus. And it's like, oh, I can't hear for a band. And so you have to think like, no, I came here for a Nerf night. So, oh, yes, but before that, can we spend 20 minutes talking about Jesus? Why? I came here for a Nerf night. And you either have to sacrifice the amount of content that you can do or the seriousness with which you can take the Bible, or you run the risk of actually not being more interesting than the park, 'cause at least the park could play basketball without being told about Jesus. And so the better our relational model, which is attractive is here's a community of people who accept me, who love me, who welcome me. I feel known and loved here. This is really curious. And these people who know love and seem to genuinely care about me, keep talking about Jesus. What's with that? Like, I'm curious that Jesus seems to be the thing that ties all of these people together. Both my peers that are my age, that love coming here, and these adults who seem to really love and appreciate me as well, and miss me when I'm not here. And so slowly over time, this is the, again, this long-term, it's low-case relational, but you're building up in their mind, this connection between love, acceptance, welcome, and Jesus in saying, yes, actually, it's because of Jesus that we have this attitude. Jesus also welcomes you. And Jesus is attractive. And Jesus is attractive, not because he's the coolest thing to do, but because he actually fulfills the deepest longs and needs that we have, and even that our children have. Yep, fantastic way to put that, I think. Your second book, though, should we move on to the second one? We are welcome to. And it's called, do you wanna hold it up for the camera in there? Yes, I can. It's called the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Goodness me, it's very scandalous. It is very scandalous, and it's a 20-something-year-old book, it was publication date. 1994 came out, so it's as ancient as you are, Joel. She whiz, you're all than me. Come on, man. How old have you been, eight? There you go. Eight in '99. I would've been 12. See, four years, I would've been. Ed, I've been wanted for a while, 'cause it keeps getting referred to. It's one of those sort of classics. Yeah, it's one of those, like, you gotta read this one. Yeah, yeah. And it starts by, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. Ooh. Is that the opening mind? That is the opening mind. Wow. Is it that forward, or it's the-- There is no forward, there's no preface? No, there is a bit of a preface. But, yeah, that's just chapter one. Boom, straight out. Opening mind, wow. What does he mean? So, here's what he's talking about. He is-- Sorry, the author is Mark Noel. The author is Mark A. Noel. He's a-- Mark Noel. Mark. I'm sure he's never heard that one before. Yeah. He is very well respected Christian church historian, and he had done lots of really good, really excellent church history kind of stuff. And I bought him about 2/3. His big promise is that, particularly from his vantage point in the early '90s, that there's-- Evangelicals have done a great job at particular spheres. And so they've, yeah, there's a lot of big churches. There's a lot of evangelism. There are media companies. There's television. But it's all within this kind of evangelical ecosystem. And he says, what we don't see is a lot of evangelical thought leadership in all the other aspects of life. Where are the Evangelicals who are doing the hard work in science, in business, in astronomy, in microbiology, in those kinds of-- So he's looking out at the sort of the academy, I suppose, and saying, we've-- why aren't there significant evangelical thought leadership happening here that are integrating a rich gospel understanding of the Bible and a thorough commitment to Jesus Christ and a really robust engagement with the academic life and the scientific life and the social scientific life. And so he started saying, there's not a lot of-- it's overlapped here between the Evangelicals. No, there's not Christians in those spaces. And he's really focused on the Evangelical Church. But he will along the way, he's kind of noticed, yeah, there's Catholic thinking. He has a lot of strong Catholic thinking on some of these things. But it doesn't seem to be much in the Protestant Evangelical world, why is this? And so he then tracks history. So he's a historian primarily. And he's looking at some of the stuff that we've talked about a number of seasons ago. He talks about the fundamentalism, revivalism. He talks about all these kind of bits and pieces. And one of the really interesting things that I've noticed, I really appreciated, was he said, there was a number of different movements in enlightenment thinking. And one of them, he talks about this Scottish Enlightenment. I'm probably going to put some of this, because I've only just been smashing this during the week. But he talks about the Scottish Enlightenment had a big emphasis on common sense. And so we know things by common sense. And that kind of is one of the pieces that kind of filters into this American Protestantism and American Evangelicalism, along with revivalism. And so this taking personal faith in Jesus, and it's very experiential. He talks about the rise of Pentecostalism and holiness movements and emphasis on Holy Spirit and all of these kind of things play into a world where we take Jesus very seriously, but not very seriously in the Evangelical world, a robust engagement with the academics. And so part of it is-- and the time with the Enlightenment common sense idea is that if the Bible is to be understood, and if Jesus is to be known, then I can experience that just me and the Bible by myself. And so I don't need an academic understanding. And even quotes this one guy who wrote a commentary on the Bible, and he prided himself on the fact that he had read no other commentaries and had done no formal study, and that this was a significant advantage, because it was just him and the Bible, and therefore he wasn't polluted by all of this academic stuff that was happening over on the side. Rubbish. And so he was able to more purely articulate what was in the Bible because he was free from academic study. And I mean, this is a kind of extreme case, perhaps. But he's noticing these trends in Evangelicalism. And he talks about politics. He talks about science. And talked about how when a lot of the Enlightenment stuff, it kind of fractures off the different parts of the Christian world. So we talked about it when we talked about the fundamentalist-- conspiracy. Was it the liberal fundamentalist split? The scopes monkey trial is sort of the classic example of this, where can we teach evolution in schools? And seemingly, you had this choice between you either go with science and therefore reject the Bible, or you go with the Bible and therefore reject science. So he picks up some of those things as well. He says, this was part of in this atmosphere. But it was enhanced by all these other things, like the dependency on common sense, dependency on Holy Spirit, dependency on sort of revivalism, that it's just about you and your personal relationship with Jesus is the really key thing. And so Evangelicals have largely left the establishment, the academic establishment. And so there's not a lot of robust thinking going on there. So yeah, that's kind of what he's talking about. It's fascinating to think the way through-- Does he provide any solutions? I haven't got that yet. As you said, it's 20 years old. It's interesting that he's saying that something like the scopes monkey trial led to, especially in Christian circles in the US, of your science or your not science. So that's led to a whole lot of Christians not even engaging in the areas that he's saying they should be engaging in. Yes. And he did say that the scopes monkey trial is a bit overplayed in history. And he said it's really just one example of much larger trends. And that's whether he's interested in these big trends through chapter eight, which I've not yet got to yet, is called, is an Evangelical Intellectual Renaissance underway? So maybe there's some hope in his thinking. Do you agree with that? I mean, like I say, it's 20 years ago. You might have your own perspective on that. Well, I mean, yeah, I think of, there are people who are Evangelical Christians who are in significant spaces. I think it's been interesting, growth in Christians in philosophy. And so William Lane Craig is one who is an apologist, but he's a philosophy professor. So he's in that world. So there seem to be more and more impacting different spaces like that. The other thing he talked about recently in that I read a little bit this morning was, if there are Christians in these spaces, they often ruck them off. So I'm a Christian over here, and I might be a scientist. But I don't connect those two, or I don't think the big thoughts about how does an understanding of God, Jesus, the world impact my understanding and relationship to science and those kinds of things. So that's really interesting. So it hasn't been changed. I mean, the books I've really appreciated recently. We talked about Christopher Watkins, biblical criticism. I think he does a great job in this space. I mean, he's a philosophy, professability, teachers, actually, he's a state university. He's very seminary. I can't remember now. He's in Melbourne, isn't he? He is in Melbourne. Yeah, I was trying to remember if he's in a Christian institution or a non-Christian or a secular institution. But I think biblical criticism, no, what is it? Critical-- Theory. Critical biblical theory? Yep, or biblical theory. Beautiful political theory. Yeah, people know which one. BCT. Christopher Watkins, yes. I think what that does really well is give a evangelical Christian integration into these things. How do we actually think, theologically, about these massive trends? So yeah, I mean, I can sort of identify a few people who are in that space. So, yeah, so maybe things have picked up. He's an monash university, I think. Right, OK, yeah. So he is in the political department. The lectures and research is French studies and monash. Yeah, he's mostly a French philosophy guy. Wow, and then he wrote that huge book on biblical theory. It's the spare time. Goodness me. Yeah. He's a bit of a brain. Yeah. It's a bit of a floating brain in a tank. Yeah, yep. Yeah, right. Anyway, yeah, I've been enjoying that understanding of evangelicalism. It feels like he's peeking your interest and how you're thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah, I do, like, I don't think this is completely related. But as I said before, I've been, been served a lot of skateboarding videos. And I started off with us saying that Cordano Russell, Canadian skateboarder is a Christian. But as I've recently found that I'm a couple of other skateboarders and Christians. OK. And I think it's an interesting way. You're talking about integrating faith with your vocation and whatever it is. And there seems to be, I think, maybe Christians are being maybe intentionally or unintentionally becoming a bit more nuanced with that because we're now realizing something that Stu talked about on our episode about the Last Supper reenactment that they had at the Paris Olympics was that we're not in the majority. We're not in the majority. That's what I meant to say. Well, Christians have been used to being in the majority. And even when we talked about faith for exiles, we're used to being in the majority because a Christian worldview dominated the West. That's changing a lot now. So I wonder if it's forcing us to become better at integrating those things rather than just being a smack you over the head kind of approach. I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, there's probably people I've done a lot better than others. But I'm just wondering if that is because of that post-Christian thing, it's forcing us to become much more nuanced and better at how we explain the gospel within those contexts. Yeah, I hope so. And I think this is where the stuff from Faith for Exiles, that idea of resilient discipleship comes in as well. That the resilient disciple is someone who is not just being a church, because that's the right thing to do, or the good thing to do. I mean, if it's just hiding a church. Or hiding a church? Or even if it's just a good routine. But you go into church as a strong matter of conviction and a deep understanding, this is what I do. And even when it's hard. And you have an understanding of yourself in which this makes sense, that this is what you're doing. And I think, again, the West becomes more and more secularized. And Christianity is more and more weird and unusual that that helps solidify those who do it. Because there's no longer any social privilege in being a Christian. It's actually now a social detriment to be a Christian. And so that sort of weeds out, I suppose, those who will get distracted by the other things. And it just talks about the four soils. And there's those who roots the shallow and either dry up or who are choked out by the weeds and the concerns of this world. And is it that in an increasingly secular society that those concerns, we more and more what takes people away from church. And you're left with it. Well, the number of resilient disciples has the percentage of church increase, even if the churches themselves-- The increasing number. --decreasing number. And the extreme case of this, of course, are the countries where Christianity is under persecution. Where it's illegal or otherwise to be a Christian. And if the only way of meeting as a Christian is under cover in darkness, secret locations, you have to be a resilient disciple to bother. You've got to be thoroughly convicted that Jesus is Lord, even Lord over this oppressive government. And an oppressive structure that may actually arrest me if they find out what I'm doing and how I'm spending my time. But I've got a high view of Jesus as king. And so I imagine that there's not many casual Christians in the persecuted church. And while I don't wish for persecution, I think that God wants us to live in free societies. And that's a good thing. Democracy is a great thing that Christianity has-- the Christendom has brought about. But nevertheless, the irony of God's kingdom is that it often grows under persecution and strengthen resilience and sometimes come through hardship. I think they all-- yeah, not sometimes. I think it's definitely where it comes from. Yeah, which makes sense of who we are. We talked-- yeah, it was the last week, before you saw me out watching the skating videos, where you show the hundreds and hundreds of times-- The fails. --the fails to get there. They're working through hardship in order to get to the result. And I think that's part of how God has created us as humans, is that's part of our makeup. Yeah, I think a great place to finish. But I'm going to get that out. But thank you, as always. Oh, nice. I love the conversations that we have. There's been very wide-ranging all over the place. Yeah, talk about-- Sausage trains? Sausage-- inset football stadiums, children's ministry, scandals, evangelical minds. Maybe that'll be the title of the podcast, just to pinch it off the-- it's quite a clever title, actually, to get people to pick it up. Maybe I've digested it more next week, you know? Oh. That's some more thought title there. That'll be good. Until next week, Tim, thank you. Until next week. And until next week, everyone, listening and watching, thank you very much. Check a comment on the YouTube channel. It seems to get our videos out there more, which would be awesome. And my name has been Joel, if you know, because I don't think I introduce myself at the start of the episode. But thank you very much. Thank you very much for watching and all this thing. And we'll see you next week. We'll finish with them one way. One way. One way. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (gentle music) (gentle music)
