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Jesus doesn't call us to find disciples. He calls us to make disciples. And so, you know, again with, with the Preston and Jackie example, you know, now it's like everybody wants to be close to them. Everybody wants to say, oh yeah, you know, impacting them or whatever the case might be, but it's, how do we, how do we find the Simon and walk with him into Peter? The person who's, who's on the street corner, the person who's in the prison, the, the, the person who. Selling their body for this month's rent, you know, the person who, you know, just doesn't look like they have it all together right now and invite them to come follow.
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Hey friends, welcome back to Unfeigned Christianity where we are on a journey of becoming a people who are theologically anchored in Jesus and emotionally healthy so we can love and disciple others. Well, today I have on the podcast Brian DOD of Legacy Disciple from Chicago, Illinois to talk about what it looks
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like to make disciples.
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I met Brian back in 2019 at A Legacy conference in Los Angeles area. And I was struck not only just at the power of the conference, some incredible workshops that I was able to attend and learn from. Very practical, very missional minded, but also just at how, how these conferences in and of themselves were an outflow of the discipleship work that he and his wife have been doing in Chicago. They were run and led by people they've been mentoring and discipling. And they also, the mc, the worship team and different speakers were local to each of the conferences that they did. So in Southern California, we had several local people. One of the profs from my Bible college taught at one of the breakout sessions and so forth. So that impressed me too. Like they're going to major cities doing these conferences and utilizing the Christian community in that city as a part of the conference. And so I've been wanting to have Brian on for a couple of years. In fact, he was gonna come on two years ago. We had it scheduled and planned right before my health crisis hit. And thankfully he was gracious enough to come back on, even though I kind of left him hanging back then. So I'm excited with you. Our conversation, what we get into, we talk about the orphanage versus family model of church and why one produces dependence and the other produces disciples. Discuss what Brian actually does in a three year discipleship relationship and why he caps himself to three to four people at a time and why that's not a failure of vision. Discipleship is a long game and it involves bringing somebody into Every part of your life. So that's another piece that we discuss, how to invite people into your rhythms instead of just your schedule. I'm going to stop rambling here and just dive into my conversation with Brian.
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All right.
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Welcome, Brian, to Unfeigned Christianity. It's good to finally have you on the podcast, man.
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It's good to be with you, Asher.
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I'd love to start by just having
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you share some of the background. My introduction to you. I was attending Bible college with Eternity Bible College in Southern California, and they were helping to sponsor one of the Legacy Disciple Conferences. I can't. I want to say it was 2018, 2019 somewhere in there. Were you doing them in 2018?
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Yep. Yeah, we. We started the conferences in 2007, I think we started doing them in LA and in 2016. 2017.
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Okay. Yeah, so it was one of those 2018, 2019. And I remember having a brief conversation with you at the conference, and I've always thought, oh, it'd be fun to have you come on and share more about discipleship. And how do you do that kind of discipleship where you are growing up? Leaders who are being discipled become leaders in their community and take on the ministry of their own. Because sometimes it feels, at least in my limited young experience so far, that feels really hard to. To do effectively. I don't know if. If that's making sense a lot, but I'd love to hear how you got into this work in ministry and then to dive in more deeply into how do you do that kind of discipleship.
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Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Asher. So I'm a native of Chicago. I have Puerto Rican and white heritage. My grandmother came from Puerto Rico when she was 17, 18 years old, settled in Chicago. The flag behind me is a Puerto Rican flag, just to acknowledge that. So I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly Puerto Rican and African American, kind of a more impoverished community. So I was kind of a minority my whole life until I went to college. I went to a predominantly white college in Ohio, and that was really my first exposure, 18, 19 years old, to, again, majority white culture. And so as someone who grew up in a community of, again, Puerto Rican, African American, I became kind of this bridge builder. You had to become this bridge builder in between different. Different people, groups. Culture is beautiful, right? It's something that God created. Revelation tells us all nations will be. Will be worshiping. This vision that John sees, right, is. I mean, he's able to tell that there are different nations. He's hearing in the language that they're speaking, he's seeing it visually. We. We do not lose culture once even we're in our glorified bodies. It's not that we all become one. One race or, you know, it's obviously one human race, but. But culturally, we all bring something unique to the table. So. So again, I grew up, you know, in this context where I was immersed with. With various cultures. My grandmother was a solid believer. My mother has had mental illness my whole life. I'm convinced she loves God. She did her best to raise us in the church. My father was an alcoholic, very nominal in his religious background. But my grandmother, again, was the spiritual rock for us. So she did everything she could to connect me to positive mentors. At age 12, a guy from the church started investing in me. He was a carpenter by trade. Wasn't ministry trained, wasn't paid to do ministry. But the gospel had impacted his life in such a way that. That he invited other people to come hang out with him, following him. And so weekends we would just spend a lot of time together. On Saturdays, he would go volunteer services, paint someone's house, help someone move. And he would just pick me up and bring me with Sundays, who invited me over to his house. I had dinner with him and his wife. First time I sat down at a dinner table with the family. I always say I heard Ephesians 5 preached growing up in the church, husbands, you know, love your wives and so forth. But this was the first time I saw it preached. And I realized in that, in that moment of him walking life with me, that I saw God. Because I would hear God is this father. God is your heavenly Father. But my father, even though he was present, he wasn't active. He didn't engage me. We didn't play catch. We didn't have deep conversations. It was. It was when I got in trouble, right when my grades went up to par of what he wanted, when we were too loud in. In. In the apartment, that's when he stepped in. And so I just kind of thought that's how God was then. If God's a father, really, just stay out of his way. Don't get. Don't get him mad. But through Paul Terry, this, this carpenter, he became this father figure to me. And I was able to see God as a father in a different light. A father who wants intimacy, who desires relationship. And then he moves to Atlanta when I'm. When I'm 14 or so. After a couple years, my grandmother also brought me to this Christian community center in the neighborhood. And there There was another mentor who me and my two best friends came, were kind of growing in Christ at the same time. And he noticed that and he challenged us one day. He was like, hey, it's great that you've grown in the faith, but your faith is not meant to stay with yourself. It's meant to be passed on. And so one day he gives us a list of kids in the neighborhood and he says, go, go knock on these kids doors. This is before cell phones, you know, so forth. We're knocking these k doors, invite them to, to Bible studies, invite them into relationship, minister to them. And in this process he teaches how to study the Bible, how to teach the Bible, how to, how to walk life with people. So high school and in high school we're learning these, these practices. And you know, we kind of just thought this is what Christians do, you know, because again, I saw my grandmother, I saw it, and Paul, this carpenter, I saw it. And Dave this mentor now at age 14. And we just thought this is what Christians do. We, we come to Christ, we grow in Christ, we share Christ. And the older, older I got, the more I realized, oh, this is not, this is not the norm. Most American Christians are, are, are good, are okay with just kind of growing in their own individual faith. You know, confessing sin, growing in community, going to church, paying their tithes, serving in the nursery, whatever the case might be. But that becomes the extent of it. And I don't think that was ever God's heart. That was never God's mission. God's heart was. I mean, the reason why he keeps us on earth as even after faith is so that we could become his ambassadors, we could become his ministers of the Gospel. And so my life since has really been in how do we, how do we encourage, equip everyday Christians to be disciples who make disciples in a holistic way in the same way Jesus, you know, it's not just, you know, I always say sin. When we look at the consequences of sin, it doesn't just affect our eternal relationship with God, that's obviously one aspect. But also it impacts our relationships with one another. It impacts childbirth being painful for women. It impacts work being hard, you know, the labor that we give. It impacts brother and brother's relationship where Cain kills Abel, it impacts nations who war against each other over land and over finances or whatever the case might be. And so if sin affects every aspect of creation, then shouldn't the Gospel reverse that in every area of creation? And so really just again, walking with people, loving on them and, and Help guiding them along with, you know, the Holy Spirit to. To who they. They should be.
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Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's. That's powerful. I didn't realize you're. Back when. When I was at the conference in. Yeah, back in 2019, whenever it was, I. I went early for a. A session that you did on making disciples and. And found that profoundly helpful. But, yeah, I hadn't either. I missed or maybe you didn't share in that session, but just the background of who you were growing up and the setting, seeing discipleship lived out firsthand. You are. You are one of. You are the recipient of. Of what you're doing now as. As a disciple maker and with the legacy conference that. Yeah, I don't. I don't want to name drop, but was interesting or just really stood out to me, the fact that, like you, you played a fairly key role. I think I was reading in his book in Preston Perry, his own discipleship. Is that correct?
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Just. Yeah. So I. If people are familiar with Preston Perry's, him and his wife Jackie are, you know, national, global ministers. Yeah. In many platforms. But I knew Preston as an unbelieving teenager. I was invited by a friend to go play basketball at a gym New Year's eve, probably in 2005 or so. And Preston was 17, 18 years old at the time. And my friend was walking life with him, kind of mentoring him, sharing the gospel with him, so forth, but he hadn't committed his life to it yet. And so my friend just asked me, hey, share your testimony with Preston. And I was able to do that just in a few minutes. And so I don't attribute me leading Preston to the Lord, you know, but other. This guy named Gary Brown kind of walked with Preston for. For. For several months and planted seeds in him. And then Preston moves out of the. Out of the state. His mother kind of wanted to get him away from some trouble he was getting into, and God just continued the work in his life. So I run into Preston probably two years after that. There was an event that was being put on at a church in my neighborhood, and someone invited me to it. So I came and I saw Preston on stage doing poetry. That's kind of his background. And it clicked. Hey, I know this guy. We met, you know, a couple years back, and so, you know, caught on that he had been, you know, came to Christ and. And so forth, but wasn't kind of got burned with a. A previous church experience and where there was a moral failure of the pastor and just not. Not owning up to it. And so forth. And so, so he, and, and this group of young believers were, were kind of disconnected from any, any older mentorship, any discipleship, any Christian community. And beyond just, just themselves. And so, so yeah, through that we entered into a discipleship relationship that has been going on, you know, for, you know, probably close to 20 years now. And just walking with him, walking with Jackie, you know, in their dating relationship, in their, in their premarital and, and then even, you know, I was just, I talked to Jackie yesterday, I talked to Preston yesterday as well. Both individual phone calls, you know, just checking in on them and you know, praying with them and so forth.
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Yeah, thanks for sharing that background. The, the reason it stood out to me, stands out to me is that it, it's so easy. And this, this was me just in full transparency, but it's easy to, to pursue discipleship or missions or whatever kind of for the big grandiose story of, of leading someone like Preston to the Lord maybe where they go on to be a national figure in the church and so forth. But just the, the way that I, I can't remember where I first heard about it, but Preston was talking about it and it like I could tell Brian was this key guy in his life and somehow later I put together, oh, I think it's Brian Dye. And you hadn't talked about it or it's not.
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Yeah.
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And just the faith kind of the way real discipleship is, is in the faithful, mundane kind of everyday life and you never know exactly how a certain seed is going to flourish. That's what kind of stood out to me and encouraged me, even in some of my own discipleship relationships where they don't always feel like they're growing into anything special to just be faithful. Yeah, yeah.
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I would just say, you know, I think that the American church, we do a good job at finding disciples and kind of maybe fine tuning them. Right. So again, enter into this six week discipleship Bible study where we'll teach you the basics of the faith or, or, you know, a church that needs a youth pastor or even a senior pastor. Right. They go to the seminaries and, and they, they try to find somebody who meets the criteria and then invite them into a position of, of leadership. But, but Jesus doesn't call us to find disciples. He calls us to make disciples. And so, you know, again with a Preston and Jackie example, you know, now it's like everybody wants to be close to them. Everybody wants to say, oh yeah, I'm, I'm, you know, impacting them or whatever the case. Might be, but it's. How do we, how do we find the Simon and walk with him into Peter, right? How do we find the, the person who's, who's on the street corner, the person who's in the prison, the, the, the person who's their body for, for this month's rent, you know, the, the, the, the person who, you know, just doesn't look like they have it all together right now and invite them to come follow. And this is what exactly what Jesus did, right? He, he found ordinary people. And I would even say, you know, back, back in, in the, in the Hebrew culture of Jesus Day, early educators, all students went to school at, you know, six or whatever years old. And your, your one book, your one curriculum was the Bible was the Tanakh, right? What we call the Old Testament. And so you would memorize the, the Tanakh, the scriptures, you, you would recite it. That's how you learned how to read, right? That's how you learn critical thinking skills. That's even how you learn geography was through the Scriptures. And so students in, let's say elementary school, you know, primary grades, they were tasked with memorizing the first five books of the Bible. The Torah, the Genesis, exes, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy, right? Something that I have not met a Christian yet who, who says, oh yeah, I got that all memorized. You know, if, if you memorize that, then you went on to say middle school right? Now you would learn the prophets and, and the poets and so forth. And there were rabbis of the day that would go around these classes and kind of see who, who was the top of the class, who, who had it all memorized, who, who could spit it back to them, who seemed to again, you know, be gifted by, by God. And they would invite those individuals now to come follow them. The rabbi, right? And everybody wanted to be selected by the premier rabbis of the day. And the goal of walking with the rabbi is to become like the rabbi. And so to have a marriage like they do do to, to know the scriptures like they do. If, if you weren't selected by a rabbi, then you went back to your family business. So when Jesus comes and finds his disciples who were teenagers at the time, because only Peter paid the temple tax, which was to be paid by any, any male 18 years and older. So, you know, when the people came to Jesus, why don't you pay the temple tax? Why don't you and disciples pay the temple tax? And he told Peter, go get a fish, grab a, grab a coin from the mouth and pay the tax for me and for you, not the other 11 disciples, right? So, so again, if they're all teenagers, when Jesus finds them fishing, when he, when he finds them at the tax booth and and so on, then that means that the, they were not selected by the rabbis of the day. Jesus. Because the rabbis of the day didn't see the potential in them. They, they, they didn't know the scriptures, like, like the cream of the crop. They didn't, they didn't have it all together. You know, maybe they were getting in trouble, maybe they were throwing spitballs in class, you know, whatever. But they weren't deemed worthy of the rabbis of the day. But Jesus, the, the rabbi of rabbis, right, comes and, and sees them fishing and says, come, follow me. Use them as a tax booth. Come follow me. And so it makes total sense when you understand that context, that they would come following because again, they want to be like the rabbi. So it's all about how do we see potential in the midst of, of, of what's on the outward appearance. So in John, chapter one, you know, John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God, right? Two of his disciples start to follow Jesus. Jesus turns around, what are you seeking? They say, rabbi, which means teacher, where you staying? Right? Even that idea, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Doesn't make sense in our context because it should be, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you teaching, right? I want to come to your Bible study. I want to be part of your church, you know, so forth. But for them, again, they understood that, that you learn primarily by watching, not by listening. You learn by watching, right? A parent could say, don't lie. But if you keep seeing your parent lying, then you're gonna learn how to lie, right? And so they spent that day with him. One of the two disciples who followed Jesus was Andrew. He goes, gets his brother first thing in the morning, he gets his brother Simon. He brings him Jesus. Jesus looks at him, says, you, you are Simon, the son of John. That's who you are. But he doesn't stop there. He says, you shall be Peter, right? And then in another verse, you read that Peter means rock, right? And, and upon this rock I will build my church. So you, you look at, you know, Simon Peter's life in the Gospels, and you're like, is this really the person you want to build your church upon? You know, this person who grabs a sword and try to fight off a legion of soldiers and, and hits the servant? Not even a soldier, you know, are these really the disciples that you want to build a church upon. But Jesus continues to shape them. He continues to mold them over three years and then his Holy Spirit comes upon them and continues the process. Right. So that's, that's the whole thing, you know, you know what was special about me that Paul Terry saw, you know, that Dave saw nothing. You know, but, but people invited me to come follow them as they follow Jesus and, and that's where the difference is made. Right. As we, as we follow Jesus and now we invite other people to join us on this journey. Not that I'm perfect, but you know, when I, when I mess up, when you see me argue with my wife, I want you to also see how I'm going to apologize and how I'm going to own up to it, how I'm going to confess my sins. Right?
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Yeah.
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And so, yeah. What does it look like to invite people to come and, and be with us and on this journey as we all grow together?
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Yeah. Yeah. So how, how has that looked for you guys there in Chicago? Is I, in my experience, my wife and I are actually, we're, we're here in central Colorado, the town she grew up. And so I'm, I'm learning this whole new dynamic of how, how to make disciples in rural setting as opposed to inner city setting. And it's been good, but the, in the city we, we had the process of, you know, there's, there's the go out and preach on a street corner or pass out tracks, 10 Commandments kind of challenge people into thinking and considering the kingdom of God and, or you do the events, you kind of alluded to this earlier where it's a big, we did for a number of years a, a big Bible school event that would be in the evenings and we could get close to 300 kids with their families around and a part of it fairly easily. But then when it came to long term in the kids clubs and even building relationships afterward, first of all we weren't really personnel wise. Like our church was fairly small and so it was hard to keep up with that many people. But it just seemed like maybe two or three were actually that interested in long term. And so that's kind of led me and different ones of us to evaluate the effectiveness of, of street preaching or big events or like do you, have you guys done that or is it, have you primarily focused the energy in bringing people into your everyday life?
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Yeah. So you know, we're all wired differently. So I'm not completely against street preaching, but I, I'm not a, I'm not good with starting conversations with strangers. You know, it just. And a street preacher, you need to be able to kind of enter into a conversation real quick and win somebody over and so forth. So this is not my personality. I would also say that, you know, I've only met maybe a couple people that have, that I know have come to the faith through street preaching, right? Stats show us that the vast majority of people come to Christ through close relationships, whether that's a parent or another relative or a good friend, even a co worker, right. You know, God, God made us in his image, in his likeness, right? And so even when he says in Genesis 1, let us make man. Us is the Trinity, the eternal community, right? So let us, the community of, of God, right? Make man in our image. Well, what does that mean then? Then we are created as communal beings, right? We're commute. Created for community. I always use the illustration. You know, in, in some parts of the world, there's, there's orphanages that, that care for, you know, dozens if not hundreds of kids, right? And they're able to provide the basic necessities which saves their life, right, from having to, you know, just die in an alleyway or in a trash heap or whatever, right? They're able to give them food, they're able to get them protection from the weather. But that's not the same as a child who's born in a family, you know, with a parent or ideally two parents, right, who not only give them the necessities, but give them the warmth, give them the love, give them the, the personal attention, right? And so how, how do we, how do we move beyond, you know, this kind of mass production into really life on life. And so Jesus, he. He ministered to the crowds, right? Thousands will come here and preach. He fed the thousands. But he also knew that the crowds, the crowds come and go. You know, people, oh yeah, this, this church is a new church. They have a better preacher, better sound. You know, the worship team is better so forth, so. Or they have a better children's program. So let's, let's go to that. But then as soon as the, the newer church opens up, they're going to that church, right? Or as soon as the pastor says something they don't like, they're, they're, they're leaving the church, you know, up in arms. And you know, in, In John chapter 6, Jesus starts talking about, you know, eat my flesh, drink my blood. You know, really the idea of like taking all of me, not just the parts you want of me. It says the many in the crowd left. And Jesus turns to his disciples and says, are you going to leave too? And they say, where shall we go? You know? And so Jesus ministers to the crowds, but he invests in the few. And I think that's, that's where we need to get to is again, I, I say the American church because that's what I'm most familiar with, right, The American church. We look at the numbers, we look at the crowds and we say, oh, a hundred thousand people came to this conference or, you know, 5,000 people came, come to my church every Sunday or whatever the number might be. As though that's, that's the, the success, you know, when really the success is how do we filter those people down, right? How do we focus them into deeper relationships, deeper community, deeper growth? How do we see them reproducing themselves, right? Because I, I don't know. I don't know, Ashley, if you have kids, but you know, if a parent who has kids, you don't want your kids living with you for the rest of their lives. You don't want them dependent upon your, your paycheck and, and your, you know, food budget and so forth. You want to develop them over 18 years or so, right? Plus or minus two, to become independent or interdependent, I should say, right? Because we're never totally independent, but interdependent, right? We're now they're able to raise a family, they're able to invest in their community, they're able to pay it forward. And so. But why do we settle in a church for, for people being in our churches for 10, 20, 30 years, 40 years, and still dependent upon the pastors teaching, preaching, still dependent upon receiving instead of multiplying and giving. What? One more passage I would allude to is Luke chapter five. It says the crowds are pressing into Jesus to hear the word of the Lord. You would think, man, this is great. They're eager to hear the word of God. And it doesn't say how many are in the crowds, but usually when the Bible talks about crowds, it's talking about most likely hundreds if not more people. But it says as, as Jesus is teaching the crowds, he sees two fishermen who were in their boat washing their nets. They just got done working for overnight. As you find out who these disciples, who these fishermen are, it's. It's Peter and Andrew or Simon. Peter and Andrew, right? As you look at the chronology of things, this is after Jesus already spent the day with Andrew. It's after Jesus already met Simon and Says, you are Simon, son of John, who shall be Peter, right? The. The chapter before in Luke, chapter four, Jesus is hanging out at Peter's mother in law's house, and he and his mother in law is ill and Jesus heals her, right? So you would think, like, if anybody should be listening to the word of God, it should be Andrew and Peter, right? Like, they, they've seen the miracle of Jesus. They, they spent time with him. He's given them purpose. But in their minds, whatever the excuse might be, I've heard that teaching before, or, you know, Jesus, this is great, but I got to make my money. You know, I got some support, family, so forth. But Jesus doesn't give up on them. And it says, Jesus goes to them and he gets in their boat, right? And he asks them to push out a little bit. And Jesus teaches, continues to teach the crowd from their boat. He uses their, their platform, right, to, to speak to the crowd. But then after finishing teaching the crowd, he asked them to push out into the deep, right? And that's when, you know, Jesus says, cast your nets out into the deep. And they're like, Jesus, we've been out here all night. We're professional fishermen, right? We, we did this already. We caught nothing. He says, cast it out, right? And they cast, and they catch a large number of fish or they, they have to get their, their. Their co laborers, James and John, to come and, and bring the fish to shore. And then again, Jesus repeats to them, come, come, follow me. I'll make you fishers of men, right? So what you see in that again, Jesus not being satisfied with the crowd and not giving up on the people who even left the crowd, right? He continues to, to pursue. He continues to love on the individuals. He continues to remind them of his of. Of who he is and his calling into their lives. So that when, you know, Peter starts walking on water and he looks away from Jesus and he starts to drown Jesus, Peter yells out, save me. Again. Jesus doesn't say, I'm over. I'm done with this now. You know, when, when he. He tells Peter, you're gonna deny me three times, you know, he doesn't give up on Peter. He continues to, to remind them of, of his purpose. You know, feed, Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs, right? So forth in John, chapter 21. So crowds are great street preaching if, if that's how someone's wired great. But, but we have to. We have. What we're called to do is make disciples, right? And making disciples is, is the evangelism piece but it's also the discipleship piece. It's, it's walking with someone from pre conversion to conversion to maturity. Right. Till they loosen in the life of others.
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Yeah, yeah. How do you, how do you do that with. So I gotta organize my thoughts. I had about three or four questions that I could split from. But one, a couple things that I'm thinking about is how do you move people who are sitting in the pews receiving? I feel like in some ways that's almost more the challenge that, that the setting that I'm at now is a lot of people are familiar with Jesus in the church, in the, in the community that I'm a part of now. How do you, how do you move people even? So sometimes within the church they're sitting there and, and, and consider themselves committed Christians, but not really, they're really just kind of living off of what we as a church leadership team are giving to them and, or even a young man that I'm mentoring who's, who's not attending a church regularly, he's, he's still dabbling with, you know, almost kind of a self help approach to. He, he's familiar with Jesus. His dad was a pastor actually, so he wants Jesus, but hasn't quite captured the hunger and thirst for righteousness in the way of Jesus fully. So that's one question is how do you generate that desire for feeding themselves that maybe sounds wrong, but their own pursuit of relationship with Jesus and then reproduction and then also kind of another question I'm curious about is how you contest, contextualize the gospel and maybe this is easier for you if you're still in the setting you grew up in. The question that I, I grew up in rural Midwest and then I was out in la. And so the challenge of like how, how do I contextualize this to the young people that are there in the city where their, their world is totally different than what I grew up in. I don't know, maybe you want to tackle the first one first. And.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Luke 6:40 says a student who is fully trained to be like his teacher, right? So I want to start there that we have to be what we're calling other people to be. And so again Paul says follow me as I follow Jesus, right? The idea is not follow me as I have followed Jesus, it's as I follow Jesus ongoing. Right. And so I need to keep growing, I need to keep following my, my Rabbi Jesus. And I have, I have human disciplers, you know, who also, you know, I continue to spend Time with and, and allow to speak into my life and challenge me and, and see my blind spots and, and all of that. So, so we need to be the people who are connected to the vine, who are biden in the word, you know, who, who are like the tree planted by the streams of water, who are praying without ceasing, right? Who are repenting, confessing sin, all that. So it's, it's sometimes easy as someone who's been in ministry for a while, who's been in the faith for a while, to become stagnant in my own growth, in my own pursuit, right. Well, that's going to rub off. Whoever I am is going to rub off on people close enough to me. And so, so, so that's number one. And then number two, it's okay now that as I'm doing that, I need to allow people to get close enough to me so that life on life begins to rub off again. Not just my teachings, right, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Not where are you teaching right now? I'm not negating teaching. Like teaching is a critical piece of the whole process, but it's, it's teaching close by. It's, it's teaching next to each other. It's, it's teaching in close proximity. And so you know, Jesus, Jesus limited himself to 12 primary disciples obviously. Again, he had, he had others that followed him as well, but there were 12. And even within that 12 there was really three, you know, and when for special moments that he invited them into even deeper intimacy. And for those three years, Jesus was, was full time in walking with these, these individuals, right? He didn't have, he wasn't working carpentry during those years. He, he didn't have another job. He didn't have a wife, he didn't have kids, right? So Jesus uninterrupted, chose to choose 12 that he could go deep with. So if you have a spouse, you have less time. If you have children, you have less time, right? Or really those children should be counted as your disciples, right? If you have a job, you have less time, right? So for us, those numbers should dwindle from 12. It's unrealistic to say that someone could truly disciple 12 or more people at, at a given time. But our churches, again, are pastors, right? Typically, you know, a full time senior pastor is, is, is probably caring for a hundred plus people, right? Bigger churches, you add extra staff. But, but still, you know, the, the, the numbers are in the hundreds that you're supposed to shepherd and care for. That's there's only so much. Again, it's, it's, it's the orphanage model as opposed to the family motto. And some good come out of those spaces. Sure. You know, can, can people be, be fed the word sure. You know, can they take that and continue to walk with it? Sure. But ideally, how do we, how do we go deeper? How do we invite people to closer proximity, closer community? And so what I found in my context, you know, I'm, I'm able to handle three, maybe four individuals at a time that I'm intentionally walking life with in the early stages. And I'll commit about three years, you know, and so I, I call it the, I spent formal time and informal time with them. So the formal time is we'll set a weekly time to connect for an hour and a half or so, and usually that's early mornings because, you know, once, you know, workday gets going and, and so forth, it's just impossible to do. And so I'm, I'm not a morning person. You know, if it was up to me, I would wake up right when I need to get to work and, and get to work, right? But I'm getting up 6, 6:30, right, to, to meet with somebody and, and the idea for me is I, I got to get in the word, I gotta pray. Well, why don't I just invite someone else into my, my quiet time, you know, why does it have to be just me and God? Why can't it be me and Antoine with God or me and Omar with God, right? So I invite them into, into my, my time with the Lord. And so we just walk through scriptures. You know, typically I, I like to walk people through. Ephesians is a relatively short book, six chapters, walking through it. You know, we could do it in two, two or three years, given that we're not going to meet every single week. Someone's out of town, someone's sick. You know what I mean? Whatever the case may be. And we'll just kind of go through three, three, five, six verses. And you know, so Ephesians starts with Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, right? So, you know, I'll just do an inductive study. So what do you know about Paul? You know, and, and I'll chime in. And what does it mean to be an apostle? And so we'll look into that, right? Cross references of scriptures, right. So in this process, I'm helping people to, to read the word of God for themselves, to, to make observations, you know, to, to research, to study to, you Know, so forth in this time as well, you know, we, we ask each other accountability questions. So how's your time with the Lord been this week? How are you stewarding your finances? How are you loving your, your spouse? You know, are you, are you spending time with your kids? Right. Whatever the case might be, helping them just to, you know, learn how to confess sin, learn how to be transparent and, and open with trusted people, how to go deeper again in community. So that's kind of the formal time, but then the informal time. Hey, I'm preaching this Sunday at such and such church. Ride with me, meet me at my house, we'll drive together, we'll get some time in the car. Can you pray for me before I preach afterwards, give me some feedback. What did you hear? You know, so forth and way back home, you know, we stop, get some lunch, you know, type thing or. Hey, you know, my wife and I have dinner every night at 6:30. Come, come, come join us for dinner for us. We don't have any biological kids, but we, we have four guest rooms. And so we've always had people stay with us who, you know, are in a transition stage of life or, or whatever the case might be. And so it's, it's again, inviting people. So for me, again, it's, it's three or four people. Typically, I'll, I'll do that for two or three years. And then, you know, as one person rolls off, I'll add somebody else to the mix. Now those people that roll off, you know, we, we're still in relationship. We, you know, but it's, it's like as a kid, leaves, leaves home right, at 18, 19 years old. You know, they still stop by for holidays. They still come do laundry. You know, they still call, hey, dad, you know, man, help me to, you know, know what to do in the situation, right. Call for advice and, and stuff like that. So you don't like, hey, don't call me ever again, right? We're done. But the relationship transfers. It becomes more of like a friendship as opposed to a discipleship relationship. So I think. Did I answer your first question?
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Yeah, yeah. No, I, I love that. I, I really appreciate that. That gives me a lot of ideas. It also gives me a little bit of relief. I have six biological kids. We just had our, our six. And so I, I'm. There's one young man that I'm mentoring right now, and I've, I've often felt like I, I wish I could do more. But if I'm hearing you accurately, that might Be about what I can do, considering that I have six other young ones to also be discipling.
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And I'm assuming you have a job. I don't know.
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You got to work full time. Yeah.
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Yeah. So again, you have, you know, you have less capacity. Right. One thing I would, I would say is as much as possible, right? We in, we don't add stuff, we don't add disciples to our schedule. We involve them in our schedule. Right. So again, as you're having dinner with your family, right, Invite some, invite a, another person to the table. Let them see how you raise your, your children, how you love your wife, you know, how you lead a family devotion, whatever the case might be, how you put the kids to bed, you know, maybe how you cook a meal, you know, and how you budget for your bills, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's all part of it, right? Yeah. You know, what I've started doing is as I'm preparing a message or a lesson, I invite someone to join me in that process. Hey, I'm going to be teaching on Jeremiah 29 in a few weeks. Can we connect a few times to study that passage together? Because a lot of times, you know, one again, you point it to them, but also their questions could help you in, in preparing that, that sermon or that lesson. Yeah, you know, I, I, My wife gardens, and so she'll, she'll invite people to garden with her. You know, hey, I gotta pull out weeds. Come join me. You know, now her, her work is being lighter, right? Because, you know, now she has help, but at the same time, she's investing spiritually and checking in and spending time with somebody else and teaching them how to, how to cultivate from the ground and how to pull out weeds. Right. Which is a whole life lesson. You know, I had to put a fence up for, for her, for her garden. And I'm not a handy person, so, you know, but I invited a young person. Hey, we're gonna learn this together, you know, let's watch some YouTube videos. Let's run a Home Depot. Let's, let's figure this out, you know. And so again, as you know, as much as we can incorporated people into our, our life rhythms.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Require. It requires a willingness to be vulnerable. Like even you mentioned earlier, when you argue with your wife, you know, letting them in on the restoration process or tackling a project you don't know how to do, letting them in on the learning process, that, that's a piece. I think there's something innate in our humanness where we want to present the put together part of us primarily as opposed to inviting. But I can see how inviting people into that would naturally kind of begin to start making disciples in a way that.
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Yeah, we have to help people understand that. Chris, being a Christian does not mean being Christ, does not mean being perfect. Right? We, we are broken people. We are sinners who are still needing to repent and confess, to trust in, in the Holy Spirit's power. And so, you know, I mean, we all talk to unbelievers. I, I've talked to unbelievers who, you know, I invite to, to, to, you know, walk with Christ or come to church or whatever. It's like, well, I'm not, I'm not ready for that yet. You know, I gotta clean up my life. Because in their minds, it's Christian. Being Christian means being perfect, right? Because that's how Christians portray themselves, you know. Well, then people don't, will never come to Christ. Right? But Christ always went after the sinners. He always, you know, I mean, he was called a friend of sinners and the people use that as a derogatory term. But, but it was a badge of honor for him, you know, and obviously Jesus was perfect, right? But, but none of his other followers, you know, in the past 2000 years have been perfect. And no one ever will be. There's only one. Right. And so we, we, we look to him. The perfect one.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, I, there's, there's lots of questions that I could keep asking you, but we're at the one hour mark. I want to be respectful of your time. And so thank you for coming on and sharing this, this much with us. And you are still doing Legacy conferences in. What did I see?
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Yeah, so, so we, we put a pause on the conferences during the pandemic, but the last couple years we brought them back. And this year will be in five cities. We'll be in Chicago in August, Louisiana. In September, Houston in October, Miami in November, and then Phoenix in, in December. People could go to legacydisciple.org find more information. But you know, we got Jackie Hill Perry, we got Preston Perry, we got Eric Mason, we, we have other ministers that, that come in. We typically do. You kind of mentioned earlier, we try to keep the conferences local as much as possible. So typically for the conference we bring in one kind of national speaker who kind of is a name that people would recognize and come for, but then everybody else, the other general session speaker. The worship team workshops, you know, are really the meat of Legacy Conference. Everything Is else is local ministers. Because we realize the conference can only accomplish so much. The conference kind of helps to shake things up, helps to amplify certain voices. But at the end of the day, you know, the conference is a one day event. There's 364 days left in the year. And so we want people to get connected to pastors and leaders and non profit leaders and, and Christians again, everyday Christians who are walking out the faith in their communities. And so we've been able to really see a lot of relationships come out of that, a lot of networking come out of that, a lot of young adults who get encouraged in that faith journey. We also have a podcast that we do. I don't want to take away from your podcast, but.
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No, I was, I was just noticing you started. It looks like you have one episode or so out.
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Yeah, so we, so we have four or five out now like in quarter four of 20, 25. So right now we're at the pace of releasing one every two weeks, so twice a month. And then we hope to pick that pace up in the, in the future. But, but it really, I mean, kind of like this conversation was, it's really just learning from other people. You know, what does discipleship look like for you? How is it working and having conversations around this topic?
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Yeah, yeah, no, I'm going to have to check out the podcast. I hadn't realized until this morning that you had that. Looking forward to it. Have you done any in Denver or will you do any in Denver?
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So, you know, our goal is to continue to add new conferences. We just don't know what pace we're able to do that. Yeah, you know, five, five conferences is a lot right now. I'm kind of a visionary. I'm like, yo, let's, let's add one new one every year until, you know, eternity. My team is like, Brian, we, we might need to just, you know, put pause on this for a little bit, you know, just to make sure we have, we have the capacity for it. So one day we definitely would love to get to Denver. You know, it's, it's kind of in a very central space. So we have, we have the west coast now with LA and Phoenix. We have kind of the, you know, we have Texas with Houston, we have California, eastern part of the Midwest with Chicago. You know, we have the east coast with Miami. We're looking at New York City, we're looking at Philly coast. Denver again is on the radar. If, if there's someone, you know, watching this who has, you Know, some, you know, a couple million dollars that they don't know what to do with. You know, there's a donate button on our webpage. But you know, in addition to what we do with the like conferences and the podcast, we're also adding Legacy University in the next couple months, which would be online courses kind of think, you know, almost like community college level Bible courses that would be accessible for, for anybody at any, any given time to lead through a small group or, or do individually or with a couple disciples. And then locally in Chicago, we have a plethora of programs that we've created to walk with students from elementary school to homeownership in a holistic gospel way. So helping them to deal with their emotions, to come to, to understand who God is and, and what Christ has done for them, to build up their, their family wealth, you know, how to get out of debt and all that kind of stuff, how to, how to, how to learn, you know, what God has called you to do. And so that's also happening where we're, we're reaching about 400 kids on an annual basis in Chicago, you know, 2,000 people in the conferences, you know, thousands of people listening to the podcast so far. And we do this with practically, I think it's 11 part time staff, you know, all that. To answer your question, we would love to be in Denver, but we need to figure out the capacity piece.
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Well, it's obvious you're not, you're not anti program in favor of just the intimate discipleship. You're coupling them together in a effective way. Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time to come on and share with us and thanks for sharing the resources and stuff that you guys are doing.
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Yeah, well, thanks for this opportunity, Asher. Just, and you know, I'm a firm believer. Again, we're all on this journey, so wherever we are, if, if all we know is John 3:16, let's teach John 3:16, right? And whatever we, whatever we, we receive, we're called to be a blessing to pass it on. Blessing is meant to flow through us, not to stay with us. And so let's be people who, who pass it on and you know, count it a blessing as, as someone who gets to join God and, and his mission.
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Amen. Thank you.
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Hey friends, thanks for listening to my conversation with Brian Dye. Hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did and you found it helpful, please feel free to share it with your friends, your family and drop a comment if you're watching this on YouTube or if you happen to see the link on social media. And if you're just listening to this on a on a podcast platform, leave a rating and shoot me an email@AshersherWitmer.com or something. Let me know how this episode and how all of these episodes are impacting your walk with Jesus and your formation as someone who seeks to follow Jesus faithfully and make disciples of other people. Till next week, Grace and Peace
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SA.
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Jesus doesn't call us to find disciples. He calls us to make disciples. And so, you know, again with, with the Preston and Jackie example, you know, now it's like everybody wants to be close to them. Everybody wants to say, oh yeah, you know, impacting them or whatever the case might be, but it's, how do we, how do we find the Simon and walk with him into Peter? The person who's, who's on the street corner, the person who's in the prison, the, the, the person who. Selling their body for this month's rent, you know, the person who, you know, just doesn't look like they have it all together right now and invite them to come follow.
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Hey friends, welcome back to Unfeigned Christianity where we are on a journey of becoming a people who are theologically anchored in Jesus and emotionally healthy so we can love and disciple others. Well, today I have on the podcast Brian DOD of Legacy Disciple from Chicago, Illinois to talk about what it looks
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like to make disciples.
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I met Brian back in 2019 at A Legacy conference in Los Angeles area. And I was struck not only just at the power of the conference, some incredible workshops that I was able to attend and learn from. Very practical, very missional minded, but also just at how, how these conferences in and of themselves were an outflow of the discipleship work that he and his wife have been doing in Chicago. They were run and led by people they've been mentoring and discipling. And they also, the mc, the worship team and different speakers were local to each of the conferences that they did. So in Southern California, we had several local people. One of the profs from my Bible college taught at one of the breakout sessions and so forth. So that impressed me too. Like they're going to major cities doing these conferences and utilizing the Christian community in that city as a part of the conference. And so I've been wanting to have Brian on for a couple of years. In fact, he was gonna come on two years ago. We had it scheduled and planned right before my health crisis hit. And thankfully he was gracious enough to come back on, even though I kind of left him hanging back then. So I'm excited with you. Our conversation, what we get into, we talk about the orphanage versus family model of church and why one produces dependence and the other produces disciples. Discuss what Brian actually does in a three year discipleship relationship and why he caps himself to three to four people at a time and why that's not a failure of vision. Discipleship is a long game and it involves bringing somebody into Every part of your life. So that's another piece that we discuss, how to invite people into your rhythms instead of just your schedule. I'm going to stop rambling here and just dive into my conversation with Brian.
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All right.
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Welcome, Brian, to Unfeigned Christianity. It's good to finally have you on the podcast, man.
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It's good to be with you, Asher.
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I'd love to start by just having
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you share some of the background. My introduction to you. I was attending Bible college with Eternity Bible College in Southern California, and they were helping to sponsor one of the Legacy Disciple Conferences. I can't. I want to say it was 2018, 2019 somewhere in there. Were you doing them in 2018?
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Yep. Yeah, we. We started the conferences in 2007, I think we started doing them in LA and in 2016. 2017.
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Okay. Yeah, so it was one of those 2018, 2019. And I remember having a brief conversation with you at the conference, and I've always thought, oh, it'd be fun to have you come on and share more about discipleship. And how do you do that kind of discipleship where you are growing up? Leaders who are being discipled become leaders in their community and take on the ministry of their own. Because sometimes it feels, at least in my limited young experience so far, that feels really hard to. To do effectively. I don't know if. If that's making sense a lot, but I'd love to hear how you got into this work in ministry and then to dive in more deeply into how do you do that kind of discipleship.
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Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Asher. So I'm a native of Chicago. I have Puerto Rican and white heritage. My grandmother came from Puerto Rico when she was 17, 18 years old, settled in Chicago. The flag behind me is a Puerto Rican flag, just to acknowledge that. So I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly Puerto Rican and African American, kind of a more impoverished community. So I was kind of a minority my whole life until I went to college. I went to a predominantly white college in Ohio, and that was really my first exposure, 18, 19 years old, to, again, majority white culture. And so as someone who grew up in a community of, again, Puerto Rican, African American, I became kind of this bridge builder. You had to become this bridge builder in between different. Different people, groups. Culture is beautiful, right? It's something that God created. Revelation tells us all nations will be. Will be worshiping. This vision that John sees, right, is. I mean, he's able to tell that there are different nations. He's hearing in the language that they're speaking, he's seeing it visually. We. We do not lose culture once even we're in our glorified bodies. It's not that we all become one. One race or, you know, it's obviously one human race, but. But culturally, we all bring something unique to the table. So. So again, I grew up, you know, in this context where I was immersed with. With various cultures. My grandmother was a solid believer. My mother has had mental illness my whole life. I'm convinced she loves God. She did her best to raise us in the church. My father was an alcoholic, very nominal in his religious background. But my grandmother, again, was the spiritual rock for us. So she did everything she could to connect me to positive mentors. At age 12, a guy from the church started investing in me. He was a carpenter by trade. Wasn't ministry trained, wasn't paid to do ministry. But the gospel had impacted his life in such a way that. That he invited other people to come hang out with him, following him. And so weekends we would just spend a lot of time together. On Saturdays, he would go volunteer services, paint someone's house, help someone move. And he would just pick me up and bring me with Sundays, who invited me over to his house. I had dinner with him and his wife. First time I sat down at a dinner table with the family. I always say I heard Ephesians 5 preached growing up in the church, husbands, you know, love your wives and so forth. But this was the first time I saw it preached. And I realized in that, in that moment of him walking life with me, that I saw God. Because I would hear God is this father. God is your heavenly Father. But my father, even though he was present, he wasn't active. He didn't engage me. We didn't play catch. We didn't have deep conversations. It was. It was when I got in trouble, right when my grades went up to par of what he wanted, when we were too loud in. In. In the apartment, that's when he stepped in. And so I just kind of thought that's how God was then. If God's a father, really, just stay out of his way. Don't get. Don't get him mad. But through Paul Terry, this, this carpenter, he became this father figure to me. And I was able to see God as a father in a different light. A father who wants intimacy, who desires relationship. And then he moves to Atlanta when I'm. When I'm 14 or so. After a couple years, my grandmother also brought me to this Christian community center in the neighborhood. And there There was another mentor who me and my two best friends came, were kind of growing in Christ at the same time. And he noticed that and he challenged us one day. He was like, hey, it's great that you've grown in the faith, but your faith is not meant to stay with yourself. It's meant to be passed on. And so one day he gives us a list of kids in the neighborhood and he says, go, go knock on these kids doors. This is before cell phones, you know, so forth. We're knocking these k doors, invite them to, to Bible studies, invite them into relationship, minister to them. And in this process he teaches how to study the Bible, how to teach the Bible, how to, how to walk life with people. So high school and in high school we're learning these, these practices. And you know, we kind of just thought this is what Christians do, you know, because again, I saw my grandmother, I saw it, and Paul, this carpenter, I saw it. And Dave this mentor now at age 14. And we just thought this is what Christians do. We, we come to Christ, we grow in Christ, we share Christ. And the older, older I got, the more I realized, oh, this is not, this is not the norm. Most American Christians are, are, are good, are okay with just kind of growing in their own individual faith. You know, confessing sin, growing in community, going to church, paying their tithes, serving in the nursery, whatever the case might be. But that becomes the extent of it. And I don't think that was ever God's heart. That was never God's mission. God's heart was. I mean, the reason why he keeps us on earth as even after faith is so that we could become his ambassadors, we could become his ministers of the Gospel. And so my life since has really been in how do we, how do we encourage, equip everyday Christians to be disciples who make disciples in a holistic way in the same way Jesus, you know, it's not just, you know, I always say sin. When we look at the consequences of sin, it doesn't just affect our eternal relationship with God, that's obviously one aspect. But also it impacts our relationships with one another. It impacts childbirth being painful for women. It impacts work being hard, you know, the labor that we give. It impacts brother and brother's relationship where Cain kills Abel, it impacts nations who war against each other over land and over finances or whatever the case might be. And so if sin affects every aspect of creation, then shouldn't the Gospel reverse that in every area of creation? And so really just again, walking with people, loving on them and, and Help guiding them along with, you know, the Holy Spirit to. To who they. They should be.
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Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's. That's powerful. I didn't realize you're. Back when. When I was at the conference in. Yeah, back in 2019, whenever it was, I. I went early for a. A session that you did on making disciples and. And found that profoundly helpful. But, yeah, I hadn't either. I missed or maybe you didn't share in that session, but just the background of who you were growing up and the setting, seeing discipleship lived out firsthand. You are. You are one of. You are the recipient of. Of what you're doing now as. As a disciple maker and with the legacy conference that. Yeah, I don't. I don't want to name drop, but was interesting or just really stood out to me, the fact that, like you, you played a fairly key role. I think I was reading in his book in Preston Perry, his own discipleship. Is that correct?
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Just. Yeah. So I. If people are familiar with Preston Perry's, him and his wife Jackie are, you know, national, global ministers. Yeah. In many platforms. But I knew Preston as an unbelieving teenager. I was invited by a friend to go play basketball at a gym New Year's eve, probably in 2005 or so. And Preston was 17, 18 years old at the time. And my friend was walking life with him, kind of mentoring him, sharing the gospel with him, so forth, but he hadn't committed his life to it yet. And so my friend just asked me, hey, share your testimony with Preston. And I was able to do that just in a few minutes. And so I don't attribute me leading Preston to the Lord, you know, but other. This guy named Gary Brown kind of walked with Preston for. For. For several months and planted seeds in him. And then Preston moves out of the. Out of the state. His mother kind of wanted to get him away from some trouble he was getting into, and God just continued the work in his life. So I run into Preston probably two years after that. There was an event that was being put on at a church in my neighborhood, and someone invited me to it. So I came and I saw Preston on stage doing poetry. That's kind of his background. And it clicked. Hey, I know this guy. We met, you know, a couple years back, and so, you know, caught on that he had been, you know, came to Christ and. And so forth, but wasn't kind of got burned with a. A previous church experience and where there was a moral failure of the pastor and just not. Not owning up to it. And so forth. And so, so he, and, and this group of young believers were, were kind of disconnected from any, any older mentorship, any discipleship, any Christian community. And beyond just, just themselves. And so, so yeah, through that we entered into a discipleship relationship that has been going on, you know, for, you know, probably close to 20 years now. And just walking with him, walking with Jackie, you know, in their dating relationship, in their, in their premarital and, and then even, you know, I was just, I talked to Jackie yesterday, I talked to Preston yesterday as well. Both individual phone calls, you know, just checking in on them and you know, praying with them and so forth.
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Yeah, thanks for sharing that background. The, the reason it stood out to me, stands out to me is that it, it's so easy. And this, this was me just in full transparency, but it's easy to, to pursue discipleship or missions or whatever kind of for the big grandiose story of, of leading someone like Preston to the Lord maybe where they go on to be a national figure in the church and so forth. But just the, the way that I, I can't remember where I first heard about it, but Preston was talking about it and it like I could tell Brian was this key guy in his life and somehow later I put together, oh, I think it's Brian Dye. And you hadn't talked about it or it's not.
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Yeah.
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And just the faith kind of the way real discipleship is, is in the faithful, mundane kind of everyday life and you never know exactly how a certain seed is going to flourish. That's what kind of stood out to me and encouraged me, even in some of my own discipleship relationships where they don't always feel like they're growing into anything special to just be faithful. Yeah, yeah.
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I would just say, you know, I think that the American church, we do a good job at finding disciples and kind of maybe fine tuning them. Right. So again, enter into this six week discipleship Bible study where we'll teach you the basics of the faith or, or, you know, a church that needs a youth pastor or even a senior pastor. Right. They go to the seminaries and, and they, they try to find somebody who meets the criteria and then invite them into a position of, of leadership. But, but Jesus doesn't call us to find disciples. He calls us to make disciples. And so, you know, again with a Preston and Jackie example, you know, now it's like everybody wants to be close to them. Everybody wants to say, oh yeah, I'm, I'm, you know, impacting them or whatever the case. Might be, but it's. How do we, how do we find the Simon and walk with him into Peter, right? How do we find the, the person who's, who's on the street corner, the person who's in the prison, the, the, the person who's their body for, for this month's rent, you know, the, the, the, the person who, you know, just doesn't look like they have it all together right now and invite them to come follow. And this is what exactly what Jesus did, right? He, he found ordinary people. And I would even say, you know, back, back in, in the, in the Hebrew culture of Jesus Day, early educators, all students went to school at, you know, six or whatever years old. And your, your one book, your one curriculum was the Bible was the Tanakh, right? What we call the Old Testament. And so you would memorize the, the Tanakh, the scriptures, you, you would recite it. That's how you learned how to read, right? That's how you learn critical thinking skills. That's even how you learn geography was through the Scriptures. And so students in, let's say elementary school, you know, primary grades, they were tasked with memorizing the first five books of the Bible. The Torah, the Genesis, exes, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy, right? Something that I have not met a Christian yet who, who says, oh yeah, I got that all memorized. You know, if, if you memorize that, then you went on to say middle school right? Now you would learn the prophets and, and the poets and so forth. And there were rabbis of the day that would go around these classes and kind of see who, who was the top of the class, who, who had it all memorized, who, who could spit it back to them, who seemed to again, you know, be gifted by, by God. And they would invite those individuals now to come follow them. The rabbi, right? And everybody wanted to be selected by the premier rabbis of the day. And the goal of walking with the rabbi is to become like the rabbi. And so to have a marriage like they do do to, to know the scriptures like they do. If, if you weren't selected by a rabbi, then you went back to your family business. So when Jesus comes and finds his disciples who were teenagers at the time, because only Peter paid the temple tax, which was to be paid by any, any male 18 years and older. So, you know, when the people came to Jesus, why don't you pay the temple tax? Why don't you and disciples pay the temple tax? And he told Peter, go get a fish, grab a, grab a coin from the mouth and pay the tax for me and for you, not the other 11 disciples, right? So, so again, if they're all teenagers, when Jesus finds them fishing, when he, when he finds them at the tax booth and and so on, then that means that the, they were not selected by the rabbis of the day. Jesus. Because the rabbis of the day didn't see the potential in them. They, they, they didn't know the scriptures, like, like the cream of the crop. They didn't, they didn't have it all together. You know, maybe they were getting in trouble, maybe they were throwing spitballs in class, you know, whatever. But they weren't deemed worthy of the rabbis of the day. But Jesus, the, the rabbi of rabbis, right, comes and, and sees them fishing and says, come, follow me. Use them as a tax booth. Come follow me. And so it makes total sense when you understand that context, that they would come following because again, they want to be like the rabbi. So it's all about how do we see potential in the midst of, of, of what's on the outward appearance. So in John, chapter one, you know, John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God, right? Two of his disciples start to follow Jesus. Jesus turns around, what are you seeking? They say, rabbi, which means teacher, where you staying? Right? Even that idea, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Doesn't make sense in our context because it should be, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you teaching, right? I want to come to your Bible study. I want to be part of your church, you know, so forth. But for them, again, they understood that, that you learn primarily by watching, not by listening. You learn by watching, right? A parent could say, don't lie. But if you keep seeing your parent lying, then you're gonna learn how to lie, right? And so they spent that day with him. One of the two disciples who followed Jesus was Andrew. He goes, gets his brother first thing in the morning, he gets his brother Simon. He brings him Jesus. Jesus looks at him, says, you, you are Simon, the son of John. That's who you are. But he doesn't stop there. He says, you shall be Peter, right? And then in another verse, you read that Peter means rock, right? And, and upon this rock I will build my church. So you, you look at, you know, Simon Peter's life in the Gospels, and you're like, is this really the person you want to build your church upon? You know, this person who grabs a sword and try to fight off a legion of soldiers and, and hits the servant? Not even a soldier, you know, are these really the disciples that you want to build a church upon. But Jesus continues to shape them. He continues to mold them over three years and then his Holy Spirit comes upon them and continues the process. Right. So that's, that's the whole thing, you know, you know what was special about me that Paul Terry saw, you know, that Dave saw nothing. You know, but, but people invited me to come follow them as they follow Jesus and, and that's where the difference is made. Right. As we, as we follow Jesus and now we invite other people to join us on this journey. Not that I'm perfect, but you know, when I, when I mess up, when you see me argue with my wife, I want you to also see how I'm going to apologize and how I'm going to own up to it, how I'm going to confess my sins. Right?
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Yeah.
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And so, yeah. What does it look like to invite people to come and, and be with us and on this journey as we all grow together?
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Yeah. Yeah. So how, how has that looked for you guys there in Chicago? Is I, in my experience, my wife and I are actually, we're, we're here in central Colorado, the town she grew up. And so I'm, I'm learning this whole new dynamic of how, how to make disciples in rural setting as opposed to inner city setting. And it's been good, but the, in the city we, we had the process of, you know, there's, there's the go out and preach on a street corner or pass out tracks, 10 Commandments kind of challenge people into thinking and considering the kingdom of God and, or you do the events, you kind of alluded to this earlier where it's a big, we did for a number of years a, a big Bible school event that would be in the evenings and we could get close to 300 kids with their families around and a part of it fairly easily. But then when it came to long term in the kids clubs and even building relationships afterward, first of all we weren't really personnel wise. Like our church was fairly small and so it was hard to keep up with that many people. But it just seemed like maybe two or three were actually that interested in long term. And so that's kind of led me and different ones of us to evaluate the effectiveness of, of street preaching or big events or like do you, have you guys done that or is it, have you primarily focused the energy in bringing people into your everyday life?
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Yeah. So you know, we're all wired differently. So I'm not completely against street preaching, but I, I'm not a, I'm not good with starting conversations with strangers. You know, it just. And a street preacher, you need to be able to kind of enter into a conversation real quick and win somebody over and so forth. So this is not my personality. I would also say that, you know, I've only met maybe a couple people that have, that I know have come to the faith through street preaching, right? Stats show us that the vast majority of people come to Christ through close relationships, whether that's a parent or another relative or a good friend, even a co worker, right. You know, God, God made us in his image, in his likeness, right? And so even when he says in Genesis 1, let us make man. Us is the Trinity, the eternal community, right? So let us, the community of, of God, right? Make man in our image. Well, what does that mean then? Then we are created as communal beings, right? We're commute. Created for community. I always use the illustration. You know, in, in some parts of the world, there's, there's orphanages that, that care for, you know, dozens if not hundreds of kids, right? And they're able to provide the basic necessities which saves their life, right, from having to, you know, just die in an alleyway or in a trash heap or whatever, right? They're able to give them food, they're able to get them protection from the weather. But that's not the same as a child who's born in a family, you know, with a parent or ideally two parents, right, who not only give them the necessities, but give them the warmth, give them the love, give them the, the personal attention, right? And so how, how do we, how do we move beyond, you know, this kind of mass production into really life on life. And so Jesus, he. He ministered to the crowds, right? Thousands will come here and preach. He fed the thousands. But he also knew that the crowds, the crowds come and go. You know, people, oh yeah, this, this church is a new church. They have a better preacher, better sound. You know, the worship team is better so forth, so. Or they have a better children's program. So let's, let's go to that. But then as soon as the, the newer church opens up, they're going to that church, right? Or as soon as the pastor says something they don't like, they're, they're, they're leaving the church, you know, up in arms. And you know, in, In John chapter 6, Jesus starts talking about, you know, eat my flesh, drink my blood. You know, really the idea of like taking all of me, not just the parts you want of me. It says the many in the crowd left. And Jesus turns to his disciples and says, are you going to leave too? And they say, where shall we go? You know? And so Jesus ministers to the crowds, but he invests in the few. And I think that's, that's where we need to get to is again, I, I say the American church because that's what I'm most familiar with, right, The American church. We look at the numbers, we look at the crowds and we say, oh, a hundred thousand people came to this conference or, you know, 5,000 people came, come to my church every Sunday or whatever the number might be. As though that's, that's the, the success, you know, when really the success is how do we filter those people down, right? How do we focus them into deeper relationships, deeper community, deeper growth? How do we see them reproducing themselves, right? Because I, I don't know. I don't know, Ashley, if you have kids, but you know, if a parent who has kids, you don't want your kids living with you for the rest of their lives. You don't want them dependent upon your, your paycheck and, and your, you know, food budget and so forth. You want to develop them over 18 years or so, right? Plus or minus two, to become independent or interdependent, I should say, right? Because we're never totally independent, but interdependent, right? We're now they're able to raise a family, they're able to invest in their community, they're able to pay it forward. And so. But why do we settle in a church for, for people being in our churches for 10, 20, 30 years, 40 years, and still dependent upon the pastors teaching, preaching, still dependent upon receiving instead of multiplying and giving. What? One more passage I would allude to is Luke chapter five. It says the crowds are pressing into Jesus to hear the word of the Lord. You would think, man, this is great. They're eager to hear the word of God. And it doesn't say how many are in the crowds, but usually when the Bible talks about crowds, it's talking about most likely hundreds if not more people. But it says as, as Jesus is teaching the crowds, he sees two fishermen who were in their boat washing their nets. They just got done working for overnight. As you find out who these disciples, who these fishermen are, it's. It's Peter and Andrew or Simon. Peter and Andrew, right? As you look at the chronology of things, this is after Jesus already spent the day with Andrew. It's after Jesus already met Simon and Says, you are Simon, son of John, who shall be Peter, right? The. The chapter before in Luke, chapter four, Jesus is hanging out at Peter's mother in law's house, and he and his mother in law is ill and Jesus heals her, right? So you would think, like, if anybody should be listening to the word of God, it should be Andrew and Peter, right? Like, they, they've seen the miracle of Jesus. They, they spent time with him. He's given them purpose. But in their minds, whatever the excuse might be, I've heard that teaching before, or, you know, Jesus, this is great, but I got to make my money. You know, I got some support, family, so forth. But Jesus doesn't give up on them. And it says, Jesus goes to them and he gets in their boat, right? And he asks them to push out a little bit. And Jesus teaches, continues to teach the crowd from their boat. He uses their, their platform, right, to, to speak to the crowd. But then after finishing teaching the crowd, he asked them to push out into the deep, right? And that's when, you know, Jesus says, cast your nets out into the deep. And they're like, Jesus, we've been out here all night. We're professional fishermen, right? We, we did this already. We caught nothing. He says, cast it out, right? And they cast, and they catch a large number of fish or they, they have to get their, their. Their co laborers, James and John, to come and, and bring the fish to shore. And then again, Jesus repeats to them, come, come, follow me. I'll make you fishers of men, right? So what you see in that again, Jesus not being satisfied with the crowd and not giving up on the people who even left the crowd, right? He continues to, to pursue. He continues to love on the individuals. He continues to remind them of his of. Of who he is and his calling into their lives. So that when, you know, Peter starts walking on water and he looks away from Jesus and he starts to drown Jesus, Peter yells out, save me. Again. Jesus doesn't say, I'm over. I'm done with this now. You know, when, when he. He tells Peter, you're gonna deny me three times, you know, he doesn't give up on Peter. He continues to, to remind them of, of his purpose. You know, feed, Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs, right? So forth in John, chapter 21. So crowds are great street preaching if, if that's how someone's wired great. But, but we have to. We have. What we're called to do is make disciples, right? And making disciples is, is the evangelism piece but it's also the discipleship piece. It's, it's walking with someone from pre conversion to conversion to maturity. Right. Till they loosen in the life of others.
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Yeah, yeah. How do you, how do you do that with. So I gotta organize my thoughts. I had about three or four questions that I could split from. But one, a couple things that I'm thinking about is how do you move people who are sitting in the pews receiving? I feel like in some ways that's almost more the challenge that, that the setting that I'm at now is a lot of people are familiar with Jesus in the church, in the, in the community that I'm a part of now. How do you, how do you move people even? So sometimes within the church they're sitting there and, and, and consider themselves committed Christians, but not really, they're really just kind of living off of what we as a church leadership team are giving to them and, or even a young man that I'm mentoring who's, who's not attending a church regularly, he's, he's still dabbling with, you know, almost kind of a self help approach to. He, he's familiar with Jesus. His dad was a pastor actually, so he wants Jesus, but hasn't quite captured the hunger and thirst for righteousness in the way of Jesus fully. So that's one question is how do you generate that desire for feeding themselves that maybe sounds wrong, but their own pursuit of relationship with Jesus and then reproduction and then also kind of another question I'm curious about is how you contest, contextualize the gospel and maybe this is easier for you if you're still in the setting you grew up in. The question that I, I grew up in rural Midwest and then I was out in la. And so the challenge of like how, how do I contextualize this to the young people that are there in the city where their, their world is totally different than what I grew up in. I don't know, maybe you want to tackle the first one first. And.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Luke 6:40 says a student who is fully trained to be like his teacher, right? So I want to start there that we have to be what we're calling other people to be. And so again Paul says follow me as I follow Jesus, right? The idea is not follow me as I have followed Jesus, it's as I follow Jesus ongoing. Right. And so I need to keep growing, I need to keep following my, my Rabbi Jesus. And I have, I have human disciplers, you know, who also, you know, I continue to spend Time with and, and allow to speak into my life and challenge me and, and see my blind spots and, and all of that. So, so we need to be the people who are connected to the vine, who are biden in the word, you know, who, who are like the tree planted by the streams of water, who are praying without ceasing, right? Who are repenting, confessing sin, all that. So it's, it's sometimes easy as someone who's been in ministry for a while, who's been in the faith for a while, to become stagnant in my own growth, in my own pursuit, right. Well, that's going to rub off. Whoever I am is going to rub off on people close enough to me. And so, so, so that's number one. And then number two, it's okay now that as I'm doing that, I need to allow people to get close enough to me so that life on life begins to rub off again. Not just my teachings, right, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Not where are you teaching right now? I'm not negating teaching. Like teaching is a critical piece of the whole process, but it's, it's teaching close by. It's, it's teaching next to each other. It's, it's teaching in close proximity. And so you know, Jesus, Jesus limited himself to 12 primary disciples obviously. Again, he had, he had others that followed him as well, but there were 12. And even within that 12 there was really three, you know, and when for special moments that he invited them into even deeper intimacy. And for those three years, Jesus was, was full time in walking with these, these individuals, right? He didn't have, he wasn't working carpentry during those years. He, he didn't have another job. He didn't have a wife, he didn't have kids, right? So Jesus uninterrupted, chose to choose 12 that he could go deep with. So if you have a spouse, you have less time. If you have children, you have less time, right? Or really those children should be counted as your disciples, right? If you have a job, you have less time, right? So for us, those numbers should dwindle from 12. It's unrealistic to say that someone could truly disciple 12 or more people at, at a given time. But our churches, again, are pastors, right? Typically, you know, a full time senior pastor is, is, is probably caring for a hundred plus people, right? Bigger churches, you add extra staff. But, but still, you know, the, the, the numbers are in the hundreds that you're supposed to shepherd and care for. That's there's only so much. Again, it's, it's, it's the orphanage model as opposed to the family motto. And some good come out of those spaces. Sure. You know, can, can people be, be fed the word sure. You know, can they take that and continue to walk with it? Sure. But ideally, how do we, how do we go deeper? How do we invite people to closer proximity, closer community? And so what I found in my context, you know, I'm, I'm able to handle three, maybe four individuals at a time that I'm intentionally walking life with in the early stages. And I'll commit about three years, you know, and so I, I call it the, I spent formal time and informal time with them. So the formal time is we'll set a weekly time to connect for an hour and a half or so, and usually that's early mornings because, you know, once, you know, workday gets going and, and so forth, it's just impossible to do. And so I'm, I'm not a morning person. You know, if it was up to me, I would wake up right when I need to get to work and, and get to work, right? But I'm getting up 6, 6:30, right, to, to meet with somebody and, and the idea for me is I, I got to get in the word, I gotta pray. Well, why don't I just invite someone else into my, my quiet time, you know, why does it have to be just me and God? Why can't it be me and Antoine with God or me and Omar with God, right? So I invite them into, into my, my time with the Lord. And so we just walk through scriptures. You know, typically I, I like to walk people through. Ephesians is a relatively short book, six chapters, walking through it. You know, we could do it in two, two or three years, given that we're not going to meet every single week. Someone's out of town, someone's sick. You know what I mean? Whatever the case may be. And we'll just kind of go through three, three, five, six verses. And you know, so Ephesians starts with Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, right? So, you know, I'll just do an inductive study. So what do you know about Paul? You know, and, and I'll chime in. And what does it mean to be an apostle? And so we'll look into that, right? Cross references of scriptures, right. So in this process, I'm helping people to, to read the word of God for themselves, to, to make observations, you know, to, to research, to study to, you Know, so forth in this time as well, you know, we, we ask each other accountability questions. So how's your time with the Lord been this week? How are you stewarding your finances? How are you loving your, your spouse? You know, are you, are you spending time with your kids? Right. Whatever the case might be, helping them just to, you know, learn how to confess sin, learn how to be transparent and, and open with trusted people, how to go deeper again in community. So that's kind of the formal time, but then the informal time. Hey, I'm preaching this Sunday at such and such church. Ride with me, meet me at my house, we'll drive together, we'll get some time in the car. Can you pray for me before I preach afterwards, give me some feedback. What did you hear? You know, so forth and way back home, you know, we stop, get some lunch, you know, type thing or. Hey, you know, my wife and I have dinner every night at 6:30. Come, come, come join us for dinner for us. We don't have any biological kids, but we, we have four guest rooms. And so we've always had people stay with us who, you know, are in a transition stage of life or, or whatever the case might be. And so it's, it's again, inviting people. So for me, again, it's, it's three or four people. Typically, I'll, I'll do that for two or three years. And then, you know, as one person rolls off, I'll add somebody else to the mix. Now those people that roll off, you know, we, we're still in relationship. We, you know, but it's, it's like as a kid, leaves, leaves home right, at 18, 19 years old. You know, they still stop by for holidays. They still come do laundry. You know, they still call, hey, dad, you know, man, help me to, you know, know what to do in the situation, right. Call for advice and, and stuff like that. So you don't like, hey, don't call me ever again, right? We're done. But the relationship transfers. It becomes more of like a friendship as opposed to a discipleship relationship. So I think. Did I answer your first question?
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Yeah, yeah. No, I, I love that. I, I really appreciate that. That gives me a lot of ideas. It also gives me a little bit of relief. I have six biological kids. We just had our, our six. And so I, I'm. There's one young man that I'm mentoring right now, and I've, I've often felt like I, I wish I could do more. But if I'm hearing you accurately, that might Be about what I can do, considering that I have six other young ones to also be discipling.
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And I'm assuming you have a job. I don't know.
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You got to work full time. Yeah.
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Yeah. So again, you have, you know, you have less capacity. Right. One thing I would, I would say is as much as possible, right? We in, we don't add stuff, we don't add disciples to our schedule. We involve them in our schedule. Right. So again, as you're having dinner with your family, right, Invite some, invite a, another person to the table. Let them see how you raise your, your children, how you love your wife, you know, how you lead a family devotion, whatever the case might be, how you put the kids to bed, you know, maybe how you cook a meal, you know, and how you budget for your bills, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's all part of it, right? Yeah. You know, what I've started doing is as I'm preparing a message or a lesson, I invite someone to join me in that process. Hey, I'm going to be teaching on Jeremiah 29 in a few weeks. Can we connect a few times to study that passage together? Because a lot of times, you know, one again, you point it to them, but also their questions could help you in, in preparing that, that sermon or that lesson. Yeah, you know, I, I, My wife gardens, and so she'll, she'll invite people to garden with her. You know, hey, I gotta pull out weeds. Come join me. You know, now her, her work is being lighter, right? Because, you know, now she has help, but at the same time, she's investing spiritually and checking in and spending time with somebody else and teaching them how to, how to cultivate from the ground and how to pull out weeds. Right. Which is a whole life lesson. You know, I had to put a fence up for, for her, for her garden. And I'm not a handy person, so, you know, but I invited a young person. Hey, we're gonna learn this together, you know, let's watch some YouTube videos. Let's run a Home Depot. Let's, let's figure this out, you know. And so again, as you know, as much as we can incorporated people into our, our life rhythms.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Require. It requires a willingness to be vulnerable. Like even you mentioned earlier, when you argue with your wife, you know, letting them in on the restoration process or tackling a project you don't know how to do, letting them in on the learning process, that, that's a piece. I think there's something innate in our humanness where we want to present the put together part of us primarily as opposed to inviting. But I can see how inviting people into that would naturally kind of begin to start making disciples in a way that.
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Yeah, we have to help people understand that. Chris, being a Christian does not mean being Christ, does not mean being perfect. Right? We, we are broken people. We are sinners who are still needing to repent and confess, to trust in, in the Holy Spirit's power. And so, you know, I mean, we all talk to unbelievers. I, I've talked to unbelievers who, you know, I invite to, to, to, you know, walk with Christ or come to church or whatever. It's like, well, I'm not, I'm not ready for that yet. You know, I gotta clean up my life. Because in their minds, it's Christian. Being Christian means being perfect, right? Because that's how Christians portray themselves, you know. Well, then people don't, will never come to Christ. Right? But Christ always went after the sinners. He always, you know, I mean, he was called a friend of sinners and the people use that as a derogatory term. But, but it was a badge of honor for him, you know, and obviously Jesus was perfect, right? But, but none of his other followers, you know, in the past 2000 years have been perfect. And no one ever will be. There's only one. Right. And so we, we, we look to him. The perfect one.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, I, there's, there's lots of questions that I could keep asking you, but we're at the one hour mark. I want to be respectful of your time. And so thank you for coming on and sharing this, this much with us. And you are still doing Legacy conferences in. What did I see?
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Yeah, so, so we, we put a pause on the conferences during the pandemic, but the last couple years we brought them back. And this year will be in five cities. We'll be in Chicago in August, Louisiana. In September, Houston in October, Miami in November, and then Phoenix in, in December. People could go to legacydisciple.org find more information. But you know, we got Jackie Hill Perry, we got Preston Perry, we got Eric Mason, we, we have other ministers that, that come in. We typically do. You kind of mentioned earlier, we try to keep the conferences local as much as possible. So typically for the conference we bring in one kind of national speaker who kind of is a name that people would recognize and come for, but then everybody else, the other general session speaker. The worship team workshops, you know, are really the meat of Legacy Conference. Everything Is else is local ministers. Because we realize the conference can only accomplish so much. The conference kind of helps to shake things up, helps to amplify certain voices. But at the end of the day, you know, the conference is a one day event. There's 364 days left in the year. And so we want people to get connected to pastors and leaders and non profit leaders and, and Christians again, everyday Christians who are walking out the faith in their communities. And so we've been able to really see a lot of relationships come out of that, a lot of networking come out of that, a lot of young adults who get encouraged in that faith journey. We also have a podcast that we do. I don't want to take away from your podcast, but.
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No, I was, I was just noticing you started. It looks like you have one episode or so out.
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Yeah, so we, so we have four or five out now like in quarter four of 20, 25. So right now we're at the pace of releasing one every two weeks, so twice a month. And then we hope to pick that pace up in the, in the future. But, but it really, I mean, kind of like this conversation was, it's really just learning from other people. You know, what does discipleship look like for you? How is it working and having conversations around this topic?
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Yeah, yeah, no, I'm going to have to check out the podcast. I hadn't realized until this morning that you had that. Looking forward to it. Have you done any in Denver or will you do any in Denver?
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So, you know, our goal is to continue to add new conferences. We just don't know what pace we're able to do that. Yeah, you know, five, five conferences is a lot right now. I'm kind of a visionary. I'm like, yo, let's, let's add one new one every year until, you know, eternity. My team is like, Brian, we, we might need to just, you know, put pause on this for a little bit, you know, just to make sure we have, we have the capacity for it. So one day we definitely would love to get to Denver. You know, it's, it's kind of in a very central space. So we have, we have the west coast now with LA and Phoenix. We have kind of the, you know, we have Texas with Houston, we have California, eastern part of the Midwest with Chicago. You know, we have the east coast with Miami. We're looking at New York City, we're looking at Philly coast. Denver again is on the radar. If, if there's someone, you know, watching this who has, you Know, some, you know, a couple million dollars that they don't know what to do with. You know, there's a donate button on our webpage. But you know, in addition to what we do with the like conferences and the podcast, we're also adding Legacy University in the next couple months, which would be online courses kind of think, you know, almost like community college level Bible courses that would be accessible for, for anybody at any, any given time to lead through a small group or, or do individually or with a couple disciples. And then locally in Chicago, we have a plethora of programs that we've created to walk with students from elementary school to homeownership in a holistic gospel way. So helping them to deal with their emotions, to come to, to understand who God is and, and what Christ has done for them, to build up their, their family wealth, you know, how to get out of debt and all that kind of stuff, how to, how to, how to learn, you know, what God has called you to do. And so that's also happening where we're, we're reaching about 400 kids on an annual basis in Chicago, you know, 2,000 people in the conferences, you know, thousands of people listening to the podcast so far. And we do this with practically, I think it's 11 part time staff, you know, all that. To answer your question, we would love to be in Denver, but we need to figure out the capacity piece.
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Well, it's obvious you're not, you're not anti program in favor of just the intimate discipleship. You're coupling them together in a effective way. Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time to come on and share with us and thanks for sharing the resources and stuff that you guys are doing.
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Yeah, well, thanks for this opportunity, Asher. Just, and you know, I'm a firm believer. Again, we're all on this journey, so wherever we are, if, if all we know is John 3:16, let's teach John 3:16, right? And whatever we, whatever we, we receive, we're called to be a blessing to pass it on. Blessing is meant to flow through us, not to stay with us. And so let's be people who, who pass it on and you know, count it a blessing as, as someone who gets to join God and, and his mission.
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Amen. Thank you.
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Hey friends, thanks for listening to my conversation with Brian Dye. Hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did and you found it helpful, please feel free to share it with your friends, your family and drop a comment if you're watching this on YouTube or if you happen to see the link on social media. And if you're just listening to this on a on a podcast platform, leave a rating and shoot me an email@AshersherWitmer.com or something. Let me know how this episode and how all of these episodes are impacting your walk with Jesus and your formation as someone who seeks to follow Jesus faithfully and make disciples of other people. Till next week, Grace and Peace
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SA.
