Creation Care is Discipleship - Brendan McClenahan | Faithly Podcast

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Regardless of your political or any other kind of affiliation, everyone we asked all had very similar attitudes towards creation.

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They all loved being outside.

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They all loved camping.

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They all loved they would recycle if someone asked them to.

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No matter how liberal or conservative you were, people had basically the same practices.

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This is the Faithly Podcast.

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Hi, and welcome back to the Faithly Podcast.

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Today, I'm joined by Brendan McClenahan.

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He is the church engagement manager at Plant With Purpose, and he's one of the creators of TEND, an initiative of Plant With Purpose.

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Today we're going to be talking about Brendan's ministry journey and his vision for TEND.

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We'll talk about why caring for the environment has become so political and whether the church can actually bring people together on it.

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So, Brendan, welcome.

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Thank you so much, Alicia.

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I'm so happy to be here talking with you about this.

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Yes, yes.

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So much stuff I want to dig into.

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So let's just jump right in.

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Before we talk about Tend, I'd actually love to hear your story.

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You've had such an interesting journey.

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You've worked in the church, you've worked in marketing, and now plant with purpose.

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So take me through it.

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It is a zigzag loop-to-loop journey of all different kinds of interests.

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And sometimes when I look at the things that I've been involved in, I kind of scratch my head and hope that God has some great golden thread that goes through all of it.

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And to me, it's just, it's a...

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It's this world that God has made that is so full of adventure and beauty.

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And there's so much opportunity to partner with people to create something beautiful.

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And so I love doing that.

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I love bringing people together, making something beautiful.

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And especially making things that bring glory to God from church, community, music.

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My degree is in music originally.

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My garden, agriculture.

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We raise chickens in the summer.

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Books.

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I've helped people publish books.

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And yes, now I'm working with Plant With Purpose.

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And yeah, this is kind of a zigzag journey, but there's this beautiful adventure to be had.

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And I'm grateful for it.

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So yeah.

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Yeah, that's what I'm doing now is working with Plant With Purpose to help churches thrive.

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Amazing.

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Well, so how did you first get connected with Plant With Purpose?

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And what exactly is your role there today?

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So I knew about Plant With Purpose back in high school, before they were even called Plant With Purpose, they were called Floresta.

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But I remember my brother went on a mission trip with them to Oaxaca, and he came back saying amazing things about what he saw there.

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And I started following them, and our church were supporters of them.

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And since 2001, my wife and I have been donors of Plant With Purpose.

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They do international poverty alleviation through regenerative agriculture, spiritual renewal, economic development.

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And it's incredible the impact they have around the world.

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And I couldn't say higher things about this organization and my pride in being a donor of theirs.

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And in 2024, they were awarded a Lilly Grant to help churches in the U.S.

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They'd been working only internationally and they got awarded a Lilly Grant to help churches in the U.S. thrive and...

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And, um, and to do that through discipleship and creation care.

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And my wife saw the posting and she's like, Brendan, you have to apply for this job.

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I know you love your job.

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I know you're doing important things, but you've got to apply for this job.

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So I applied and, um, now this is what I do.

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I get to work with an organization I deeply respect, but I get to do it, um,

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through means that I, through part of my calling, which is to serve the church.

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And so I get to work with pastors, Christian leaders, as they create or strengthen their communities, as they form practices around spiritual formation.

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And it's really exciting to be able to do this work alongside an organization that I so love.

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Okay, so that's amazing.

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I want to dig a little deeper into that, into the organization itself.

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So for someone who has never encountered it before, they're hearing about it for the first time from you, what is Plant With Purpose trying to accomplish?

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And how does the church fit into that?

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Yeah.

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So Planet of the Purpose, they say that their vision statement is creating a world where people and planet flourish.

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That's their vision.

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And you can see, anybody can see in the world that that's just not the case right now.

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That's the world that we're creating, but it's not the world that we inhabit right now.

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We work around the world at the intersection of extreme environmental damage and human poverty.

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So you can imagine people living at the bottom of ravines where all the trees have been cut down for firewood.

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And every time it rains, it pollutes their drinking water and destroys their crops and property.

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And then we partner with local teams in those places and they gather people and they say, we are not poor people.

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We are humans created in the image of God.

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And it's our God-given responsibility and joy to care for this place, to care for the creation.

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And so what they do is they learn how to create contour barriers to stop the rainfall just wiping out the hillside.

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They practice regenerative agriculture, agroecology.

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They stack agricultural enterprises on top of each other.

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And as they're doing this, they're also doing it alongside their discipleship at the church.

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So they create these discipleship groups called purpose groups or savings groups.

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And they begin helping each other and growing spiritually and economically.

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And the church thrives, the ecosystem thrives.

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Across all our program countries, poverty is cut in half in the areas where we work.

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And people's lives are transformed.

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Wow.

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So TEND, that's the initiative that you oversee.

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It grew out of the lessons that Plant With Purpose was learning around the world.

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So what was it that you saw internationally that made you wonder, could there be something here for churches in the United States?

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Yeah.

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I'd like to take it back to this theme of thriving.

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When we look at thriving, even through like a biblical perspective, we have learned to look internationally.

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Like we're looking at what do we want these communities to, what do we want to see in these communities?

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There's at least three relationships going on.

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You could say there's maybe four or five, but I just want to simplify it to three.

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Our relationship with God, our relationship with our neighbors, and our relationship with the earth.

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And that's what we're working towards internationally, to have all three of those relationships integrated, healthy.

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They're working together that when I understand myself in right relationship with God, it helps me in my relationship with my neighbor, and that helps me in my relationship with the earth.

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So they're all...

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intertwined and part of a holistic picture of thriving.

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But in the U.S., we're actually seeing an erosion of all three of those relationships as well.

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You could look at our relationship with God.

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Church attendance is declining, but even more than church attendance, which is kind of a flat number, I think.

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Recent studies show that 46% of church Christians don't read the Bible, and 56% say that their faith is entirely private.

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Yeah.

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Our relationship with our neighbors are breaking down.

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Loneliness has been declared a public health epidemic.

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They say that the loneliness we're experiencing is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day is the effect it has on our bodies.

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And also in terms of our relationship with our neighbor, teens say that they're spending, sorry, half of teens say that they're spending almost all of their time online.

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They say they're literally almost constantly online.

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So there's a disconnection we're experiencing not only with God, but with our neighbors and then also with the earth.

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Yeah.

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13% of Americans have low food access.

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A third of us don't have access to any green space.

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Only 1.2% of us are part of a farming family versus like 100 years ago where everyone understood the direct relationship that we have with the earth and our dependence on God through the earth.

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And now it's only 1.2% of American families understand that connection like that, depend in that direct way.

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And we're spending an average of 11 hours a day indoors on screens.

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including our conversation right now.

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And so we are more and more disconnected from the community and from creation that used to shape our faith.

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And so that's why 10 started to grow out of Plant With Purpose.

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And that's kind of what the impetus that helped shape how we designed it.

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I got it.

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I got it.

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It's about bringing us back to thriving.

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So if I'm a pastor or a ministry leader hearing about this for the first time and I'm intrigued, what would I actually see if a TEND group started at my church?

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Yeah.

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So in a really small nutshell, TEND is a free discipleship and outreach, 10-week small group experience that's rooted in creation care.

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It is not a centralized program that the pastor or staff has to run on their own or host or figure out.

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It's all ready to go.

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It's pre-written.

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Basically, everything is included in there.

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And so the leaders get, you know, scripts and prayers and discussion questions and Bible passages and material lists and all kinds of things, calendars, everything to make it happen.

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So that's what it is.

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And what they're going to see, you said, what are pastors going to see with a 10 group?

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Like, what are they going to observe?

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They're going to see, instead of like a few staff people trying to run a centralized program, it's going to be a pair, like a co-leader pair.

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that is gathering other Christians into their home during the week to eat, open scripture, pray for each other.

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And then on the alternate weeks, they invite their neighbors to an outdoor activity, a creation care activity, like hiking or composting, cleaning up trash, helping in a community garden.

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These are low bar activities that anybody can do in any context, any time of the year.

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They're all free activities, totally accessible.

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So that's what they're going to see is a pair of co-leaders gathering Christians in their homes, doing a combination of spiritual practices from in the home, eating, praying, reading scripture, and then outside with their neighbors doing creation care activities as partners with their neighbors.

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And ultimately, you're right, it is designed for healing, basically.

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TEND is designed to begin to heal some of those relationships we were just talking about between God, people, and earth, so that a church, any church, can be part of the healing that God is already doing in the world.

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That's really beautiful.

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I'm struck by something that you just said when you described like the cadence of how the groups operate.

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I think you said every other week you do something in the creation care sphere.

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for or rather with your neighbors, right?

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And that's something I've read up on when it comes to the tend and your philosophy is this difference between doing something for our neighbors, which I think the church is well acquainted with, right?

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Like we do things for our neighbors versus doing something with our neighbors.

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Why is that distinction so important?

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Yeah, I think the first reason it's important is because it's the lesson we've learned over and over and over again in our international work.

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We have this phrase that says, partners, not projects.

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And it comes from the Bible.

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It comes from loving your neighbor as yourself.

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It comes from Genesis 1, where it says, God created us in his image.

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And so we believe that every human is created with the image of God, deeply embedded in them, that that's what it means to be human, is to be made in the image of God.

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And so when we look at our neighbors, what do we first see?

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Do we first see somebody who's different from us and somebody who might disagree with us?

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Especially as we talk about politics, we see their political affiliation, the color of their skin, the area they live in, their socioeconomic status, whatever it is.

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Or are we first and foremost seeing them as this is a beloved image bearer?

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If that's the case, then they have gifts to offer in the kingdom of God, even if they don't know it.

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And they are worthy of love and respect.

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So international partners, I'm going on a vision trip.

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I'm going to go visit our field, one of our program countries next month.

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In Mexico, we're going to go to a town called Puebla, and we just did a whole training yesterday talking about how important it is to show up there ready to see these people as image bearers, not as projects, not as people we're doing something for, but partners we're partnering with.

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So that's where it comes from.

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But like I said, this is a love your neighbor as yourself, which is Jesus' teaching.

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And the church has had a really difficult time with that.

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Really difficult time living that out from the Crusades all the way up through the way that we practice evangelism today.

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And I believe there's got to be two things that we hang on to when we think about our relationship with our neighbors.

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First is to believe that God, not only are they image bearers, but God is already at work in the lives of our neighbors.

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They have something to contribute.

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There is evidence of grace and love in their lives.

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Like John says, wherever there's love, there's God.

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And so we have our eyes opened as Christians.

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Part of our job is to go in as witnesses of the kingdom of God to say, I think the kingdom of God is breaking through in this neighbor's life.

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And to be at look for that and not just seeing our neighbors as they are unbelievers who need to be saved by me, but people who are already being pursued by a God who loves them.

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So that's the first thing.

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And then the second thing is to remember that our faith is not a series of beliefs that we ascribe to.

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Our faith is a way of living.

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Our faith is a way of following after Jesus.

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And so evangelism is not an intellectual sales pitch, primarily.

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I know that there are ways of practicing evangelism that can involve that in a really healthy, faithful way.

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But I believe primarily our faith is not just an intellectual, I agree with those beliefs, but it is a way of putting my life

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in the hands of a God who is now my source of belonging.

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And my life belongs to God.

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And so I live my life in a way that honors God.

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And so when I remember that, I go, oh yeah, okay, so then evangelism is not just me trying to get someone to agree with what I agree with.

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But it's me inviting this person into a new way of life that I've discovered.

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And we can participate that together.

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And they don't have to agree with it to begin.

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They can just receive the invitation and say, just like Jesus said, come follow me.

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And so it's an invitation to join us.

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There is a community that's already practicing the mission of God together.

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And so evangelism can be an invitation to join us in the mission of God and discover Jesus along the way.

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That's really beautiful.

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What I heard and what you said was a reintroduction of the nuance and subtlety that I think we're called to show in practicing the Great Commission, right?

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It's not this blunt thing that I think some of us can fall back on, right?

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The let me convince you, like, let me get you to agree with me.

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So you touched on the political climate.

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I want to talk a little bit more about that.

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This phrase, creation care, caring for the environment has become politically coded in this country, right?

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And I think you would say that creation care goes all the way back to Genesis.

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So how did it become this issue that many Christians now associate with one political side or another?

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Yeah, I will.

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In terms of the question of how do we get here?

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I think since the fall, and you mentioned Genesis, creation care is right at the heart of Genesis.

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And you see since the fall, the brokenness of creation has always been fuel for political division.

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So for example,

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You've got a famine.

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You've got these 12 brothers who come back to Egypt with Joseph because there's a famine, and you have all the people in the area coming to Egypt and selling everything they have to Pharaoh, including their livestock, including their land, in exchange for food.

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And they become sharecroppers.

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And this leads to a huge population being oppressed and enslaved.

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Right.

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And a large part of the Old Testament is telling the story of how God delivers people from that entanglement.

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And this is still happening today.

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Our broken relationship with the earth is intertwined with this unhealthy political landscape where we're vying for power, where people are dividing each other, where we're oppressing each other, where we're hurting each other.

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All over the scrambling for what we perceive as scarce resources because of the fall, because of a broken relationship with creation.

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I'm not saying that's the only reason, but it certainly makes it worse.

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So caring for creation, on the other hand, is not politically coded.

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It's actually the opposite.

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Everyone cares about the park down the street.

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Everyone cares that we have clean water to drink.

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Everyone cares that we aren't breathing in toxins.

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Everyone cares that we're not eating dangerous chemicals.

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We want whole food.

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We want safe neighborhoods.

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We want to be protected.

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When we care for creation, it's a way that God can free us from these political identities and remind us who we were made to be.

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So I think it's actually the opposite.

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It's actually a great remedy for our political partisan environment.

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And it actually frees us into who God's created us to be.

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I like that.

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That's really good.

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So I'm sure there are Christians that you encounter that when they hear some of these phrases like creation care, like they might be skeptical at first.

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So how do you get them to think about it more biblically rather than politically?

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Yeah.

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Well, first of all, I totally get it.

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It can be a term or even caring for the environment.

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These can be attached to political messaging that can make us feel really squeamish.

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And what I've noticed, and actually we did a bunch of research about this,

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When we first started our project, you just go, what are people's existing feelings and beliefs about this?

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And it turns out people aren't actually skeptical of creation care.

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Regardless of your political or any other kind of affiliation, everyone we asked all had very similar attitudes towards creation.

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They all loved being outside.

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They all loved camping.

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They all loved, they would recycle if someone asked them to.

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No matter how liberal or conservative you were, people had basically the same practices of caring for creation.

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And they all said that the outdoors were important to them, that caring for the environment was important to them.

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What they all recoiled at was being

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associated with a particular political party that they perceived as not part of their faith and so there really isn't as much of a barrier as people perceive most people think that there's this huge what what people don't like is the political languaging around environmental care around creation care but um

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But then when you ask about how to help them think about it more biblically rather than politically, I think that's a really key question.

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I think a lot of the way we talk about it, when we do talk about it, is borrowing from the political messaging around the environment.

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And I'd like to help pastors, Christian leaders, develop a different set of words, a different set of messaging around creation care.

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And the funny thing is, it's just, it's in the Bible.

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You know, I just wonder out loud, and this is how I would help people come to this on their own, is I would say basically, why did God create humans in the first place?

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Why did God create humans?

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And in Genesis 2, you've got the earth completely barren, except for this wonderful, fruitful, vibrant place called Eden.

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And that's where everything is growing.

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That's where God is walking and spending time.

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And God says, I want to extend this flourishing, this beautiful garden.

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I want this to be everywhere.

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And God probably could have snapped his fingers and just made it so.

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But God decided, you know what I want to do?

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I want to take some dust and mush it together into something that looks like a human.

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I'm going to breathe a breath of life into them.

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And they are going to go and take this into the rest of the world.

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And that's the charge of God to these people.

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Go tend.

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Tend the garden.

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Multiply this.

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Be fruitful and multiply and go over the whole face of the earth so that the whole creation would know how good and abundant God is.

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And so, for me, it's really simple to look at this biblically and say, this is not like a cute add-on to our faith.

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It's not a way of being a better human.

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It's not a virtue signal.

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This is why we were created, is to help extend the beauty and majesty of God across creation.

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We have a role to play.

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That's what we see in our international partners through Plant and Purpose, who are doing this in real time.

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and turning their desolated, environmentally degraded areas into mini-Edens, it's incredible.

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And human and ecological flourishing goes through the roof in these areas.

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That's what God created us for, and that's a biblical vision of caring for creation.

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Well, you won't find any argument from me on that.

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Like, I have sensed that call from the Lord when I've read the pages of Genesis.

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I think His voice and His heart for creation care comes through loud and clear.

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So, something else that caught my attention in your writings is this idea that we don't have to agree.

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before we serve together.

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Can you talk a little bit more about that and talk about, you know, your vision around like doing something together or taking care of a neighborhood garden or a park?

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Yeah.

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So when we started our TEND group, we were wondering, and this is before we had it all formed.

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We kind of started the group first and then made TEND afterwards.

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And our group was wondering, how do we engage the mission of God with our neighbors in our neighborhood?

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And what we decided to do was go ask our neighbors if they'd be willing to compost with us.

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And so we went around with buckets and just said, do you compost?

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you know, we literally knocking on doors and some of the neighbors I knew, but as I kept going there, now I'm getting to neighbors.

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I don't know at all.

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And I'm knocking on their doors and we're all doing this in our neighborhoods.

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And I, we say, do you compost?

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They say no.

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And I said, well, here's a five gallon bucket.

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Will you be willing to, instead of throwing your food scraps away, put them in this bucket and I'll come back next week and I'll give you a fresh bucket and we can do that during the summer.

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Yeah.

301
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And every one of them, every single neighbor said yes.

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Everyone I asked.

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And it's not because they all have Save the Environment bumper stickers.

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It's not because they're all one political party or another.

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It's not because they knew we were doing this in behalf of our faith and they were Christians too and they wanted to do it.

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My neighbors are all over the political spectrum and my neighbors are either involved or not involved in church.

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It doesn't matter.

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They said yes, not because it was a political project, but because it's a neighborhood effort.

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And I think deep down, there's something in every human that wants to help and wants to partner and do something restorative that's in all of us, I believe.

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And our 10 group has been together now for, this will be our fifth year we're going into.

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And I know from private conversations with different members of our group that the families in our group are also all over the political spectrum.

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that they might even be really passionate about their political differences.

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But the number of times that politics has come up, let alone been an issue, is precisely zero in our group.

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It's never come up.

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And I believe that's because we've established a different center to our group than what our ideology is.

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And we've got practices that bind us together that have nothing to do with our opinions about politics or a whole lot of, even there's people in our group that didn't start out part of our group because they were Christian.

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They started off because they wanted to join the compost group.

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And then they found out about this vibrant community.

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They want to join it.

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And they found out we had faith in Jesus and they want to know more about that.

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So it's not even that we have to agree about faith either.

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Caring for creation is literally investing back into our common ground as humans and allows us to grow from there.

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I love what you just said about the sort of progression of, well, your neighbors joined in because you have this common interest.

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And then eventually they find out that you have this faith.

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And it sounds like maybe even some of them were interested in learning more about your faith.

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So tell me more about that approach to evangelism versus like just inviting your neighbors to go to church with you.

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Yeah, it's a completely, it's what we're talking about, for versus with.

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If you're doing something for your neighbor or if your neighbor is your project,

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not only are there, I don't want to say, like slightly theological issues with the way of approaching that, but also it's just really anxiety producing.

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When you think about how do I get my neighbor to come to my church service?

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Again, that's operating under the assumption that the only way my neighbor is going to experience the quote-unquote gospel is if they come to a church service and hear a sermon.

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That's the only way they're going to hear a clear gospel presentation, and then they're going to either respond or not respond.

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And so we put out donuts, and we have really nice buildings, and it's all clean, and we have greeters at the door.

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We put a whole lot of effort into Sunday morning carrying the weight so that someone could invite a neighbor and it would be a positive experience for a quote-unquote seeker.

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And that is extremely exhausting and also anxiety producing for someone who's like, I got to invite you to a whole new space where you don't know anybody except for me.

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And you're going to jump into a different world here.

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I really hope this works.

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And that can work.

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Like God can do amazing things with that.

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I'm not saying that doesn't work.

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I'm just saying it's hard.

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And, um, with the, I'll just finish the story that I just started telling.

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This is a family that we had gotten to know and they had started hearing about our group because they're part of our, you know, our circle of influence.

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And we started doing composting and they started hearing about that.

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And then we said, um, they, they learned about our community and, um,

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And I said, well, we get together on every other Thursday night and we eat dinner together.

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We open up scripture together.

348
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We open up the Bible together.

349
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And then we pray for each other.

350
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That's all I said.

351
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I didn't say we're a bunch of Christians.

352
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I just said, this is what we do.

353
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I didn't say these are our list of beliefs.

354
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I just said, this is the community that we are.

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We get together every Thursday night, every other Thursday night, open up scripture, we eat a meal and we pray for each other.

356
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And I said, we also do this composting thing.

357
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And he said, we have always wanted to be a part of a community like that.

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It's like, okay, come join us.

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If you want, I did not expect him to come.

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But he came and it was in a home.

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He brought his young child, an infant at that point, his wife, and they had not met anyone else besides us.

362
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But we had formed a relationship along the way, so they trusted us.

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And they came in and we said, all right, we're going to open up to John.

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And they said, who's John?

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And...

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You know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, they said, we have no idea what you're talking about.

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And so we got to open Bibles with them for the first time and share with them the story of scripture.

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And I remember that night was my daughter's birthday and we got out ice cream and my wife was just on the floor with them going through all the books of the Bible, not reading them, you know, verbatim, but just saying, this is the story of God.

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This is what you're going to find different points.

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And then we pitched in all together and

371
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as a group and bought these guys Bibles, bought them two Bibles.

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And then they started coming every time we gathered.

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And now their whole family follows Jesus.

374
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And so, and they've got another daughter now.

375
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So it's, they just had us over.

376
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And now actually that family has started reaching out to their neighbors and involving them in a compost group.

377
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And so now there's new neighbors being connected relationally, which is really beautiful to see.

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And they're starting to host people in their house.

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And so it's starting to spread.

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And I'm really grateful for that.

381
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So that's kind of what,

382
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what we're trying to help people experience is a sense of organic discipleship and outreach where we're not depending on the centralized church to make disciples for us, but that we are empowered.

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We are baptized and sent and empowered to

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incarnate the good news, to live out the gospel, to be an incarnated gospel in our neighbors, not just the gospel preached on Sunday morning, but the gospel declared and demonstrated throughout the week in our everyday normal lives.

385
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Brendan, you make it sound so simple.

386
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I think because it is.

387
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I think that's the point, right?

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I think what I saw intend was this like reuniting of discipleship and mission.

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And I think that is what you're talking about here.

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And I think you've said that the church has unintentionally separated those two things, but by bringing them together, you're able to walk the gospel with your neighbors.

391
00:33:23.565 --> 00:33:27.430
Yeah, that's exactly right.

392
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Unfortunately, the church... Well, I'll just start with this.

393
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The gospel that many of us inherited...

394
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is a really small version of the gospel.

395
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And it goes like, the way it sounds is, Jesus came only to save human souls.

396
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And yes, Jesus came to save human souls.

397
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I just want to be completely clear about that.

398
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But the testimony of scripture is to say, salvation, in God's eyes, is salvation.

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is a flourishing cosmos that's teeming with life and beauty the way God intended it.

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That the creation, the whole creation healed is what God is going for.

401
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That's what we see in Revelation and all the way back to Genesis.

402
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That's always been God's intent, was that humans would be dwelling with God in a restored and renewed creation.

403
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So if we think about it through that term, the tiny gospel, in contrast, is a very dualistic gospel where, like I said, it's about what you think.

404
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For a lot of us, it's about gaining knowledge about God, which early on in the early church was shot down as not part of our orthodox traditional faith.

405
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What we see though today is this dividing between discipleship and mission.

406
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I think it has to do with our tiny understanding of the gospel.

407
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What we do is we think discipleship is learning more about Jesus.

408
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And so we put together classes and experiences that have to do with gaining scriptural knowledge or studying the Bible, usually alone.

409
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But if we do it together, we're sitting in a circle and talking about what we think about the Bible, what we think it means, objectively.

410
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And that becomes our discipleship.

411
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But then we know that the Bible tells us we're supposed to be serving the world.

412
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So in order to be obedient to that, we create volunteer opportunities where we have committees or teams or staff members who are appointed to make sure that we are serving our neighbors.

413
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And then what those leaders do is they try to recruit people to come be part of this mission experience.

414
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And they run out of volunteers.

415
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Any church leader is going to tell you they're always looking for volunteers.

416
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And that mission opportunity just turns into a volunteer experience.

417
00:36:00.948 --> 00:36:02.569
It's not connected to our discipleship.

418
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You're not quote unquote learning anything about the Bible or Jesus when you're on those mission trips or those mission experiences or if you're cleaning up the park.

419
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You're doing it as a way to be a good Christian.

420
00:36:13.441 --> 00:36:21.672
And really what you're doing is you're trying to encounter people so that they could come to the church and participate in a distinctively discipleship experience.

421
00:36:22.132 --> 00:36:23.033
That's the difference.

422
00:36:23.233 --> 00:36:25.336
That's the divide that we're experiencing.

423
00:36:25.556 --> 00:36:26.457
And it's exhausting.

424
00:36:26.618 --> 00:36:27.939
It's exhausting for the pastors.

425
00:36:28.820 --> 00:36:34.526
And for people, it feeds this consumer culture of knowing more, more, more, more.

426
00:36:34.887 --> 00:36:38.450
And I just go to church to get more information.

427
00:36:38.731 --> 00:36:40.292
And that's kind of this consumerist culture.

428
00:36:40.973 --> 00:36:46.659
What we're trying to do is put those back together and say, discipleship happens along the way in mission.

429
00:36:47.420 --> 00:36:49.241
Discipleship is the engine of mission.

430
00:36:49.282 --> 00:36:50.122
So for example,

431
00:36:50.843 --> 00:37:01.907
We had a church in Compton that was right next door to this low-income neighborhood, and they had a community garden that they were trying to recruit volunteers for, and no one was doing it.

432
00:37:02.927 --> 00:37:09.830
And so they found Tend, and they said, could Tend be a way that we revitalize the community garden?

433
00:37:10.830 --> 00:37:15.475
And so we started working with them to help them identify a leader and develop a group around it.

434
00:37:16.056 --> 00:37:33.174
So this group met for Bible study in the garden and in their homes, and they started doing discipleship around the space of mission and brought the garden back to life, not as an add-on to try to a marketing ploy to try to get new people, but as a way of practicing discipleship together.

435
00:37:34.290 --> 00:37:48.301
So I think that everything the church is doing to serve its community, any mission team, any staff member ought to have a discipleship engine, a discipleship force behind it so that it's all connected.

436
00:37:48.681 --> 00:37:52.584
So if you have a creation care team, for example, usually it's a committee.

437
00:37:53.325 --> 00:38:12.462
that has been appointed by the elders to manage the garden or whatever it is, if that team could also be in each other's lives and meet each other's neighbors and share meals together, now you have a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God where God,

438
00:38:13.423 --> 00:38:16.045
People and God and earth are all coming together.

439
00:38:16.085 --> 00:38:18.107
Discipleship and mission is being reintegrated.

440
00:38:18.708 --> 00:38:30.778
That's the vision behind 10, is to pull these things together so we're not always trying to do two separate things, but that we can focus on the way Jesus lived his life and bring these discipleship and mission pieces back together.

441
00:38:32.041 --> 00:38:43.504
Well, when you were talking about how churches tend to do things, oh, no pun intended, how churches have a tendency to do things, I know you got a lot of pastors' attention.

442
00:38:43.544 --> 00:38:46.764
I know you got my attention because it's how most churches work.

443
00:38:46.784 --> 00:38:48.545
It's how my church works.

444
00:38:48.625 --> 00:38:55.126
But what you've described is really, really intriguing, is really, really attractive, and is biblical.

445
00:38:56.667 --> 00:39:01.548
And so for the pastor listening to this who says, okay, like I want to explore more.

446
00:39:02.288 --> 00:39:04.611
Um, what can, what should they do?

447
00:39:04.711 --> 00:39:06.674
Like, how do they, should they get in touch with you?

448
00:39:06.714 --> 00:39:07.976
Do you have resources for them?

449
00:39:08.176 --> 00:39:12.982
Walk me through the next steps for someone who, who wants to figure out how to make this work for their church.

450
00:39:13.623 --> 00:39:13.863
Yeah.

451
00:39:14.564 --> 00:39:15.545
A lot of pastors.

452
00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:22.361
are probably thinking, it sounds awesome, but my people are really busy.

453
00:39:22.441 --> 00:39:23.081
I'm really busy.

454
00:39:23.121 --> 00:39:24.422
We already have a lot of programs.

455
00:39:25.222 --> 00:39:29.303
We already have a plan for meeting some of these needs.

456
00:39:30.263 --> 00:39:40.185
I want to talk to a pastor and say, remember when you started ministry and your dream was just to be able to go out to coffee with people and pray for them?

457
00:39:41.606 --> 00:39:44.328
That's what I dreamed of ministry being.

458
00:39:45.289 --> 00:39:54.056
You know, I just get to meet up with people who are Christians, who want to serve God and love God in their families, in their community, in the world.

459
00:39:54.796 --> 00:40:02.422
And I get to come alongside them and be their pastor and pray for them and help them know that God is with them.

460
00:40:03.403 --> 00:40:04.704
That's like my dream as a pastor.

461
00:40:06.165 --> 00:40:09.908
And then some along the way, you get caught up running everything.

462
00:40:10.877 --> 00:40:12.377
And now you're in the administrative role.

463
00:40:12.417 --> 00:40:15.198
Now not only are you a pastor, you're also a nonprofit leader.

464
00:40:15.598 --> 00:40:16.598
You're managing a building.

465
00:40:16.859 --> 00:40:17.859
You're managing programs.

466
00:40:18.839 --> 00:40:22.940
And while that has become part of your job, it's not really what a pastor is.

467
00:40:23.880 --> 00:40:29.942
A pastor is there to be the touchpoint for community that is of disciples, that's making disciples.

468
00:40:31.298 --> 00:40:36.403
And so my hope is that TEND can help restore some of that.

469
00:40:37.184 --> 00:40:39.066
It is a ready-to-run program.

470
00:40:39.506 --> 00:40:54.000
It's a roadmap that a pastor can just hand to anybody in their congregation and say, hey, if you are interested in building community, in living your faith authentically with your neighbors, hey,

471
00:40:54.580 --> 00:41:02.463
and in being part of something restorative in your neighborhood, here's something that you can implement without my help.

472
00:41:03.583 --> 00:41:05.323
You don't have to ask me a whole lot of questions.

473
00:41:05.363 --> 00:41:11.145
In fact, Brendan is on the phone and he could talk to you and help you know how to put it together.

474
00:41:11.565 --> 00:41:12.746
And I'm just going to be your pastor.

475
00:41:13.871 --> 00:41:15.371
I can just go out to coffee with you.

476
00:41:15.391 --> 00:41:24.193
I can just pray for you and celebrate what God is doing in your life or lament the difficulties you're encountering, but I don't have to run another program.

477
00:41:25.154 --> 00:41:31.315
And for me, as I'm putting this together, as we created TEND, we had all this stuff in mind.

478
00:41:31.355 --> 00:41:37.176
I was thinking primarily of pastors and TEND can hit so many different objectives for a pastor.

479
00:41:37.697 --> 00:41:42.518
This can be a way to help with children's ministry, with Sticky Faith.

480
00:41:44.779 --> 00:41:46.580
for whole families, intergenerational ministry.

481
00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:50.142
So kids are part of the disciples gathering.

482
00:41:50.462 --> 00:41:52.143
They are part of the earth care activities.

483
00:41:52.263 --> 00:41:53.204
They're part of the whole thing.

484
00:41:53.284 --> 00:41:54.204
They are the church.

485
00:41:54.224 --> 00:41:55.285
They're not the future of the church.

486
00:41:55.325 --> 00:41:56.225
They are the church today.

487
00:41:57.166 --> 00:41:58.887
And so this hits children's mission.

488
00:41:58.907 --> 00:42:04.550
If we want to get children connected to adults who love them, who are praying for them, our ratio is five to one.

489
00:42:04.651 --> 00:42:07.152
We want at least five adults, everyone.

490
00:42:07.272 --> 00:42:07.892
So if there are six

491
00:42:09.448 --> 00:42:13.390
households who are part of your 10 group, you've got that covered, that goal.

492
00:42:14.170 --> 00:42:16.611
So you've got intergenerational ministry going on.

493
00:42:17.651 --> 00:42:20.252
Seniors can participate with younger people.

494
00:42:21.593 --> 00:42:24.974
You've got a discipleship program that's helped people grow deeper in God's word.

495
00:42:25.354 --> 00:42:29.016
You've also got evangelism, so you don't have to do these huge programs

496
00:42:29.536 --> 00:42:40.446
One day, big splashes in your community where you're trying to do, you're printing off t-shirts and you're printing banners and you're trying to put something in the paper to get everyone to come and you're hiring a band and all this stuff.

497
00:42:41.127 --> 00:42:41.347
No.

498
00:42:42.328 --> 00:42:44.009
So you can let go of that if you want to.

499
00:42:44.956 --> 00:42:49.280
You don't have to have a creation care team that's trying to care for the community garden.

500
00:42:49.380 --> 00:42:53.183
You can put that in charge of a 10 group leader who's doing it as part of their discipleship.

501
00:42:53.784 --> 00:43:08.537
So trying to show pastors, there's so much that you're already doing that is trying to scratch a deeper itch, which is how do we help the people of my church carrying the weight of ministry rather than just me all the time?

502
00:43:09.118 --> 00:43:10.699
And 10 helps you step closer to that.

503
00:43:11.568 --> 00:43:11.768
Hmm.

504
00:43:12.729 --> 00:43:13.209
That's good.

505
00:43:14.010 --> 00:43:20.094
I know that a lot of our listeners right now are very, very intrigued, Brendan, and I think they're going to want to find out more.

506
00:43:20.934 --> 00:43:22.715
So tell them how to find you.

507
00:43:22.835 --> 00:43:28.379
Tell them where you are on the World Wide Web, how they can follow along with you while we're doing.

508
00:43:29.202 --> 00:43:29.402
Yeah.

509
00:43:29.802 --> 00:43:35.245
You can go to tendlife.org, T-E-N-D-L-I-F-E.org, and you create a free account.

510
00:43:36.125 --> 00:43:36.846
That's the first step.

511
00:43:37.086 --> 00:43:38.486
And then just look through the materials.

512
00:43:39.127 --> 00:43:39.847
See if you like it.

513
00:43:40.287 --> 00:43:44.809
Give it the good old, you know, once over check to make sure you like the theology and stuff.

514
00:43:44.869 --> 00:43:47.471
We've already run it past all our board and done all these.

515
00:43:49.111 --> 00:43:50.852
We've already been working with all kinds of churches.

516
00:43:50.892 --> 00:43:52.153
So I think you will like it.

517
00:43:52.353 --> 00:43:54.314
But look through the materials.

518
00:43:55.154 --> 00:43:56.575
And then instead of trying to

519
00:43:57.698 --> 00:44:03.520
This is what most pastors are going to try to do is they're going to try to like, oh, we can make all our small groups tend groups.

520
00:44:04.260 --> 00:44:11.862
And I think instead, just identify a few people in your church who you think could lead a group and hand it to them.

521
00:44:12.282 --> 00:44:14.083
Don't make it a centralized program thing.

522
00:44:14.123 --> 00:44:15.463
Don't make it part of your annual goal.

523
00:44:16.203 --> 00:44:22.528
Just identify a few people that you go, you know what, these people are probably the kind of people who would be the first ones to start a group like this.

524
00:44:23.148 --> 00:44:38.919
So as pastor, you can just hand this off to someone else in your community and encourage them to take the next steps in planning their group, which the platform, they have a dashboard that walks them through how to plan a group and get it off the ground.

525
00:44:38.959 --> 00:44:40.040
And then they have access to me.

526
00:44:40.920 --> 00:44:43.722
to, uh, to take their first steps if they need it.

527
00:44:44.343 --> 00:44:46.484
So, um, that's how they, that's how they would get started.

528
00:44:46.504 --> 00:44:48.666
If they're interested in it, like I said, it's completely free.

529
00:44:48.886 --> 00:44:52.969
And the first step is to go to our website, tendlife.org and explore it for yourself.

530
00:44:54.188 --> 00:44:54.648
Amazing.

531
00:44:55.068 --> 00:44:55.388
Amazing.

532
00:44:55.428 --> 00:45:01.910
We'll include all of that in the show notes as well, so our listeners can see all of that there in front of them.

533
00:45:02.671 --> 00:45:05.051
This has been such an awesome conversation, Brendan.

534
00:45:05.131 --> 00:45:13.954
You've really helped me to think about discipleship and mission and neighbors and evangelism in a whole new way.

535
00:45:14.374 --> 00:45:21.396
I really, really appreciate your time today, and I look forward to following along with you and with TEND and everything that you're doing.

536
00:45:22.470 --> 00:45:23.496
Thank you so much, Alicia.

537
00:45:23.516 --> 00:45:24.542
I appreciate the time together.