Hitting the Ball You Cannot See - Jurie Kriel | Faithly Podcast

If young people aren't coming to your Sunday morning services, then try doing something on a Sunday night, try doing something on a Friday, try decentralising. Use the limitations you have and do something different and fail, fail quickly. This is the Faithly Podcast. Well, today on the Faithly Podcast, I am joined by Yuri Creel. Yuri is based in Austin, Texas. He leads next move. He's on the executive leadership team of Shoreline Church and he serves with the LaZanne movement. He is also the author of a new book. I believe your first book, Yuri, which is called Hitting the Ball You Cannot See. Welcome, Yuri. At least that's great to be here. Before we dive into the new book, I'd love for our listeners just to get to know you a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about your ministry journey, how you got to be where you are, and ultimately what major read the book? Oh, wow. That's three questions that might keep me busy for a while. So a little bit about my ministry journey is that I am evidence of the fact that God can eat straight shots with crooked sticks because that's who God is, right? So if I reflect on my ministry journey, it's just grace upon grace. It's the power of God, it's the ability of God. The early days of my call was delivering absolutely terrible messages or sermons and seeing the Holy Spirit bring people to salvation, not because of me, but absolutely regardless of me. So most of what I've seen in ministry is not because of me, but in spite of me. So having seen God do some great things, I was born in apartheid South Africa. So I had the privilege of seeing a nation transform into true democracy and seeing God bring people from, bring a nation from the brink of civil war, right back to reconciliation and love and racial reconciliation. So got to be a part of a lot of that. Then started and led a Bible college in the Cape Region, helped plant churches in different places from Japan to London, to different places in Europe. And then got involved with a church called Doxadeo in South Africa where I got to initially just serve in a large church and eventually lead a mega church in that context and ended up leading a multi-campus environment, got reminded of the call, ended up in the U.S. to first be positive for preaching for a large church here in Austin, Texas. And then planted a church in downtown Austin. And if you know anything about downtown Austin, when I announced it to the church where I was preaching at the time, one of the ladies came to me afterwards and said, but that's Sodom and Gomorrah. And so we planted a high-tech, high-touch church in one of the least-reached urban cores in the U.S.A, which was a fantastic journey, ended up merging with Shoreline Church. During that journey, I was really confronted by the next generation in the U.S. context stepping away from the faith and figuring out what to do with regards to that. So that's where the next move was birthed out of it. A lot of my unity work in the global church was in the city space where I helped start move in to Africa where we were able to minister into 50 African cities. But in all of this, I think there was two themes that were continually emerging. The one theme is the theme of the next generation and the importance that we have a high level of relevance in the way that we put down the church or the message or the church. And the second theme that kept on emerging is this duplication and the church challenge, right? So there's no lack of resource. There's no lack of idea. There's no lack of intent from the heart of God to for for the great commission. But there's an abundance of duplication and competition within the church. And whether it's intentional duplication or I believe I can do it better or unintentional duplication, I just didn't know anyone else was doing this. If we could optimize what we're doing in that way. And so all of that kind of mixed in with just a conviction that technology is neutral and should be used to the good. It's not a bad thing, but it certainly is changing our world. Kind of culminated in what ended up being a book about the future of the faith. So I could tell you more, but that's kind of touching on some of the mountain peaks there. I love it. Well, with all that you've done, Yuri, you look really good for being 150 years old. I mean, you've done a lot of things over a lot of different contexts. Before we dive into the book actually, can you talk a little bit more about next move? It's all about the next generation, right? It's all about the next generation knowing and following Jesus. So what we do day to day is we build relationships that changes the world. And it sounds so flaky almost, right? So I always say the next move, we don't do anything, right? We just accelerate what others are doing by putting them into the right relationships. So if you study church history, Alicia, I mean, everybody remembers Martin Luther, right? Or everybody remembers Wesley. Or, you know, there's these key figures we remember. But if you go study these stories, what's true about each of these stories is they had key relationships that brought about the change. And I'm a firm believer that we can stretch the sales of relationship and trust God to blow the winds of revival into it. And that's what next move is all about, is we're trusting God for a next move and a next move and a next move of His Spirit on planet Earth. But the part that we do is we build meaningful transformational relationships between the right leaders around the world to accelerate the gospel. That eliminates duplication. That reaches the next generation. That moves the ball forward. We do consulting with organizations. We help facilitate conversations and then we have these 10 regional teams around the world where each of these regional teams does that on a regional basis in their different contexts. So next move is a very little tiny organization. We're only in about 71 countries. But the power of the next move is the fruit growing on other people's trees. It's the effect of the great leaders that's a part of this more than what it is. The work that we do, it's the work that we accelerate that's really significant. Think of the Clapham sect in the fall of slavery. It was essentially this home group that made together and it's these relationships that enabled William Wilberforce to did what he did. But without those relationships, he could never have done it. We, none of us can cause that, can make a William Wilberforce happen, right? It's an act of God. It's God that raises the leader at the right time in the right place. But what we can do is we can build the net of relationships around those individuals to set them up. And that's different activities, but that's essentially what next move is. Yeah, wow. And how long have you been leading next move? We've started about five years ago. Five years ago. So in some ways, I'd argue I've always been leading next move because it's just been relationships, right? So, and leading is a very strong word you're using here for, I'm not worthy to tie most of the shoelaces of the people that's a part of the next move. There's some incredible leaders in this community. But it's a privilege to set the table and to see what's emerging from this conversations. Great. Well, thanks for explaining up all of that. I think it's important context because it seems to me that next move and all the work that led to next move is a lot of what has been poured into this book. Yeah, and it's a, the book is a collaborative work, Alicia. I'm not very smart, but I've got amazing friends. And, you know, it's listening to these people. It's listening to some of these leaders. And, you know, as I explained in the beginning of the book, I was invited by the World Evangelical Alliance to facilitate a conversation on the future of the gospel. And then, you know, we had the next move community together for the not-on-our-watch now conversation in Dallas. And then we had the, you know, I got to work with Luzon on this whole process of the state of the Great Commission report and the Fourth Congress. And then I got to work with the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education on the future of the gospel, a future of theological education conversation. So I had the privilege of facilitating all these conversations and speaking to all these amazing leaders. And I just realized there's some themes emerging from this process and there's some learning about how the world is changing and how we can respond to it. And that's kind of what brought it about was these conversations with, you know, people that, I just curated the great things they said, right? The creativity is for getting where you got it from. And I'm very, very... I'm excited to bring our listeners into it as well. So with that, I'd love to ask you about the title, hitting the ball you cannot see. I have an eight-year-old son and as a baseball mom that totally resonated with me. What is it about that metaphor that you think really reveals leadership in this changing world? Well, Alicia, it's a metaphor that I came across, not in baseball, but in cricket growing up. And actually in the book, you'll find it in baseball and a couple of cricket references just because of the global audience, but it's this concept or this idea that when a fastball comes your way, it comes at you at a speed that you can't hit it, right? So the time that it takes for the ball to leave the pitchers hand to the batter, the batsman is less than the time it takes for your eye to recognize the ball, send the signal from your brain to your hand to swing the bat and hit the ball, it's scientifically impossible to hit a fastball, right? And what the book essentially is based on is we're living in a day and age where the world is changing so quickly that it's impossible for us to hit the ball that's coming our way, right? To hit that home run that God has called you for. But the reality is and the beauty of all this is that every weekend, every time a baseball game is played, every time a cricket game is played, this miracle of hitting the ball people can't see is happening. And I believe it is because they understand anticipation more than reaction. And if we can learn to anticipate the shifts that's happening in our world, right? If you think AI, if you think media, if you think truth, if you think what's happening in governments right now, if you think at how the world is changing, we're all struggling with this inability to keep up to the rapid rate of change around us. But if we could learn the skill of anticipation and we could like the sons of Esokara in the Bible, understand the times, if we could gain those skills, I think we're able to hit the ball for a home run because God is excited about the time we're living in. God is a plan and a purpose and you've been born for a time such as this and as a leader, you've been placed in the city and the season and the time with the challenges that surround you for a time such as this. And the book really is just an attempt to bring definition to what's happening around us and then to teach some of these skills of anticipation. So yeah, it's six key shifts in the world. And for each of them there's a definition of the shift and then there's a set of skills that's needed to respond to that shift in society at this point in time. So when you began to write the book and you began to write about these six shifts, did you go into it knowing that that's exactly what you'd write about, did anything change in your thinking as you were putting it together? Everything changed in my thinking as we're putting it together. The reality is that words are to life, like containers are to water. If you've ever tried to drink from a faucet and get that water with your hand or drink directly from the faucet or drink from a fire hose, it's a hard thing to do because you don't have a container to define the water in. And what words does is it gives us containers to actually say, okay, this is the thing. Now I can move the water, I can grab the glass, I can drink it, I can hand you a bottle of water because I'm able to contain this thing that's happening in a container. So I think the concepts that the best books we read on the books that teach us something new, Alicia, if you list out your best books, your favorite books of 20, 25 or your favorite books of your life, you'll probably list out a bunch of books that didn't teach you something new, but it articulated what you already knew. It gave you words for concepts that you experienced. So what was exciting about the process of writing the books wasn't seeing things that I went, man, I've never seen this before, but it was finding the words to the things that I was, we've been living it. And suddenly things started making sense. I mean, I say there's six shifts in the world. We started with 50 plus shifts that we narrowed down to 10 that we narrowed down to six. And we kept on seeing correlation and we kept on kind of fighting into, and actually it narrowed down to three ways in which the world is changing at the moment. So it kept on, we kept on aiming to simplify this and then the exciting part, the most fun part about the journey was the conversations with the people. You've read the book. As you're gonna forget all this stuff I said, but you're never gonna forget the stories that Anja Greenwood from Poland told or the examples used by Kevin Lee from the Chinese context, right? It's those things that the real life stories that really makes it make sense and it gives us a parable for our own lives and the situations we face. That is so good. I'm gonna try to remember what you said. I think you said words are to life as containers are to water that is so good. I'm gonna remember that and use it. You should forget to attribute it to you. Just the only time you need to attribute it to me is when you tell your husband about it, right? Then you say you're he said. The next time you say, you say someone said, and the third time you use it, you just say like I always say because you've said it three times by that point. So go for it. And then by the fourth time I'm writing a book around it and so you said, it'll be a best seller. I'll buy it. I love it. Okay, so one of the, one of the things you talk a lot about is trust and how it is collapsing, how it has collapsed and a lot of institutions and relationships. What do you think trust is going to look like in the next generation? How do we as the church, how do we respond to that? It's a great question. And I forgive me for creating a little bit of context, but I think the understanding of trust is connected to these other things, right? So if you look at the framework, the world is changing in three essential ways, right? Our, it's changing experientially, it's changing structurally and then it's changing relationally, right? So the way we live, the way the world works and then the way we connect is changing. Now these things aren't changing in isolation. They're, the momentum is being built. It's like imagine gear is fitting together, right? So trust and the dynamics of trust is one of these gears under the way the world works. And the reason why trust is changing so much is because the definition of humanity is changing, right? What makes us human is different, which means we're having this digital existence which is impacting what and why we trust, which is changing the way organizations work, which changes the way people relate to one another, right? So these gears together. So to answer your question about trust, is I think the world is looking for an apologetic, which isn't based on historical apologetics. It's actually based on relationship, authenticity, what is truly real. So if you think about information and how information has made something true, right? So, so the whole idea of fact checking is fast disappearing because it's become a curse word, right? Because you and I grew up in a time where if something was to be proven as true, it was true, right? But remember, it wasn't a thousand years ago that medical science proved that smoking didn't cause cancer, right? That was a fact proved it, right? But then facts proved that, oh no, it does, right? So we've become so good at manipulating the information that the generation that's growing up isn't looking for apologetics. So let me give you an example in the church world, right? We would have grown up, most of us going to seminary, you would have been trained in apologetics because you've got to be able to intellectually defend the faith. I want to tell you the generation growing up couldn't care less about the intellectual defense of the faith, the authenticity, the trust that they're looking for, the apologetic that they're after is an incarnate Christ. It's a relational reality of the life lived in relationship with Christ. It's not truth as a concept, but it's truth as the person of Jesus Christ. And these things have an impact, right? So the digitization means that you and I, again, 20 years ago, again, 20 years ago, if I showed you a video of someone doing something, you'd say, well, it's on video, it's true. Today, I can take this picture of you on my screen right now and I can get you to say anything and do anything in your voice with no more information than what we're recording on this podcast right now, right? So what does that do to our trust, right? What we trust, how we trust, how we perceive trust. And in the book, I deal with a little bit, what are some of those things that we need to do differently as the church? If we want to come across trust worthy to the next generation, because coming up with the best apologetic for what we believe is true, is not going to make people believe in the authenticity of the Bible. I believe in the authenticity of the Bible with all my heart, but it's not whether I believe it. It's whether I'm able to convey it that makes a difference in the world, 11 or not. Thank you. Thank you for that, Yuri. I feel like you just sort of captured the heart of the book, you know, the challenges that we're facing right now in this generation. Let's get into the opportunity. Let's get into like, how does the church need to respond to face this? Yeah. Now, I don't want to spoil the book, right? But if you're looking for doom and gloom, this is not that, right? So the reality is that things are changing. Things are changing rapidly. But the answer isn't in the new. The answer is in the ancient. So as you go through the journey of the book, you'll, you know, I laughed at our church staff team because I, you know, they were my guinea pigs. As I was finishing chapters, I'd, you know, we've got about 45 people on staff here at the church. So in our leadership investment times, I take them through it and kind of get their feedback. And, you know, there's a lot of 20 sums, things or something. End of last year, we did a review with them on the years leadership investments, asking what was good. And one of them said their favorite thing about the year was Yuri's scary leadership talks because, you know, when you year about the definition of humanity changing and the impact AI is having in the way we work and, you know, what it's doing, these things are scary. But, you know, it's amazing. The answers is the church, the flourishing, authentic, translated, local church is the hope of the nations, it's the hope of the future. As people are being exposed to more technology, they're leaning in and digging into more authentic, deep relationships with real people. So if the church can figure out how to take the rom mentality of an information-scase era, which is over, right? Information is abundant, cheap and free. In fact, application is abundant, cheap and free because my chat GPT can better apply information right now to my context than what the world's best consultant can. Right? It's just the way it is. So application, but what isn't abundant and free is experience. So if we could shift our understanding, if we could shift our application to experience, I want to tell you there's nothing more attractive than the local church. If you look at the early church, they weren't presenting information, they weren't sharing the gospel based on information nor was it on application in your context, they were presenting it based on experience. Come and be the people of the way, come and live the Christ life, let Christ be incarnate through you in your world and it was so attractive to change the world. It's the same things, but it's figuring out how to translate the gospel to the age we live in rather than dilute the gospel to the lowest denominator, which is the temptation is as making it less and less and less to try and reach the world. When in actual fact, we should go back to the things that really matter in Scripture and just make it more and more. So what's my hope? My hope is that we do what we should have been doing all along, but just rediscovering something. So is that what you mean when you say go back to the ancient thing? Yeah, it's the ancient, it's 2000 years old. Now that doesn't mean that we need to do it in exactly the same way, right? So there's a portion that deals with innovation towards the end of the book, right? How do we innovate? How do we work through innovation? And we've got to understand that innovation always has an end. There's always got to be an end before there's a beginning. And sometimes we've just got to make peace with the fact that certain things has to come to an end in order for things to begin anew, right? So there are things that you need to stop doing if you're going to reach the next generation just because it brought you here, it doesn't mean it'll get you there. Success is far more dangerous than failure because success causes us to repeat and failure causes us to ask what's necessary, right? So failure is safer than success, success is dangerous. And oftentimes that's why organizations die, not because of their failure, but because of their success that makes them irrelevant for the future. But it's so it's that dynamic of deciding what do we need to let go of and what never changes, right? There's some things that never changes and should never change. And when you try and change the unchangeable, you actually do more harm than good. I'll give you a very practical example, right? So church in Europe, they're going through this process of, trying to be more palatable, be more relevant, right? So the main churches in Europe that all start youth groups in the late 60s and 70s and 80s, right? So churches starting to decline, the European church is bringing in pizza and ping-pong, ping-pong into every little community hall because that's what teenagers want. And so they take away the price of Christianity and in the process, they lose the prize of Christianity. And you know, recently Lego did a study and they were trying to figure out, I don't know if you noticed that Lego kind of faded away and then it had this renaissance and now Lego is the thing, you know, adults are building Lego and all the rest, right? You see, I thought I didn't realize that. I thought it was just my life because I have eight-year-old son. So I certainly had a Lego renaissance just in my home. It's not just in your home, it's everywhere. But here's what I want you to see is what happened was Lego became irrelevant because everybody wanted digital, right? And in the late 90s, early 2000s. So Lego did a study and they, what they thought they needed to do is dumb down Lego. So there was a time where Lego was like little mosques and little men and they tried to just make it more like mainstream media, just something nice and lace pieces doesn't take that long to build. So they do this study where they go around to teenagers' homes and they just asked them this one question, what's the most valuable thing in your room? And the teenagers show them different things and they thought teenagers were going to show them their playstations and their Xboxes and this one teenager, there's many stories like this but one of the favorite stories from this study is the teenagers shows them this old pair of tennis shoes that's worn and, you know, and he says, this is my favorite thing in my room and they say, why, why has this, you've got all these nice things, why is this your favorite thing? It says because every scuffmark, every bit of wear on these shoes represent me learning to ride the skateboard. And it's the hardest thing I've ever done. That story and the journey that Lego went through is they realized that teenagers weren't looking for something easier, they were looking for something harder. And so Lego switched gears and rather than making their products easier, they make it harder and harder and harder. Now you get 15,000-piece Lego sets, right? Why? Because people were looking for something worth them in this time rather than looking for something easy. The problem with the church in Europe is young people were leaving the church and joining the G-Hard in the Middle East. Why? Because while they were looking for something worth giving their lives to, the church was offering them pizza and ping pong. So if we want to, and again, to my example of ancient and modern is that hasn't changed, right? So if we dilute the gospel from what it was to something that we think is more palatable, we'll lose the plot. But if we translate the gospel and we take the fact that Jesus is saying, if you want to find your life, you've got to lose your life and we take those hard truths and we translate it to the world, I want to tell you there's nothing more appealing to this next generation than the truth of the gospel preached an authentic and real way. And that's kind of the point is, yes, the world's changing. Yes, we need to adapt to those changes, but we're serving an and changing God with truths that will be true beyond the invention and the downfall of AI, beyond what we can see on the horizon. That's so good. You're common about translating the gospel, I think, is really the key to starting that balance, right, between the modern and the ancient, because we can't go back to the ancient times. The answer is found in the ancient, but here we are in the modern times, right? And I mean, you being part of this incredible faithy project is what you guys are doing, is you're translating, you're removing the duplication, you're translating the gospel, you're presenting the gospel on platforms and in different ways that is relevant to where people are at, right? You're going to the marketplace of the day. Jesus didn't just teach in the temple, he taught in the marketplace. There's more miracles that Jesus did outside of the religious context than within the religious context. And you're doing those miracles, you're presenting it in that way. I think the threat, technology is like money, right? It's, money is not the root of all evil, though it's been quoted that way many times. It's the love of money that is the root of all evil, right? So money is a great, it's a great servant, but a terrible master, and the same with technology, right? It's a great servant, but it's a terrible master. And if we're taking it as a tool and we're infusing it with authentic real relationship, then what an opportunity, what a time we live in, where we can utilize technology to spread the gospel. But if we take what is the technology of the day and we let it rule us, then there's dark days ahead for the church. So it's that, it's how to be stay authentic to who we are and authentic to our message while using every single possible tool that is out there for us to do and being in the spaces where people are. I'm convinced that if Jesus was around today, he'd be preaching on TikTok and Instagram and he'd be publishing Reels because that's why he was on the mount, right? For the servant of the mount because people could hear him in that context. That's why he preached from a boat because that was the best amplifier that you could find to preach the message in that day. Jesus embraced the technology at the time. We have the Bible, we have the gospels because God timed the coming of Jesus with the Roman road and the invention of the mailing system. If he didn't, time it like that, we wouldn't have what we have today. But God knew that that was the timing and that was the technology to get us to where we are today. We need to do the same thing with the technologies of our day. Yeah, that's so good. And it's a perfect segue into my next question, which is where are people today? One of the major themes that goes through your book is this idea of the shifting degrees of separation that there is this fragmentation. So how does the church approach that? It's the paradox, right? People are more connected than ever, but people are more lonely than ever, right? Yes. And that paradox creates opportunity for us on both sides. So people are more connected than ever, means you can reach more people in a simpler way than ever before, right? You can reach people, but you're gonna reach them in a very shallow way. That's the one opportunity. So, you know, beyond social media, but be there in an authentic way. Don't market on social media, add value on social media, right? My hope is that people listening to this is not gonna feel like somebody, I'm not marketing the book, right? Either the book will add value to you or it won't, right? So it'll market itself if it adds value is you don't market on social media, you add value. So don't advertise your youth night coming up on social media. It's not gonna help you any. You're just gonna drown in everything else. And in fact, people are gonna see the ad and go, you know, they're advertising it. But let one of your youth telling authentic story of how Jesus has changed their lives on social media, that's value ad, that's contributing, that's different. People can find you. If they look for you, it's called a search engine, right? So make sure, firstly that that's true. But you don't have to market, they can find you. Don't put up all boards saying church, join us. Tell stories of Jesus changing lives through the people that's a part of the church and I would tell you people will flock to those stories. So firstly, the more connected people, yes, make sure you add value in that space. Secondly, the more lonely people than ever is you've got to create circles and not just rows. If you think of most churches, you think of pews being set in rows. People aren't coming to church because they're hungry for information. I don't care how well you preach. They can find a better preacher online, you know? So, and I'm not gonna name any names yet, but they're gonna find somebody that's more relevant, that's cooler, that has better examples than you. If not somebody, somebody's, right? Because people could just go from listening to somebody's best message, to somebody's best message, to somebody's best message. Why do they come back to church? As because here they can have authentic relationships with real people. And please don't hear me wrong. I'm not saying therefore church should be small. Church can be thousands of people. But if you can facilitate thousands of people into thousands of authentic, meaningful relationships. And that's the key thing is utilize the loneliness and utilize the hyper connectedness in these different ways. I don't know if that answers your question. It absolutely does. I love it. Create circles, not rows. Great circles, not rows. And I loved your advice about how to use social media if you have a youth night coming up. It is so incredibly practical, which is one of my favorite things about your book, which is there was something practical connected to each of the shifts. Now, when you look at, I think there were six, when you look at the six, which practical skill do you think is the most urgently needed right now? I don't think it's a skill for anyone in particular, but it's this, there's two, I'm going to break your question. I apologize. I would not pass this exam, but I'm going to give two skills, because I think we need both. You know what? I asked three questions and one question. You can give me two answers. Yeah, it's all good. There we go. We're going to find it. So the two skills is the one is the skill of understanding. Is the problem is we are more threatened by the change in the world than what we're doing the work to understand it. And oftentimes the problem is with a threat or a fear is it's this nebulous thing that you can't get your arms around, that you can't understand. And there's this cliche saying of face your fears. And I think we need to face our fears with regards to the way the world is changing. Because too many people are in this space of just, oh, the world's changing too quickly. It's changing too much. I'm just gonna, I remember I was having this conversation with somebody and they were like, I am so glad I'm retiring next year. You know, that's all they could think of. And I thought that's, I think a lot of people are in that space where they're just going, man, I just, I'm just glad I get to see this art and I'll be okay. But I don't know what the next generation is going to do. We've got to face it. We've got to understand what's happening. We've got to face it because most of the time when you face a fear that fear becomes much smaller and when you face it, you can deal with it. Story for another day, but I was once chased by an elephant and long story, okay? And the game ranger faced up to the elephant and screamed at it and this huge, you know, massive animal, many times bigger than the game ranger stopped in its tracks because this game ranger faced his fear. And sometimes we just need to face our fears. We just need to be willing to say what, how is the world changing? And I understand it. I don't, can't control it. But I can understand it, which means I can respond to it. And the second overarching skill would be that of innovation. We've got to learn to innovate, Alicia. We're, we're the most creative entity on planet earth. We have direct access to the creator of the universe. But yet the church doesn't display that creativity because we too rooted in our traditions and not rooted enough in our creator. I love the story of stained glass windows, right? Stained glass windows are most people associated with the old churches of stained glass windows. Well, when stained glass windows came about, it was created for an illiterate society to not just see the pictures painted on the walls, but somebody figured out that if you painted on glass, light would shine through it and you'd see the picture in a way that you've never seen the picture before. This was a technology developed by the church which would be later adopted by every castle and every nobleman's manner all around the world. But it was creativity that stemmed from the church. What you're doing with faithly is displaying, explaining, doing creativity around how the church interact, how people of the faith connect with one another in a creative way, maybe not just follow trends, but maybe actually set trends and bring that creativity, bring that innovation forward as we hold on to the ancient things that shouldn't be changed, but we change the things that should be changed and we keep on developing new ways of communicating the message. I love it. That to me was the big call to action in the book which was to innovate, it was to pioneer. I'm gonna ask the question that I think are it is probably on listeners' minds right now, which is, Yuri, that's easy for you to say, here you are on this global stage with this big platform, like I'm a local pastor with not a big budget, not a big team. What does innovation and pioneering mean for me? That's a great question. And to be honest, I think I'm more qualified to answer that because most of the innovation in my life hasn't happened on big stages or global context. It's been in local churches. It's been the lessons I learned starting with zero. I mean, I went from having 85 people on staff in my church to having zero members in my church, right? So we planted a church in downtown Austin three months before the pandemic started, by the way. Great timing for planting a church. But the reality is that what I learned from that process and what I think is important to understand is that innovation isn't subject to the scale, right? So a lot of people say, for you to innovate, you've got to think outside the box. I actually think for you to innovate, you've got to understand the box. It's understanding the limitations that enables innovation, right? It's the, you know, it's the Benjamites in the Bible, right? That could shoot the arrow from the left and the right hand, right? Everybody reads that story and say, well, you know, they innovate it, they excel that they're craft. You know, we've got it, we've got to, we've got to do it. But if you look at this story, how they learn to do that, their backstory and the book of judges is that the Benjamites were dwindled down to 600 people with no wives, no children, no legacy, no future. But they embraced the suck and they taught themselves new skills inside of the limitation, inside of the box. And then years later, they're this incredibly skilled, incredibly powerful tribe of Israel. But it didn't start that way, right? So for the local pastor, for the guy there, is you've got to ask the question, what's working, what isn't working, and develop this lab mentality. What I mean with a lab mentality is experiment, right? So if young people aren't coming to your Sunday morning services, then try doing something on a Sunday night, try doing something on a Friday, try decentralizing. Use the limitations you have and do something different and fail, fail quickly, right? So when you fail, fail and say, I failed, that didn't work, we're going to try this, right? In social media, there's something called A, B, Testing, where you put two concepts out, you see which one flourishes, you kill the one that didn't, and you, you know, you market the one that did, it's the same thing, is do some A, B, Testing, try different things, keep trying things, don't be afraid, organizations die when their history and their legacy and their past success is more important than their future mission. And so if you place the mission above your method, it doesn't matter the scale of what you're doing. It doesn't matter if you're just speaking about the one person you're trying to reach. It's whether you're trying to reach your own teenager or whether you're trying to reach the teenagers of the world, taste, experiment. If one way of building relationship doesn't work, try another way of building relationship. Have the conversation, ask the next generation, invite them into the conversation to shape their thing. You'd be surprised at the intelligence and the wisdom and the understanding and the innovation and the new ideas. And what people design together, they own together. So if you wanna do this innovation, make sure that you involve people in the process of doing it. So there's a whole bit about collaboration and the shifting dimensions of organization, but these principles are not designed to work at scale, only they're totally designed to work for the local church. And when my, I'm a church guy. I lead a lot of global organization. I do a lot of that, but I'm a local pastor that will later this afternoon have a conversation with an individual about their faith journey and what God wants to do with them next. We cannot be so globally minded. There were no local good. It's local faithfulness, it powers our global ministry and that's the way it should be. That is so good, Yuri. I have found that more so than in any pocket of sort of industry or people, there is more sort of this holding onto of the way we do things, the way we've always done things in the church world than anywhere else. And I wonder if you're right, it's just like fear of failure because so much has worked for so long. But my hope is that your words have just given permission to hundreds of not thousands of church leaders to experiment, to be entrepreneurs in the faith to try different things, to fail quickly. I love it, that is so good. You mentioned collaboration. I wanna talk about collaboration for a bit. Major theme in the book and in your work with next move and certainly with LaZone, what have you learned about collaboration? It has always been a tricky subject when it comes to the church. What works, what doesn't work? I'll never forget I had this conversation with a Ukrainian pastor once that told me, if the church was full of vegetables and fruits and vegetables, church would be easy, but now it's full of people, so it's hard. I think it's the same as collaboration, right? Is the problem with collaboration is not the belief that better is together. I think most people have some sense of belief that better is together. I think most people fundamentally think it can work. The challenge is paying the price for collaboration. So in order to pick up collaboration, you've got to lay down individualism. And that's the challenge. It's not the belief, it's the conversion to. And I think there needs to be a conversion to the belief that better is together. And then there needs to be an action to that. And we need to be willing to try and fail. In many ways, it's in a world of instant gratification, collaboration isn't the best way to get instant gratification. It's the best way to get a long-term success, but it's not the best way to get instant gratification. It's easier, typically, to just do it yourself than to work with someone else. But it's that African saying, as an African, I can testify that it truly is an African saying that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And I think that's the reality. So what I've learned about it is probably a broader conversation, but I have never been more convicted or convinced that it is in collaboration and only in collaboration that we can keep up and that we can accelerate to the extent that we can truly impact and change the church into the future. We're not going to be able to impact this generation in isolation. It's only through collaboration, because collaboration is a multiplier. So if you think about it, Jesus prays many prayers, right? But there's only one prayer of all the prayers that he prays, that he prays directly for you and me. In fact, he says, Lord, I don't just pray for them, but I pray for those who would come to faith because of them, right? So that's you and me. That's the only prayer and what's that prayer? Lord, I pray that they might be one as you and I are one. And so it Jesus knew that what we needed in the future and the global church is being one. And they will know that we're his disciples for the love, agape, beneficial love we have for one another. So it's still logically the way it's the need demands it. The need demands it. And then largely, practically it just makes sense, right? So draft horses, these incredible animals, I love them. And they dwarf human beings, they are massive pieces of muscle. One draft horse is able to pull 8,000 pounds or four tons of weight. But if you put two together, you think, well, therefore two would do 16 pounds, right? 16,000 pounds because it's twice as much. No, two together can do 24, right? So there's a multiplication that takes place when you put two together. If you train those two together, two can do 36, which means two draft horses is doing the work of four draft horses if they're trained to work together. That takes time and effort. The time and effort we put into collaboration. If done right will always have exponential impact down the line, but in a world of instant gratification, in a world of pride, in a world of me, in a world of YouTube and you version and you everything and you rule in that world, it's hard to convince people, but it's the most important thing we need to do in the season and the church. Yeah, amen. Well, we've covered a lot of ground in this conversation, you know, we've talked about shifts and technology and connectedness, innovation pioneering. We've talked elephants, draft horses. We've really, we've covered a lot of ground. I just bull cricket. It's been around. Perhaps we can leave it with this one final question. You said this book is not about doom and gloom, right? And as you look ahead, amid all the shifts, the disruption, the uncertainty, the change, what is the thing that gives you most hope about the future of the church? Most hope is difficult because I think there's a lot of things that give me hope. But in the same way that a farmer would look over a freshly planted field with all these little seedlings coming up, he's hope doesn't lie in this seedling is going to be taller than any other. But what gives me hope is the field. What gives me hope is a generation that's emerging. It's it's islands of revival that's breaking out around the world. It's still an ocean of stepping away from the faith, but these islands of revival, there's there's little sparks, there's little amber as there's individuals, there's a generation arising that's hungry for the things of God and to see God do great things in their generation. And God has not lost a generation yet and he's not about to lose one now. So I am full of hope and excitement for that lies ahead in this next season. Well, thank you, Yuri, for this incredibly thought-provoking conversation and that is a beautiful note to end it on. Thank you, sir. Thank you, it was great being with you, Elishan. Excited about the incredible work you guys are doing. Thank you. You're listening to this podcast. So I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressive save over $900 on average. They make it super simple. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with coverage options tailored to your choices. Plus, you'll see which discounts you may qualify for, like the online quote discount, or savings for paying and free. You'll see which discounts you may qualify for, or savings for paying and full. 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