Ep.5 - Why The Hate Part 1
00:00:00.000 | all right everyone welcome to the grace point what is this the official unofficial grace point
00:00:11.520 | podcast i have bad host this is a show where we talk about all things grace point the good
00:00:18.080 | the bad the ugly and today we are going to talk about the question why the hate why the hate why
00:00:24.480 | the hate so let's start yeah so i think isaiah why do you hate me we're not we're not talking about that
00:00:30.800 | here we can talk about that later outside the um i i think one thing that a lot of people whether that
00:00:39.200 | be our people or um i don't know people who are checking out our church for the first time and
00:00:43.760 | searching on us google us on google um one of the first questions i think a lot of people have is
00:00:48.000 | whoa this church has a lot of just hate online and a lot a lot of a lot of bad press yep and
00:00:54.320 | why does a church of this size have just proportionally like so much about them yep
00:01:00.880 | and so we want to talk about that and i mean i don't know exactly um so obviously there's
00:01:05.280 | you know i've read through a lot of it personally um okay so i haven't read you haven't very much of
00:01:10.480 | it yeah i just choose not to yeah i i like it actually it's kind of it's kind of interesting
00:01:15.360 | um so i mean as i've read through a bunch of it um and so i mean so obviously this is sort of our
00:01:18.960 | take on it like we're not the authorities on this but i do feel like might be helpful just to talk about
00:01:23.440 | that and um yeah so basically what we're gonna do is we're going to talk about our top three yeah
00:01:30.000 | what are the top top three reasons top three we're gonna give our top three we're gonna talk about it
00:01:33.920 | um and see how this goes yeah so how about this well we'll go from three to two to one sure save
00:01:40.320 | the most important one for last um and we'll just count down say it at the same time and see if we get
00:01:47.920 | the same things okay okay all right this is mind meld okay okay you count you can't okay all right
00:01:52.320 | one two three conservative korean culture oh okay very different okay how about you go first all right
00:02:00.560 | well yeah i mean i think one of the reasons why we get a lot of hate is because we're big target right so
00:02:05.440 | you said about like it's like disproportionate right um and i think to agree that's true it's it's sort of like
00:02:10.400 | i i you know like let's say you're you're a newcomer at like you know coming to one of our newer churches
00:02:17.360 | a church plant and it looks really small you you look us up online and it's like what is this torrential
00:02:23.360 | like outpouring of stuff right that is true but the thing is is like yeah maybe that person thinks like
00:02:28.160 | we're just one small new church of like 30 but the reality is that we're on like it's like 70 campuses
00:02:33.680 | now or something like that yeah so so it's really strange we we have the feel of a small family church
00:02:40.400 | close-knit community right but in actuality we are like a nationwide network this organization right but
00:02:47.280 | the nationwide work still feels very familial because like the leaders have years of relationship you and
00:02:52.560 | i know each other for 14 years right and in a lot of ways i think our church is going through like this
00:02:57.760 | transition where we like to think of ourselves and we conduct ourselves like a small family church but we
00:03:02.240 | are actually this big network this big institution yeah you know and there's a lot of things that
00:03:05.760 | haven't really caught up to that like systems and and and added in policies or best practices whatever
00:03:10.160 | it might be in a sense we kind of want to resist that too because we don't become institutionalized
00:03:14.160 | because that's not the greatest thing either because when there's like a movement when there's
00:03:17.600 | like anyway so we that that's like a whole other thing but i think that we are a big target
00:03:22.400 | and um and in some of our campuses we are the biggest target around and berkeley for sure oh yeah you
00:03:29.040 | know and um and i think that's why um we get all hate yeah that's a good one i didn't i didn't actually
00:03:34.800 | think about that um i'm curious about yours well i kind of cheated i kind of combined it into two things
00:03:41.280 | about our culture okay is uh conservative and very korean and i know nowadays i don't know if korean and
00:03:48.000 | conservative is sort of associated back in the day i think it certainly was um so i'll just talk about
00:03:53.360 | those a little bit but i think we're very conservative and i think most people like
00:03:56.640 | that's obvious right like we have a like we don't do we're kind of anti-media like we're like slightly
00:04:02.080 | amish um you know we're anti we say we're anti-drinking you know alcohol southern baptist or southern
00:04:08.720 | baptist i mean you know a whole whole lot of stuff with that and then um you know like the gender thing
00:04:15.200 | like dating we talked about that we talked about that before so we won't open that can of worms
00:04:19.520 | anymore uh but yeah so there's just a lot about us that uh if you didn't come from that kind of church
00:04:24.880 | it can feel very like restrictive when you come in and like yo why are these people like so uptight
00:04:28.720 | um so i think that's part of it and then i think um i don't know kind of relatedly we're we're
00:04:33.520 | we're our roots are very korean right um so okay tell me what that means because i'm not korean so yeah
00:04:38.960 | okay well i mean i meant oh on one hand just like literally yeah like literally the founding you know
00:04:44.560 | pastor couple of the church that grace point came out of you know they were which was not your parents
00:04:49.280 | not my parents yeah that was so you know we there was a church called bbc in 1981 and then we came
00:04:55.040 | out of them in 2006. um and uh but yeah like up till i don't know up till at least the 90s i think
00:05:02.640 | pretty much our whole church was korean we used to be called kbsk korean baptist student
00:05:08.480 | koinonia which is like the worst name ever and then we changed it to asian baptist student
00:05:12.960 | that's when we just became koinonia and that's when we sort of entered like normal modern life
00:05:18.880 | okay i i kind of see that as that marker there yeah um but yeah i mean so we were very homogenous and
00:05:23.680 | very korean and that means a lot of things like to cuss at each other like if you cuss at someone
00:05:28.720 | in english then it's like i hate you but in korean like you cuss at people like you like it's an
00:05:33.120 | affection yeah it's almost like an affectionate thing anyway and so i think some of that um didn't quite
00:05:38.080 | make the the jump american culture in a very graceful way included in that is like the propensity to
00:05:45.120 | talk really rough with someone or like sarcastically or like or like yell at people like i remember one
00:05:50.320 | of my friend's moms um she told me a story of how um when she was young she thought her dad hated her
00:05:57.360 | because her dad would often tell her to go die in korean oh wow right and she was like you know american
00:06:02.160 | born so she didn't understand yeah how in korean like like someone telling someone to die is that's
00:06:08.320 | kind of it's kind of like funny and endearing right but if you say that in english yeah if you tell someone
00:06:13.280 | go die it's like oh my god yeah you you you want me to die right you hate that so anyway you know i get
00:06:18.640 | that because actually there are aspects of chinese that are like oh do chinese people do well it's not
00:06:22.240 | like to that extent but i've definitely had experiences where i've like literally translated what my parents
00:06:26.000 | said to me i'm like why how could you say that and then they're like what you know like so to a
00:06:29.920 | degree i think that's that's true yeah that might be an east west thing yeah so i i just think uh there
00:06:34.880 | was a period where our church was becoming more diverse but we were still behaving as if everyone
00:06:39.760 | was korean and still kind of talking to each other in a certain way and even you know when we came to
00:06:43.920 | spiritual stuff and the way we like brought stuff up and confronted it it felt very like rough because
00:06:49.040 | in your face that was what we were used to and i think maybe we're a little slow to catch up to that i
00:06:52.720 | mean which is our bad you know we we need to adapt to culture and kind of understand like what the
00:06:57.120 | culture is and what people can take and what they can't and what they interpret as love so i mean i
00:07:01.280 | think in some ways we're still i mean i think we've obviously come a long way but i do think in some
00:07:05.040 | ways we're still kind of like oh okay kind of unraveling the the threads of our culture that have
00:07:10.240 | been kind of interwoven into our church yeah um so that would be my number three okay should go to
00:07:15.120 | number two or yeah any other comments on that um no no okay let's do number two yeah all right you
00:07:20.080 | give us count cool all right one two three the internet oh what okay we're very different yeah
00:07:25.840 | very different yeah yeah i mean so again i you know i haven't read any of this stuff um but my my
00:07:31.120 | mine is more just like a i don't know sociological perspective a little bit you know like just kind
00:07:36.560 | of zooming out at our culture at large and hate on the internet is just like everyone knows it's there
00:07:43.520 | it's just perfect like there's that there's that wreck it ralph i've never seen the movie but i know
00:07:46.880 | wreck it ralph too there's a part where you know wrecks the internet goes to the comments he goes
00:07:50.000 | across the comments section and it's like oh we don't go there and then he's he's there and he's
00:07:53.120 | like you know and it's like everyone knows exactly what happens in the comments section you do right
00:07:58.880 | so you know everyone knows like there's some something about anonymity anonymity anonymity
00:08:03.760 | anonymity that's my chinese side coming out um but yeah so something about that like people don't
00:08:08.720 | know who you are so you can say what you want you can be completely unfiltered right and it's sort of like i
00:08:13.680 | mean i i say stuff in my head that's like i would never say out loud right because i but i know you
00:08:18.720 | know but god hears it so i should repent but but you know like that's that is what happens right but i
00:08:23.520 | think on the other hand it's not just like like you know that enabling very vicious language but like
00:08:30.160 | sort of people finding all kinds of things to hate on like and and being able to pick up on the weirdest
00:08:37.760 | things to hate on so and and just sort of like being able to really mischaracterize so so there's
00:08:43.680 | this really famous article that came out recently called um reality is a video game and we're all
00:08:48.160 | losing and it's taking this like people used to um so when the dark knight came out this sounds totally
00:08:54.320 | tangential totally when the dark knight came out no idea um they ran this campaign to advertise it
00:08:59.280 | where people were literally chasing clues in real life it was like like they got it like a card and was
00:09:03.680 | like me at this street corner here at this time if you could figure it out when you got you got there
00:09:08.000 | you got the next clue the next clue so it was almost like a real life like puzzle yeah and then at the
00:09:12.560 | end of it they like each got clown masks and it was like it was like part of this like you know oh why
00:09:17.360 | it's so serious it was the unveiling of the why so serious like tag and so it was this real life
00:09:21.520 | thing and it was like a small community of people at like i think it was comic-con where they were like
00:09:25.280 | whoa you know and that became kind of a thing for like companies and gaming and people to do the most famous
00:09:30.080 | was this guy that buried like a hundred thousand dollars in like britain or something like that and
00:09:34.560 | then people were like all over the world trying to figure it out someone finally found it right but
00:09:38.480 | it was like a real life video game so there's a known genre and so what happens is there's this
00:09:42.640 | culture that gets created about it running where people are like looking for clues and stuff and
00:09:46.560 | they start kind of it's almost like confirmation bias they're starting to look for things yeah now that
00:09:50.240 | the whole point of the article is like oh that's kind of weird but people are noticing that
00:09:54.080 | that that's like heightened to another degree you know i mean you see that with like conspiracy theories right
00:09:59.440 | right that guy that like invaded the pizza shop because he thought there was going to be like a
00:10:02.560 | sex yeah yeah yeah yeah so like people are sort of making the weirdest connections yeah and like
00:10:09.120 | able to paint the most sinister picture yeah and like create something really hateful out of something
00:10:13.760 | that's not even there yeah and i think they do that with political tribes that aren't like them i think
00:10:18.400 | that like whatever is their target they will they can find ever more things to hate on yeah and you know
00:10:23.520 | like i i've heard about some of the things that people write about us and then some of this stuff is
00:10:26.960 | ridiculous it's ridiculous what you know but but then i think that's what's going on okay yeah
00:10:32.080 | okay so so just to qualify one thing you said like i don't like i just want to make it clear like i don't
00:10:37.920 | think you're saying this either but like that doesn't mean that everything on there is no right like
00:10:41.840 | obviously people have like real hurts and yeah yeah yeah and we need it and we need to acknowledge that
00:10:46.000 | but i do see what you're talking about because yeah i spent a long time reading through what's online
00:10:49.840 | and there's some ridiculous stuff and i mean some of it i know is ridiculous because it was about me right
00:10:55.120 | like there was a claim that like this this one guy online just just made this claim that my dad bought
00:11:00.960 | me a house and that just didn't happen yeah right but he and his justification was oh i looked at your
00:11:09.520 | linkedin a little creepy by the way but i looked at your linkedin yeah and you saw your salary what you
00:11:14.160 | made and then i looked at like the housing records and basically there's no way you could have made enough
00:11:19.760 | money in that time to get that house right and so therefore you're lying and your dad bought you this
00:11:25.840 | house because i went on there and said i didn't my dad didn't do that right and he's like and he's like
00:11:29.040 | no you're lying and i was like uh okay i mean i don't know what to tell you at that point but i i do
00:11:35.680 | think yeah like there's a certain extent to which okay you've been wounded you've been hurt for sure
00:11:39.600 | right but then people take it to this next level where now because they're seeing everything that filter
00:11:44.160 | like everything is sinister and everything like we are like you know we're the illuminati now
00:11:48.480 | and like every move of ours is kind of analyzed and thought through so okay that's that's kind
00:11:52.560 | of where i'm coming from like no for sure there's like stuff on there that's like serious it's like
00:11:55.760 | whoa you know but like i i think the the way it gets compounded is this like internet yeah
00:12:02.240 | dynamic so it kind of becomes it kind of gets out of hand and yeah okay i mean so mine was very
00:12:07.120 | different yeah what was yours again i said bait and switch okay yeah i think a lot of people's
00:12:11.200 | experience of our ministry on like especially like the college campus is that we seem to promise
00:12:16.480 | one thing or kind of front load like niceness people use like the term love bombing and things
00:12:21.520 | and say like oh you you just try to recruit people with these like fake tactics right um i mean i don't
00:12:27.920 | know like i i get it because it can seem like that like a lot of our flyers you know people will accuse
00:12:35.360 | us of like oh this flyer is very deceptive because it says like free food you know i mean but it also
00:12:40.560 | says christian group at the bottom but sure like okay i i can see that and you know people feel like
00:12:46.000 | oh like they try to they try to get you in the door right through their like nice tactics um but then
00:12:51.760 | what they're really looking to do is to like enslave you you know and to like get you part of their
00:12:57.520 | system like plugged into the matrix and there's that kind of thing um and i mean i i think in some ways
00:13:03.520 | like okay so i feel a little mixed about that i'm a little ambivalent about that one because yeah i can see
00:13:08.560 | it in some ways like like there have been times so we did that used to do this thing called cooking
00:13:12.560 | for a question we stopped because we got so much cookie for questions yeah yeah i think it became a
00:13:16.800 | meme on the berkeley meme page yeah we got famous but you basically go on campus and you say hey come
00:13:22.320 | ask a question about god and then you get a cookie right which perfectly legitimate very upfront sort of
00:13:28.720 | ministry yeah like tactic in my opinion but then what some people started doing some like students
00:13:33.600 | actually not staff but some students started doing is they would go to people and they could be like
00:13:37.440 | hey you want a free cookie and then the guy would be like okay and they'd be like okay but first you
00:13:41.600 | got to come ask a question about god and be like oh okay now i don't want a cookie yeah i don't want
00:13:45.520 | the cookie anymore so so i can see that like people being like over eager over zealous and doing stuff
00:13:50.000 | like that for sure that happens yeah or like you know yeah you want to get free green barbecue or like
00:13:53.920 | you want to get free dinner or food whatever and we offer free food at our events yeah it feels like we're
00:13:57.840 | trying to trick people with food we do say christian on the flyer yeah but still i could yeah but so so
00:14:02.720 | i mean i don't know i i do so so on the one hand yeah we're guilty and i think we we've told our
00:14:08.080 | people we've told our people i've told my people like don't be bad and switchy you know so our welcome
00:14:12.800 | night now is just called the good news right to be very upfront like this is a christian thing you're
00:14:17.440 | coming to a christian thing um but on the other hand i do think like one thing to understand about the
00:14:22.000 | college campus is that it is a recruitment like sphere like everyone's recruiting the frats are
00:14:28.560 | out there recruiting all the other christian group i mean like it's not just us like christian groups
00:14:32.320 | do this all the time offer free food with their events and stuff and like that's kind of what's
00:14:36.800 | expected you know and obviously like i'm not just giving you free food because i love giving away free
00:14:40.960 | food yeah right i'm trying to get you into something i'm trying to get you into so that you'll hear the
00:14:44.480 | gospel right but it's not because i want your money or because i want your labor right i'm trying to do
00:14:48.720 | something which i think will really benefit you you know eternal life so that you don't like what
00:14:52.320 | else am i supposed to do am i supposed to like act mean right yeah so so i mean again that one's kind
00:14:57.280 | of complex and and i get it and i think we we were bad at this in the past and we're trying to get
00:15:04.000 | better and admit in some ways we still need to be better well i think like i think that's true so a
00:15:08.720 | lot of like the recruitment aspects bait and switchy but i think you said something else that i think we can
00:15:12.800 | do a little bit longer on which is kind of like the experience of like you first come and you're really
00:15:17.600 | welcomed and then suddenly there's all this expectation on you or like something like the
00:15:21.360 | in your sophomore year the switch flips and like there's now things you're being asked to do you
00:15:26.160 | know and it's like what you know and that wasn't like not clear yeah part of me kind of wonders
00:15:31.440 | like why wasn't that clear don't you see that the upperclassmen are serving or something like that a
00:15:34.960 | little bit and like you know but but like no but i can see how you would experience that that can feel like
00:15:40.960 | another element of bane switch that's just sort of like whoa like i was i didn't sign up for this you know and and so
00:15:47.200 | people kind of give out and then by that time they've like made that all their friends are in
00:15:52.000 | our church right that's hard and then when they realize like okay i don't want this you know and
00:15:55.920 | then they they need to find out you know they decide to go find another church whatever that process is
00:16:00.160 | really painful yeah i mean so again we've actually talked about this before with like all of our staff
00:16:05.280 | and i think one thing that we've tried to do is like and be a little more upfront like with people
00:16:09.360 | like hey we are an intense church i think even this podcast is one effort to do that honestly just to
00:16:13.440 | give people like an inside look like hey before try before you buy a little bit you know like we are
00:16:18.320 | kind of different in this regard um but it's hard you know because it's yeah i mean like your dad like
00:16:22.880 | you know at certain retreats i've heard people go look like leave earlier you know i mean like even
00:16:28.240 | started saying to that extent like this is the time to leave if you're thinking because this is what we
00:16:31.920 | are about yeah what we're like we don't want you to experience that pain so and so but then we do that
00:16:36.160 | and it's sort of like you guys are too quick to kick people out you know until that's 22 yeah it
00:16:41.600 | goes both ways cool all right move on to the last one sure all right number one okay ready one two
00:16:48.080 | three talking conversations okay same thing same thing okay so i said talking to people tough conversations
00:16:53.600 | you want to share your thoughts first yeah yeah so um this is like i think one of the toughest things
00:17:00.000 | about ministry and i think most of the hate out there is because of this it's just tough conversations
00:17:06.720 | gone wrong um and yeah there's just so so you know as we're trying to disciple people as we're trying to
00:17:15.120 | raise and become like christ you know like every you know what what is it that we do and you know for me
00:17:18.880 | the picture of that is ephesians 4 right it's it's speaking the truth in love it's acts 20 paul's
00:17:22.720 | paul's saying you know i admonished everyone like i did not withhold anything that was profitable i
00:17:26.160 | modest you day and night with tears you know and you read those and you're kind of like okay that's
00:17:31.360 | like you can just gloss over those words really easily right but what is it what is that about
00:17:35.120 | that's that's like i'm i as a leader have the responsibility to shape you into someone who's more
00:17:39.440 | and more like jesus in every of your life and in every aspect right and that's really intense you know
00:17:44.880 | but but you know i'm gonna do it with as much wisdom as i possibly can with like the strength of
00:17:48.880 | relationship all that but that means i'm gonna have to have moments where like i have tough
00:17:52.960 | conversations with you about things that i'm seeing you know and like i'm not trying to be mean
00:17:58.080 | i think those things are going to help you right but those are really hard conversations to give but
00:18:03.760 | also to take and think about how many of those conversations have happened in our church because
00:18:10.400 | of like how long we've been in ministry and how many people have come to ministry and then like
00:18:14.400 | they're college students so they're young they need a lot of shaping frankly yeah yeah but then it's like
00:18:20.240 | it's you know it's like yeah you're young and you're you don't take that the best way and no one
00:18:26.320 | talks to you like that maybe not even your parents you know so your parents talk you to talk to you
00:18:30.160 | like that yeah yeah i mean i grew up really church so maybe that's why but um but i think
00:18:35.600 | you take that and then you take the fact that like we have a lot of leaders and a lot of young
00:18:39.520 | leaders and then it's not like professionally trained you know or anything like that it's like
00:18:43.760 | you know people who are kind of you know learning maybe they picked up some of that korean
00:18:47.840 | culture-ness you know them they're just doing what they're doing yeah they receive and there's
00:18:51.680 | just there's probably been a lot of mistakes there have been a lot of mistakes and people have been
00:18:55.280 | hurt and relational hurt like that is the worst kind and so that results in pain anger disappointment
00:19:01.840 | and then that just kind of just all comes out you know on and people feel like they can't talk to
00:19:06.960 | people about it so they talk you know type on the internet yeah yeah so um i think basically the same thing
00:19:14.080 | for me i think one verse that captures it for me is colossians 128 him we proclaim warning everyone
00:19:19.200 | and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in christ for this i
00:19:22.960 | toil struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me so i mean to me that sounds yeah to
00:19:28.880 | me that sounds more than like hey let's meet once a week and talk about the bible right it's like a little
00:19:33.040 | more than that because i don't know if that counts as struggling with all of god's energy that he works in
00:19:37.600 | you right like that means like i'm trying to deal with your character i'm trying to help you grow as
00:19:41.200 | a person i'm trying to like confront your sin issues i mean you look at all the things that paul had to do
00:19:46.560 | had to go through with like the corinthians you know and all the things that he wrote in his letters
00:19:50.240 | just the many different topics he was addressing like that was not like you know that was full life
00:19:55.920 | discipleship that he was doing and i think we as a church we really believe in that we believe we are
00:20:01.280 | called to do that like we have to do that like out of obedience to christ but we also well the
00:20:06.160 | other element of that is like we're living so close yeah that you see like like we're in each other's
00:20:10.640 | home yeah like i can't ignore it like right there in front of me yeah my kid will be like there was
00:20:13.920 | no one coming over today you know like that's the extent right and then so it's right there and it's
00:20:17.680 | like yeah okay to a degree i need sometimes i need to just let those slide but then after it's
00:20:22.400 | happening a lot it's like oh i'm gonna talk about that you know because like i see it you know if you
00:20:27.680 | obligated to do that yeah yeah so then i mean and you know it's tough but i think as i think about
00:20:34.000 | as i think about my own life like not only that's like oh we're supposed to do this out of grim duty
00:20:38.320 | but like as i think about my own life and you know feel free to chime in with some of your experiences
00:20:43.040 | but um as i think about my own life all the times where i really grew and like took a big step forward
00:20:47.760 | in my faith were times where often it was precipitated by some tough conversation you know so i mean
00:20:52.880 | just quick example that i always go back to is you know i went to taiwan my junior year to serve as
00:20:56.640 | a missionary honestly i had no heart for the taiwanese i didn't know where taiwan was on a
00:21:01.040 | map i didn't like taiwanese food i just went because my friend really wanted to go and he
00:21:05.040 | needed a buddy to go with them so i was there surely out of grim duty i didn't like it i had a bad attitude
00:21:10.320 | and i was like breaking down the team and then one day my leader just sat me down and he was like yo
00:21:15.840 | you know what like i think you're just really immature you know you need to grow up and that was tough to
00:21:22.000 | hear because i fancied myself a mature person which is hyper deluded of me but um but that's what he
00:21:28.880 | said to me and there it was and i had a choice to take him up and you know take that seriously or to be
00:21:34.400 | like you know you don't know me like whatever you know and i mean thankfully uh i i listened
00:21:39.600 | you know and i said okay you know i'm gonna try i'm gonna start trying to like really love these people
00:21:44.720 | and try to make the most of this time and it ended up being one of the most transformative
00:21:48.640 | like months semesters of my life you know i got to see one of my dear friends to this day come to
00:21:53.600 | christ this total non-christian guy and i mean yeah there's there's so much to that that i could go on
00:21:58.320 | about but i i think back and i'm like gosh i'm so thankful that my leader at that time talked to me
00:22:03.520 | because otherwise i would have just missed out and maybe it would have been worse like i might have i
00:22:07.120 | don't know i don't know what effects i could have had ultimately but i'm so thankful because i got
00:22:11.120 | to be a part of that now and i get i can look back with like a lot less regret than i otherwise
00:22:15.920 | would have so like yeah and so i think about that in the lives of the people that i ministered
00:22:19.920 | like i don't want to rob them of that right even if it is costly in the sense of like it's hard to
00:22:24.960 | have those kind of conversations so yeah yeah no so that those are like the best stories and i for sure
00:22:30.400 | have experienced that i don't even experience leaders like saying stuff like you know i'm not sure
00:22:33.920 | about this but like this is kind of i'm seeing like is this the and then they're like they back fine
00:22:38.160 | first and they kind of explore and ask more questions before they you know and then they go
00:22:41.840 | okay is it this or this and it's more like this okay and then they trust so i think for the most part
00:22:46.400 | even within the tough conversations my leaders have been really gracious with me actually i really
00:22:50.480 | appreciated that it's been blessing but i think for me like like like well here's a question do you
00:22:57.840 | are you more confrontational are you like like or do you think you could you should grow like where
00:23:03.040 | where do you find i'm not confrontational okay i'm like an enneagram like i'm kind of an enneagram
00:23:06.560 | nine or five one or the other but yeah i my issue is that i don't confront enough but i know you're
00:23:11.520 | sure yeah yeah this is really surprising people because they think i'm nice in fact one of your
00:23:15.200 | guys that you're mentoring once was like man like you know what what if i was like under you what if
00:23:19.520 | you're my leader and i looked and i was like you don't want to be because i knew it was under you
00:23:23.760 | you're used to a certain kind of leader right very different and i so yeah for me i definitely had a long
00:23:28.800 | like kind of period of time and i'm still growing through it but like where i was like a little too
00:23:32.960 | confrontational and maybe even like a little too smothering a little bit like really one of my guys
00:23:36.720 | who are really pushing them and not putting the ball in their court enough you know that sort of thing
00:23:40.480 | kind of not recognizing boundaries that well i remember those times we've been talking about yeah
00:23:44.320 | yeah and you i had conversations with you where i was like recognizing that and i was like it was
00:23:47.920 | really painful to to to grow out of that because like i started realizing these different
00:23:53.120 | conversations like oh maybe i shouldn't have done that and i went back to multiple guys
00:23:58.400 | and and this is actually just like right before church playing actually where i was like
00:24:01.920 | hey this tough conversation can you tell me if i like did anything like that you know and you know
00:24:09.840 | it was it was anything that was like yeah yeah that was too much you know and one of the guys was like
00:24:14.480 | no i needed that thank you for doing that and i don't think i have anything to fulfill so okay
00:24:19.520 | another guy was like no most part was good but there's just one thing that was a little bothered by
00:24:22.960 | apologize for that and there was one guy that was just like you know that season
00:24:28.080 | is very mixed for me and i i don't want to kind of i don't feel the need to like correct everything
00:24:34.800 | everything you know that happened i'm just you know like we're just gonna have grace about it you
00:24:39.520 | know and so like that was i don't know if i needed to i i felt like i needed to do that i don't know if
00:24:45.520 | like every leader needs to do that or something like that but that was just something that i needed
00:24:48.000 | to do and um like ultimately you know me ministering didn't depend on those answers it was just sort
00:24:54.000 | like me relationally with those guys i just wanted to know that right and it's just it's so hard and
00:24:58.960 | maybe sometimes like some people don't like i don't know like maybe sometimes some people don't
00:25:07.280 | recognize how hard it is and how fraud it is and how risky it is and then like you you kind of don't
00:25:11.280 | think about it you don't pray but you don't really feel the weight of it and you just really rigidly or
00:25:16.000 | mechanically just you know you say and then it's like oh you should have done that you know and i had to go through
00:25:20.720 | that kind of growing process or even i had to like process my own frustrations and patience and
00:25:25.440 | repent of those things too at the same time some of those guys are like no i need to hear that yeah
00:25:29.920 | and so it's a constant growing process yeah i mean i think gosh i know this is a little bit of an
00:25:34.560 | overgeneralization but i do think like people make blunders for sure and often that's just an issue of
00:25:40.240 | wisdom like oh you were foolish like i don't know why you had that kind of conversation with that
00:25:44.320 | person at that time like he wasn't ready for it right so those blunders happen um and there are times
00:25:49.680 | also when people are maybe a little like i don't know in an effort to be a good leader you know
00:25:56.080 | there's sort of this kind of perception that like a good leader is one who confronts which i think is
00:25:59.920 | true to an extent like you do have to be able to confront but maybe you know they don't balance that
00:26:05.040 | with the requisite kind of wisdom or thought yeah warming or even just warming up yeah we're just like
00:26:09.520 | like our relationship is not at that point and they misjudge that so i definitely think those blunders
00:26:13.760 | happen and i think those are the cause of a lot of pain and i think what you did was good because i think we
00:26:17.440 | we need to know how to apologize for that i i don't think i'm great at that i don't think
00:26:21.280 | actually a lot of people at our church don't know how to do that gracefully and i think maybe that's
00:26:25.680 | something maybe you should teach a workshop on that one day but no but i do think that's important to do
00:26:29.840 | um to to to acknowledge mistakes and to apologize and so maybe that's an area of growth for us but
00:26:35.280 | on the other hand i do feel like i can say with a fair amount of confidence for me for the people that
00:26:41.920 | administer to me for everyone i know as a minister that those conversations are never from a place of
00:26:47.600 | like i'm trying to benefit myself right and that's what i really find frustrating about some of the
00:26:51.760 | online criticism they they act so certain that these conversations that we have are because we're on
00:26:56.800 | power trips or because we hate these people or we're trying to like like that is i mean i'm not saying
00:27:01.920 | that never happens but if it does it's exceedingly rare it's like really rare because like you just
00:27:08.080 | got to think about it like why like what power do i really gain from that if anything i'm probably going
00:27:12.960 | to drive you away if i cared about having more influence and like more people under me i would
00:27:16.480 | just be nice to everybody right because then everyone would love me and everyone would stick around
00:27:20.480 | i i mean so i i know it's hard to prove to anyone but like i would just appeal like give give your
00:27:26.720 | leaders the benefit of the doubt like i'm not saying they do it well yeah i'm not saying they don't have
00:27:30.880 | anything to apologize for but at least their intent is it's almost never out of some personal gain you
00:27:37.360 | know yeah it's always it's always at least the intent with is for your good and i can say that right yeah
00:27:42.560 | yeah and i remember that was one thing you said to me actually when i was kind of going through that
00:27:46.800 | when i was like kind of wrestling i don't you don't remember oh yeah it was it was like i was
00:27:51.120 | like wrestling like man i don't was like did i do a good job that you know whatever and you're like hey
00:27:54.800 | you know um i know you you know and you did because you love those guys and i was like yeah i did you
00:28:01.520 | know and that's the most crucial thing and i might have made a mistake you know but it was out of love
00:28:05.360 | and and um you know so it's like i don't know maybe there's just like one takeaway it's just
00:28:11.760 | just to see more grace maybe on both sides yeah you know yeah and we're learning we need to grow we
00:28:17.040 | need to change we need to shift but it's like it's not like to air that out like all online and and all
00:28:25.920 | that like do we really need to do that it's not it you know yeah so yeah and and i mean like again
00:28:30.880 | there's there's things we got to improve and grow in like i think one thing is like i don't think we
00:28:35.040 | have a great way to reconcile those situations right now because sometimes the leader you're just
00:28:39.120 | oblivious yeah and i don't know if we've really figured this out like hey who do i talk to if i
00:28:43.680 | feel unfairly treated by my leader you know and we have like pastor ed's anonymous email inbox but
00:28:48.400 | i don't know that can be kind of complicated like i don't talk to the head pastor about this and also
00:28:52.000 | like i don't know how he's going to reply to me because it's an anonymous email like how do i have a
00:28:55.360 | dialogue about this i mean so that's something that i've kind of been pushing for personally like i think
00:28:58.320 | we got to talk about it more yeah so i'm not saying like we got this down perfectly like don't
00:29:01.840 | complain like i definitely think like let's talk more and if you have ideas about this if you're listening you
00:29:05.920 | have ideas about how we can do this better yeah for sure no i agree like in my 10 years of being
00:29:10.160 | college minister i think it's been twice where my leader said hey someone under you had this feedback
00:29:14.960 | for me yeah that's super hard to do yeah it's it's only happened like twice it's hard it's hard i agree
00:29:20.160 | and that's never happened to me but that's probably because i don't confront enough so
00:29:23.520 | anyway all right well this was a fun conversation yeah i'm glad we had it because i think um these are
00:29:29.200 | the things that you keep talking about um but hopefully that gives people some perspective
00:29:33.520 | because people have a sense of like how we feel about some of the things that people read online
00:29:37.600 | yeah um but um yeah so it's another episode of why they hate and you know unofficial official i can't
00:29:46.480 | get those straight dude the official unofficial grace point maybe you should do the intro okay i'll
00:29:51.040 | do the outro yeah well like subscribe and we will see you guys next time thanks for joining us on
00:29:56.080 | the official unofficial grace point podcasts