How can we reliably approach today’s pressing social issues in a way that honors God and points people to Jesus? In this week’s conversation on FrontStage BackStage, host Jason Daye is joined by Dr. Ted Bryant. Ted is the lead pastor at Granger Community Church. He earned his MDiv at Moody Theological Seminary and his PhD at Notre Dame. His most recent book is entitled The Jesus Method. Together, Ted and Jason explore some of the common tendencies and temptations we have as ministry leaders when it comes to addressing some of the complex and controversial social issues of our day. Ted points us to the life of Jesus, focusing on the priority of relationships and helping us understand the value of not just what Jesus taught but how he engaged the people around him.

Looking to dig more deeply into this topic and conversation? Every week we go the extra mile and create a free toolkit so you and your ministry team can dive deeper into the topic that is discussed. Find your Weekly Toolkit below… Love well, Live well, Lead well!

• Video links to this week’s episode – easily share with the ministry leaders in your church
• Audio links to this week’s episode – easily share with the ministry leaders in your church
• Additional resource links from this week’s conversation – so you and your team can easily find what is mentioned or referenced
• Ministry Leaders Growth Guide – key insights and concepts from this week’s conversation as well as engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process
• Full-text transcript of this week’s episode – review something you heard, pass along snippets, post tweets, create presentations to share, or use in whatever way you find most helpful in developing your ministry leaders
• Shareable Social Graphics – Feel free to post them on your church social accounts, your personal accounts, or use them as graphics in your communications

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Video Links

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Audio Links

Share the audio podcast with your ministry leaders…

• This week’s episode on Apple Podcasts
• This week’s episode on Spotify

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Additional Resource Links

www.grangerchurch.com – Visit Ted’s website to discover more about his ministry, church, book, and various resources crafted to support and uplift you on your personal faith journey and growth.

The Jesus Method: A Reliable Approach to Navigating Today’s Urgent Social Issues – In his book, Ted offers a different way: a simple, clear model for dealing with social dilemmas the way Jesus would, giving you confidence that you can respond with wisdom and love no matter what hot-button issues come your way. By examining Jesus’ mindset and approach to tough situations – not just WHAT He said, but HOW He said it – you will discover a path that alleviates the pressure to “get it right” and helps you get unstuck and move forward with those you love.

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Ministry Leaders Growth Guide

Key Insights and Concepts

• Jesus’s approach to controversial issues provides a model for believers to navigate social dilemmas, emphasizing the importance of both what is said and how it is communicated.
• The cultural emphasis on “what” over “how” often leads to a misalignment with Jesus’s method of addressing contentious topics, prioritizing being right over maintaining or building relationships.
• Jesus focused on relationship-building as the primary goal, recognizing that there’s always a person behind every question or problem.
• As the level of controversy increases on a topic, so should the level of relationship required to engage in meaningful conversation about it.
• Jesus’ approach distinguishes between “family” (those claiming to follow Him) and “guests” (those not yet part of the faith), tailoring His communication style accordingly.
• Engaging like Jesus did relieves the pressure of having all the right answers, instead emphasizing the importance of engaging in conversations with a Christ-like framework.
• Jesus’s pace of change focused on one relationship at a time, which challenges our cultural expectations of rapid, widespread transformation.
• Mass communication in church settings should be assessed in light of Jesus’s own approach, recognizing the limitations and opportunities of different venues for addressing controversial topics.
• The danger of an “us vs. them” mentality is contrary to Jesus’s method, which sought relationship potential with everyone, regardless of their beliefs or actions.
• Retaliation and forceful convincing are absent from Jesus’s method, as He respects the sacredness of individual choice, even when people reject His message.
• “Contending for the faith” is often misunderstood as fighting against others, when it actually involves deepening one’s own relationship with God and fighting for others’ salvation.
• Jesus’ approach involves a delicate balance of urgently representing God’s love while respecting people’s freedom to make their own choices regarding faith.
• Micro-prayers before difficult conversations can help realign one’s perspective with Jesus’s relationship-focused approach.
• The effectiveness of sharing truth (the “what”) depends greatly on the relational context (the “how”) in which it is presented.
• Engaging others on challenging issues like Jesus did requires continual self-reflection and surrender, challenging believers to align their hearts with Christ’s desire for relationship, even with those they find difficult to love.

Questions for Reflection

• How am I balancing the need to speak truth with the importance of building relationships in my ministry? Am I leaning too heavily on one side?
• How am I currently modeling Jesus’s approach to controversial issues within my congregation and community? What ways can I improve how I engage to better reflect Jesus?
• How am I equipping my church members to engage in difficult conversations as Jesus did?
• Am I unconsciously perpetuating an “us vs. them” mentality in my sermons or leadership? How can I shift towards a more inclusive, relationship-focused approach?
• How can I create more opportunities for personal, one-on-one interactions within my ministry, following Jesus’s example of individual engagement? What will this take?
• In what ways am I differentiating my approach between those who are already followers of Christ and those who are not? Why does this matter? How can I improve this?
• How am I handling the pressure to have all the right answers? Am I modeling vulnerability and continuous learning for my congregation?
• How are our local church ministries currently addressing controversial social topics? How effective have we been? In what ways can we better reflect Jesus’ approach to these types of topics?
• How can I better assess and utilize the different venues within my church (Sunday services, small groups, leadership meetings) to address controversial topics appropriately?
• In what ways am I encouraging and equipping my congregation to contend for the faith as defined in the book of Jude, rather than as cultural retaliation?
• How am I personally maintaining and deepening my relationship with God amidst the challenges of ministry and controversial issues?
• In what ways can I incorporate more “micro-prayers” into my daily ministry, especially before difficult conversations or decisions?
• How am I balancing the urgency of sharing the gospel with respecting individuals’ freedom to make their own choices about faith? How is understanding Jesus’ approach to this helpful for my life and ministry?
• In what ways can I foster a culture of relationship-building within my church, especially with those who hold differing views or beliefs? What might this look like, practically, in the way we minister?
• How am I addressing and preventing an overemphasis on “what is right” at the expense of “how we engage” within my church community? How am I teaching others the value of “how we engage” in relation to the way of Jesus? How can we better equip our people and emphasize the importance of “how we engage” with others?
• In what ways can I encourage my congregation to see and engage with the “person behind the problem” in their daily interactions, both within and outside the church?

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Full-Text Transcript

How can we reliably approach today’s pressing social issues in a way that honors God and points people to Jesus?

Jason Daye
In this week’s conversation on FrontStage BackStage, host Jason Daye is joined by Dr. Ted Bryant. Ted is the lead pastor at Granger Community Church. He earned his MDiv at Moody Theological Seminary and his PhD at Notre Dame. His most recent book is entitled The Jesus Method. Together, Ted and I explore some of the common tendencies and temptations we have as ministry leaders when it comes to addressing some of the complex and controversial social issues of our day. Ted points us to the life of Jesus, focusing on the priority of relationships and helping us understand the value of not just what Jesus taught but how he engaged the people around him. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye 
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage, I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the honor of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader and we jump into a conversation and tackle a topic all in an effort to help you and ministry leaders just like you embrace a healthy rhythm for both your life and your ministry. Now at FrontStage BackStage, we are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we have a conversation every week, but we also provide a toolkit that complements the conversation that we have. You can use this toolkit yourself for your own personal growth, but we also encourage you to use it with the ministry leaders in your local church. In the toolkit, you’ll find a lot of different resources including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, and in there, you will find questions and insights that are designed to help you wrestle more and learn more about the topic at hand. So please be sure to check out the toolkit, you can find that at PastorServe.org/network. Now our team at Pastor Serve loves walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you would like to learn more about receiving a complimentary coaching session, you can find more information at PastorServe.org/freesession. If you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We absolutely love getting to know our audience better and we’ll be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow because you do not want to miss out on any of these great conversations. We have a great and timely conversation for you today. At this time, I’d like to welcome Dr. Ted Bryant to the show. Ted, welcome.

Ted Bryant 
Thank you, Jason. It’s great to be here.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, it’s so good to have you with us. Ted, we’re going to dive into a topic that, as I mentioned, is very timely. We are discussing what it looks like for a devoted Christ-follower to really navigate some of those hot-button social issues that we see in our world today. Just start this off, Ted, with the phenomenon of urgent social issues, of pressing social issues, is not simply a 21st-century thing, right? If we look back across church history, we see that there are so many different different issues, so many things that those who are following Jesus, and those who were leading churches or shepherding flocks had to contend with. So, Ted, to start off, let’s back all the way up to about 2000 years ago when Jesus was living and was ministering. Talk to us a little bit about this idea of hot-button social topics and those things that seem to be pressing.

Ted Bryant 
Yeah, you mentioned that it’s been pretty pervasive throughout church history. But it’s not just about the followers of Jesus as Jesus himself had hot-button issues and these predicaments that he was surrounded by. Many times they were coming at him aggressively. So this is something that we can truly look to Jesus in how he navigated these and then be able to see what he did, take that, and apply that in our own lives. So it’s great. It’s not just a teaching that he did about what to do or what not to do. It’s actually about looking at what he did and taught, but also how he did it. So we have a walking talking model in Jesus on how to navigate these issues.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, what a gift that is for us. To think that because of something that you said, I want to spend a little more time on this. Kind of the what and the how. As you look at The Jesus Method and look at the way that Jesus approached these issues which were prevalent in his day, just as they are in ours. Oftentimes, it seems like we get hung up as pastors, as ministry leaders, and as Christ-followers we can get up on the ‘what’, right? Like, what is true, and what is not true, and that’s where we expend our energy. Yet, in The Jesus Method, Ted, you help us hone in on not just the ‘what’, and not dismissing the ‘what’, the ‘what’ is important, right? But really honing in on the ‘how’. So talk to us a bit about maybe that perspective switch that we need to embrace.

Ted Bryant 
Well, to start, I just want to say for whoever’s watching or listening in, if you’ve ever felt stuck in these social issues, I feel you. I was there. I never intended on writing a book, I just wanted to find a solution for getting unstuck. Because I felt like, up to a certain point in my life as a Christ-follower I had been taught, I had even been trained, I had been pressured with one of two options in my life when facing a social dilemma. Either I speak up very loudly, make sure that everyone knows where I stand, and I say that as often as I can and as loudly as I can, regardless of the consequences of that. I was going to be loud, and very proud about that, wherever I was. That was option one. Or if I wanted to be more loving, then I just stayed quiet. Like come on, Ted, it’s not worth disrupting the relationship or offending somebody. So just be quiet and don’t say anything at all. Those were kind of the two options that I felt like I was given by the world, even by some of the church as I was growing up, and even more recently. So I started to research the Gospels and discovered that Jesus didn’t do either one of those. There was a separate way, a different way, a third way that I ended up calling The Jesus Method. It’s not my method, it’s his method. I just looked at it and figured out that it actually wasn’t either one of those ways I had been trained up in. Because both those ways I’ve been trained up in are really about what you’re doing or what you’re not doing. That made me think about how our culture rewards the what from a very early age. It doesn’t matter how you answer the multiple-choice question on your test, it matters what the answer is. It doesn’t matter how you go about achieving certain things. It’s what you actually achieve. So in all kinds of behaviors growing up in our culture, as well as in the workplace, all throughout school, the ‘what’ is emphasized. If you get the ‘what’ right, the ‘how’ just doesn’t really matter. I mean, yeah, it’s nice. It’s icing on the cake. But what is right is always more highly rewarded than how you got there. Yeah, you’re supposed to show your work in your math class in eighth grade. But does it really matter? No. What you get as the answer, that’s what matters. So we have a reward system on the what and on having the right answer, and then being able to proclaim that right answer to help find the solution for whatever we’re navigating. So that is our default system. That’s our operating system. Whenever we’re facing a crisis. Whenever we feel stuck, we search desperately for what is the right answer. That’s how we’ve been trained and that’s just not how Jesus operated.

Jason Daye 
Right. Now that idea that this is kind of the default mode of society, this idea that we’re really focused on the ‘what’, getting the right answer, or saying the right thing. Ted, one of the things you mentioned there is that you felt a bit of a dilemma. Either you’re shouting out and holding onto your convictions firmly and making sure everyone knows what it is or you’re stepping back and not speaking up at all. So there’s this stark contrast between those two and I think a lot of people would resonate with that. Even a lot of pastors and ministry leaders would, right? Because we think about that it seems like if we address a social issue, there are gonna be some people who are upset. If we do not address a social issue, there are people who are gonna be upset regardless. I mean, there’s no win in this when it comes down to it, especially as a pastor of a local church. It doesn’t seem like we can win on this and I think this is been amplified, or we’ve recognized that even more, over the last four or five years since the pandemic. Really, I think it amplified this whole reality for us. So as we look at that, and look at this third way, as you call it, the way of Jesus, this countercultural way to approach these, and look at the emphasis on the ‘how’. Where do we start with the ‘how’? Is it that we set the ‘what’ completely aside initially? I mean, is that the real shift we need to take to hone in on the ‘how’, and in focus there?

Ted Bryant 
You know, I hesitate by saying to really set the ‘what’ aside because, as you mentioned earlier, the ‘what’ is really, really important. What this book is trying to get at is bringing to light the importance of the ‘how’. I’m not trying to necessarily lower the level of the ‘what’, I’m trying to catch up with the level of importance of the ‘how’. So what we see, for instance, with Jesus is that it’s not just about what is right, it’s really about relationship. You can be right, or you can have relationship. But oftentimes, you can’t have both of those at the same level. If you are bound and determined to be right, you’re probably going to hurt the relationship. But if you focus on relationship, you might at times not emphasize the right answer because they may not be ready to hear that, or we might need to have more relationship in order to have that conversation. One of the things I talked about in the book is, that as the level of controversy on a topic increases, so should the level of relationship in order to engage that conversation. We see this in Jesus’s method and how he interacts with these social issues. If it’s a very hot topic, then he doesn’t make these massive public statements about it. He usually really makes it a personal conversation with someone. We see that when people are really interested in power, they make things public, when people are really interested in people, they make it personal. So Jesus’s method really has a goal of relationship. There was always a questioner behind the question. There was always a person behind the problem. He was able to see that person and be able to see the relationship potential and emphasize that. That is what determined how he went about the conversation and how he went about telling the truth. It wasn’t that he diluted the truth. It’s just that he formed a relationship in order to most accurately express his heart of love in the truth. But when we know what’s right without knowing the way of Jesus, we can oftentimes weaponize the truth of Jesus. It is that relationship. That is the goal of the Jesus method and that’s really what it all comes down to. I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but that is the emphasis that you see in the method.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, I absolutely love that because focusing on the value and importance of the relationship helps immediately frame every conversation, right? Because whenever you consider, as you said, the depth of relationship that you already have established, then that kind of gauges, it takes you to the next step of the ‘how’, right? Because it kind of helps you navigate, okay, if this is a deep relationship, if this is family, friends, people that I’m having a deep kind of discipling relationship with, versus the crowd, you know what I mean? The guest or the stranger, even. That changes the way that we approach it, right, Ted? You share this in The Jesus Method. So talk us through that a little bit about the depth of the relationship and how that helps guide us in how we approach that ongoing conversation.

Ted Bryant 
Yeah, absolutely. What we see in The Jesus Method, how Jesus approaches these situations, is he contextualizes the conversation immediately. So is this person that he’s about to talk to, are they claiming to be a follower of Jesus? Are they claiming to want to do the will of the Father, which is how Jesus defines family, spiritual family? When he was talking to his own biological family, they’re like, Jesus, come on, we want to talk to you and he’s like, Oh, who’s my mother, who are my brothers? He defines family as those seeking to do the will of the Father. We would define it as those who are following Jesus in our current scenario. So that’s the family that we talk about in the book. Then everyone else is a guest because they’re not a part of the family. But man, they are invited. The heart of invitation is there. They’re the guests. They’re not just outsiders, pagans, or lost, they’re the guest. We want to invite them in and show them what it’s like to be a part of the family. So we have family and we have guests as two separate contexts that Jesus puts on to every conversation that he has. If the person he’s talking to is a guest, they’re not claiming to follow Jesus or do the will of the Father. They’re not following the Christian way. The way he engages them around a hot topic is very different than the way he engages someone who is claiming to be a part of the church, or claiming to be doing the will of the Father, or saying, oh, yeah, Jesus, I want to follow you. The way he engages that individual is, again, very different. So it’s not that one is better than the other. Again, it’s a ‘how’. How he engages in order to make the most relational progress possible is key in the Jesus method. This also, Jason, takes the pressure off. We put so much pressure on ourselves around the ‘what’. I gotta have the right answer. I mean, I don’t know if I know enough about the Bible. I don’t know if I have the argument or the case built for this topic so I’m not even gonna engage the person. It takes the pressure off to go, what if it’s not about having all the right answers or even being right? What if it is truly stepping into this conversation with the framework of the Jesus method, knowing that I am literally following in the footsteps of Jesus himself, and how he would engage these individuals? It takes pressure off, I’ve found over and over as I talk to people about this method. You also see that he does this one relationship at a time. It’s not like, I gotta win everyone in my church, or everyone in my community, or everyone in my workplace. I gotta win them all, like tomorrow. There’s pressure and it’s on me. Jesus was, if that’s the mentality, Jesus was really bad at his job. I mean, he really failed horribly and he took way too long. Now, I’m thinking that that’s not theologically accurate from what I believe in. So this pace of one relationship at a time, there is a value in that and there’s a freedom in that. Who is right in front of me? Who are the two or three people I see two or three times a week that God’s already given me some impact in? It could be the same gas station I go to or the same grocery store, it could be someone in the church, or it could be a neighbor. I call these impact circles. Who are the two or three people we see two or three times a week that God’s already given us some impact in? Then how do we engage the Jesus method? Maybe that’s the expectation and we can walk in the footsteps of Jesus and how he did it.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, Ted, I love that. Whenever we think of it in terms of one relationship at a time, that radically changes the way that we approach engaging in these social issues. As pastors, we have a voice and we’re speaking to more than one person at a time, oftentimes A lot of the focus in how the church world is set up and how we were trained in Bible college or seminary, wherever that might be, what’s been modeled for us has been that a lot of our focus and a lot of our energy goes into mass communication, right? It goes into the weekend worship gatherings, the sermon, and the message. So talk to us a bit from a pastor’s perspective, as a pastor yourself, Ted, how do we navigate some of these issues when it comes to kind of mass communication, talking to a crowd, versus what that looks like on a one-on-one relationship-by-relationship basis?

Ted Bryant 
Correct. So yeah, this question has come up several times in conversation, and what I’m about to explain, I realize, hey, people may not agree with me, and that’s totally fine. But what I found, in my experience as a lead pastor of a fairly large organization, I’ve been in other churches of different sizes as well. But in our current situation, one of the things I had to determine as a leader and as a senior pastor is, what am I expecting to accomplish in my mass communication. What I found was that I was actually trying to accomplish more than what Jesus was trying to accomplish in his own mass communication and that was humbling. It made me think about okay, What are the different venues that we as a church are offering in order to have different conversations? So, for instance, in our particular venue, because we believe that the level of controversy requires a level of relationship, I don’t talk about a lot of hot-button issues, what’s right, what’s wrong, what you should believe, and here’s the case for why you should believe what you should believe, on the weekend Sunday morning service to several 1000 people at a time. No, but I’m trying to equip our life group leaders, I’m trying to equip our staff, and I’m trying to equip volunteer leaders in our church with the Jesus method or other ways to say, Oh, you’re going to have a smaller group conversation, you’re going to have conversations with people that trust you and can hold on in a conversation when they maybe disagree with you. So I’m looking at our student ministry and looking at our kids ministry. I’m looking at stuff that we do with men and women and I look at our overall organization, and I’m thinking and assessing what are we trying to accomplish in these different offerings, and back to the ‘how’. How we talk about these things, I believe, should differ in those different venues and in those different opportunities. That’s not just my idea, again, I explained it in The Jesus Method. That’s what Jesus did. What he did to the masses and how he talked to the masses, is different than how he talked to his own disciples or other individuals. So in the book, I go over quite a few case scenarios. This situation Jesus was trapped in and how he navigated the Jesus method, which sounds kind of funny, it’s his method. So how did he navigate his own method? I believe we need to do an honest assessment of our own churches and go, am I trying to accomplish too much because I feel like I only got one shot? I only got one shot and I want to make sure I’m preaching the entirety of Scripture and I’m being faithful to the Word. So I gotta make sure I am guiding people on the weekend from the pulpit on all these hot-button issues. I would say, again, in my opinion, I’m going to emphasize trying to equip and train them in a method. It doesn’t have to be this book, you can read the gospels on your own, and just look at how Jesus did this. If I can equip our people to do this, then they will actually be able to pursue relationship through the Jesus method in all of their one-on-one conversations, or small group or life group conversations they have throughout the week, long past Sunday morning.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, I love that, Ted. One of the things that that goes back to is the idea of the guest. Because whenever we have a gathering, regardless of if your church is a church of 100, or a church of several 1000, more than likely there are people that can walk in on any given Sunday, at any given worship gathering, that we do not know well and that we do not have that depth of relationship with. So thinking about them in terms of a guest. A guest who has walked into the church, I think is important. But I want to take that family and guest categorization a step further. When we think about the idea of the “they” out there, people like to talk about what “they” think, what “they” say, or what “they” are doing, and just kind of “other” everybody. But it seems as I read through The Jesus Method, you make the case that Jesus didn’t “other” people. Jesus really viewed people as, like you said, intimate family, or that everyone else was in some ways a guest. Everyone else was invited, no matter how vile they might be and no matter how challenging their lifestyle was. So help us, Ted, a little bit, to process through that idea of, we live in a world where people are, even within the church, people are really contending for the faith in their way. But they’re being loud and they’re talking a lot about what everyone else is thinking and how we have to stand up against everyone else. Ted, as you studied the life of Jesus, as you were working on The Jesus Method, and looking at the examples from his own life, what do we learn from Jesus when it comes to this?

Ted Bryant 
You said all that really, really well. You should write something in exposition. But one of the dangers as I was researching, studying, and writing this book, one of the dangers that I saw Jesus absolutely refuse to succumb to is an us versus them mentality. He absolutely refused to get sucked into us versus them. That is something that I see Christians, the church, and myself, can be tempted at times to be well, it’s us and it’s them. It’s us who believe certain things, and it’s them who don’t believe those things. It’s only going to get more intense heading into the political season. One of the reasons why I wrote this book and wanted to get it out is so that it can help pastors and churches, really, as we enter into the next five months. How can we navigate our conversations with the heart of Jesus while still making progress? We’re not just sitting on our hands being silent and we actually are not hurting relationship potential either at the same time. So with Jesus, again, you see him look for relationship with everyone. Now, they may not choose him back and that is hard. So there are a lot of stories I talked about in the book, but the rich young ruler is one of them, as he walked away, refusing to engage Jesus in relationship further, Jesus did not chase after him. He did not say, Oh, I’ve got three more points, I want to convince you that I’m right and that you’re wrong. There was none of that. He expressed, he looked deeply into the man’s face lovingly and told him. They had established a relationship at that point and now because the man was claiming to be part of the family, and wanting to know more. The Jesus Method says that, well, if they’re part of the family, you can lovingly challenge them and empower them with the next steps. That’s what Jesus did, is I’m challenging you that there’s something still has your heart, man, and I’m going to empower you to give that up and follow me. Choices are sacred and that man made the sacred choice to walk away. Jesus let him because the relationship potential for that moment was done. The man had chosen to not engage anymore. There was no fighting, there was no loud rebuke, and there was no, you better watch out with this choice. There was none of that. You find that, for Jesus, retaliation never lead to greater relationship. If the goal is relationship, then retaliation really isn’t a part of his method. In fact, Jesus says that he’s going to leave situations like, that he’s going to leave those up to God, the Father, the one who judges justly. I think for many of us, we forget that component. We feel like we’ve got to defend God, we’ve got to make sure. I say in the book, God’s all grown up, he can take care of himself. We’re like, What am I going to do to defend him? But what if we leave the consequences of people’s spiritual decisions up to God? It’s actually not our responsibility. Our responsibility is, if they’re a guest, we provide for their needs, invite them into the family, and encourage them. If they’re family, we can lovingly challenge them and empower them. But again, as I walk through example after example in The Jesus Method, you just see such a consistency in Jesus and how he focused on relationship. It was relationship the way that he defines it. So some people on these hot-button issues are like, no, if you love me, you’re going to agree with me, or if you don’t agree with me, then you don’t love me. You don’t see those ultimatums with Jesus. In the book, I walk through what relationship really means. It’s not just what a guest says relationship is. It’s not just how a guest would define and constrain. No, this is what I mean by relationship. It really is what does God say relationship is? And then how do we make that the goal in all these social dilemmas?

Jason Daye 
Yeah, that’s helpful. I’m gonna ask you a question. And a lot of what you’ve already shared, has, I think, answered this question in some ways, but I really want to hone in on this particular question. So, Ted, what would you say to the brother or sister who’s serving in ministry who says, Ted, that’s sweet, this whole Jesus method is sweet. But it’s weak. Right? Like, come on, Ted. Look at the state of the world around us. Look at what’s going on. Look at all of these things. It’s time for us to step up and lean in, and all that. We hear a lot of this bravado, right? Ted, what would you say to that fellow ministry leader who has that argument?

Ted Bryant 
It depends on how sarcastic I can be with the person, like how well do I know them? If they’re someone that I have a great relationship with, then my immediate response was, yeah, Jesus was so weak, like, you’re totally right. Now, I would not say that to someone I didn’t know. If it was someone who was honestly asking that question because that’s what they were feeling, they don’t want to back down, they want to make sure that they contend for the faith is the phrase that I often hear, I would go with what I wrote in chapter five, I’d say, Hey, do you have a few minutes? Can we read through the book of Jude together? Because in the book of Jude, which is what I unpack in chapter five of the book, in the book of Jude, that’s where the phrase contend for the faith comes from. It’s right away at the beginning of the chapter and Jude goes on to explain the state of the world that he is living in, and all the horrible things that are being said, being done to people in the church. He is encouraging people to contend for the faith. Then at the very end of the chapter, he actually defines what that is. What was so surprising to me when I really studied the book, and what is surprising to most people, is that what contending for the faith means is not what people think it means. People think contending for the faith is contending against someone. So like in a boxing match, I’m contending for the title, I’m fighting, I’m fighting someone. We’re contending for the faith really is fighting for someone. Jude outlines that the first step of contending for the faith is actually deepening your own relationship with God. It has nothing to do with who’s persecuting you. It has absolutely nothing to do with what is coming at you. It is first strengthening your own relationship with God. Then it is looking at those that are persecuting you and he says to snatch them out of the fire if you can. In order to snatch somebody out of the fire, you’ve got to be grounded yourself. If you’re not holding on to something solid, you’re going in baby, I mean, you’re going into the fire with them. So where are you grounded? That’s why, first, you are solid in relationship with God and you deepen that. Then I don’t care what they’re doing, they may be spitting fire at you, but you’re still trying to snatch them out. You’re still trying to, which is a close one-person-at-a-time sort of mission. It’s a saving, grace-filled, and mercy-filled situation. Then, a warning of don’t fall into the fire yourself and don’t go down that path. But there’s absolutely not a single ounce of retaliation in the definition of contending for the faith. Of course, as you go through the Gospels, this isn’t surprising. The disciples were sent out and they were to dust their sandals off when they walked out of a town if the village did not accept the message. There was no call for burning fire from heaven or any sort of retaliation at all. It seems that God wants us to be urgently representing him in how he loved people, in how he invited people, and in how he saw relationship potential. Then he is equally committed to letting people decide and make their choices. Do they want him back or not? But it really is not up to us. I know that still sounds cheesy or whatever. But I can’t get over that when I studied the Gospels when I wrote this book, and in all the conversations I’ve had, it still comes down to that. It is truly about relationship. So again, going back to your question, I would love if I had half an hour to sit down, have some coffee, and read through Chapter 5 of the book of Jude. Read through Chapter 5 together and really have a healthy discussion on what contending for the faith means. What does that say about our role in this whole winning the world to Christ thing? Does it shift our mentality at all and what we mean by that?

Jason Daye 
Yeah, that’s really good, Ted. I love that. I love that chapter in the book too, because it was very enlightening and like, oh, yeah, got to dig into it. So I appreciate that, Ted.

Ted Bryant 
Yeah, it really was tough on me. I’m kind of like, come on, let’s do this. Then I was like, okay, okay, settle down. Yeah, it was tough.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, I love that. Ted, one of the things that’s absolutely fascinating, and we shouldn’t be surprised at this point, I think in our journeys with Jesus, is that when you look at what you call The Jesus Method, it truly is countercultural. It truly does not align with the way that most people in the world approach issues that are challenging. It’s the way Jesus does it. Jesus again and again, shows us this third way, this kind of countercultural way of really leaning into things. Because it is countercultural, it means that we have to be intentional, we have to be thoughtful, we have to practice, and it has become a part of who we are. It isn’t natural. It isn’t a default mode. So, Ted, talk to us a little bit about what does that look like? That intentionality. Actually putting this into practice. How can we really embrace this and not let it just be Oh, that’s a cool idea, Ted. Oh, that makes sense. We all nod our heads and like, oh, yeah, and then we just go revert back to living it out as the world really lives it all out.

Ted Bryant 
Right, one of the things I’ve shared recently is we did a breakfast book study with a bunch of men at our church last month, and you just walk through the book together. One of the things I was sharing with them was just this idea of micro prayers. Small prayers before I enter into a conversation. It could be, if I’m a pastor or a church leader, it can be with a volunteer who’s disagreeing with something, or if I’m in the marketplace, if I’m going into a board meeting, or I’m going into a just a regular staff meeting, or whatever it is, but I know tension is coming with my neighbor at home or the person three doors down from my apartment. I know it’s coming. We know when tension is present. When that hits our heart and our mind, to just pause for just a moment, God, help me to see the question behind the question. God, help me to see your way of relationship. Open my eyes and ears to see your goal of relationship. One relationship at a time. Just these quick few-second prayers to refocus my perspective on relationship. God, give me eyes to see or ears to hear, is this a guest or is this a family member? Because most of the time, that in and of itself, and then following the method from there is so freeing, it takes pressure off. It’s just like, oh, I can engage this family member in this way, in this way, or in this way. Or I can engage this guest in this way or this way. It feels productive. But it starts for me, exactly the way The Jesus Method starts, it starts with prayer. It does not have to be 45 minutes worth of prayer. It could be, that’s awesome. But could be five seconds, God, help me to see the relationship in this. Help me to focus on relationship with this and give me a heart for relationship in this. Again, it’s within the context of relationship that the ‘what’ is right and wrong, actually, can be planted in fertile soil. When we don’t have relationship, it can be the same seed, but we might as well be throwing it on a parking lot. It’s not growing. This seed isn’t any different, but the soil is not there. So in my heart, do I really want to invite this person? Do I really care if this person gets to be part of the family? Or am I deep down going, I don’t like him at all? I don’t want him in this family. I don’t want to be in eternity with Him. So where’s my heart in this? Am I willing to till the soil and not just toss on the concrete? That’s the humbling thing for me that is a constant mirror for me, is do I really want what Jesus wants? Because the method is simple. Like I wanted to make it, I didn’t make it. I think Jesus made it simple, but certainly not easy because of our own hearts and the state of our own hearts. The very people that we oftentimes are most frustrated with and want to alienate are the very people that Jesus says, oh, no, like, I don’t want them to perish. I want them in the family and I want you to talk to him. I want you to build a relationship. So that level of surrender, just continuing to check my own heart and my own mind with those prayers is, again, for me, absolutely foundational.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, that’s powerful, Ted. I absolutely love it. Ted, thank you so much for making time to hang out with us. I want to let our viewers and those who are watching or listening along know that The Jesus Method, which is the book that Ted wrote that kind of outlines all of what we were sharing today. You can find that available now and you can find links to purchase that book in the toolkit for this episode at PastorServe.org/network. You can learn more about Ted, his ministry, and the book itself there. So be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. In there, you’ll also find a ton of other resources for you to use with the ministry leaders of your local church, including the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, so be sure to check that out. Ted, as we’re winding down, I just wanted to give you a minute to share words of encouragement with pastors and ministry leaders. What would you like to leave with them?

Ted Bryant 
I just want to say that these are obviously challenging times. They are not new times, necessarily. When you look at the history of the church and what God has done, nothing is taking him by surprise. I know you already know this but sometimes we need to be reminded that God is no less in control, He’s no less sovereign, He’s no less good, and He’s no less near right now. I just want to encourage all of you, in the areas that you serve, to keep seeking God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Keep listening to and obeying him and leave the consequences up to him. You are made for this, you are the man, the woman, or the student for the role God’s placed you in. Believe it and be encouraged by it. He is doing a new thing. He really is in this world, I believe it. He’s not interested in slowing down or demolishing the Church or His kingdom. It’s always more. It’s always better. It’s always growth. You got this. You can do this because he’s got you. Bless you all.

Jason Daye 
Absolutely love it. Thank you so much, Ted. God bless you, brother.

Ted Bryant 
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.

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