Becoming People Who Heal Our Communities : Brenda Salter McNeil

Full-Text Transcript

As a ministry leader, have you ever noticed the brokenness of the neighborhoods and communities around you and had a desire to help, but we’re unsure where to start or maybe even fearful that you might make a mistake?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Brenda Salter McNeil. Brenda is the director of the Reconciliation Studies Program at Seattle Pacific University. She’s also an associate pastor of preaching and reconciliation at Quest Church in Seattle. She’s a dynamic speaker, an award-winning author, and her latest book is entitled Empowered to Repair. Together, Brenda and I look at some of the challenges and opportunities we have as local ministry leaders to help mend broken systems and bring healing to our communities. Brenda shares practical steps as we reflect on the story of Nehemiah on how we, as local ministry leaders, can help usher in healing in our communities and neighborhoods. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends. Thank you for joining us. Excited to have another insightful episode of Frontstage Backstage for you today. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week I have the privilege and honor of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a conversation all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy, sustainable rhythms so you can flourish in both your life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network and each week, not only do we have a conversation, but our team also creates a toolkit that complements the topic we discuss. You can find that for this episode and every episode of Frontstage Backstage at PastorServe.org/network. Now, in that toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. You can use this growth guide yourself and we encourage you to use it with the ministry leaders at your local church to really reflect on the topic that we discuss and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. So please be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Now at Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside ministry leaders and if you’d like to learn more about how you could receive a complimentary coaching session from one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can find that information at PastorServe.org/freesession. Now 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 love getting to know our audience better, and our team will 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 conversation for you today. At this time, I would like to welcome Brenda Salter McNeil to Frontstage Backstage. Welcome, Brenda.

Brenda Salter McNiel
It’s great to be with you. Thank you.

Jason Daye
Thank you for making the time to hang out with us here on the show. Really excited for this conversation. Now, Brenda, you have really given your life and your ministry focusing on reconciliation, which is such a beautiful thing. You’ve written so much, you teach, you’re a professor, and you really focus on the idea of healing, reconciliation, restoration, and starting a conversation. Brenda, as pastors and ministry leaders, this is our calling. This idea of healing, of reconciliation, and of restoration. Brenda, oftentimes we look at this and we think of kind of the vertical aspect of that. We think of, yes, reconciliation to God through Christ Jesus and that’s kind of our focus. But sometimes we forget the horizontal piece of that, right? So I’d love, Brenda, for you to share a little bit about maybe why we tend to focus on the very, very important reconciliation, healing restoration that we find through Christ with God. But sometimes, we may not lean into that same kind of reconciliation that God’s called us to with our neighbors. So we’re good at loving the Lord your God, but maybe sometimes we miss out on the loving your neighbor part. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, well, I think part of it is our discipleship because we come into our relationship with God very much through an individualistic lens, right? Jesus Christ is my personal savior. Jesus came into my heart, right? So I don’t think it’s because we mean to kind of exclude the horizontal work of reconciliation. I think it’s because our discipleship has kind of groomed us to think about how we personally grow. How do we personally do the right thing? How do we personally seek after God, right? So when a person like me comes along and says that the horizontal reconciling work of crossing over boundaries, over divisiveness, and over perspectives to make the family of God unified, people kind of go, oh, what does that have to do with it? So I think part of it is that when we bring people into the faith, we have to let them know that we are not the person of God, we are the people of God. That should be the orientation. We are becoming a part of the people of God, and it’s not just about my personal discipleship.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s so good, Brenda. That’s a great reminder, I think, for all of us, that as we are discipling, preaching, teaching, and leading our local churches and ministries, to really make sure that we obviously don’t neglect the vertical, but that we include the horizontal, right? Yeah, excellent. Now, in your newest book, Empowered to Repair. By the way, I absolutely love the subtitle, becoming people who mend broken systems and heal our communities. I love that “becoming people” part, and I want us to kind of start there because I know for myself and a lot of pastors and ministry leaders, we tend to get really excited about jumping in and taking action, right? We tend to really get excited about, okay, what do we need to fix? What do we need to get into? But you talk about this idea of becoming people, and I think that’s beautiful. There’s something important there. So, to begin, Brenda, before we get to the activity, action, and engaging with others, what are some thoughts that we need to keep in mind? Maybe some things that we need to think about, like the backstage of our lives, our internal, personal lives as pastors and ministry leaders, that we want to lean into to help us have a heart posture that honors God, honors others, and honors the kingdom, so then we can enter into some of this activity.

Brenda Salter McNiel
I think it’s really a carry-on from our first question, right? That we’re the people of God, and so that was very intentional. So much of what I’ve written and others have written has called people to individually think about how to become a reconciler. Yes, I want us to think about that. But I felt like, in this book, I needed to do something more. I needed to push this envelope a bit because I could tell that people were still looking at this as a choice they were making to do something, right? I was almost trying to say, No, that’s really not what we’ve been invited into. We’ve been invited into being the people of God, and we are being shaped into those people together. It is a communal effort that we are representing the kingdom of God. No one person, no one ethnic group, and not one church. There’s no individual or siloed place that represents the fullness of the kingdom of God. So we need different languages and different cultural perspectives. We need males and females, young and old. We need the global church, and becoming that means we’ll have to step out of our comfort zones and to realize that even though in our local places we are doing good work, it’s not the fullness of the work unless it has more people, both in our communities and outside of the church, who inform what needs to be repaired.

Jason Daye
That’s good. That’s helpful. Now, Brenda, probably for the last nine months, I’ve had multiple conversations and have heard from different people within the church, and from all different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, white, African American, Latino and they’ve raised a question, and somewhat of a concern, and I’d love to get your input on this. They have a couple of concerns, but the overarching thought is that we need to be careful with making every issue about race, right? Like somehow inserting race or highlighting race, let’s say, in every situation or every issue. It’s interesting because one well-respected African American pastor made mention that there are some things that are just common to humanity, to humankind, right? One of his concerns was that, and others have voiced this, there are two major concerns. One is that if we try to highlight race in every single thing, sometimes that can make the healing more challenging because it’s highlighting something that could be divisive. Okay, so that’s one concern that I’ve heard. Another concern is if you focus on the differences of race too much when it’s not necessarily something that needs to be focused on, although there are times that it does, it can also kind of dilute those times when it’s really important to talk about some of these challenges that we have with racism or racial tensions, right? So there’s kind of this, and it’s interesting this conversation, I’ve just heard more of this over the last, like I said, nine months or so, and I’d love to know what are some of your thoughts. You live in this world. I mean, you teach in this world. You write in this world. So talk to us a little bit about some of those concerns. Your thoughts on those? Are they valid concerns? What do you find there to help us in ministry?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Wow, that’s a tough one now. Thank you very much, Jason. That’s complicated. Very, very, very complicated. On one level, I thought of as you were speaking, the importance when there is a wound, say a physical wound, that as much as it’s painful, it’s important that, like, I have two kids who are now grown young adults, right? But when they were small and something got hurt, they wouldn’t want you to look and you feel like, no, I got to take your hand off of it because in order for us to make it better, we’ve got to look at it, right? I believe in healing, so it’s not divisive because I think the motivation of a person has a lot to do with what they’re saying. My motivation is not division. Mine is healing. The analogy I use of a kid, a child who’s frightened to look at it because they’re afraid it’ll make it worse. It hurts. Yes, I know it does, but if I can’t look at it and clean that off and really see how deep it is, mommy can’t fix it. So I want to say to the church and to the leaders listening to us, we don’t have to be divisive to raise the issues that are happening in our world today, and if we raise it with the heart intent toward healing because you can’t heal what you don’t deal with. And I’m trying to suggest that there is a way that Christians have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation that comes from a heart of love and not from a place of fear. Therefore I don’t say anything because God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. How about we try to demonstrate to the world around us what reconciliation could look like if we did it from a place of that type of motivation and not because we’re trying to point fingers at people? I don’t think that it’s an either-or zero-sum game. I think we’ve got to talk about real things, but how we do that from a place of godliness will make a difference.

Jason Daye
I love that. I’m glad I asked the question because I knew you’d have a good answer and I knew I had you here. So that is super helpful because I think it’s important, as you said, that we need to address the concerns, we need to address the issues, and we need to address the problems. We need to lean into them because we’re called to do that. So how do we do that? I think the posture, like you said, Brenda. It really comes down to our heart posture. That’s what makes the difference and that is what is going to be our testimony to the world as the church. It’s how we’re approaching these things. So I love that. Now in Empowered to Repair you really focus a lot on just this. How we go about approaching these things in a way that honors God, that reflects the love of Christ, and that really helps us lean into the work that God does in our hearts and in our communities. So I would love you to share a little bit with us, Brenda, if you could about this idea of whenever we enter into this place of saying, Okay, we see that there are needs. We see that there is brokenness in our systems and there’s brokenness in our communities. What are some of the first things that we need to keep in mind as we enter into some of these conversations? Because sometimes, Brenda, quite honestly, they seem way too big for us to handle and yet we’re called to step in. So how do we do that?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yes. Well, I told you I brought a copy of the book because this is what I’m trying to talk about here. I’m trying to say from the book of Nehemiah. So I always root whatever it is I write in some biblical text because I thank God. I don’t know how I got called to the ministry of reconciliation. I grew up in a church that didn’t, I mean the word reconciliation was all about God. But I went to seminary, I started being in a more diverse context, and the word of reconciliation drew me, you know? So, in answer to your question, one of the things that I knew was that this had to be rooted in a scriptural text. Everything I write does. I looked for an example of, where do you begin? What do you do when it’s a gargantuan text? Nehemiah, my gosh, the walls were destroyed and the gates burned with fire. The people were in a desperate situation and he had gotten out of it. He’s a cup-bearer to the king. He has a social status, or a social level, and an economic status that these people do not have, right? But he doesn’t come in as the know-it-all. Amen. He does not come in to help like let me tell you what to do. Our church came to help you. He comes in asking questions because it’s the people who are in the situation who know best and are more intimately connected to what’s wrong. They are the people who should inform us of what needs to be done, what’s really broken, and what’s the greatest thing that needs to be addressed right now. So I think there’s a humble posture of those of us who represent the Nehemiahs. I think there’s a need to come into that situation and take my little doctorate degree or whatever else I got, set it aside, and say you don’t have a PhD in this neighborhood, though, honey. What you need to do is ask that grandmother over there what she thinks because there are people who know what’s broken. I think we begin the whole process by winning trust, by not coming in to build the house and telling you, didn’t we do a great job? I think we come in and say, We’re here to be with you. Would you guide me? Would you show me? Can you help me to understand how this became this way? Then we’ll have a better sense of collegiality, and connection with the people there, and we’ll build the trust that says we’re not coming to take over. We’re coming to partner.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. In doing that, Brenda, not only does it help inform us of what’s going on, kind of at a grassroots level that we may not know of and we may not see, but it also creates, as you said, this the sense that we’re in this thing together. We’re not doing something kind of at you. We’re walking alongside you. We’re learning from you. That posture is very much a posture of a disciple, right? It’s very much a posture of someone who is seeking to honor God in the way that they relate to others. So as we’re asking those questions and beginning to consider okay, in identifying, and others helping us identify, okay, here’s some of the brokenness. What do we then begin to do with that brokenness? Because it’s one thing to ask the questions and to hear the responses and to say, okay, here are the issues. As a pastor or a ministry leader, then how can we lean into okay, what’s next? Where do we go from here?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, I’ll tell you, I use Nehemiah as like a step-by-step, right? So after he does a survey of the situation before he tries to fix anything, right? The next thing he does is pull the people together, right? He builds a diverse coalition of folks. He starts saying, Hey, I didn’t come here to be the savior of everything. I came here to work with you. I identify with you. I know what it feels like to see things that you love being in disarray. I know what it feels like, I have kids, if I’m talking about myself here. So when I’m in a neighborhood and I see other kids, I as a parent, relate, right? So then what you do is find those places of commonality, and you begin to say, Okay, I’ve come close enough now not just to talk to you, but I see what you’re talking about. I’m not doing this from a distance. I’m closer now. I’m proximate to it and now I would love us to figure out what we could do together, right? To say that everybody is necessary, everybody needs, and everybody brings something. Everybody can do something. So when I looked at the diversity of the people on the wall, like the perfume maker, I thought, what’s the perfume maker doing building the wall? This person is doing really delicate work and very, very, very skilled work, and who would do perfume work on the wall? But when it’s your family, when it might be your kids, when it could be your future and your neighborhood, it makes you care, and it also makes you feel like you can contribute. So my next step would be to start talking to the people, to start asking how we could do something together, and that’s what community organizing looks like. It takes a long time. We don’t just roll in and start. It really takes a lot of listening and then being invited to say, Yes, you’re welcome to come work with us, and then to say, but I want you to know that you are as important to this as I am, and I would love us to figure out what we’re going to do together.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. I love that. Brenda, talk to us a little bit about how it’s one thing to help a specific situation, a specific family in need, let’s say. It’s something else to address a broken system, right? So those are two different things. Oftentimes, as Christ followers, we can see the individual brokenness, and we’re good at stepping in, right? Like we want to do that and praise God that people step into those things. But sometimes we don’t see the bigger picture. You know what I mean? So thank God that we’re investing in people, we’re serving people, and we’re loving people, but if we step back, how can we better step back and see that bigger picture and not lose that intimacy of serving and loving others? But look at the bigger picture and say, Wait, there’s something that we as God’s people can do to an even greater degree that will impact many, many other people. How can we make that shift, Brenda?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, it’s interesting that we’re having this conversation in the time frame that we are because we’re in an election year and things like how we vote matter. So we could vote for what matters to us, and/or we could also say, hmm, I am not in that situation, but if that school goes down, even though my kids are out of college now. See, that’s the kind of mindset, that mindset that says I haven’t just come to be helpful. I understand the reason why you all don’t have a playground in this neighborhood where kids can be safe, you see? So our church will go to city hall with you, and we’ll sit in City Hall with you so that when you talk to the legislators about what you hope would happen for your neighborhood, we’ll sit in that room with you. When they say, who would like to see a new park here? We’ll raise our hands. You see? That’s different than coming in to do charitable work, which there’s something to be said for charitable work, but what people are looking for now is allyship, people who are allies to helping them push a major issue, and they need the support of other people to get the attention of the legislators who are making those types of decisions.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. Again, Brenda, that means we have to have those conversations, we have to ask the questions, and we have to understand their perspective in order for us to walk alongside them in that, right?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Absolutely, absolutely. That stuff matters.

Jason Daye
Right. That’s good. So, Brenda, and I love that in the book, Empowered to Repair, you do use the Nehemiah story throughout, which was just really, really helpful, I think. It frames everything up and there’s a cohesiveness to it. But one of the things that we know from the story of Nehemiah is that Nehemiah faced opposition, right? Nehemiah faced opposition from external opposition, but also there was internal opposition. You touch on this because both of these and oftentimes we think of the external really quickly. The big baddies out there, right? So we think of that. But talk to us a little bit about, how can we, as we’re looking at bringing healing to our communities, identify the opposition and then respond to it, both the external and the internal opposition we might come up against.

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, one of the things I like most about Nehemiah, and I didn’t know this until I started studying this book, he prayed a lot. That dude stayed before God. Now I know why, and I’m certain that there’s many a person listening to this podcast conversation, and they too, are people who are like, God, if you don’t give me guidance, I don’t know what to do. So I think that we should anticipate pushback, we should anticipate opposition, unfortunately, from the inside and the outside. From people who like things the way they are and feel like we’re pushing it a little too much, you know? So why don’t you back off a bit kind of thing? We never did that before, or that’s woke, you’re trying to be woke, and all of that. So we should anticipate that people are going to have different reactions to that, right? It’s going to hurt because it’ll be people that we love and we hope understand our hearts and that we have no intention of being hurtful or divisive. Then there’ll be people who resist change on the outside, who are either wanting something from us and trying to get it, and now what’s going on here, or people who feel like don’t come into to do this for us, or whatever. So the complexity of it cannot be understated and we should sit with that truth. If we think we’re going to go have a happy good time and all things will go well, then we haven’t been in ministry long because it’s hard. What keeps us going and my guess is that this is true for you and many people who are listening. I know it’s true for me. It’s holding tight to God’s hand. It’s basically saying what Nehemiah says, Lord God, please note that I’m doing all that I know you’ve called me to do because that’s really all anybody can do. If what we hope for is to be welcomed, well-received, or successful. More than anything, I think what we should look for is to be faithful. If we hear a “well done” from God, we did our part, we take our bow, we curtsy, and we walk off the stage. That’s my sense, that we trust God. We give it everything we’ve got. We stay before God for guidance and we also know that ultimately, that’s who we’re looking to. We’re looking to God for the “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. You did touch on fear in the situation and you shared one story that was very enlightening to me. You shared a story of a white pastor, he’s from an affluent suburb, who felt called to help plant a multicultural church. So he had a multicultural staff, and there was a situation with an African American pastor on his staff, and he was really struggling with addressing that situation. Can you talk us through that? Because I think this is helpful and informative, and it is that fear factor to some degree because we don’t want to mess up. So many of us, Brenda, don’t want to mess up and we’re sometimes fearful that we might offend, and we’re trying to do the good thing. We’re trying to do the right thing. But we live in a world where people get offended very easily these days, right? So it’s hard sometimes. So talk us through that story a little bit and help us understand that fear factor.

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, we’re still friends today. That’s how we became friends. He kind of came to me for some advice. Basically, I think one of the things that’s important to know is that there’s a difference between cultural differences and moral issues. So, of course, there’ll be cultural diversity, and I do it more this way. That’s the stuff you wrestle with. That’s the stuff you kind of go, oh, okay, I realize that I have a different worldview there, and I hadn’t thought about that from a Latino perspective before from a global perspective. Thank you. That’s helpful. This person was kind of doing a serial dating thing throughout the church. He was not an ordained minister, but he was a minister in training, and so he kind of just was dating different people. Different folks would come to the pastor and say, I went out with this person a couple of times, and then he’s dating so and so in the church. So that’s not just cultural now. That’s not a cultural issue. That becomes an issue that must be addressed no matter what the person’s race or gender, it does not matter. Now you have to say, from a pastoral perspective, what’s responsible, and if this person was not an African American, and this person was whatever race you are, what would you do? That’s exactly what I said to him. If this was a person who was white and was having the same kind of dating habits going on throughout the church, and people were coming to you hurt, feeling like they thought that they were in a relationship, what would you do? It was an immediate answer. He knew exactly what he would do. I said, please do not confuse pastoral wisdom with cultural sensitivity. They are not the same, and you must do what you must do when it is a moral issue happening in the church. He dealt with it well. He still has a multiracial church. He still has people that he knows now have the character and not just the color because you’re looking for people who are right to be in leadership, not just to prove that you’re willing to have diversity. That’s not the goal.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s a good word. That’s very helpful. Brenda, as we’re looking at this idea of how we serve our communities, how we lean into these systems that are broken, and what does it mean for reconciliation within them? How do we mend those systems from the local church perspective? What are some just words of encouragement that you would leave with pastors who have a heart for this, right? They have a heart for this. They see the brokenness. They see the issues. Not 100% sure what to do. They’re taking some action. They’re doing some things. But what encouragement would you have for those pastors?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, have two young adult children, and I love them. You can tell my face brightens up just what I think about them, and my guess is that I’m talking to other people who have either nieces or nephews or young people in their lives, and they love them too. I say that as an entree into this conversation because I think we have a generation who is losing confidence in the church and that concerns me. My kids love God. They love their mom. They listen to me when I preach. They kind of tune in because they live out of state now, but they’re not all that keen on going to church and I’m noticing that as a trend. I love young adults and I believe they want to see change. So if I was preaching right now, I’d have everybody in the audience say, see change. They want to see change. So having church and hoping that they’re going to come back into church and see that as relevant to them, they don’t. So what I want to say to all of us is that we’ve got to reimagine church and I think we’ve got to be actively involved. They don’t want to hear us talk. They want to see us do. They literally need to see change. So I would beg anybody listening to this podcast and in the church to really think about what the shift is that God might be calling our church to make to cause us to be more actively present in the world around us and demonstrate to the generation coming behind us that we are addressing this world, interacting with this world, and not siloed away from the world that they’re living in. I think that that’s going to win credibility for us and I think we should get on it right away.

Jason Daye
Yeah, wow, that’s a good word. It’s a big call. It’s a big call because, again, I think we recognize there’s brokenness. Sometimes we don’t know exactly what to do with it and that internal opposition, that fear, sometimes that you talk about in the book. Sometimes we’re afraid we’re going to mess up. So I think the encouragement that you’ve shared that, listen, there are needs all around us. We’re the people of God. God has invited us into the brokenness. That’s what God does and we can lean into that. I think that is encouraging. I think the emphasis you had about us doing it together, I think is going to be key because I think a lot of us think about, oh, I’m afraid I might mess up. But when you lock arms with others, you’re not going it alone. You’re not trying to be the Mr. Fix-it or Mrs. Fix-it. That fear kind of dissipates to a degree when you’re not doing it alone, right?

Brenda Salter McNiel
Yeah, in this book, I talk about a class I took because I didn’t know much about how to do community work either. So know that I was not an expert. I had to take a whole class to do it. I took a class with a professor, Jewish professor, Marshall Gantz, and he started our class on community organizing, getting involved, being a part of your community in your neighborhood, and taking it seriously. He started it with this analogy and I’ll leave it with you. He basically asked us all, and people were in this class from all over the world, all over Australia, Tanzania, I mean, Canada, and South America. He said, How did you learn to ride a bike? Then people started coming into the chat and they would unmute and tell everybody how they learned to ride a bike. Everybody would talk about how they learned to ride a bike. At the end of maybe 20 or so people throwing their ideas in there. He said, did you notice that nobody said they read a book? He said the way I just heard all these people from all over the world describe how they got on the bike, somebody held it a little bit, and they were wobbly. They had training wheels then took the training wheels off. They went maybe a little bit and fell. They got up and their mom, dad, brother, sister, or somebody came and got them and wiped them off and said, Okay, try it again. Next time, don’t look back because you’ll fall. You’ll lose your balance. Basically, what I’m trying to suggest to all of us is that we just get on the bike knowing that we’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to fall, and knowing that that’s how you learn. You get stronger and better and more steady just by trying something. So I would say to all of us, most of us don’t want to fail, and we don’t want to look embarrassed, but that’s how we learn. We learn by being vulnerable enough to say, I don’t know how to do this well and I might fall. But if I do, I promise I’ll get back up and brush my knees off and I’ll try it again. Each time you try, you’ll get better and better as you go.

Jason Daye
I absolutely love that. What a great word, Brenda. Thank you so much. I want to encourage everyone that a good way to start taking some action and leaning into this is to pick up Brenda’s newest book, Empowered to Repair. It’s an absolute gift to the church. She does, as she mentioned, lean on Nehemiah and Nehemiah’s story and unpack it in such a beautiful way and just, as you go through the book, walks you through, literally, step-by-step, reflecting on Nehemiah’s story. What does it mean for us to become people who are mending broken systems and bringing healing to our community? So I really encourage you to check that out. You can find links to that, to Brenda, her ministries, where she serves, where she teaches, her socials, and all that fun stuff in the toolkit for this episode at PastorServe.org/network. So be sure to check that out. Brenda, as we wind down, I want to just give you an opportunity. You’ve got the ears and eyes of brothers and sisters serving. What words would you like to leave with them?

Brenda Salter McNiel
I believe in The Church, the people of God, the Ecclesia. One of the things that I’m beginning to understand is that the Greek word ecclesia doesn’t mean “building”. It means “the called-out ones”. So it’s not being in a building that makes us a church. It’s being the people of God who are in the world representing God. So be the ecclesia. Let’s go show people what the people of God look like. We’re not perfect, but we do try, and I pray that the ecclesia will show up because we sure do need you now if ever we need to see the ecclesia in the world around us.

Jason Daye
Amen. Amen. Brenda, thank you so much for making time to hang out with us on Frontstage Backstage. I appreciate it.

Brenda Salter McNiel
It’s been my pleasure. Thank you.

Jason Daye
Alright. Thank you, God bless.

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.