Grounded Podcast with Chuck Quinley: ReJesus Everything!

What do you do when God feels completely silent? (and two other great questions)

Welcome back to the Grounded Podcast! I hope you are having an incredible week. Sherry and I are out of the country for the next few weeks on an assignment that is part ministry and part Sabbath for the two of us. We run pretty hard on the schedule, some days having six meetings back-to-back, and it’s just important to balance that with some good time of restoration. What’s coming up? Today we get three great questions: * Is it okay to question things you were taught growing up in church? * What do you do when God feels completely silent? * How do you maintain personal faith when you’ve seen so much hypocrisy in the church? * Bonus: and I talk a bit about how God brings revelation to us through others. I wanted to highlight the second question because it’s something I have experienced myself, so I can really sympathize with others who are going through it. Life Can Wear You Out We all get worn out, sometimes. The most important things in life need sustained effort on our part. It even seems that the more important something is, the harder it is to do because it gets resisted by the darkness. I mean, nobody stumbles into a great lifetime marriage or launching a bunch of happy, healthy, solid kids. Or building a God-honoring business that balances making profits with being a blessing to people. These things are so resisted in the world that we have to push harder in our efforts to achieve them. We Meet a Tired Man Sherry and I just returned from the Pastors Coalition meeting in Tennessee this past weekend. This is a group of excellent pastors who want to go the extra mile and not only run a healthy church but also influence that church to do something powerful in global missions and humanitarian work around the world. In this group, there was one notable leader, a man I truly admire. A year ago, I felt compelled to drive to his city and have a meeting with him although I did not know why. When I called to set it up, he didn’t seem too excited about the prospect of me coming to have a talk with him. After I got there it was a little awkward but eventually we got to an amazing fish house, where we ate a lot of shrimp and ended up having a long talk about dryness and the need to take a sabbath rest. The essence of our conversation was that maybe he wasn’t really burned out, nor was he finished in his calling. He was just tired and exhausted, and he needed to let things idle for a year. At this week’s meeting, he told me that our conversation probably saved his ministry, because he was, in fact, resisting meeting with me out of the secret knowledge that he was about to leave it all behind. His wife said, “We were depleted, but our ground was depleted too. We needed to let the land rest.” Putting Things into Sabbath Mode He quietly put everything in this big dynamic church into maintenance mode without announcing it to anyone. Every time someone had a great idea, he said, “That’s a great idea. Write it up and email it to me!” but he never did anything new the whole year. He slowed the busy-ness of his church and focused on health in the church. Sabbath year. Just let the land rest. He spent more time on his personal health, and he and his wife logged a lot of missing hours together and renewed their strength and rebuilt themselves on the inside for twelve whole months. The core leaders from the church got a rest too as things got simplified for a whole year. The end of the story is that they’re both revived and the church with them. This year they’re actually going to start eight micro churches under other leaders. This will have minimal drain on them or the church but will ignite eight new people in their circle to do something visionary with God in a house group or small-sized church setting. That’s usually the fruit of truly unplugging for a season. Maybe you need that, and if you do, I hope you will not argue yourself out of it, but just start pulling plugs out and making space in your calendar for a season of doing nothing. But that’s not even what this episode is about That part is for free, folks! What I talk about in the video is something totally different. It’s about the reality of a place called the wilderness—a dry, arid, vacant place you end up somehow wandering into even as you faithfully follow Jesus. You don’t intend to go there. It just happens. Things get quiet and you sense that you’re just alone in a desert place, and no matter how loud you cry out to God, you don’t hear anything in response. Maybe this lasts a week or a month. I felt nothing. It lasted for three years. Journeying Through a Spiritual Desert In Manila, I preached each week, and we had great harvest. Typically, 25 people every Sunday came to Christ over an 8-10-year period. For a long while, I could sing. I could pray. But inside I just felt silence. (I talk more about it in the video.) Thank God, the thing about all deserts is that they don’t go on forever. I got out of mine eventually, so I can fully understand what this experience feels like to other people and can assure you that it is not a permanent state. Actually, this phenomenon is well recorded in Christian history. Many of the people considered spiritual heroes in Christian history report a season in their life where a similar thing took place. So if you’re in that condition right now, please take heart. Yes, it’s a time to ask God if you’ve done something to cause it, and if you have, you need to fix it, but it’s also very possible that you didn’t do a thing. It’s just a process, and somehow we need it—for reasons we can clearly see and for some reasons that we may not understand in this lifetime. Life with Jesus is so amazing, whether it’s in a desert or on a mountaintop. As long as he’s there, it’s a precious experience. I think one of the main things Jesus came to teach us was how to be fully human—how to live a life that is fully engaged with God and others in this physical world. I want to taste my food, feel the wind on my face, and enjoy every slobbery kiss from babies. Sherry and I love our days, and we pray God will help you to love yours also. ReJesus Everything! Love, Chuck and Sherry Grounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe [https://www.quinley.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Should we walk away from organized religion?

Okay. In today’s quick podcast, I answer a single question that is being posed by some young people, which is: “Since all organized religion is problematic in one way or another, should we just walk away from it and have a private religion?” What is Private Religion? Private religion is sort of removing ourselves from a communal basis in our faith journey and choosing just to have what we might call privatism—me keeping my personal ideas about faith and religion private. This is one option, and many people are suggesting it. In this quick video. I give my reasons why I don’t think that’s the best path forward and why I believe it is very much possible to re-JESUS everything on a small and larger level. This past weekend, I was at the Emerging Leaders Gathering at Lee university, it was really exciting to see young people who were passionate about serving Jesus and wanting to do it in a communal way. Hats off to Mark Swank and others at Church of God World Missions, who have been leading this charge to raise up a new generation of missional young adults in a denomination that is over 100 years old. Time really is a factor in any organization, whether it’s a family or a faith-based mission. Time allows lots of cultural currents and trends and strong personalities to emerge and change the course of the original group. Sometimes this is healthy evolution and sometimes not so healthy, but what it always is is entropy, because age slows things down, makes them more institutional, and much less likely to bear fruit. That’s why the story of Abraham is such a miracle: an old man and woman had a baby. It’s just as remarkable for an old church to have a youth movement. In both cases, this was only accomplished with great intentionality. God wanted this baby, and Abraham and Sarah had to want this baby and bend their life around having future generations flow from them. We have to care about things like this, or they’ll never happen. I really appreciate the work of Dr. Propes, Mark Swank, and many others in generating some momentum among young people regarding global missions. Hope you enjoy the video. i’d love to hear your ideas too. Let’s keep this discussion going. Let’s read Jesus everything in our lives. There’s so much life in Jesus, and we can all have it, and we can all continue to bear fruit even in our mature years. Every blessing! Chuck Grounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe [https://www.quinley.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Did Jesus Establish Christianity?

Writers Note: This is a question with the power to set you free — or make you deeply uncomfortable. Maybe both at once, Please stick with us till the end. It’s a crucial discussion. Thanks for helping us spread this conversation widely so we can help others ground their faith. Did Jesus Found Christianity? Most people assume the answer is obvious. Of course he did. His name is in the title. But at the risk of being misunderstood, I still want to make the case that the answer is no — and that this is one of the most liberating thoughts you will ever consider as a devoted follower of Christ. I say this as a lifetime insider. I believe with everything in me that the life and teaching of Jesus is the most extraordinary gift ever given to this humanity. The principles he embodied are the very foundations of the civilization we inhabit today. The chaos we see in the world now is not caused by those principles. It is caused by our abandonment of them. But whether Jesus founded a religion called Christianity? That is a different question. Here are three reasons I believe he did not. Reason #1: History Simply Doesn’t Support It There is no historical evidence that Jesus founded any form of external religion. What the records show, consistently, is a man pushing against almost every institution of his day — family structures, Roman political arrangements, and most dramatically, the Temple of Judaism itself. He did not model how to build the best religion. He modeled a new way of living. Everything he said and did was about humans living in a direct, unmediated, loyal relationship with their Creator. His conclusion, demonstrated over and over, was that religion can actually become a barrier to the very God it claims to represent. When pious performance, priestly clothing, and theological gatekeeping replace direct encounter — Jesus doesn’t just disagree. He despises it. He was not anti-structure as an ideological position. He was anti-anything-that-comes-between-humans-and-God. That is not the posture of a man building a new religion. That is the posture of a man tearing down the walls that keep people from the presence they were made for. Reason #2: His Mission Was a War of Liberation, Not Institutional Formation Jesus was not building an institution. He was fighting a war. He believed this planet had come under the influence of an intelligent, malevolent heavenly being whose strategy was hateful and relentless: push the leaders of every major pillar of society toward the accumulation of wealth, the abuse of power, and a fascination with physical pleasure at the expense of everything higher. The result is what we know well: disease, broken relationships, injustice, cruelty, death. Jesus spent his public ministry tearing down that kingdom piece by piece. He cast out demons. He healed people in the streets. He raised the dead. Every act of human restoration was a declaration of war. Does that sound like someone primarily concerned with founding a religion with creeds, hymns, ceremonies, temples, rituals, and liturgical practices? He didn’t build a religion. He didn’t teach his followers how to build one either. What he did build was people. An inner circle of three. Twelve. An outer network of five hundred. Community? Absolutely essential. A ceremonial structure of institution? Probably not. In his own words, those systems in Judaism had become tools of the enemy. He said the Pharisees’ determined religious efforts actually produced people who were twice the children of hell they were. Structure is never satisfied. It always wants more structure. Over time, the life gets squeezed out by the effort to control. That is why Spirit movements keep arising — hermits in the desert, prophets in the wilderness, reformers nailing documents to cathedral doors. Jesus himself regularly walked away from civilization into uninhabited places to be alone with God. That is not the behavior of an institution builder. Reason #3: “Christianity” Doesn’t Exist as One Organization There simply isn’t one central thing called Christianity. There are more than 47,000 separated Christian groups — each with their own doctrines, mandatory practices, and expectations. Some believe Jesus is the only way. Others that he’s a noble example but that any sincere path will lead equally to God. Some believe Jesus was virgin born and raised from the dead. Others believe neither. Some believe in salvation based on works. Others through faith only. Others that it’s through mystical grace flowing through the sacraments. Some look for an eternity in the clouds. Others doubt there is an afterlife at all. Which of these did Jesus found? The answer, I believe, is none of them. Here is the formulation I keep returning to: Jesus is the standard. The Christianities are the attempts. The way of Jesus is not something you do alone — it demands community. To follow Jesus we have to build communities that align with his values and mission. The problem is in the cycle that usually attends movements. Every movement begins with hope, fire, fresh wine in fresh wineskins. But movements are messy and, eventually, have to be organized. Some become so rigid that no life remains. Others stagnate into comfortable fellowship that has forgotten the mission. The task of disciples is to build our Christian communities in alignment with his value system and for his purposes. The Kingdom belongs to Him. Building Christianities belongs to us. Jesus is the standard. Christianities are the attempts. Why This Matters This is not an attack on institutional Christianity. It is a safety measure. Most of the truly toxic things that happen in religious communities — the abuse of power, the manipulation, the cultic control, the cruelty done in the name of God — most of it begins with grandiose thinking. When a leader starts to believe their church was founded by Jesus himself, they become significantly less accountable. They can come to believe themselves as the special “anointed ones” largely above question. The downward slide of is not a rare fringe case. It is the almost inevitable trajectory of all religious institutions that confuse themselves with the Kingdom of God. But when we accept — truly accept, in our bones — that our churches are our feeble human attempts to imitate Jesus in an organized way, something shifts in a vital way. We become accountable. We hold our structures humbly, knowing they are ours, not his, and that we will constantly need to revisit and correct them. The church is not the kingdom. The minute we confuse the two, we are on dangerous ground. I know that I’ve opened up a can of worms with this, and that touching this topic can seem like an attack on the entire Christian world. I really hope this can lead to some discussion. I do not offer this as doctrine, but as my reasoned opinion on this matter. I am NOT saying that we should abandon all organized forms of Christian religion. You cannot walk as a disciple without binding yourself to the community of disciples. I AM saying that every one of our forms of Christianity is a minority position, and that each of us treating them like ours is the correct one, the only one truly established by Jesus and that all the others are false Christians is one of the most toxic aspects of global Christianity. Three Things I’m Asking You to Consider Doing First: Stop defending your version Christianity as if Jesus founded it. Humans launched yours and we generally know their names whether it’s Wesleyan, Lutheran, Moravians, etc. Sincere humans founded our tribes, not Jesus himself. Just own that. It will make all of us more humble, more open, and consequently more dangerous to the enemy. Second: Ask honestly whether your Christianity is actually producing disciples — people growing in loyalty to God in how they handle money and power, how they treat others, and how quickly they apologize when they are wrong. That is the fruit Jesus was after. Healthy churches produce it. Third: If you have allowed any institution to stand between you and direct access to your Creator — if you have outsourced your relationship with God to a pastor, a doctrine, a ritual, or a sacred building — today is the day to walk back toward the wilderness a bit to find the quiet place. Go there and speak to your Father without an intermediary. Because that is what Jesus came to give you. Not a religion. A relationship. Not a Christianity. Himself — leading you into deep, direct communion with the God who made you. Let’s pursue that together and build faithful communities in the process. Every Blessing! Chuck PS: I’m not trying to give answers, and I’m really not trying to destabilize anyone’s faith. I just hope that we can have an honest, respectful conversation about the nature of the thing we’ve built all over this planet. That is called collectively Christianity. My solution to everything is a ruthless return to Jesus over every form of institutional religion, so that we can rebuild communities that reflect him more perfectly. I hope you feel my heart in this. I would love to hear what you have to say. Chuck Quinley is President of Emerge Missions and author of ReJesus Everything. Grounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe [https://www.quinley.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Question & Response #2

Hi! Hope you’re having a great week! Since our last episode, we’ve got more great questions. I will answer three of them in this episode. The first one is: “What if someone has suffered so deeply in abuse from a church that they have difficulty separating Jesus from the abuse?” I will address this directly and offer to anyone wounded by their experience in a church or Christian organization the only path to healing I have ever discovered. We’re into a really great discussion, and I hope you’ll join us inside this week’s grounded podcast question and response session. If you send me your questions and comments, I will do my best to respond to each of them. Every Blessing! Chuck PS: I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but our Substack has this really cool feature so that if there’s even a sentence or paragraph that you like in a newsletter like this, you can highlight it and then right-click to share. It will create a really cool looking way for your friend to receive your message. Please help us grow the reach of this newsletter. No algorithm pushes it out. It depends on the people who read it to share it with their friends. Thanks so much! Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe [https://www.quinley.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

How Do You Even Define Christianity Anymore?

Writer’s note: I want to give my personal thanks to the 20 of you who recently signed up as paid subscribers. I really appreciate your support. It’s encouraging to know that people find value in the work, and it helps me build the team I need to continue and grow the podcast. Thanks again! Hi Friend! The hardest thing in discussing how to fix dysfunctional elements within Christianity is simply determining what Christianity even is today. What even is Christianity? It’s a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it. Most people assume the answer is straightforward. “Christianity is the religion about Jesus.” That seems clear enough. But when you begin to look closely at the actual landscape of Christianity, the answer becomes far more complicated. Christianity today is not just a religion, it’s also a cultural identity, a global movement, a massive institutional network, a political influence, and a sprawling economic ecosystem. It contains sincere discipleship movements, centuries-old traditions, humanitarian organizations, political activism, and millions of business ventures, to name a few elements. Let’s unpack this. The Warehouse In my upcoming book ReJesus Everything, I describe Christianity as a giant warehouse. Picture the largest warehouse on earth — a building stretching miles in every direction. Inside are countless aisles, stacked floor to ceiling with everything associated with Christianity. Yes, Christianity is a Family of Religions If you walk into the section labeled Religions, you will find an astonishing number of shelves. Scholars estimate that there are roughly 47,000 distinct Christianities around the world. Walk the aisles and you’ll pass * Roman Catholicism * Eastern Orthodoxy * Greek Orthodoxy * Ethiopian Orthodoxy * Coptic Christianity * Lutheranism * Calvinism * Methodism * Presbyterianism * The Mennonites * Baptist denominations in every variety * Pentecostalism * non-denominational Christianity * Prosperity gospel churches * Liberation theology * Christian nationalism * Progressive Christianity * House church movements * Emerging church movements, and many more Then you hit the fringe religion section (which grows every year): Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventism, Christian UFOlogy, and hundreds of radical cult groups that claim Jesus while holding beliefs most traditional Christians would flatly reject. (Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown mass suicide cults had a Christian theology as their base). And if you keep walking, you’ll run into ancient Christian spiritual systems like Gnosticism, which portrayed Jesus as a messenger from the gods revealing a radically different version of the biblical story where the serpent is the good guy, the creator is not to be trusted, and Jesus is sent by the gods to be the one who reveals all this to us and delivers secret knowledge that helps us ascend to join the sky gods as spirit beings freed from our human shell. This group almost took over early Christianity. It’s still out there. All of this sits inside one section of the warehouse labeled Religions where * Every group claims the name of Jesus. * They read the same Bible. * All believe their understanding is correct. Christianity as a National Identity Christianity is more than a religion. For hundreds of millions of people, Christianity is a national and cultural identity that has nothing to do with personal faith. This is the case in Europe. Those with a Christian cultural identity may have never prayed directly to God and only attend church for funerals and weddings. But they live in a historically Christian nation, and that makes them Christian in the same way it makes someone Iranian or Greek. Many nations enshrine this idea in their constitutions with the naming of a state religion. The King of Great Britain is authorized to rule by the Anglican Church. This is Christianity as ethnicity and civilization. To draw a parallel from largely agnostic modern Israel, Naor Narkis says, “What defines us (Jews) is our language, and our heritage, but doesn’t involve faith in a god.” 3.5 Million Parachurch Organizations Then there’s the parachurch universe. According to research from Gordon-Conwell University, there are 3.5 million Christian agencies worldwide — organizations addressing everything from lack of access to the gospel, to clean water, to inclusion of LGBTQ in clergy, to homelessness, drug addiction, human trafficking, orphan care, right to life, legal reform, and political action. It’s an industry. It’s hard to know where to draw the line on what is and is not part of Christianity. For example, is an orphanage run by Christians part of Christianity? Sure. How about the non-profit that runs the fundraising that runs the orphanage? Okay, that also. How about the Christian credit card processor that serves churches and non-profits so they can receive donations? Is that Christianity? How about the Christian investment company that oversees the retirement fund for the missionaries who run the orphanage? How about the funds they invest in? It’s hard to see the exact line. Then, There’s Christianity, Inc. There are millions of corporations and profit-driven businesses generating billions of dollars in revenue directly or indirectly attached to Christianity. The fish sticker business alone is a blood sport. There’s big bucks in fish stickers. Millions have been sold. It’s a contact sport. When Evolution Designs released “the Darwin fish” with feet (as a mockery of those who don’t believe in evolution), 3D Witness Enterprises responded with their Jesus fish eating the Darwin fish. Glorious. In the United States alone, 350,000 Christian communities are legally incorporated. They own billions of dollars of real estate and receive billions in cash flow annually with very little reporting. Add to that hundreds of universities, publishing houses, retreat centers, music labels, television networks, hospital systems, Christian law firms, sound and lights companies, church security companies, and companies making those tiny communion wafer packets that are generally impossible to open. You want more? * Christian safari companies in South Africa. You can do a mission trip and also bag a rhino. * Clerical clothing manufacturers (You won’t find backward collars at Macy’s) * Companies making hand-cranked transistor radios for underground churches. * And of course, Chick-fil-A — which some call, “God’s fast food”. (Shout out to Chick-fil-A—how about some gift cards?) We’ve got * Christian T-shirt companies * Agents handling only Christian comedians & ventriloquists * Christian Greeting Card companies like Precious Moments * Christian dating sites * Christian cruises with the Gaithers, etc. etc. There’s Christian Tourism: Branson, MO, the “Christian Las Vegas”. Entire industries revolve around pilgrimage destinations in Israel, Turkey, and other historically significant locations, with busses, tour guides, olive-wood carving companies, relic makers, anointing oil bottlers, museums, etc. The best analogy I have is this: imagine McDonald’s with no rules. Anyone, anywhere in the world can put up the golden arches and call it McDonald’s — and they can do whatever they want inside the building. Make it a skating rink, a day spa, a hardware store, or serve food of any type. No quality control. No governing body. No one to call for permission. Anyone anywhere in the world can start any enterprise they want and attach it to the Christian cause through their branding and activities. That’s Christianity today. Some parts of the Christian Enterprise are sincere and beautiful. Some have gone badly off track. Some started faithfully but then unraveled as they went along, maybe at the peak of their visible success. This is not a new problem. The church has wrestled with the tension between the institutional and the spiritual since its earliest days. But the scale of it today is genuinely unprecedented. Humans Organize Things Over the centuries, human beings did what human beings always do. We organized the movement. First, it was a movement, and then it was a governmentally empowered church system which spawned those trades that were attached to supporting Christian causes like builders, stone masons, weavers, candle-makers, etc. Over the past two millennia things just kept mushrooming in every direction as people got one great idea after another. None of this was malicious. Organizing is simply how humans handle ideas they care about deeply. But over time the headless structure grew unbounded and lost its focus. And today Christianity has long overwhelmed the boundaries of any known religion. Grounded Podcast is a 100% reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work please join us as a free or paid subscriber. My Working Definition of Christianity So here is my honest, eyes-open definition of Christianity: “Religion, culture, businesses, initiatives, and assorted enterprises somehow related to the story and person of Jesus of Nazareth.” Not inspiring, I know. I’m just trying to be accurate so we can begin to discuss Christianity intelligently. Now you might think that all this crazy human chaos is rubbish and we should all repudiate it and walk away, but here’s what’s ironic…. Astonishingly, through these ungoverned, unplanned, random, and sometimes corrupt human creations — God has done extraordinary things anyway. Do you think I’m overstating? I’m not just talking about small good deeds scattered around the edges of history. I mean that there’s a mystery in this mess. Yes, mistakes have been made, and people within this enterprise have gotten a million miles off course. Yet somehow this headless enterprise has created things that fundamentally reshaped life on this planet for everyone, including people who want nothing to do with Jesus. Here are just a few. The concept of universal human dignity — the idea that every person, regardless of race, gender, class, or ability, bears the image of God and deserves to be treated with dignity — that is a Christian idea. It is not found in ancient Greek philosophy or Roman law. It was Christianity that first insisted that slaves were full human beings made in God’s image. It was Christianity that built the first hospitals, the first orphanages, the first universities. The abolition of slavery in the Western world was driven overwhelmingly by Christians — William Wilberforce in England, the evangelical abolitionists in America. The civil rights movement was led by a Baptist preacher whose entire vision was drawn from the Sermon on the Mount. Modern science was largely developed by Christians who believed that a rational God had created a rational universe that could be understood through rational inquiry. The rule of law, limited government, individual conscience — all deeply shaped by Christian thought. Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization, which has brought two thousand years of growing prosperity to this entire planet. Every single one of us — whether we follow Jesus or have never heard of him — owe this ungoverned, messy, sometimes embarrassing enterprise called Christianity an enormous debt. I say this after 45 years in ministry, having seen the church at its absolute best and its absolute worst. Yes, you can travel the world and find people who have been deeply, genuinely wounded in churches and Christian organizations. That is real and it matters. That’s what this podcast is about. But you can also find millions — I mean millions — who are now free from an unbreakable bondage because of the actions of people within Christianity. They are free from addiction, rescued from trafficking. They’ve been cared for after war took everything from them. Like so many, they have found a local community that consistently held them up while they the hard work of living out their lives. All because— somehow—our amazing Jesus does his work even through this ungoverned, imperfect enterprise. Sit with that for a moment. That alone is a miracle. Unlike a franchise system such as McDonald’s — where a central authority controls how each location operates — Christianity has no global governing structure, and yet….the mystery and the mess. The Paradox There is always this deep paradox at the heart of Christianity. On one hand, the Christian world itself is fragmented, disorganized, and sometimes so deeply flawed and contrary to the very values of Jesus. On the other hand, through this very imperfect system, extraordinary good has somehow been accomplished. It’s like a tile mosaic of life. The individual pieces might not actually match the project but step back from the tiny broken pieces and look at the whole mosaic created by Christianity, and something remarkable appears. Despite its flaws, Christianity has often been a powerful force for compassion, justice, and human flourishing. I find that so amazing. But here’s the thought I’ll leave you with today. The early church had no buildings. No banks. No benefactors. No publishing houses. No political action committees. No fish stickers. They had one thing: a living connection to Jesus. He held all authority. He was the magnetic north around which everything else oriented. With that single center, a small group of fishermen and tax collectors spread a faith across the entire Roman Empire within 300 years. The power was not in the complexity of their enterprise. The power was in the centrality of Jesus, which may be the most important lesson for the modern church. That’s the only way forward. And that’s exactly what ReJesus Everything is about. That is the challenge before us today: If the first Christians turned the world upside down with nothing but a living connection to Jesus, what might happen if the modern church found its way back to that center again? Here’s our discussion question for today: “The early church had no buildings, banks, or institutions — just a living connection to Jesus — and turned the world upside down. What do you think the modern church would have to give up to get back to that kind of center?” Drop your answer in the comments. I read every one, and I’d love to hear your story. Thanks for joining me on Grounded. Let’s ReJesus Everything! Send me your questions and I’ll respond. The Next Episode Which brings us to the question that this whole season is building toward: Did Jesus establish Christianity? And can it be saved? I’m going to tackle that question fully in the next episode. Please help us share the Grounded podcast with your friends. There’s no algorithm driving the expansion of our audience, only you sharing the value you find in this discussion with your friends. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe [https://www.quinley.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]