The Urgency of Discipleship in the cHURCH with Dr. Johnny Walker Part 2

Rick Yuhas 0:01
Coming up on renewed mindsets. Part two of my interview with Dr. Johnny Walker, where we talked about today's church, its relevance and its impact or lack of on both those counts. We closed last week with the understanding that the little C church is lacking when it comes to training and equipping people to go out into the world. Lacking in discipleship. Today, we'll see if we have answers to that. Let's go, boys. Discipleship.

Hey, welcome to Renewed mindsets. I'm Rick and I'm so glad you're here. You know, when it comes to training and equipping people to go out into the world, the church is lacking in discipleship. And before the church becomes effective, we have to start meeting the needs of individuals searching for the truth. Last week we closed with this. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 1:04
But that's discipleship. It's meeting someone where they are and finding out what they need. Meeting those needs, physical needs, emotional needs and spiritual needs. But you've got to to meet these physical and emotional and sometimes intellectual needs. Yes. Before we've earned the right to share the gospel. 

Rick Yuhas 1:27
So let's just jump right into part two. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 1:32
And when they're ready, we share the gospel. And that's what I love about what I do every single day. People say, Well, why aren't you in the ministry anymore? When I was at the college career minister at this church, I said, I am. I'm in marketplace ministry. I meet people's needs every day. I work with people all over the world. And and I've ministered to people via Zoom. I have you know, people. Hang on. Hey, I've got a question for you. In sometimes it's a spiritual question. Sometimes it's an emotional question, a relationship question, because the things we teach in companies work in all relationships, not just for selling or something. And and I'll ask the questions. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Do you have a faith that you follow? And you know. And if they do, I sure do. Is there someone you can talk to there? I don't push my faith, but they'll always eventually ask about my faith and I'll just share what I have and I'll offer it to them. And and that's what my children are doing. And and that's what these young people are starting to do, and that is church. We don't go to church. You said it before. We are the church, right? And I and I catch myself. I'm really trying to break the habit of saying, hey, let's go to church on Sunday morning. And I try to say, let's go gather with the church, and observe discipleship.. 

Rick Yuhas 2:53
That's good. Discipleship matters. Discipleship does matter.

Dr. Johnny Walker 2:53
Because that's what's happening and that's what needs to be happening. So the question we started with today was, why bother going to church? You shouldn't. You should. You mean the world out there should be encountering the church, you know, so much and so often that they they don't have to attend, but they're drawn to attend because all of those weird Christian people are the ones that meet my needs. And that's that's really how we became the authors of history. You know, when the Roman Empire fell is the Christians we're meeting the needs. So and and that's how we became the main influencer over the last, you know, a thousand or more years. And we're losing that. 

Rick Yuhas 3:39
We are losing it. We're losing it because church attendance is down now, as far as as far as discipleship in the story you told, first of all, your children are exceptional and they are the exception to the rule, unfortunately. Now, I'm looking at you now people are hearing us talk, but I'm looking you in the eye. Did they learn that in church or did they learn that from you? 

Dr. Johnny Walker 4:11
They learned that from me. 

Rick Yuhas 4:12
See, that's what is supposed to happen. But somebody's got to start it. Not everybody has a Johnnie Walker in their family to learn this from. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 4:24
Well, they should. And it's not that they should have a Johnnie Walker. They should. 

Rick Yuhas 4:27
But what I do. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 4:28
What I've done. 

Rick Yuhas 4:29
Right. The problem is in my eyes, 

that generation, which is going to do some amazing things, should really covers both ends of the spectrum. Discipleship was never the option with them.And there's not a whole lot of middle. You've got you've got you've got on fire young people and you have young people that are the other end as far as you've as far as the east is from the west, the church itself actually physically go into church, I don't think offers that group that's missing out enough, mainly because of the attitude that younger people have towards older generations now. And I don't know if that's happened over the years, but the average pastor is a boomer. The average age of a pastor is a little older than us. And I believe the church attendance is down, not so much because of culture, but it's generational 

and that younger generation is not going to do what they are told to do. If to be a Christian, if you've got to walk into a church building, they won't do it just because that's what it's supposed to be. They're the ones that are online. They're the ones that are watching videos. They're the ones needing discipleship. They're the ones that are doing things with technology that we could only dream about. And we're just sitting here doing a podcast and watching video online. But we're both pretty stupid about it. You know, we're just barely getting by. Sure, 

we've got to figure out a way to disciple this generation. Discipleship is the key. Discipleship is the only way this will work.

Dr. Johnny Walker 6:16
So I want to I want to go back to that as you go ahead. You said you said this earlier, and I think the answer is the same. Well, I don't think it's the mode I think the mode is somewhat important, but I think it's the message and it's and it goes back to word relevance. Are we relevant? I mean, a company that is not relevant disappears, right? An organization, a nonprofit that's no longer relevant disappears in the church as far as the institution is. That's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about Big C body of Christ. We're talking about little C institution of the church is is not relevant in today's culture. And it's not because 

I agree, the culture has changed so much. I think we haven't done we haven't been obedient. 

Rick Yuhas 7:14
It's in mind that's really what it's done. Even as parents of that age, they are so far removed from what we know. I don't know if it's the way they grew up. I don't know if it's because that generation grew up in this vast amount of knowledge gathering and no discipleship. And you know, we got to our thirties and forties and I don't want to say we stopped learning, but we stopped being able to gather information as quickly. And our kids who were children at the time really surpassed us in a lot of ways as far as information gathering. Now the information that they have may not be as quality, but they are loaded down with it. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 8:00
Yeah, so it's information overload. But you said something a moment ago around and again, I know I'm an anomaly, but I made a comment to someone a couple months ago who made that comment you just made about learning and getting older and old dogs new tricks. I'm 55 and. 

Rick Yuhas 8:19
Are you sure? 

Dr. Johnny Walker 8:20
I am, but I'm not sure if you are. 

But you know, we're 55 years old right now, and in the last minute I've had this company ten years. I was in business six years before that. The last 16 years of my learning has grown exponentially more so than the previous years. The the previous 39, I guess if I'm doing my math right, 

so I'm in an anomaly there. The wealth of information that we have, the question is, is what are we downloading into our minds? And most people our age are binge watching Netflix or or, you know, something on Hulu 

where my kids are watching things that are relevant to them. And some of it's funny, goofy stuff, Some of it. My son watches basketball tape from the games because it's available online and he watches it more than anyone on his team. So I do agree with you that they are hungry for information and they're hungry for the truth and they're hungry for relevance. So the question is, why isn't the church offering that? And some of it is modality, but I don't think that's the key. Does it matter if we switch modalities right now because we're not doing it right in person. We've got to fix the problem. We've got to start discipling people again. You know, when when, when Peterson. 

Rick Yuhas 9:58
Jordan, Peterson. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 9:59
Jordan Thomas and George Anthony, that was from Jordan Peterson. 

Rick Yuhas 10:02
That's his brother. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 10:04
And. 

Rick Yuhas 10:05
Probably But Jordan, he sells peanuts. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 10:10
Jordan Peterson, you know, has teaches the scriptures. And more people are listening to Jordan Peterson teach about the Bible. And he's now an ordained minister and and admittedly somewhere young in his faith. And but he does the study and he does the research and he has this information and he's he's transparent and he's authentic and he's sincere and he shares his struggles with depression or marriage or instead of, you know, being the one that's up in front of the audience, you know, with their arms raised, be like me, be like me. No, we we have someone to be like, Jesus Christ, right? And we and we that's who we follow because he followed the father. And so, so we listen to people that are sincere and honest and transparent and and that will share their life with others and share their mistakes and share what they've learned and share their current struggles. But we you and I grew up in a generation of Ministry B ministers as Gen Xers, that we were supposed to have all the answers. 

Rick Yuhas 11:27
Yeah. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 11:28
And no one buys that crap anymore. And I'm not sure they were really buying it then maybe for a little bit. But the moment someone like that falls and suddenly, you know, all the lessons are lost because they're attached to the person, right? Where if I'm transparent and I say I struggle, I mean I mean, you know, you were talking about George Barna, the studies that they do on pornography, the number of ministers that are hooked on pornography that can never go find help. Yeah. Because if they stepped out and said, I'm struggling with this, oh, my gosh, you're just totally unfit. Well, maybe they need some time off to get that. But there's no restoration. It's just fiery, Right? And their whole livelihood is gone and taking care of their family is gone. And there's just nothing there for them. So everyone finds it in. And we've got to get to a point and and I'm not sure we can do it in the megachurch. I'm not sure the megachurch, I think it's the megachurch has a great discipleship program where they train people on a disciple and then they their discipleship groups are growing in number. I think that is a healthy church. They use discipleship.

Rick Yuhas 12:42
That is what they did 2000 years ago. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 12:46
Sure. 

Rick Yuhas 12:47
They had home churches. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 12:49
Yes. 

Rick Yuhas 12:50
And that group would learn. I kind of I always felt like they would switch around, too, because one person's house would be really good at one thing. And people would stay there a while and then they'd move to another home or they would learn something else. And by the time they went around to three or four places, they were ready to go. They were ready to be out in the world and ministering to people's needs. Providing discipleship opportunities in communities.That, I think, is what it boils down to, is the church is meeting their own need. Yes, but they're not meeting the needs of the rest of the people, not all of them, but the majority of them otherwise. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 13:30
So they're meeting the needs of the people that grew up in that church and they're used to tradition and things of that nature. And you said something a while ago that the church has learned. I'm going to disagree vehemently. 

Rick Yuhas 13:43
Yeah. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 13:45
Because I don't think they learn. I think they're reacting. I think that they are able. Yeah. They're able to see ten years from now when these old people who have all this money are going to die and that money is going to go to their kids who don't come. Mm hmm. So suddenly they're scrambling. How are we going to. And the word is not be relevant. It's survive. If we don't change something, we're not going to be here in ten years. We're not going to be here in 15 years. And I saw a statistic that, what is it, 1400 churches close. You know, I think it's probably bigger than that. But only 1000 new churches are being planned. I don't know if that's the right number, but it was for the first time, whatever the number. 

Rick Yuhas 14:32
In history, we're losing more than we're gaining. Yes. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 14:35
And that's the point, is that there's fewer churches being planted. And the truth is, we shouldn't be measuring these buildings. We should We should be measuring impact on people's lives. And, you know, am I relevant to the people around me? Why do I go to work every day? I mean, my purpose in life is to help people in need and make a positive impact where I can. And I understand that purpose is fulfilled in the offering, whether they receive it or not. So I can find fulfillment in the offering. I follow my foundational core values integrity, truth, faith, family, respect, imperfectly. But when I screw up and and I violate them, I get back to them quicker than I ever have in my entire life. I'm getting better. You know, it. It's about being relevant to people. Why am I going to work? So instead of having a work life and a home life and a church life and all these different lives, there's just life. And there is no perfect life. There's just life. And and we have the way we know, the way, the truth in the life. We know that person. And through that we have this relationship with God, the God of the universe, who created everything. Who cares so much about me and you and everyone listening. All of that gets lost in the trendy stuff that we do to try to get people to show up. So that our doors don't closed. I would have no problem if every church fell down to the ground as far as the little church institution. As long as the big C church continue, you'd to minister because that's what the church is. 

Rick Yuhas 16:10
I believe that's where our problem is, is if more people had that relationship and understood who they were in Christ, then the little C church could thrive because everyone would know what they were supposed to do. But I think what happens is church goers are getting their identity from the little C church. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 16:31
Yeah. 

Rick Yuhas 16:32
And then Monday morning it's done until they get back on Sunday and then they're part of that little C church again. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 16:39
Well, that's why we invented Wednesday nights so that we can grab them. I mean, do you remember them saying that? Well, we got to do Wednesday night, so because, you know, otherwise the world will get them. You know what really? Apparently we didn't. You know, we should be engaging every day. We should be doing life together. Right. To such a degree that, you know, we're two or more gathered. You know, we're doing church right now, brother. 

Rick Yuhas 16:59
We are. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 17:00
And there's the church has gathered and Jesus is you know, the Holy Spirit is here in the presence of God is here. And that's what we're missing. Yeah. And it's really about being the big C church and gathering at the little C church building with the big C church. The church needs to gather together on occasion, but this idea that it has to be a certain size, I mean, what do we used to say when we were about these ministers? We gather with the youth ministers at lunch on Thursday morning. What was the big question after Wednesday night? 

Rick Yuhas 17:32
How may you have last night? 

Dr. Johnny Walker 17:34
That's it. How many of you have? How many do you have? And then and then if your number was close to someone else's number, not you personally, but what would they say? 

Rick Yuhas 17:43
Well, I'll get you next. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 17:44
Week, right? Yeah. Or the other comparison. Well, how many came down front, made a decision. Yeah. You know, I mean, heck, I mean, some of those kids came down every week because they were just hurting so badly. Needed prayer. Yeah. Which was great. And then to pray for them. But, you know, didn't did we have the number of adults needed to minister to them Now you can. 

Rick Yuhas 18:04
Introduce and then I didn't it was pretty much me in the midst of more teenagers than I want to be around now. I guarantee you that. You know. I'm just kidding, mate. Maybe. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 18:16
Yeah. No, I mean, I get it. It's it's the problem is we hire people to do the ministry instead of hiring people to train us to do the ministry. You know, it's. It's everyone loves this ideology that I have around. Hey, my job is to train you to do ministry runs, like, yeah, in about a year into it, they're like, This sucks. You know, this is work. 

Rick Yuhas 18:37
This is this work. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 18:38
This is it hard? And it's like, is life. Life is hard. Life is a challenge. Like this. Fine life is I mean, but but it's the enduring through that that we we see the fruit. And I mean, farming is not fun, but eating the fruit of your labor is a wonderful thing. 

Rick Yuhas 18:57
I think we've probably raised more questions than we've answered here today. I don't know how effective, how effective this is going to be. We may have to get back together and discuss this one further. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 19:12
Yeah, I don't think this is a one and done conversation, but, you know, but I do think I do think the answers are this Am I going somewhere where I'm being disabled into a discipline? And if the answer is no, what what needs to change where I'm going for that to happen, it doesn't mean yet to leave that church. Maybe you can be the Institute of Change, right? And where you bring up that question, I want to be disciple more. Who will disciple me now? If no one stands up to do that, maybe you need to go somewhere else. But, you know, to say, I want to learn how to disciple so I can disciple others, because that's the great commandment to make disciples. Maybe it's really studying and understanding what that really means, right? Doing life with people. And you don't have to have the answers. I mean, we train salespeople that, I don't know is a perfectly good response. As long as you follow it up with all and I'll find out. That's it. So in church, I tell the young people, if you if you're doing ministry, you're going to say, I don't know, but I'll find out a lot. And when that's when you know, you really disciple in is because people are bringing things to you that you don't have the answer to, but you have resources. The wisest people don't have all the answers, right? They they know they can connect you with people that do. They have a great network of people and they will research and they will find the answers with you. 

Rick Yuhas 20:35
Okay, Jonny, let's let's assess this now. We've discussed this. This is going to be played in episode two. So we had a whole episode last week plus today. Can you answer the question, why do we go to church? 

Dr. Johnny Walker 20:50
So I think one being disciple, number two, discipling others in three starts. And we really didn't talk about this, but start making this sanctuary, meeting the main event. And and I think if the little C church would make the life groups the main event, 

gather together instead of making big church, it's what we like to call you going to big church church, make big church at 9:00 or 930 and make it end on time. In that way, the little gatherings, the life groups can go as long as they want to and they can continue over lunch and all that. 

I think if at the very least, flip that script and then train and equip your leaders to start teaching and start discipling and facilitating conversation tions and asking questions around application and connecting this lesson to the last one to where we're growing in our faith. Without that, what's the point? 

Rick Yuhas 21:53
I hear pushback on what you said at first, along the lines of why I'm not ready to give up my Sunday mornings yet. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 22:03
Actually, that was that. That one was pastor I went to that. I had the idea of doing a Sunday school class with young parents and finding a demographic six couples or 12 couples, six in each Sunday school group and had similar dynamics. And for six months I would train one group on Sunday night, don't come to church, but have your own church with your kids at home and do these life lessons. James Dobson's group came out with these really great books that you can do these fun lessons with your kids and then we can use this. You know, we have all the materials here. It would be very inexpensive. And at the end of six months, you know, the other group would just do what they're normally doing Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And then let's compare let's do surveys before and after around. How connected do you feel to your parents? How how much have you grown spiritually in the last six months or whatever it was? And the pastor's response was, I'm not ready to give up my Sunday night yet. I mean, he knew the answer. Yeah, he knew the result would be that those children and those teenagers would be more connected to their parents. The families would be more intact. But he wasn't ready to give up his Sunday nights yet. 

Rick Yuhas 23:21
I actually mentioned that on a previous episode at some point, but I didn't go into detail. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 23:26
Well, and we're not I'm not naming the church, we're not gossiping here, but I'm just simply saying I was I did not stay. I was I immediately started looking for somewhere else to go. Yeah, but it was it's heartbreaking because that's that's the mindset. 

Rick Yuhas 23:41
Speaking of connection, how can people connect with Dr. Johnny Walker? 

Dr. Johnny Walker 23:47
Well our website is W WW dot character Inc and C dot com. My email is Johnny at character dot com in they can call us at 

7704565547. 

Rick Yuhas 24:09
And I will put all that in the show description just in case you weren't driving down the road with a pen and paper in your hand. You got any closing thoughts, Johnny? 

Dr. Johnny Walker 24:20
Well, I just thank you for number one, the ministry that you're doing, enlisting in the Holy Spirit. And you know, God is blessing to you, showing you favor with great opportunities here. You know, And I just pray that something that we said in our conversation today touched someone's heart. We're not dogging on the church. We love the little sea church. We want to see it thrive. Yes. But we have to be real and we have to be able to be wrong. And we don't pretend to have all the answers. But we've got to do things differently than we're doing it now. And I think the getting back to the basics of discipleship in Scripture. 

Rick Yuhas 24:58
Yes. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 24:59
And teaching foundational things in meeting people's needs is the answer. 

Rick Yuhas 25:05
That's it. Well, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to me and that person that's listening right now as they're driving down the road and we want you to come back. 

Dr. Johnny Walker 25:20
Well, I'd love to. 

Rick Yuhas 25:21
I've got a couple ideas, so I'll be getting in contact with you and checking out your schedule and seeing when we can get you back here and talk about something really, really important again. 

And now, Deep Thoughts by Jack Candy from Rick Yuhas. 

You know, I've thought about it. And at my funeral, I'd like there to be a pinata so that people can be happy but filled with bees so they're not too happy. 

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Well, after two episodes about this, I don't know that we're any closer to an answer than when we started. We did have a lot of great information and I really appreciate Johnnie Walker, Dr. Johnnie Walker, Dr. Reverend Johnny Walker. 

I really appreciate Johnny coming here and talking to us. And that's what discussions are for. Just to get your brain chugging along. I don't know that we will ever be able to come up with a definite answer, but we've definitely put out some information for people to think. One thing we didn't talk about was the importance of the church, little seed church, you know, the building as a place we go to praise and worship our father God. A place that we go to corporately worship with other believers in the midst of the Holy Spirit. That is one positive thing about little seed church that I do love. We need to make sure that in addition to that, we're being disciple and disciple in others. Well, at this time, I want to officially thank Dr. Johnny Walker for taking time out of his busy schedule to come talk to us today about the state of the church. Johnny, I really enjoyed it. And I hope you come back and talk to us again real soon. If you have any comments or questions about this episode or if your local church does something that's really outstanding in the area of discipleship, drop us a note. Let us know how it's going. Drop by our website at renewed mindsets dot com. You can leave me a voice message or you could just write it. I just may play it or talk about it on a future episode. And while you're there, you can check out all of our past episodes, read the blog or shop for the ever popular renewed mindsets merch, T-shirts, hoodies, hats, Drinkware playing cards. We've got everything there. 

We thank you for listening and I will see you later. Until next time. I'm Rick. 

I love you. 

All right. I'll 

see you. 

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