Bonus Episode: Tony on the Disciple Dilemma

Hey everybody, welcome back to The Practitioner's Podcast, where we're applying Jesus style disciple making to everyday life. Today, special bonus episode, we're going to be doing this throughout the smer. We're going to take some of the podcasts that Justin and I have been on and sharing them in other places.

, today's episode is me. On the Dennis Allen's podcast, Dennis Allen, the disciple making dilemma, a great conversation about what disciple making is and isn't. And I was so honored to be a guest on his podcast. So, , you'll notice his, he's running the show. Once we turn it over to him and we cut to that audio, it'll be all his podcast.

, as always, you can check out the show notes for ways to get in contact with Justin or I, we hope that you are having a great smer and we look forward to bringing you, , the next season of the podcast. Very soon. So now let's listen in on this conversation between me and Dennis Allen the disciple makers dilemma.

Hello folks I'm Dennis Allen and welcome to the disciple dilemma In what ways are our churches responsible for disciples and in what ways are disciples responsible for the churches? Who does what? What do pastors and staff do in a church, and what do the folks out in the pews do in a church? Do the pastors and the staff own the roles and the responsibilities, or are the rest of us implicated in this?

Our conversation today is how should disciples do church? And we've got the privilege of having with us a pastor, an author. A podcaster and most importantly, a husband and a dad from almost state in Ohio, it's Tony Miltenberger from the reclamation podcast. Welcome Tony. Hey, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today and to really dive into what is a really important topic for all of us to think about.

I'm going to see if I've got your rap sheet right here. , I think if I've got the story straight from all of my sources, you are the director of leadership and discipleship at. Spirit and truth. Is that right? That is, it's an awakening and equipping ministry that walks alongside the local church in my specific area of expertise is disciple making.

And so I get to travel the country and talk to pastors and church leaders as we kind of define what it means to be disciples and how to make disciples who can make disciples. So I'm going to guess that if you're not really from that space digitally, and you're not really around the Dayton area, you might know Tony from his role as the host of the Reclamation Podcast.

Tell us a little bit about the Reclamation Podcast, Tony, and why it's there and what you're trying to accomplish with that. Yeah. So, , the reclamation podcasts, , , geez, I'm 183 episodes in and, , every single week we put out content and the whole goal is to help move people closer to Jesus. And then we just believe through intentional conversation and dialogue and, and eventually practice right.

That people can move closer to Jesus in a way that, , reminds them and helps them live into the fullness of life with Christ. That's promised to us. In the scripture. And so once a week I get to sit down and interview amazing people like yourself and, , and talk about the things of the church. And then, , the other episode I put out a week is a monologue episode, which is kind of like a sermonette.

It's designed to be another kind of arrow in the quiver. It's 15 minutes or less. And it's really just, , again, it's there to help move people closer to Jesus. And if I can be fully transparent, it's also there because I had seven years in the local church where I preached every week. And so roughly 360 some odd sermons that were just sitting in an Evernote file dying to be used.

So here we are.

Seven years. And if I've got this right, it was a Centerville United Methodist church in Centerville, Ohio, right? That's correct. I started out as the lead pastor there at Centerville United Methodist. And then we rebranded as restoration church kind of helped tell the story about what God was doing in that community through revival and prior to that.

I was the, the director of discipleship at a megachurch north of Dayton called Ginghamsberg United Methodist Church. At one point in time we had 120 small group leaders that were, , that were doing God's work all over, all over the area. Wow. And you're also a military veteran. 16 years of like international duty with the Army reserves as a chaplain's assistant.

Right. Yeah, yeah, I enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1998 and then, , and then had the privilege of serving, , for well over a decade, almost two, and, , got to see Kuwait, Germany, Minnesota. , just some, some really crazy things and God just did incredible ministry with my time in the army. So I was super thankful for that.

And, , I, you know, I personally think it really helped form some of my, , views on disciple making and chain of command and what does that look like? And what's it mean? And how do we bring all that together in, , in a strategic and reproducible kind of way? So folks, this dude sitting with us is an MDiv from United Theological Seminary, and he's also got undergraduate work in religion and psychology, if I got that right.

That is, Indiana Wesleyan, , go Wildcats was my undergrad, and then, , and then United where I went to seminary, which is an incredible spirit filled seminary here in Dayton. Wow. So I'm just thinking through the traffic pattern we just talked through. And I'm going, this guy has got a lot of discipling smeared all over him, both from the development of folks to think about it, as well as just the dynamics in the marketplace.

So let me just, let me just tee this up this way, Tony, , digital discipling versus real live face to face han beings. How does Tony think about that? Hmm. So digital discipling. , I would have to define a little bit further, right? So if, if we're going to say that digital discipling is zoom, I think it's possible.

I think, , I think zoom is possible. I think outside of one on one or one on two or intentional relationships, I don't believe that digital discipling is possible. Now, one of the things that I'm very passionate about is that, , Is that common language creates common movement and a lot of things get called disciple making that aren't disciple making and a lot of things get called disciple ship, which may not be so.

So let me just kind of define it for everybody. For my vantage point and then, , you know, if people can want to disagree, they can email you later.

So I would say a disciple, a disciple is someone who wants to learn and follow Jesus. right? A disciple is someone who wants to learn and follow Jesus. Matthew 4 19 comes to mind. Come follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. Discipleship is teaching someone about Jesus. This is what we see in a classic pastor's Bible study.

Disciple making. This is The metric of a mature disciple is disciple making and that's Matthew 28 and it's walking alongside someone in their journey of faith. It's, it's rooted in scripture and it must be multiplied. I would say that that's the definition that I, I lean into when I talk about disciple making so when we think about digital.

Disciple making unless it has the relational component. I tend to say that it's probably more discipleship than disciple making. So when I do the podcast stuff, I would say that's that's discipleship. I'm trying to teach people about Jesus. Now they can move closer to Jesus and that's my prayer. And that's the prayer that, , I, most of the guests that I have on, that's kind of like the, the filter that I use for that sort of mission field that I'm in.

, but when I'm doing intentional disciple making, it's for the express intent of spiritual reproduction. I want spiritual grandkids all over the world that I send. And that's my heart. I, I want that promise that God made to Abram, that my spiritual descendants will outnber the stars. And that's what I'm shooting for.

So that was Tony, Pastor Tony, talking to us about looking at the idea of digital and real life discipleship. If I grab the average person in the pews over your years and I pull them in and I go, what's discipleship? What do you think most of the average believers are going to tell us is the definition?

Oh, I would say that most of the average believers would say it's going to church and reading your Bible and praying. So in a sense, what they're going to say is if If I accomplish these tasks or am present at these kinds of gatherings, I'm, I'm getting an A, a B, kind of grade on discipleship. Yeah, I would think so.

I think most people think they're following Jesus, , wholeheartedly. And again, I don't, I don't think that this is a malice intent by any church or by any person. I think most people don't take the next step. But one of the things that I always say in my podcast, and it's how I end every episode is that if, if you want to follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.

And I think what ends up happening is a lot of people watch Jesus. Very few people follow Jesus. Yeah, we, we we've enjoyed listening to several people. You included, I think over the last few months, talk about this idea that, , I guess Sam Albury traps it in the idea. I really like being a fan of Jesus, but this lordship thing where I'm following him, not so much.

Yeah, that's tough. , in your, in your time as a pastor, , as a chaplain, , and in your, in your life as a theologian, do you think that the church is doing a good job of delivering the content and the people doing a bad job of picking up the content or do you think the structure and system is a little bit distracting?

How, how, how is this diversion that we've just described between a you and a them kind of opening up? So I would say yes to both. So first of all, , If you've talked to any seminarian, anyone who spent any time in seminary, at most, there's one class around disciple making and some, some seminaries don't even have that.

Right. So one more time, just so everybody gets the shockwave system. Yeah. , at most there's one class of disciple making and some seminaries don't even require that honestly. And so what we're training people to do or to be experts of the word of God, but not experts in the practice of God, right? And this is really, this is really a big disconnect between.

Classical formation of pastors and the church, because what's clear is that we have to study the word of the Lord, but we also have to study the practices of the Lord. in our own lives. So what's happened is, is we've created generations of leaders and generations of pews of spiritual orphans, people with no spiritual mothers or fathers, people with no intent to have spiritual mothers or fathers.

And we've And in my belief, we've given into the culture of conserism that I can sit in and watch church happen and not actually have to be the church. One of the biggest tricks of the enemy is my belief that they've convinced us that the church is a building. And, and in the Greek, and you know, this, and some of your listeners have probably heard this before, because I, I know I'm not the first person to say it, but in the Greek, it's the Ecclesia, it's the called out people of God.

And so somewhere along the way, we shifted the metric of success. in the ecclesia to being attendance and finances and even baptisms in not spiritual reproduction, right? And so we've shifted all of this away from things that, , Jesus did to, to, to a system now that, that honestly think about this for just a second, imagine what would happen.

If you got a pastor who came in who was an incredible preacher who did miracles, but in three years only talked really spent time with poured into 12 people fired, he would get fired, and it wouldn't even be a question. So,

What you're really saying is, , the, what you've done for me lately, doesn't seem to express itself really obviously in a pastor pouring into a few where we're kind of looking for something in the church. What are we looking for from you guys, Tony? What is it? What are the, you can kind of feel in the vibe that we expect from you guys.

I think, , , Ted talk comes to mind, right? Like, I think oftentimes we want to go to church. And we want to feel good. That's how we want to leave. We want to feel good. And sometimes feeling good is also being convicted. And so we're even okay with really hard messages. I can do better. I can, you know, it's, it's that coach, right?

It's that coach who, who gives you the stern talking to. And so what we're doing is in a sermon, we're, we're illustrating things that Jesus did. People listen to that. And if we deliver it well, and we're funny, and we're all of these wonderful things and the music is good and it looks good and it feels good, then everyone will be good.

But the truth is, is the fullness of life with Christ and our Christian identity, it doesn't come from what we watch. It comes from what we do. And so, and this is, this is going to sound blasphemous to some people who grew up in the church, but I actually could make a really strong argent that preaching is one of the least important things that pastors do.

Break while people recover and get up off the floor. Maybe I should just call a commercial

break here. If you were to take a pie chart of Jesus's life percentage wise in his three years of ministry How much time did he spend preaching? Yeah, I generally get the answer when I ask this question three to 8%. Now, if you take a pastor's work week, and you say it's a 40 hour week, how much of that time do you think is spent preparing for one hour on Sunday?

Now, now we're into an interesting place. So I want you to, I want you to walk me with that thought forward. On what these expectations are for you as a past, there's a lot of despair going on why Tony, this is a cushy job, right? I mean, like, yeah, you got to put together a couple of sermons, right? But it's mostly the golf course and you go to the men's group on Friday, right?

I mean, what else is it? Come on, I, I wish it was that easy. I, and, and, and granted, I tell people that my job as a pastor is always flexible unless it wasn't, you know, and, and that's, , yeah. That's the best way that I can describe it. So, so typical, typical week for me pastoring might be, , three to five counseling sessions.

, I need to come up with content every single week, , for a Sunday experience. , I'm also in charge of the budget of my case. It was, , just over a half a million dollar nonprofit, right? , I need to think about, , the social justice, social outreach arm of my nonprofit, right? So, Hey, not only am I responsible for the.

Theological growth of a flock of people. My, my flock, I'm also responsible for the mission outreach arm of the church while also trying to attract new members and be relevant in a world that is canceling, actively canceling Christianity and Oh, by the way, , you can. You can call a pastor anytime and there's an expectation that will answer.

And if you have a funeral of a really important member, you may have to come back from vacation early so that you can, , honor that person's life. Because obviously the family who's grieving schedule is more important than the family who's living schedule. And those are just some of the stark realities that our pastors are facing.

Throw on top of that decision fatigue. Right. So COVID decision fatigue. , so, so every Sunday, a pastor communicates anywhere from, from three to five different generations at one time. Think about that three to five different generations. So if I say something to reach the younger person, the older people email me.

And if I say something to reach the older people, the younger people email me, both of them are either not happy then. Think about the, the polarized climate of, , North America politically, right? And so if I say something like. Hey, scripture says we have to take care of immigrants. I get a whole set of emails.

If I say something, Hey, we need to give care and comfort to the mom who may have had an abortion in the midst of being pro life. Then I get a whole different set of emails right like there is no. Republican or Democrat when it comes to following Jesus, but the culture, the culture has led us to a place that says, not only is there an expectation for that, but if you hurt my feelings on that, I have permission to correct you, even though I may not know you personally, or how you would vote.

Wow. So you get like, , 500 or a thousand feedback loops every week, whether you like it or not, right? With this kind of thing. Well, I I'll be honest. I was preaching a sermon once a really hard sermon on immigration. And, , and someone got up in the middle of the sermon. It wasn't even over yet and walked out and then never came back to the church.

And, , as much as I wish I could tell you that you don't take that personally, I never figured out how to turn that part of my heart off. And that is the part that was probably hardest on my wife and my kids, because it's a full time job, , that has real implications. For eternity and, and, you know, obviously I'm not the one doing the work.

The Holy spirit is the, the, the advocate, but, , but man, there were seasons, especially early on in ministry. There were seasons where I felt like I was either failing or, , or, or I wasn't even sure I was doing that. I was going to make it right. That, that one day that the pastor police were going to break down the door and come get me.

Cause I was an imposter because I, I didn't know. I just didn't know. Folks, you're listening to the Disciple Dilemma with Dennis Allen and Tony Miltenberger, who is the podcaster, the author, and the pastor behind the Reclamation podcast. We're going to take a break and come right back when we start asking Tony the really hard questions.

Folks, we're in the second half of the Disciple Dilemma, where we're asking the question, how do disciples do church? We've got Tony Miltenberger with us, who is the host of the podcast, The Reclamation Podcast. Tony is an author. He's a pastor. He has served in the military for a bunch of years, but the most important and challenging part is he's got kids.

And he's married to the wonderful Karen, who probably means that he outkicked his coverage and getting such a wonderful person. But hey, that's where he is. Tony, we're listening to you describe the challenges as a pastor who is looking at disciples in a church in a very radically independent American culture.

And then you've described a whale of a lot of challenges. And a lot of strange thoughts that are running through the minds of a lot of pastors trying to survive the expectations of being a pastor. So I want to ask you the question, you're a pastor, but right now you're not a pastor. Why aren't you a pastor?

That's a great question. , I think the most succinct way to say it is, is I began to doubt, , How effective of a disciple maker I could be as a pastor. Okay. Okay. Wait, let everybody breathe. Whoa, whoa, alert, alert, alert. You know, what's going on here? He just said, how effective can I be as a pastor? Look, guy, you're the pastor.

You're the pro you're supposed to take care of this stuff. I'm supposed to be able to sit in the pew, drink my latte, go home and watch the golf tournament. What are you telling us, Tony? I really began to pray and wonder if it wouldn't be easier to make generational disciples without the mantle of, and the, and the positional authority that comes with being a pastor.

And, and, , let me, let me explain on that a little bit. , when I was pastoring, people would come to me for all of their faith stuff, right? If from, from understanding what Ephesians five talks about and wives submitting to their husband to, , what's it mean to be pro life or, Hey, what do I do if a child is thinking about same sex relationships?

All of those things came across my desk in the years of pastoring. All of those things are important. All of those things are also not disciple making and the way that I defined it earlier on in the podcast, right? And so intentional disciple making is exclusive. It's not inclusive. So, so the pastor for, for so many reasons has to be available to the entire flock, but the disciple maker has a responsibility to those that are in his or her inner circle exclusively.

I mean, Jesus, Jesus did inclusive ministry. , and exclusive disciple making. And so think about that. Think about the, everyone who was included in Jesus's ministry, but excluded from his, his inner circle. And even the 12, there was even more exclusivity with the three. And, and that's not a model that's done really well in the church.

And certainly my own practice, it was not a model that I. was even prepared to articulate when I left the church a year ago. And so it was just about a year ago when I left the local church and really spent this past year looking at how do I do more of what Jesus did. I was in the midst of all this turmoil around disciple making and the bishop's representative called me and said, Hey, Tony, we think we're going to move you.

And I said, I'm making generational disciples here. It's going to take a generation. And they said, well, that's not how our system works. And, , you can do that at the next place. And, and I said, well, it, it, it takes so much time, right. And, and, and that was all led to this kind of giant frustration that said.

Man is the biggest barrier to disciple making the North American church itself in the way that we understand it today. I have a really heart for helping pastors, a really big heart for helping pastors see that disciple making is not programmatic. And so here's the beautiful part about not being a pastor.

When I go into churches. I can say whatever I want,

right? And so telling a leadership team that the way that you've defined success is not the way that Jesus would define success. is a beautiful gift. And you've been in the business world for a long time. You know that the outside consultant has an ability to give hard messages in ways that the local leader can't.

And so now I'm kind of on this mission to talk to as many pastors and leadership teams as possible to tell them that good disciple making is intentional, relational, and reproducible. It's not programmed. And so stop trying to program what can only be done in Jesus style, disciple making through relationship.

So I'll call you a prior pastor. What does a prior pastor feel like the traction with these other churches that you're equipping and speaking into is like people like, like, you know, the church, we don't like change and we don't like people coming in and telling us we're not doing things right. How's it going?

I, Oh, , yeah, it's hard. It's hard. It's, but this is, this is what I'll tell you is that, , COVID was an incredible gift to the disciple making community. Wow. Unpack that one for us. Well, think about it like this. We deprogrammed America when it comes to church during COVID. We pruned it back. I think the Lord pruned it back personally.

And, and so we, we gave people permission to stop going to Sunday morning. And so now the church can get really clear on what its real mission is. which is teaching people to fall in love with Jesus. If you make a disciple, they'll always go to church. If you make a church goer, they'll leave in the midst of struggle and transition and pandemics.

And that's what COVID taught us. So we're at this point where there are so many churches who are desperately searching for an answer. And that's when I get the opportunity to come in and say, Let me tell you what I think Jesus would do here. And that's the, that's the gift. And that's why I think many of us, , are coming up, you know, what, why we see disciple making almost being in vogue because, because there's nothing else that's working.

So if you were to look at the, the, this is such an unfair question for people, but Hey, I'm in the business of unfair questions. So if you were to look at the typical. Evangelical church and you evaluate scripture against that church. What would you say are the missing ingredients or the absent ingredients that are hindering its role in discipleship?

Oh, that's a good question.

I would say that that most of what we're missing is around ownership. Go deeper on that. So. So the, the, the North American evangelical Christian church is owned by a few and visited by a lot. Hmm. And, and what I would rather have us see. , is kind of invert that right? And, and let's have it owned by everyone and visited by a few.

, and, and so what happens is, is worship Sunday morning worship should be the, the result of living with Christ throughout the week. And so if everyone owned the faith, then what would happen is conversions would happen in the street and not in the pews. So by the time they got to the pews, they wouldn't be a visitor anymore.

They'd be an owner. And that's the shift. If we could get the community of believers who identify as Christians to really own the idea of being the ecclesia, the church, the called out people of God, then what we would begin to understand that pastor is indeed an important position in the body, but it's not the whole body.

It's not the whole idea. It's not even the head, right? The pastor is, is just one part. It's the organizer, the, the gatherer of people, the one who, who pours over the word and studies and, and walks alongside other owners, right? And what we see from Paul is a really great example. Paul traveled amongst different churches.

He wrote letters, but what he really did is he sent his disciples. First and second, Timothy is one of my favorite books for disciple making just simply in how he opens it. Timothy, my spiritual son in the faith. If you're a Christian and you don't have a son or a daughter that you can talk to that way, you're not living out God's promises.

You're not living out the fullness of life with Christ. See, disciple making is not a spiritual gift. I'm going to say it again for the people in the back. Disciple making is not a spiritual gift. It's a core identity. It's a tenant. of what it means to follow Jesus, right? And the great commission, Matthew 28, 18 through 20, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, teaching them.

This is important, right? He's talking to everybody here, teaching them to obey all my commands. And surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age, right? And now, now I want you to contrast that idea that surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age. To the beginning of the gospel of Matthew, when the angel says, and you will call him Emmanuel, God with us.

It's the same idea. When we make disciples, God is with us. We're talking with Tony Milton Berger, who is the host of the reclamation podcast. He is a pastor. He is an author. He's a dad. He's a husband. He's been in the military. He's been in a lot of places. He's seen a lot of things in the universe, but what I love about.

Tony's word is that his heart is deep in discipleship and discipling. And as we think about that, Tony, my question for you is in the area of the nature, the culture, the DNA, the chemistry of the church, we seem to be largely constructed around the large gatherings, perhaps even the small groups, the mission trips, the ministries, the activities.

How much emphasis in your experience is the church placing on developing the one on ones and the one on twos and really driving that, that reflexive muscle memory as a culture through the church? How much do you see that? I would say less than 5%. Yeah, I would say it's, it hardly exists in the church world at all.

And the reality is it's, it's just, it doesn't look very scalable to the outside eye. It's not, it's not sexy. It's not quick. It's not any of those things that we look for, right? It's like drafting an O lineman in the NFL draft. Nobody really wants the O lineman. We all need the O lineman. Everyone acknowledges that we need the O lineman.

When it comes to disciple making, no one wants the O lineman. We all want the worship nights. the mission trip, the ginormous small group ministry. And what ends up happening is, is we end up losing ground because we didn't do the foundational work of one on one disciple making. To begin with, we didn't, we didn't draft the alignment.

Wow. So, so this is the, this is kind of the. Encounter, I think that a lot of people have an aha moment as we're talking to them about discipleship. And that is that we keep thinking that discipleship is that sort of glassy eyed. intellectual, deeply dedicated, got to fast a whole bunch, got to be in church a whole bunch, way of living.

And we don't think about that multiplication statement that you just slid by. And I want to come back to that for just a minute. If we really, really, really were serious, deadly serious about growing The church, would you talk to the contemporary concept of evangelism versus the biblical concept of discipleship and just kind of clean those edges up and say something about that.

It's so discipleship is in, . is incredibly relational. And so the goal here is when we think about evangelism, we're evangelizing for the purposes of making a disciple. We're not evangelizing for making a purposes of a church attender. And that's where most of us really get messed up. And so I think that that's a great point.

Evangelism is the first step of disciple making. And so So in a perfect world, all of us would have friends that are non Christians and would be intentional in those communities and we'd show up and we look different because Jesus makes us different, right, they would be able to smell Jesus on us.

That's what I tell people right I want just, I want my community to smell Jesus on me, somebody in that circle. And that community, whether that be my peewee football team or the bar down the street, right? When I'm there, they smelled Jesus. And then I have the opportunity to testify how following Jesus has changed my life, how Jesus has changed my life.

My testimony is not about me. It's about Jesus. You used a phrase a few minutes ago at the front end of the broadcast. tying together what you've just been saying. The phrase was spiritual orphans. What did you mean by spiritual orphans? Spiritual orphans are someone who's come to Christ and then stops because we never walked with them further.

So think about the person who's been in the pew for 20 years, some of the incredible saints of our church, but yet don't know how to interpret scripture or have never fasted or don't know. Some of the basic core tenets of Jesus's life and teaching. Well, surely if you just preach a few more focused sermons and give us a seminar, we could fix this, right?

Well, I've watched enough fitness, YouTube videos to know that that's not true. You can't just watch something and expect to be transformed, right? Information plus application equals transformation, right? That's really important. That looks like, what does that, what does that look like at the granular level for me, Joe sitting in the pew?

What are you, what are you asking me to do pastor? Okay. This is, this is what I'm asking that if, if you found one person Who was ready to read scripture with you and you read scripture with them for one week. And at the end of every day, you said, what does this teach you about Jesus? They told you, and then at the end of the week, you said, okay, now that we know these things about Jesus, what's one thing in your life that you can do differently?

And you say something like, pray with my spouse. Then I said, okay, when we come back here next week, I'm going to ask you if you've prayed with your spouse. That's it, right? It's, it's just like if you were going to write a performance improvement plan in the workplace. And I know you've got many years leading companies telling an employee to do better is way different than holding an employee accountable to actually doing better.

Right. And it's not accountability without grace, right? Jesus was grace and truth, but it's, it's accountability with love. I love you so much. I'm not going to let you stay there. I'm going to ask you, I'm going to push you to move closer to Jesus. If we're really going to follow this path that you're talking about as disciples, how does this church look, feel, and operate to somebody?

Give me the, give me the five minutes speech on that. Oh, so it would be incredibly slow. So just, just as we kind of talk about this, this is probably a five to 10 year church plant plan. If money were no object and I were king of the whole thing, right? There would be no rush to get to a building. There would be no rush.

to grow. There would be no rush to do any of that. The only thing that we would do is be, , be open to people who are ready to move with Jesus. Folks, for those of you in the business community listening to Tony, just describe this. If you're into business acquisitions, merger and acquisitions and culture change in organizations, you just heard him run a textbook play pattern on strategic planning for culture change, because what he said was every single person that comes in the door.

Really, really gets the mission of why we're supposed to be here. Then we turn to them and say, we're giving you stock in this. You're going to be an owner. You're going to own a piece of this thing. And the success of this venture is dependent on you, the owner staying on the mission so that we can keep focused and undistracted from what we do really well.

And what we're supposed to do. Really? Well, Tony, that was really, really good. I think you tell us how we can get in touch with you and the social digit space. And, , , just one more reminder about what you're doing out there in, in the world for discipling. Yeah, the, the best way to get in contact with me is, , it's probably on Instagram.

If you're on Instagram, it's at T W Milt, T W M I L T. , I'm also, I've got a website, reclamation podcast. com. And, , I I'm really excited Dennis. I just started a brand new venture, , on. On blogging again, blogging is all of a sudden come back in vogue full circle, but I love to write. So it's a, it's a great opportunity for me.

And so I'm blogging with my nonprofit spirit and truth on Substack. So it's, it's specifically for, , spirit led leaders. And we're going to get into the practical nuts and bolts of what it means to be spirit led as a leader. And, , you can find that on spirit and truths website, which is spirit and an and d truth dot life, L I F E spirit and truth dot life.

Folks. We've been talking to Tony Mildenberger, the host of the podcast, the reclamation podcast, and this pastor and author husband and dad has really impressed me with his both. part for discipleship and I think the wisdom and trueness that he brings to the game. So I hope that you will check out the Reclamation podcast.

Check out his work on Substack. We'll put all this up on the Flick here so everybody can see this and make sure that it's really plain to you. And for those of you who are with us on Disciple Dilemma, we're asking you please help us gain some leverage in the social media marketplace. It's very crowded.

And we want to get the word out that discipleship has been hacked. We think in modern discipleship is the victim of Centuries old discipleship problems that were inducing a virus that has caused us To drift away from the biblical model. Jesus gave us so please take a look at what's going on Not only reclamation podcast but with us over at disciple dilemma.

com And help us get the word out so that we can start getting leadership To get the culture change out to help disciples pursue christ with all their heart mind Soul strength. Thanks for listening.