Andy Crouch

It used to be part of who we are and were and we have forgotten.

So as a work culture, this is something that Andy Crouch and others have talked about and written about extensively.

There's these concepts of rest versus leisure.

You know, leisure is Netflix and Cheetos or always having to be entertained or even vacations that feel like work.

Um, here's what I would say.

This is a framework from, uh, Andy Crouch.

I read this book a while back, and he would say, "When Christians look at culture, you wanna do four things, uh, or you have four options to do, uh, with culture."

Mm.

But the mindset that I believe is really helpful for us when we're thinking about God's reforming of His church is saying, "I'm participating with oth- others in stewarding something that's far bigger than me." And so it, it requires some things of us, and we're gonna look into that a little bit.

But I think one of the things that initially, um, it invites us to is the question to, to, um, think through what are the driving questions that motivate me in ministry? And, uh, you know, uh, things like, what can I accomplish, or what can my church accomplish, or what can I accomplish in my lifetime, or what, what impact can our ministry make? Um, those are not unimportant questions, but if you were to- those of you who were here for that, uh, time that Andy Crouch was here sharing with us, he compared for us the difference between impact, which is a lot of force in a small period of time, versus influence.

And I think that the invitation for us in, in thinking about a reformation across generations is not just to ask those questions of, what can I accomplish in my lifetime, but instead maybe, maybe there's additional questions that are important.

Uh, think of this one as an example.

I was just going to say, we probably should say this comes from the TechWise family.

family book written by Andy Crouch and that came out in 2017.

Great, great, great book.

And it's from Evangelical Bent or Christian Bent, not evangelical necessarily, but anyway, so very good material on proofing your family against the ways of the world, especially with technology.

I had a largely pain-free life before my stroke in the way I misunderstood as a blessed life.

Andy Crouch wrote a beautiful book I read recently, and he talks about the bubble wrap of affluence and access.

And I think that was me.

I had the bubble wrap and the trappings that kept me largely safe in a pain-free bubble until the stroke.

And so in some ways we can think of them kind of like an exoskeleton, which I think is a useful analogy, right? Somebody, you know, maybe I'm wearing like an Iron Man suit and so I can lift up a car because I've got this exoskeleton on me and I couldn't do that before.

But I like to think of it I have a colleague, Andy Crouch, who was on our podcast last year, and he described it in three terms.

He said, we have tools, we have instruments, and we have devices.

And he said, a tool is great because it augments a human capacity.

And then I love the idea of, man, who else do you run those things by? Man, which friend knows your vision and can help make sure that your spending aligns with it? Where do you go with money, Joey?

yeah this is there's a there's a whole episode on this and i think the best talk i've ever heard on money is from andy crouch um who will have on the the show for sure i mean probably to talk about this but he talks about the spiritual stronghold of money it says you can't serve both god and money and what we're taught whether we're talking about is actually this the spiritual stronghold of money that can grip you so there's there's some there's some stuff that can grip you with money But I like that idea of just laying out your intention.

I have a friend, back to gambling, I have a friend and he said, hey, I really don't want to gamble.

I actually deleted the gambling app on my phone.