We're going to start with the basics. Maybe the most underrated overlooked aspect. Of being a Jesus follower, the simple basic foundation. That easy, easily gets overlooked. And we're talking today about the rhythm of presence of showing up of being present. We started talking in the prior episode about what do we do now as Christians, as followers of Jesus to live this kingdom life? How do we show up? Not in a religious way, not in a church way, but in a kingdom way. How do we care about the things that Jesus cares about? What does it start to look like in our lives? And when there's 10 rhythms. That we're going to talk through over the next episodes today. We're going to talk about the first rhythm. Which is presence, which I like is the absolute foundation. It's the very beginning. It's the simplest maybe. But maybe the absolute most important, and this is, this is a statement for presence. We will live. Among our neighbors and participate in the natural activities of the city around us. We will engage in life with others, not as a step. To evangelism, but as a follower of Christ who seeks to live as Jesus did. Let's read it one more time. We will live among our neighbors and participate in the natural activities of the city around us. We will engage in life with others, not as a step to convert. But as a follower of Jesus who seeks to live as Jesus did. John one 14. Says the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. It's talking about Jesus when he came down to earth and I liked the way the message Bible puts it. It says the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. I love that. God moves into the neighborhood. So again, the string we've been pulling on followers of Jesus follow Jesus. What does it look like for us to move into and live into a neighborhood? Here's the other thing I was thinking about. God moved into the neighborhood. Why did he do that? He's nearest. He is with us. He came close. He came to us. Y. I think. I think because he likes us. I think about that for a second. We all know, God loves us. But when you move into the neighborhood and you become friends with somebody, it's because you like them. Jesus. Likes people, all people. He likes us. He moved close to us to rescue us, to show us what God looks like. God moved into the neighborhood. And this is the thing as followers of Jesus, we are sent just as Jesus was sent. Right. Show up to embody to incarnate. What love looks like. So what does this look like? For us to show up and be present. What does practicing the rhythm of presence? Actually look like. Well, like I said, it's foundational, but it's super simple. Just be. Period. Just show up. Period. Just participate. Period. Just be present. Period. Right. We seek the live and Jesus did well. If you read the stories of the life of Jesus. Jesus was busy showing up. All over the place. Right? Jesus went to weddings. Jesus went to feast parties. He hung out at the beach. He was on boats and markets mountaintops he's in the garden shops, picnics dinners, walks festivals. On and on and on and on. He showed up with the rhythm of life around him. It says in scripture that Jesus went through all the towns and villages. Teaching healing spreading the good news. Jesus went, he left where he was comfortable and went to where people were. We started a church a few years. Well, I guess it's been more than a few years. We started the church a while back and we served as pastors for 10 years in Knoxville, downtown Knoxville. It's called Knox. Life church. And. Just a quick story of sort of how we leaned into this rhythm. When we showed up, we had no Bible training. We weren't certified pastors. We weren't ordained, we didn't have a denomination. We just moved our family from California to Knoxville downtown. And we started just to show up in the neighborhood. We'd push our girls around and scrollers. We'd hang out at the park. We'd go to market square. We spend time at restaurants, we'd meet our neighbors. We talked to the mailman. We'd linger in the coffee shop. We'd show up for festivals, no agenda, no religion, not passing out cards or tracks or. Not trying to like convert somebody, not trying to like pull the wool over someone's eyes, just showing up and making friends. Just showing up in serving painting walls, picking up trash volunteer days. There's a million ways to show up. I remember. One of the pastors in town. And a few years after we had started, he said, man, when you guys showed up here, it was crazy. You just made this huge impact. Like how did you do that? What was your plan? What was your mission? Where did you learn that training? What was like. You know, all the church ways I'm understanding. And I think he was sort of deflated perhaps by my answer, but it was just that simple. It was, we just showed up every day we showed up, we became neighbors in our neighborhood. We became known and we socked, we S seeking to know people to actually know people's stories. Eugene Peterson. Who's an author and former pastor. Has a quote and he says, the way of Jesus is always local and ordinary. I love that the way of Jesus is always local and ordinary. It looks simple. Looks overlooked. It looks plain. It's easy to miss. It's not this huge initiative. It's not this giant. Church extravaganza. It's just, it just looks simple and it looks local and it looks like it's in the neighborhood. Showing up is about proximity presence. Is that. Presence means we live out our life in front of people around us. We just show up people around us. Think about that. We're part of the city around us. We bump into people. We sign up to help. We attend concerts. We hang out in the park. We shovel snow. We meet the neighbor neighbor at the mailbox. We just show up its natural normal. It's funny that sometimes, and I say this to myself because so much of my journey over the last. Several years have been unlearning the rhythms of church unlearning the rhythms of religion. But some of the stuff that we talk about is like basic baby stuff. It's like telling adult church people how to be normal friends. You just be a friend. Friends or friendly. Friends, don't trick you friends. Don't try to sell you convert you, sign you up for their business plan. Friends are just friendly and they're present the whole round. What happens in this? Like, why is this a big deal? Because the amazing, beautiful part that comes when we start to show up. When we start to have presence and proximity, when we show up in our cities. What starts to happen is we have relationships. That's what starts to happen. We start to know people, we start to know their story. That's the whole idea is that we know people, we, we have this idea of like, I think deep seated. We have this idea that Christians are to love people, but you know what? It's really hard to love people when you don't even know people. I don't know. I think that's pretty true. It's hard to love people. When you don't know people and you want to know what else it's hard to hate people or a group of people, or be angry at people when you actually know people. When, you know their story. When, you know, their struggle. When you over their hurt and their triumph and their pain and their journey, their dreams. Their kids, their families, their jobs, when you know them. And they're different from you. It's really, really hard to group them up. As the team, that's not with you as those who are against you, you know them and you love them as people. That's what it's supposed to look like. Not our team and their team. It's about knowing. And being known. We are called the live, the kingdom life. Inside a city and inside a place. One of the things. That I see so often. Again, I'm not pointing fingers at anybody. I have been there and I've done this to the maximum. I got a plus grades and everything I'm saying. About church and religion, but one of the things I see so often. Is that we substitute showing up in our neighborhood for church activities. I get an email from a church, several churches in the area and the church newsletter of what's what's happening over the next weeks or months is jam packed men's event. Worship night, help night serve night kids night, camp night, sports night. Double worship night, volunteer ministry meeting. A million thousand things in all. Yeah. Are they good intention? Yes. Is it serving and helping? Yes. But who. The church. I'm not saying that's necessarily bad, but I'm saying if you want to follow Jesus, Jesus didn't have his disciples. Meet him at the temple. Jesus. Didn't. Go to temple events and be seen and draw people that he went to, the cities he showed up. Right. So one of the things I see so often as we jam pack our lives. Christians as church people with church activity after church activity, after church activity. And even if you're on board with this idea of presence. Yeah, man, that sounds good. Show up with, just be yourself, know, people be known. You don't have a second to spare you're. So jam packed. The church sucks. You out of your neighborhood. Sucks you out of the rhythm of being a real neighbor. And sucks you into the club of being a church person filled with church activities. I remember growing up as a kid. I just would think to myself, I was just a little kid. Right? So you have these little kid thoughts and I have these memories of them. I just remember, man, we're at church a lot. Sunday mornings on a night for sure. On Wednesday. Oftentimes a volunteer night during the week, and then we'd have a small group at our house and then we'd have like a cert. It just was a lot, a lot of church activity. Followers of Jesus followed Jesus and Jesus went to the cities and to the neighborhoods and he showed up. He knew people. He met people. It's hard to know people. If you don't love people. And it's hard to know people. When you're jammed up with church activities. To me. I think the sweet part about this is that it's about. Showing up and giving that a Roma. It's not about converting. Right? So often we have this idea that we need to convert people, but it's more about showing up and being loving and being kind and being a helper. Right. Standing up for people standing on their side, being a good listener. So they can send sort of the aroma underneath of what Jesus has, like right. Not the yelling. Not the promotions, the gimmicks, the events, the sweet aroma, like apple pie. My mom was an amazing apple pie. She got it from my grandma and she would make this amazing apple pie for almost all the holidays. She was famous for it. It was amazing, but you could smell it, man. You could smell it hours before it was done. It was baking in that oven and it would fill the house with the cinnamon apple sweetness. You were just drawn to you. Just wanted to get in there. Uh, and that's what I think that's what I think following Jesus is like, when we show up and we're present. It's about just showing up and giving that sweet aroma. This is what God is like. He is kind. He is good. He is gentle. He is forgiving. He doesn't yell and scream. He doesn't bark. He hasn't. Categorize people. He doesn't hate. He certainly doesn't. Make people feel like they're on the outside. He shows up and gives off that sweet aroma. There's that. Very old Jewish practice called sitting Shivah. And as I researched this, I'm, I'm blown away by just the power and some of the old Jewish customs. Um, But this is this idea where when someone has passed away, you just show up, you just show up and you sit with them. The person who is mourning, who has lost their loved one, you just show up and sit for hours that can turn into days. You just sit with him quietly. You say nothing. You're not trying to console. You're not reading them scripture. There's not inspirational booklets. There's not, uh, there's nothing, not a recommended podcast. You just show up. And you sit Shivah meaning you just are present with them. The gift. Is your presence. The gift is that they're not alone. And you just wait. You just wait for the mourner, the person who's grieving to make the first move. Right. To to say, I need to go for a walk now, or I need to change scenery, or I need to talk about this. You T you just wait, you sit and you wait as a group. With that person who's mourning for as long as it takes, it's as beautiful. Really. Amazing practice that I think we can learn a lot from as followers of Jesus. It's this understanding of how God relates to people of God. How God relates to those who are sad and mourning. He sits closely waiting for the mortar to come to him to make the first move. There's no pressure. There's no timeframe. There's no checklist. We just wait, we'll just present. Plus here's the other thing when you. When you remove the pressure of trying to con convert or evangelize somebody, when you just remove that you say, you know what, that's not my job. Maybe that's the holy Spirit's job. Maybe that's his job to change their heart. Maybe when they're ready, they'll make the first move. Guess what you're able to do. You're able to enjoy people like you never have before. Literally you're actually able to enjoy your neighbors as friends. I'm sad to say this. There has been most of my life. I tell I started on learning church and religion. Most of my life. 99.9%. Of my friends were church people. The people we hung out with were church people. Our social network was church people. The places we went was with church people. The concerts we went to were church concerts. The things, everything we did was around this bubble of church. Which is great if you want to meet church people, but if you want to show up in your neighborhood, And practice the rhythm of presence. You can't be filled up with church stuff. Right. Also take away the timeframe, take away the pressure of trying to secretly confer. Okay. I'll be nice for a week. I'll bring them apple pie. Uh vitam over for dinner. And then I got to drop the bomb. I got to bring out scripture and I got to tell him about Jesus. That is so incredibly awkward. Do you know how weird that is? Do you know how. Insensitive and insincere that feels. Let me tell you a story. I, that, again, I've done this for most of my life, right? So I'm on learning. That's a practice. I've given up on and I've enjoyed relationships with people and friends. Like I never have before. Like I actually believe we are called to do, but let me tell you a story. We were in Knoxville, we were, uh, going camping for a long weekend. We were at a campground on a lake in Tennessee. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. It was summertime. We had maybe started this church maybe at year two, year one, even we're right at the beginning. I remember we had little kids running around. We were there with some friends doing the whole camping thing, having a blast and. And this group, this maybe three or four, sort of like 20 some college kids came up to us and, uh, started just chatting. Hey, you guys, how's it going? We were, I think we're throwing a football around that. We threw the football with him for a little bit. We chatted, we talked. It was, it was they're super nice people, really super friendly talking about the lake, talking about. No, just whatever you talk about on a vacation. Right. Just having a good time. And then about 20 minutes into it. As we're kind of going to start prepping for dinner. They literally, I don't even know where this clipboard appeared from, but they pull up this clipboard. And they start to write on it and then they shift their conversation to say, Hey, are you guys involved in a church? Are you, are you a Christian? Do you have you accepted a Lord Jesus as your personal savior? All, you know, all the church words about Jesus in the transaction we have to have. And. Oh, gosh, it just felt like this weird thing is the first time in my life. I had been on the other side of that. I was literally like, whoa, you guys were friendly and nice. And it was to get to the point. So you could check me off your list on your clipboard. That felt weird. It felt insincere. It did not feel good. It's it's awkward. It's not true. It's not authentic. It's missing soul. No, it doesn't work. It just, I don't know if you're doing that. I just encourage you try different way. Stop doing that. It is. It is not good, is not effective and you will be free to actually enjoy relationships when you don't have that low. Hanging cloud over you of always trying to convert somebody. There'll be a time for that, right? When they make the move. When they know your life, when they see that sweet aroma, when they sense it coming out of you, what God is like, and they see your kindness, there will be a time. The holy spirit will make a way he changes our hearts. You don't change hearts. I don't change hearts. He changes hearts. So take a back seat and let God be God, let him do a good job at what he does. He draws scripture says he draws all people to himself. He's really, really, really, really good at it. You just have to show up and point to them sometimes, you know, point tone by the way, your flavor and your Roma is about justice and kindness and goodness. About peace, about calmness, about inclusion. About helping and being a good helper. About showing up in your city about caring about your city, about being involved in the rhythms of your city. No pressure, no timeframe. Be present. If you look in scripture. Uh, especially the old Testament. There's. A lot of old ancient Jewish names for God like Jehovah and there's a whole bunch more. But there'll be scriptures that will say like one wonderful counselor. There's one. And Isaiah that I really love. It's says that God is talking about Jesus, like a prophecy, when Jesus would call me and said he will be known as Emmanuel. Which is an ancient Hebrew word, which means literally translated means God with us. I love. Ah, I think it's my favorite name. God is powerful, mighty strong tower, mighty warrior. All the things. He is all that is true. All powerful. Creator author. Other dev divinity, divine, all of the things he is. I think what moves my heart the most is that name Emmanuelle. God. With us, God came to us. God gives us his presence again. Why? Because he likes us. He's crazy about you. He wants to be near you. He's not angry. He's not mad. You don't move into the neighborhood. And start loving on people when you're angry at them, trying to condemn them, know you're there for rescue, you're there to bring hope. You're there to show them what Jesus really looks like. And the thing God really cares about. Emmanuel God with us. How do we show up and embodied that? How do we show up? So our neighbors. Especially our non church neighbors. Think man, Shawn is a guy was with me. Sean is for me, Sean and his family show up and they're on our side. They care about what's happening in our city. They want to make this place better. They're interested in my life. They're not caring. Quote, unquote church clipboard. I'm not something on their list. I'm a relationship. I'm a person. Do you know, much better and authentic and true and real. And prosperous that is. There's a quote. I'm going to read by a guy named Henry now, and he's an author and just a beautiful human who, who just did amazing things. Uh, but let me, let me read this to you. I really feel this captures so much. He says this more. And more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, to greet people, to enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water. And be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice. The simple ministry of presence. Still it is not as simple as it seems my own desire to be useful, to do something significant, to be. Part of some impressive church project is so strong that some as soon, my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, and study groups and workshops that prevent me from just walking the streets. You continues. It is difficult. Not to have plans. Not to organize people around an urgent cause and not feel that you are working directly for social progress, but I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn't be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and to tell your own and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but you truly love them. That's what practicing the rhythm of presence. Looks like. Proximity and presence. Be normal. No one wants to be converted. They want to be loved to be human. Be real, be imperfect. Show your fault. Sometimes trans people just wrap up everything that they are so perfect. They're always on the mountaintop. Everything's nailed down. Nothing's ever wrong. That's not real. And then maybe most importantly, beat curious. Seek to learn about your neighbors and their stories and their lives. This is the thing it's slow and it's intimate and it's personal and it's honest, and it emerges out of a loving longterm. Trusting relationship a month equals you're not better than anyone because you're a church person. You're not better than anyone, because you said a sinner's prayer and you know, Jesus, and you think they don't, you're not better than lose the attitude. Be real, be humble and be kind. Presence the rhythm of presence, we will live. Among our neighbors. And participate in a natural activities. Of the city around us. We will engage in life with others, not as a step to evangelism, but as a follower of Christ. Who seeks to live as Jesus did.