BEMA 207: J. R. Briggs — The Sacred Overlap

Transcription Status

17 Jul 24 — Initial public release

13 May 24 — Transcript approved for release

J. R. Briggs — The Sacred Overlap

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host Brent Billings. Today we are joined by special guest Dr. J. R. Briggs, the founder and director of Kairos Partnerships. His list of ministries and projects spans the gamut of possibility: from coaching pastors to instructing university students, from authoring books to hosting podcasts. JR brings a wealth of experience wherever he goes. He and his wife Megan have two boys and live just outside of Philadelphia. JR, welcome to the show.

JR Briggs: Thanks so much, Brent. It’s good to be here.

Marty Solomon: JR, you have so many things going on, we had to figure out how to introduce you. First of all, how do you feel about the title ‘Doctor’?

JR: I’m still getting used to it, actually. I’m reminded sometimes that my technical title is Reverend Dr. J. R. Briggs, but I tell my students please just call me JR. [laughs] That’s who I am. But I still catch myself going, “Man, Dr. Briggs? I guess that’s me.” Last night in class, teaching, and it felt weird. To be honest, I’m still getting used to that. [laughs]

Marty: Excellent. How would you introduce yourself in addition to all those things? Introduce yourself for us.

JR: Well, I normally like to say I just have four driving passions that inform how I live and what I do. Number one is following Jesus. Number two is equipping and investing in hungry Kingdom leaders. Three is growing fruit on other people’s trees. The fourth, my favorite, is I like to create good Kingdom mischief. Just about all that I do gets wrapped up in one of those four expressions.

Brent: I really like the good Kingdom mischief idea. That’s pretty fun. [laughs] JR, why don’t you talk about how you know Marty or how Marty knows you or what that relationship is like?

JR: Marty and I met—I’m even forgetting the year, Marty. Maybe you can fill us in here, but the Epic Fail Pastors’ Conference is something that we hosted here in our town here on the north side of Philadelphia called Lansdale, Pennsylvania. We’ve seen so many of these Christian conferences around the country that celebrate celebrity pastors. I found myself looking around saying, “There are so many good pastors that are obscure and unknown, but are so full of wisdom and fruit and vitality, and those voices need to be heard. There are a lot of failed pastors that need a safe space to grieve.”

I just put out this crazy idea saying instead of a big pastor’s conference where we talk about our successes, what if there was a healthy and hope-filled space to host something called the Epic Fail Pastors’ Conference. I was scared to death to put this on because I thought, “Can you imagine the headline Epic Fail Pastors’ Conference canceled due to low registration”? I really wrestled with that, but fortunately there are several dozen people from around the country and even around the world that got on a plane and joined us, and Marty was one of them. I met Marty through that. Marty, what do you remember from that event?

Marty: Oh man, I’m going to say it was probably 2010, might have been 2011, because I’d just gotten hired by Impact. I remember because I had it on my calendar and they asked me if I had any conferences and I’m like, “Well, I do want to go to this conference,” and they’re like, “What’s it called?” I was like, “The Epic Fail Pastors’ Conference.” That was awesome. Was it the very first one that you guys had done? It was incredible.

It was incredible because you’re right. We don’t have spaces to talk about failure. Honestly, JR, I wonder how much even that conference and that conversation helped pave the way for me to make it. Working with college students, one of the things I love to talk about is: please, go fail. I just wrote a letter to one of the elders of the church that we just moved away from. Daughter has a birthday coming up. One of the things I put in the letter is don’t be afraid.

If you’re not failing, we’re not getting the best version of you. You’re leaving something on the table. You’re playing it safe. Not only do we not incentivize failure, but we just don’t talk about it. That was such a rich experience. As you look back on it, what were the things that you loved the most about that chapter of what you were doing, JR? What do you remember?

JR: It was a conference and we did it several times and we even did it around the country in different spaces when we were invited in by cities or denominations or groupings of churches. It’s really a conference about grace for pastors who need it most. If you call it the grace conference, every pastor goes, “I know about grace. I preach on grace.” It was pastors and ministry leaders, because we often forget that grace, when we preach about it on Sunday from the pulpit, we forget that it’s actually readily available and in abundance to us every day of the week in all areas of our lives.

I think the richness of that, and the crescendo up to taking communion together that last time, to me, I looked around and said, “This is the most impactful, powerful time of communion I think I’d ever been a part of in my life.” I remember that. The other detail I think was really important is we met in a bar and it was this pretty seedy bar, but it was the first church in our community 130 years ago or whatever, but it had failed and then became a Kiwanis club and then it became a bar.

I thought, “Man, even the venue itself holds the space in which we’re trying to talk about.” It certainly turned a lot of heads. It really got people’s attention to say exactly what you’re talking about, Marty. If we hide our failures, we never are opening ourselves up to the beautiful gift of grace that is fully available to us. Pastors need grace too and we forget that a lot. We all do, but I think especially professional Christians who are paid to love Jesus, it’s easy to forget that grace is available to us as well.

Brent: It kind sounds like the alien-orphan-widow concept, but applied specifically to pastors.

Marty: Yes, Brent, that’s what happens when you fail in ministry. It’s definitely what it feels like. You get alienated, you get marginalized, you get orphaned. Sometimes that’s definitely a feeling we project, but it’s also a real reality in so many cases for different reasons. I love that connection.

Brent: JR, you wrote a book on failure if I understand it correctly, one of the many books that you’ve written?

JR: Yes. It actually came about from this Epic Fail Pastors’ Conference idea. There were several people that said to me, “I don’t think I can even come to an event like that because of pressure from my elders.” Or, “My denominational board would say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’” Or, “Even if you made it free, the fact I have to get on a plane and get a hotel and all this, I can’t even afford that because of my own failure in ministry.” Talking with publishers I just began to say, “You know what, maybe we need to put the principles and the concepts of this idea of the Epic Fail Pastors Conference in a book.”

That was the driving force that I worked with an agent and we sent it out to 12 different publishers. 11 different publishers rejected it, which is ironic, and maybe not so ironic when the title of your book is Fail. University Press was the one that decided to take a risk on it and publish it. We live in a culture that worships success, and even in the church we worship ministry success. We have a very anemic understanding and a flimsy theology of failure. The conference and then the book was trying to help pastors see that failure can be a blessing and an invitation and not just a curse, that it’s a beautiful gift wrapped in ugly wrapping paper.

It’s not a book that you want to just hand to your pastor at Christmas and say, “Hey, I heard about this book titled Fail and I thought of you.” It’s a book that has to find you. You don’t find it. There’s been a lot of failure and rejection and shame and disappointment in ministry, especially so far in a pandemic year. I wrote this to encourage pastors to remind them they’re not alone and to equip them with a hopeful framework of failure and, hopefully, a theology of failure to equip them to fail successfully.

Brent: I’ll put a link to that book in our show notes in case anyone is listening and is discovering it through this podcast. Or maybe if you are feeling bold, you can give it to your pastor.

Marty: Yes, if the book found them as they were listening here. JR, I was curious as I thought about this interview today, do you consider that portion—I think I’m getting an answer as I listened to you talk. Is that a portion of your life that that was what I was working on back then, that was a past project, or do you find the same passion is alive and well in who JR is? I’m assuming it fits into those four pillars of your life you were talking about earlier.

JR: Failure is omnipresent and so is grace and we often forget that. Especially during the pandemic, as I said, we’re tempted to believe a lot of lies about ourselves, about God, and about others. If all is grace, therefore, instead of trying to hide the failures we need to use them in a way that helps others. I love that beautiful image of Jesus showing His wounds to Thomas for his own faith and healing. What does it look like for us to show our own wounds to the world for their own healing as well? I just think that’s what ministry is. That wasn’t some project from a few years ago.

I think that, in many ways, was the foundation on which the rest of the house had to be built because I want to build my life on the foundation of grace and the only way I receive grace is if I first admit I’m a failure. In some ways that was the foundation on which the other elements and even the other writing projects can be built from. Just the opportunity for us to embrace failure and step further into grace has never been more opportune in our lifetime than right now.

That continues even though we haven’t hosted any Epic Fail Pastors’ Conferences for a while and I think partly because the book is out. I don’t think it killed the conference, but I think oftentimes, when people ask about it I say, “Well, read the book.” Maybe we can have a conversation about that. It continues to play a huge part in our lives. I’m not sure failure will ever go away and, unfortunately, I don’t see the golden calf of success that we worship in North America is going away anytime soon, unfortunately. Therefore I think we need a deeply rooted and robust theology of failure.

Brent: That’s great. Jumping ahead a little bit, JR, your most recent book is called The Sacred Overlap which Marty read and gave five stars which is a special honor for Marty’s rating system. Four stars is excellent. It’s the best you could expect. Then that fifth star is this special something that really struck a chord with him. Maybe tell us a little bit about that book, describe what it is and then maybe Marty can share some of what made it special for him as well.

JR: Well, first of all, I want to say thank you, Marty, for your kindness to not only endorse the book, but also get the word out and to allow me to share this with your listeners here. I’m deeply honored for the five stars. Thank you, Brent. I didn’t know how difficult it was to get a Marty five star. I’m deeply honored by that.

We live in a world that’s incredibly divisive and polarized. I think we’ve felt that over the last several months, the last several years. The cultural and the religious, the political, the relational, the racial divides are growing stronger. As the arguments are becoming more explosive and the defending of our opinion seems to grow more and more intense, I had this realization as I looked around at the us-vs-them tribalism and I thought, “Man, there’s got to be a better way in which we live than this.” It led me to say, “Well, as someone who is deeply devoted to the way of Jesus, what should my posture be in the midst of all this divisiveness? How about all Christians that are taking Jesus seriously, especially in North America, how do we live like Jesus in such divisive and alienating times?”

Instead of embracing a posture of either/or entrenchment where we look at “the other” as the problem, I began to ask if it is possible to be faithfully following the way of Jesus and still live in a both/and reality. Our call as followers of Jesus is to join Him in that heaven overlapping with earth reality right now. Nothing has messed with my theology more than reading my Bible. The more I read my Bible, the more I began to say, “Wait a second. Jesus is the great either/or. He invites us into this way. Once we trust Him in that there’s a whole bunch of these spaces throughout the Gospels where we see Jesus living in a both/and.”

That was the beginning, the germinating seeds in all of this to say, “Wait a second. Even when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,’ that’s a prayer of overlap.” That’s where Jesus isn’t asking us to pray that heaven and earth would overlap. When heaven and earth overlap, the Kingdom of God, the rule and the reign of God is present. That’s a little bit of the nature and the summary of the book.

Marty: I appreciated it. I like the failure topic. I feel like maybe one of the things that I love about what you do, JR, and what you do really well is you find these corners that are just always present, always there in our face, but these things we never know, we don’t articulate, or we avoid—and you just find this way of talking about it that’s not heavy handed, but it’s not too mechanical. It’s super accessible, but it’s also well thought out. I thought, “Okay, this is going to be a really good book and I love the premise.” I kept reading it. I kept going, “Man, this is just—” I kept finding myself right in the middle of whatever chapter was talking about, “this is such an important overlap.”

In every chapter, this is another really important tension that rarely gets—I think it also helped that at the same time I was reading a whole bunch of Richard Rohr, which is a great companion to reading JR Briggs. There was all this talk of how we love to bifurcate. We love to make these binary—it’s either this or it’s this. It’s this linear scale. You have to pick your side or figure out where you land. It’s not this linear binary. It’s a much more complex, nuanced overlap. I really appreciated that. Is there a story behind the book? Was it just this thing that evolved over time? What was the thing that made you go, “That’s the next thing that I’m going to write about”?

JR: Well, one of the things that I find so important, and I appreciate your kind words about the book, when I have a significant question I need to answer and I go to look everywhere and I can’t find it and it bothers me to a certain point, then I say, “Maybe I’m the one that has to write on it.” For example, with Fail I just said, “Man, there’s got to be somebody out there that’s writing on a theology of failure.” Everywhere I looked, I couldn’t find it. I said, “Alright, well, I’ll just step in the gap.”

I think in this particular case with The Sacred Overlap, it was the same thing of realizing, “Wait, there’s a lot of mystery here. How come no one ever taught me in my upbringing in reading the Bible that there are all these both/and realities with Jesus?” Jesus being described as being fully God and fully man. He was committed to justice and mercy that were to be a part of this in spirit and truth we worship him. The Kingdom of God is near and it’s here. What do we do with all these? The Kingdom of God is full of old treasures as well as new. What do we do with these both/ands?

No one was talking about it. I said, “Maybe that’s where we need to talk about it.” It’s helping Western thinking readers understand a little bit more of Eastern oriented Jesus and His way that He invites us into. That either/or thinking is a bit anemic at times, but the both/and reality is where Jesus lives and invites us in. A lot of times I write to articulate just my own thoughts. What do I believe about this?

Then the other thing, all the way back to college, and I talk about this in the book as well, there was a speaker at a camp that my wife, then fiancée at the time, went to, a college weekend retreat, winter camp. There was a speaker there I never heard of and he said, “If we are faithfully following Jesus, we will be too pagan for our Christian friends and too Christian for our pagan friends.” That line never left me. That has grabbed me around the throat and refuses to let go. I began to say, “Yes, isn’t that what happened with Jesus? He’s being attacked from both sides at times. If I’m faithfully following Jesus, won’t I be accused of being too pagan for my Christian friends and too Christian for my pagan friends?” That was a lot of the genesis of the book. We can’t even talk about theology of the trinity or of the incarnation without talking about some of these overlapping spaces.

Brent: JR, you studied at Jerusalem University College for a while and I think you’re on the board. I’m not exactly sure what that means for your day-to-day life, but what was the experience spending time in Jerusalem? Did that speak to this tension and this concept in the book? Did you get something out of their culture, out of that school specifically or how did that play into this?

JR: Well, Jerusalem University College continues to shape me, and yes, I do serve on the board of trustees there at the college. That was 20 years ago. My love for the Text, I can trace it back specifically to the fall semester of 1999. That changed my life. I loved the Bible before then, but it’s almost as if reading it and then going on field trips on location and learning about the maps and the culture and the geography and the rock formations in this part of the world and the people group here and this was going on in other regions and this culture here. That really shaped me. That rocked me in a good way.

By the way, I love your podcast, what you all are doing here. Your podcast just threw gas on the fire even more. Thank you for the good work that you both are doing in this. Okay, I’m a Christian. I grew up in a Christian home and then I go—all of a sudden, I learn from a rabbi teaching my “Jewish Thought and Culture” class on Friday mornings from 9 to noon. Then I walk down and see my friend Suleiman, the Muslim shopkeeper in the Christian quarter.

Then I go over and see my friends Dove and Moshe, modern-day Pharisees originally from Canada who run a shop and have memorized more scripture in the New Testament than I have, even though they don’t believe in the New Testament. That began to really wrestle with me, and it messed with me and I wrestled with what does this mean for me? How do I live in the mystery of this when I so love the bento boxes of separation when Jesus is actually not anywhere close to those bento boxes, most of the time that he’s living in the tension of the both/and?

Marty: Moshe is one of our good friends there in Jerusalem. I’m glad we have that shared connection. I love that, man. Love that.

JR: Oh, yes. I went back a few years ago. I was leading a trip back to Israel with a group from our church. I made sure we stopped in there, and I pulled out an old photo from 1999 and I showed it to him. I said, “I don’t expect you to remember me, but this is me and you.” He said, “Boy, both of us have put on a little bit of weight.”

[laughter]

Marty: Yes, absolutely. Now, so this book Sacred Overlap, JR, it’s been out for a while. I’m sure you’ve had some of these conversations, probably the way that book promotion goes, some interviews, some chats here and there, but now you’re also getting to—I’m sure that the conversation is evolving. You’re getting to hear back from people about how they’re interacting with the book and what they’re getting out of it. What are you seeing or what’s something maybe that surprises you, or what is new, and/or what do you hope God is doing with the Sacred Overlap conversation?

JR: Well, that’s a great question. One of the things I’m hearing back is if people don’t read the book carefully and they just skim it or read the back cover, they call me a heretic. When they read the book though, they begin to go, “Oh, yes, that’s not what you’re saying.” I always find that to be a little bit funny. I want to be a little bit like a pebble in people’s shoe, where they just can’t ignore that of saying maybe I need to rethink how I’ve lived, maybe more bifurcated in my faith than I need to be.

The fact that we can hold this intention, this both/and while still having Jesus squarely at the center is really important for people to grasp. I’m grateful that they have grasped it. I hope that people become more peculiar. I talk about this in the book, but we’ve been around Christians that are too normal, where their lives are no different than the lives of the people around them. The unbelieving world just says, “Why in the world would I want to be a Christian? I mean, look at you, you’re no different than me.” On the other end we’ve been around Christians that are really too weird, and I’m not sure we’re called to be either one.

What do you call that space between being normal and weird? I landed on the word peculiar. In some ways being peculiar is to be uncategorizable, and that peculiarity became the attractiveness of the early church. That idiosyncratic faith is found in the overlap. It’s both normal and weird, but it doesn’t fit into either one of those categories perfectly. I think we’ve lost our peculiarity and I really hope that this book helps Christians recover it.

Marty: Yes, absolutely. One of my favorite conversations in the book was the encouragement to be a peculiar people. Just excellent. Definitely recommend that book. I know I did a video endorsement on YouTube and Brent will throw that in our show notes too if you want to see me talk a little bit more about that. JR, I want to do something a little selfish here and just do it in front of our listeners here a little bit. I don’t know why, but it’s always fun. When I’m listening to a podcast, I always learn from these little tidbits. I want to pull back the curtain just a little bit. You’ll probably have to go back before the Sacred Overlap whatever your first books were. What was your first book, JR?

JR: It’s a book that I wrote in my late 20s called When God Says Jump. It’s out of print now—and truthfully, it probably should have been.

[laughter]

Marty: Okay, I’m not going to get into details here, but there could be a chapter in my life that’s coming where I could be entering into this weird world of authoring books. That’s all I’m going to say about that for now. I’m curious about talking to people like you and learning from your experiences. You’ve now said two things that Brent will have to edit the gulp on my microphone that probably got recorded, talking about when you did this, I think you were talking about your book Fail and failure. You said you wrote this—you sent it to 12 publishers and 11 said no.

JR: Yes.

Marty: You speak of your first book, “it’s probably good it’s out of print.” I don’t know what question to ask you. Talk to me about what it’s been like to be an author. Go back to that very first manuscript, the things you’ve learned, what you love. Talk to me about that experience as somebody looking at potentially doing that, and what can I learn from that? Probably others listening [have something to learn] as well.

JR: It’s a great question, and I’ll preface this by saying two things. First of all, I love this topic because writing is so important. It can be a gift, even a calling, within the church. People ask me about the book, but very rarely do they ask about the writing process. This is a gift to be asked that, number one. Number two, Marty, you do need to write. You need to write, and if I can help you with that, put me on record, put me down as somebody that wants to help you do that, because I think the world needs to hear more of what you’re doing. That’s no pressure, but that’s just a cheerleader over here in this corner of the room, just saying I want to help you do that if I can.

Marty: Well, I appreciate that, I think.

JR: With that being said, the idea of writing, wanting to write, and wanting to be published are two different things. Many people, when they come up and ask me, “How do I get published?” I’ll say to them, “Do you want to write, or do you want to get published?” Because those are two different things. Writing is if I write and no one publishes it, I still enjoy the craft of writing and sharing it with whoever wants to just look at it. Other people want to get published—and that’s the exciting, that’s the sexy thing—but what happens is then they get to the writing part and it’s really hard. There’s not a single person I’ve met that has found writing to be easy.

Well, I’ll say this; writing is easy. It’s the rewriting that’s excruciating. It’s the editing that’s really hard. Maya Angelou said, “I don’t like writing, I like having written.” I think that’s a good description. It’s like me mowing the lawn. I don’t like mowing the lawn. I like having mowed the lawn, past tense. The best analogy I use, and this is weird for three dudes on this podcast to talk about, it’s like giving birth. It’s a weird metaphor for us as males to think about, but I do think with authoring and writing that this is the case, because you find out, “Woohoo, I got a book contract. This is really exciting. We’re expecting. This is cool.”

Then there are days you’re just like, “This hurts and I can’t sleep and I have heartburn, and I don’t want to do this,” and stretch marks and argh. Then the labor process, you’re just like, “This is so painful. I’ll never do this again. This is so hard. I hate this feeling.” Then you hold her in your arms and you look at her and say, “She’s so beautiful, honey. Let’s do this again. Let’s have more children.”

Then you just go through the whole process again. But each time I look at my wife and I say, “Don’t ever let me write another book again.” She smiles and goes, “Yes, okay.” She knows I’m just in the burning part there where it’s just so hard. It’s a beautiful gift. It’s a calling, but for me, I’m wired as a teacher. For me, writing is teaching on paper for students who are hungry to learn through the written word. I don’t read fiction, I only read nonfiction. I know readers when they hear that, they hate me for that.

Brent: Well, you have a kindred spirit in Marty, that’s for sure. Amen. Whoo.

JR: There’s just too many good true things in the world I want to learn. There’s not enough time for me to read all those books. I love nonfiction and I want to write to nonfiction. Marty, because you’re a teacher, and you’re so good at that and you have such a passion for that, I think putting that down in written form is going to be a gift to the world. I just want to encourage you to do that. It’s hard. It’s like giving birth. There are stretch marks. There’s all sorts of things that come with it, but, man, when you look down at her you go, ‘Man, she’s so beautiful. So glad we did this.”

I just want to encourage you with that, and I hope some of that experience or wisdom, it can help you and maybe even some other of your listeners.

Marty: I like that metaphor. That probably speaks to Brent right now, in this chapter of your life. We should have Maggi on the podcast. She can talk to me about writing books.

Brent: My wife is presently pregnant. Hopefully close to giving birth by the time this episode comes out. We are in the middle of it as we record.

JR: Yes. Well, congratulations. Yes!

Brent: Thank you.

Marty: If you look back on this journey from however long you’ve been actually writing and seeing those things published, what’s one nugget of practical wisdom that you could say if you were to boil some idea down, and here’s what I’ve learned as I’ve looked at, do this or don’t do that? Give me one little nugget of something from the world of writing.

JR: It’s a nugget that is very common with other writers, but it’s so true. The muse shows up when your butt is in the seat. It’s easy to just talk about writing, or read books about writing, or say, “One day I’m going to get to writing.” Writing happens when you just sit down and you commit to writing. Not just when you’re inspired, but also when you don’t feel like it, and you just say, “I need to just do the discipline work of making sure I get this out of my head and onto the page.” I think it was Hemingway that said- I don’t know about your audience if they would love this or not, but I find this to be helpful. I’m sure he meant it metaphorically, but Ernest Hemingway said, “Write drunk, edit sober.”

[laughter]

Marty: I’m not as sure about that metaphor. [laughs]

JR: [laughs] Just let it flow freely, but then later go back and really think very carefully. The game is won or lost not in the writing, but in the rewriting and the editing. I would say great writers are not great writers in their first draft. They’re great writers when they go through and they just sift through, and ask questions like Is this the point of this paragraph? Does every word matter in this sentence? What’s the question that I’m trying to answer in this chapter? What is the need that this book is meeting here? How do I engage with my readers here? How am I pushing my point forward with each paragraph? Writing is easy, it’s the editing and the rewriting that’s excruciating.

Marty: Wow, that’s really good. I think one of things I’ll struggle with, knowing how I write, is I’ll try to get it right on the first pass. I try to get it all revised, and so which makes the editing even harder because I’m like, “Argh, I’ve already done so much work on this, it’s already ready. How can I edit it, how can I revise it?” I like that piece of advice.

JR: I’ll give you one more since you’re touching on this if we have time for a brief one. In some ways, I feel like there are three phases to writing. There’s the down phase, the up phase, and the tweak phase. The down phase is just get it all down. Doesn’t have to be good—it shouldn’t be perfect, it won’t be perfect—just get it all down. Get too much down. The second phase is the up phase where you’re tightening it up. That’s where you’re cutting things, you’re changing things around, chapter 2 should be chapter 8.

This paragraph belongs at the beginning, not the end. Then, the third one is the tweak one where you’re just saying, “Man, is there a better verb there? How do I make that a stronger adjective? Is that a detail that I can bring in to tell that story to make it shine and shimmer a little bit more?” The down phase, the up phase and the tweak phase, I think are really important movements for me as a writer.

Marty: When you’re in those moments where you don’t necessarily feel inspired and you’re just forcing yourself to write, do you sit down and say, “I’m going to write for four hours,” or do you have a certain page count that you’re trying to hit? What’s your goal line that you’re getting to when you don’t have that inspiration?

JR: That’s a great question. I believe that everybody has a different writing personality. There are some writers that can just go off into some cabin in the woods for two weeks, and when they come back they have a beautiful manuscript. I’m not one of those people. On the other end of the spectrum there are people that can take little dribs and drabs of their time, 10 minutes here, a little snatch of 15 minutes there. I can’t do that either. I’ve got to be focused and in the zone.

For me, I’ve found that if I can block out about four hours a week, normally in one, maybe two chunks of uninterrupted time, and treat it like a meeting—“No one interrupt me. I need to focus on this.”—that gives me a chance to do it. By the time I’m at the end of that, I’m exhausted. I’m done. I’m not going to touch it for another week. Then, by the time I come back around, which normally is on a Monday, then on a Monday, I go, “I’m ready to engage again. Let’s do this.” Let me engage back in with this, and then I have a little bit more perspective.

I think the most important thing is that everybody needs to find out their writing personality, and you only know that by experimenting and trying out what works. I’ve just found what works for me and that’s helpful, and some days it comes easy. After four hours, I go, “I can’t believe it’s up. Are you kidding me?” and it’s a really productive day. Then, other days, I just go, “Man, I just feel like I was just slogging in the fog through here. This is just not helpful.” Maybe, I only came out with 300 words after 3 or 4 hours, but I have to say, “Well, I need trust and faith that that’s the progress that I was supposed to make today, and I’m going to leave it here and I’ll return to it in a week.”

Marty: Worst case scenario, you can edit it out later if it doesn’t end up being the right thing, so that’s the beauty of the process.

JR: Yes. Let me tell you, as a perfectionist, I have to fight that in my head all the time. Just say, “That’s not going to come out perfectly,” and I have to keep reminding myself none of it is perfect. The best authors in the world—it doesn’t come out perfectly, so take your time and just get it out there and worry later about how to make it perfect. “Right now, we’re in the down phase, Briggs. We’re not in the up phase, we’re not in the tweak phase, we’ll get there, but just get it down.”

Marty: I love that. That’s great. Thanks for letting me ask you a little bit about this. It was a slightly different kind of conversation, but I love it. It’s very helpful for me personally. I love it. Coming towards a close, here’s my open floor question for you, JR. What other kinds of things in your life are you excited about? What else is there to know? This is the open-ended what-does-Marty-not-know-to-ask-you that I ought to ask you?

JR: Well, I love that question of what’s going on, what am I excited about. I’m really fortunate. I always feel like around our organization there are a lot of exciting things swirling about just dreaming and developing resources and spaces to equip hungry Kingdom leaders, and there are three things specifically that are really lighting my fire in this season. Marty, you’ve been a guest on the podcast I co-host called The Monday Morning Pastor Podcast, but I also, several months ago, started another podcast called the Resilient Leaders Podcast. Just with the pandemic really wanting to help leaders, I think the word resilience is of utmost importance in this season for all sorts of leaders. We have a theology cohort as well. It’s twice a week, just 10, 11 minutes in-and-out, and that’s exciting.

Number two, I just submitted the manuscript for my next book, which will be coming out in March, and so I’m certainly excited about that. Also, when it comes to scripture, one thing that we did through the pandemic in the late spring and early summer was I just put out on Twitter, “Hey, if anybody is interested, I’m going to hand-copying the book of Luke. If anybody wants to join me, let me know.” It went viral. There were people from all over the world, in four continents, in nine different languages, that joined us in the process of just hand-copying the book of Luke together.

It was a beautiful thing. Now that Luke is done, here in the new year we’re looking to hand-copying the book of John. If any of your listeners want to jump in, it’s not too late, we’d love to have you. We’re just very simply #handcopyingjohn on social media and just inviting people to post pictures and questions, and what they’re learning through the process of slowing down to see the Text at a slower speed than our reading speed.

Brent: Yes. That’s one of the things you mentioned on that episode of your podcast that Marty was on. I think you and Doug were talking about it in a pre-segment, but I was going to ask if you had any fun new details that you’ve discovered from more recent readings.

JR: It’s just by slowing down. There’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t go, “Huh, I never thought about that.” Just yesterday, even though I was just doing the Zacchaeus story. How many times have I read the story of Zacchaeus? But I somehow missed the detail that Zacchaeus wasn’t looking to talk to Jesus. He said he wanted to see Jesus. That just sent me in a whole new direction of thinking he just wanted to get a chance to bump into Jesus so he could ask him something. No, it doesn’t say that.

He wanted to see Jesus. I wonder if he was even startled or fearful that Jesus actually talked to him. There are times where I want to see celebrities. I’m not sure I want to talk to celebrities. I just want to see them. If I can, up close, if I’m in the same room or in the same area. That little detail would not have come about. I would not have seen that or explored that had I not slowed down enough to hand-copy out the story of Zacchaeus.

Marty: That’s good. I like that. That whole thing is very BEMA-esque. I think we can totally with confidence suggest our listeners consider something like that that feels very creating-a-space type thing to do. I like it.

Brent: What’s your platform for discussion on that as far as people joining you in that process?

JR: Very simply just on our website kairospartnerships.org there’s a blog section there. If you just click the blog section, you’ll see a post, and we just give tips and helpful tools if anybody wants to join us on that. You can also follow me on Twitter at @jr_briggs. We’ll be giving updates on the Monday Morning Pastor Podcast as well. Anybody’s more than welcome to jump in and join us. There’s no registration page, there’s no sign up on this. Just jump in and join us. Even if you’re behind. It’s not a race. We just want to encourage people on the journey at whatever speed they’re going, but we’re encouraging people to just hand write 10 verses a day—just 10 a day.

Brent: I think doing that in the same way that you’re writing a book, just sitting down even when you don’t feel like doing it with a small goal like 10 verses a day, it’s totally achievable.

JR: It’s very achievable. I just thought it would be a few people in North America, in English writing in a journal. To see it mushroom to several continents, and these nine different languages, and sometimes people take a picture of it. It just expands my appreciation and love for God when I see someone write in Japanese this passage that I just hand wrote that morning in English, or I see it in Dutch or I see it Hebrew. It’s just been a beautiful thing to remind me that every nation, language, tongue, tribe, all serve the same God. It just encourages me deeply.

Brent: I love it. Yes, one of the other things you mentioned on the episode with Marty, is that you guys asked him about what was coming after Session 5, and I just wanted to ask, did you ever expect to be within the first couple episodes of what we now have as Session 6?

JR: No, not at all. In fact, I’m deeply grateful and honored that you all would invite me into this process, and I like I said, I’m a huge fan of what you all are doing, and every time I hear an episode, and I think about BEMA, I think about the time where I was standing in Corinth. I think you and I have probably stood on the same slab there in the bema, there in Corinth.

I just think of that, and that space and I’m so grateful for the ministry and the work that you all are doing. I know it’s a ton of work. I just want to bless you guys for your willingness to do this because the sacred text is amazing, and understanding the cultural and historical, and geographical roots and the background to it is so crucial for us to understand our text so we can understand our God.

Brent: Getting to hear some more of your story and what you’re doing and what you’re working on. I definitely see why your work resonates with Marty, and I think vice versa as well. Yes, it’s been great. Marty, do you have any other questions you want to pop in before we close this thing out?

Marty: No more questions, just a big thank you. I’m glad our paths have crossed, JR, and they continue to cross, and shout-out to Worth Wheeler for recommending I meet this guy named JR.

JR: Right. Worth Wheeler—what a guy.

Marty: He is. Thanks, JR, for being here, for doing your part in the Kingdom, and as is the case when everybody does their part, we all look at it and we love it. Thanks for doing yours.

JR: Well, thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate both of you.

Brent: Alright, JR, I will have links to Kairos Partnerships. We’ve got a page that talks about what you’re doing and also the wide variety of places that you’ve been published. We’ll put both of those links in there. You are @JR_Briggs on Twitter, Marty’s at @martysolomon on Twitter, and I’m at @eibcb. Thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We will talk to you again soon.

[music]

Brent: I did find one copy of your first book available on Amazon right now, but I won’t put it in the show.

JR: Isn’t it like $5?

Brent: It’s $24.

JR: I was going to say 24 cents. [laughs] Well, yes. It’s, yes, I look back on that, and I’m like, yes, that sounds like somebody who wrote that when they were like 26 years old.

Marty: There you go.

Brent: Oh, man, there’s—if you go into the used section, there’s two under collectible, and one of them says “autographed first edition.”

JR: Oh, there you go. I told my mom not to do that. That’s good. [laughs] I’ll have to talk to my mom about that. She can make money off her son. That’s it.

Marty: That’s so great.