In our second episode of Outside the Walls, Dylan Olson, Jon Russell, and Aaron Davitch dive into their recent experiences with the community they serve and how to make your city look more like Heaven. From the schools, to the police department, to knocking on doors - don't be afraid of opening the doors of your city to thrive! Listen in for some amazing ideas and examples of getting outside the walls.
In our second episode of Outside the Walls, Dylan Olson, Jon Russell, and Aaron Davitch dive into their recent experiences with the community they serve and how to make your city look more like Heaven. From the schools, to the police department, to knocking on doors - don't be afraid of opening the doors of your city to thrive! Listen in for some amazing ideas and examples of getting outside the walls.
Please note: We had some audio issues around 7 minutes and 50 seconds and 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Reach out to Aaron for the full story :)
Dylan Olson 00:10
What's up everybody? Welcome to the outside the walls podcast here. This is the second episode today. My name is Dylan. Thanks for joining us. And today we've got John Russell here again, joining us, and Aaron Davis, he couldn't join us the first time ever, but he'll always be joining us, going forward and popping in and out, and we'll have some other guests. But today, it's going to be an awesome day. And we're just going to kind of jump into what the Lord's doing in cities, how he's transforming people and in cities and in institutions. And we're just going to we're going to, we're going to jump right in. So let's, what do you think, guys,
Jon Russell 00:44
sounds good. Let's do it. Yeah, it's good.
Dylan Olson 00:47
So tell me. Tell me first, let's talk about the difference between when we we talk about this a lot of where Jesus was. He was in the marketplace, he was in the synagogues, and he was in neighborhoods. And so I think today we'll probably talk about synagogue and marketplace for the most part. So what are your thoughts on that?
Jon Russell 01:09
Yeah, I think Jesus modeled brilliantly. You know how we're to walk this Howard to walk our calling out outside of the walls. He actually said, Well, you have to go somewhere. Actually go somewhere. And I think it's great how he showed us where to go. You know, he modeled in the synagogues for us, where he preached to the Jewish believers. And of course, that's an appropriate way to to introduce people to the Lord. We we do it every Sunday. Hopefully people are coming to Jesus inside the walls of the church. That's partly why we exist, uh, neighborhoods. You know, you could just be walking around your town, prayer walking, or it can literally mean reaching out to your actual neighbors. And what does that look like? And then, of course, the marketplace. We find ourselves in, the marketplace much of our life, you know, shopping or doing business with people. And so how do we interact with that? Yeah, and I think when you call we talk about marketplace underneath that. Also we can place institutions, right, like the schools, the the city government, police department, things of that nature, things that operate within the city. So my friend Aaron here, you know he likes to talk about a beautiful passage in the book of Jeremiah, which talks about that just seeking the peace and prosperity of the city. So Aaron wants to just tell us a little bit about that passage and and how you see us walking that out. See how you see yourself walking that out. Yeah,
Aaron Davitch 02:51
yeah. I think maybe it's maybe an approach for how what does it look like for a pastor, for a church to engage its city, and I guess I would call I lean toward what would be considered maybe more of an exilic model. And so if you go back to the Old Testament, let's go, yeah, exilic exiles, yes, nice. We'll talk about that. The Lord was had given the bad news to the Jewish people through the prophet Jeremiah, that because of their persistent idolatry and killing the prophets that he had sent to warn them and call them back to covenant faithfulness, that they were going to be going into exile. And they're going to exile into Babylon, this wicked, wicked city that was really Israel's arch enemy, and they're going to be going there for 70 years, and yet he told them through Jeremiah, in chapter 29 verse seven, of the book of Jeremiah, he said, while you're there, I want you to seek the prosperity of the city, the peace and the prosperity of the city, and to pray to the Lord for because if it prospers, you too will prosper. And you can imagine that that would have been pretty, almost scandalous to the Jewish people to think here I'm going to this pagan, wicked, Dark City, and I'm supposed to seek the peace and prosperity of the city, and I'm supposed to pray for it. And in the New Covenant, of course, so often believers are called exiles in this present world. Our citizenship is in heaven, but we are here, and so while we're here, what does it look like to seek the peace and the prosperity of our cities? And the reality is probably a lot of churches and Christians aren't always known for that, and so we've really been inspired by that verse, and it's kind of a cool word when he says, seek the peace and prosperity to the city, that peace and prosperity is really two English words that are trying to translate one Hebrew word. It's the Hebrew word shalom, which is such a rich word, no one English word captures its full meaning. But it's the idea of peace, it's the idea of prosperity. It's the idea of flourishing and thriving and wholeness. And it's really. Essentially what we had back in the Garden of Eden. Maybe another way to say it would be, it's like seeking what we pray in the Lord's prayer, Lord, Your kingdom come your will be done here, just as it is in heaven. We want to restore and renew, where we see brokenness, where sin is infected and distorted, things here in our cities. We want to we want to heaven to bring its influence and to restore and to renew the way God originally intended to. So that's what we've been trying to do, inspired by that verse. And we've had some practical ways in which we've tried to put feet to that verse. And we can talk about that as well. That's good.
Jon Russell 05:38
I think it's interesting how you talk about, sometimes Christians aren't necessarily known for that in regards to engaging their city. Yeah, sometimes we're known for things we're against, you know, we, we have a tendency to see the things we don't think are that great, yeah, within our city. And so we, we go after that, when what you're talking about is, you know, let's get in the city. Seek the peace, seek the prosperity, serve the city. Help the city become all that it can be. Yeah, and something, Pastor, Aaron, that you mentioned a lot when you're talking to people, you talk about this idea of tithe, tide rises for Mm, hmm, I'm
Aaron Davitch 06:21
wrong. Yeah. No, yeah. Just the idea that, you know, our heart really is to see the tide rise in our city so that it truly lifts all boats. And every, every, everybody, we want everybody to win. And I think that's God's heart. And so what does that look a rising tide does lift all boats. So what does it look like to try and be a part of that, cultivate and seek that rising tide as
Jon Russell 06:45
We decided to actually step out and, you know, put some action to this, to this theology that we have about seeking the peace and prosperity about the city. And I think our model at the beginning was, well, let's just go and do it, see what happens. And so, you know, Aaron wants you to describe for us, maybe some of the first couple of interactions we had, engaging the marketplace or government, and kind of where that's taken us now,
Aaron Davitch 07:19
yeah, well, you know, I think, as you covered in the last podcast, just you know, we started with going out to pray for people on the streets, which was wonderful. And we believe that grassroots one on one ministry, just like Jesus leaving the 99 to go after the one, is so important, so significant. I think the Lord sees that has attracted to that and wants to bless that. It's good for us to get out there and engage actual people on our streets. In addition to that, I think it's also really important to work with the institutions of a community if you're really going to seek that system wide, city wide, kind of transformation. There is a book I'll just reference because I think he's got a great point. It's called it's my sociologist who's also a Christian. His name is John Davison Hunter, very important if you're actually going to transform a community and Christians being involved in those institutions, and being a faithful of what he calls a faithful presence in those institutions, is, is very important. And so we, I think the first institution we really engaged was, was during covid, when, you know, a lot of these children families who were on free and reduced lunches during covid, but now they're home, and so how are they going to get those free and reduced lunches? The school system in Shakopee, like a lot of other school systems, is there any way that we could follow those busses and bring a week's worth of food for these families? And the reason why we had the that is food, I guess, semi a week came in and they were prepared weeks worth of food for families. And so we had this amazing opportunity to do that. And so superintendent, at first, wasn't quite sure what to think about this whole idea. He talks about that now. He shared later with us that he was a little skeptical and suspicious, almost so wondering like, Who are these people and why is this church want to do this? And but he said, Well, it's good for families, and I want to see families win. I want to see families do well. So, yes, you can do that. And so we did that. We followed those busses, and we just engaged with families and provided some food for them along the way, and, and that, you know, the superintendent, you know, he just really saw that this was a win for families and and so that, I think, gained some trust. He saw that we weren't trying to advertise our church or just do something to get people to come to our church. You know?
Dylan Olson 09:51
I mean, like, oh, like, Hey, can we follow your school busses around? And just, who is it? Three guys in the truck that's. Second, what kind of favor is that? I mean, that's like, that's, that's just really good favor, I think. And Aaron, if you could just, just for like, audio sake, I think if you super one, could you just repeat the title of that book one more time, and then also, and just maybe just quickly recap the the just, just a little bit of like, the beginning of like, how that actually happened with the busses and the and the superintendent.
Aaron Davitch 10:27
Yeah. The book is called to change the world by John Davison Hunter, nice and and again, for me, it just put on my radar screen the importance of, if you're really going to transform a city, if we're really going to see heaven come down and make our cities start to look more like heaven. I think the institutions are a vital, necessary part to that transformation, and but as a church, we've gotta learn how to favorably, how to serve those institutions and not not be antagonistic toward them. And I think, you know, one of our prayers has been just like Jesus in Luke 252 it says he grew in favor with God and with man. We, you know, started praying that we would grow in favor with God and with man as well with people and and I think the Lord has been pleased to answer that prayer. He's given us a lot of favor with the institutions of our community. And
Jon Russell 11:21
I think that brings up a good point. You know, the school district, the city government, you know, we all want the same thing, right? Yeah, to thrive. We want our people to feel protected and safe, thriving, all of you, but you know, but our approaches are different, right? And I think one thing that we're learning is to look for those open doors where we can actually come in and serve what these institutions are doing, yes, as opposed to always just doing our own thing, right? Because they're already doing it, yeah, and that school lunch thing was a prime example. Who doesn't want kids to not go hungry? We all want everybody to have enough food. Yep. So we saw that opportunity. They were already doing something. And instead of coming in and doing our own thing, how can we serve you? Make what you're doing right thrive and succeed, and in the process, you know, one thing we've noticed, we start building relationships with the people, yeah, we're in government. We're in the school district. You know, fast forward five, six year, five years from there. Mean, just tell a little bit about what we got to experience last week, where that relationship has taken us with the school district.
Aaron Davitch 12:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, this is the most recent one. But even just last week, we were able there's an end of the year teacher event where teachers who are retiring and teachers who have been nominated by their peers as Teacher of the Year in this school or that school, or custodian of the year, those types of awards. There's a big event at the end of the year. And we were able to financially pay for the event, and it was a good chunk of change. It's a nice event and a nice venue, and we were able to support that event, pay for it, but then also invited to speak at it. I spoke a little bit to the teachers and to their families and the administrative staff, and then Pastor John here was able to do a really special song, because unfortunately, a couple students and a few teachers had passed away this past year, so John did. They had an In Memoriam moment at the end of the the gathering, and John played a beautiful song, and had everybody in tears there, and they were just so thankful for for what he had done, but they were just so they kept thanking us throughout the whole event for all that we do to support teachers, all that we do to support families, all that we do to support the school district. And we could get into some of those other things that we do, but but go into that most recent one. That's what that was. And
Jon Russell 13:57
I actually had an opportunity of having a conversation with the superintendent at that event, and he was talking about his desire for other communities and school districts to experience a little bit of what they're experiencing with the this partnership with, yeah, you know, a non profit or even a church, and we can actually work together. We don't have to, yeah, we don't always have to separate and divide and yeah, and do things, you know, yeah, yeah. Like, do things on our own. Do things on our own, right? Exactly, yeah,
Dylan Olson 14:29
come to my church. Come to this thing, yeah. But it's really probably where a lot of times we're duplicating exactly the same goal, right? You know, it's like we're just, we're, yeah,
Aaron Davitch 14:39
There is a common good, right? You know that we we share, but we have different angles that we take at it, but we also try to honor each other's institutions as well. Like again, I wasn't promoting our church at the event or anything, but, you know, we're really just saying it's a win for this community if teachers are thriving. Serving and doing well, and schools are well supported, and so whatever we can do to contribute to that is that's our heart, because that is contributing to a rising tide in the community. And it's it is happening. I will just say you know that the school district's graduation numbers have have gone up a lot in the last few years, and they're actually like low 80s, somewhere in the 80s. Yeah, now it's at like 94% again, it's up there with some of the more top schools in the area. That's awesome. And so great things are happening the community. And we start talking about our relationship with the police department, we'll talk about, again, seeking the safety. Do we talk about the peace and the prosperity of the city? Well, the piece of our city is is really starting to take off as well, with record low crime numbers. And, you know, the police chief himself told me personally that we have a we have a vital role in keeping the city safe, and we can talk about some of those ways we've tried to support our wonderful PD, as well. Yeah,
Jon Russell 16:00
We mentioned police that's a good opportunity. Come on, yeah, let's start talking a little bit about that relationship, yeah, police department, yeah, how that came about, yeah, currently, where we're at, and maybe some of the food of that. So you know, Dylan, you were in on that from the very beginning, relationship with the police department. So can you briefly describe Sure, how that all came to be? And well,
Dylan Olson 16:25
Always had a big part for law enforcement. You know, my dad was in law enforcement for 30 years, so naturally I just, we've always just support him. And that led him from my role at Hosanna, to reach out to the PD and said, Hey, do you guys have a chaplain program at all? And they did, you know, and it was, it's better than most cities, for sure. So I joined that for a couple of years, and then, right? And this is all kind of a lot of, this does kind of hinge around covid, you know, in that season and 2020, is kind of what I see is like the best year ever for different reasons, right? Obviously, people hunkered down. People hunkered down. We just, we got out. We got outside the walls. Right Halvorson, so it's like, it's great. It's been awesome. And anyway, so then they had reached out and right with and we all know, I don't know if you if I can find someone who doesn't know what happened in Minneapolis, but we all know what happened in Minneapolis. And so we looked at our PD and said, Hey, these men and these women and Jeff Tate, they're awesome, like, they're really good, and we just want to put them on display, kind of like what you said with the schools, like, we just want to make you guys look good. We don't want to take any credit. So I don't know how that kind of how to really happen, but the picnic, Aaron, you know you can speak to it too. I want you to chime in here. But it's like we got together and said, Let's maybe do a picnic and put them on display. But you want you to say something,
Aaron Davitch 17:44
I think, yes, simultaneously, it seemed that we were thinking the same thing our our wonderful police chief was thinking, and that is, what if we could bring the community together for a picnic of some sort. And so we both kind of approach each other really. I remember right in early June of 2020, and the idea was, well, why don't we, you know, we'll, we'll pay for a picnic. We'll have a caterer come and cook the meal. We'll have parks and recs. Do this some games, and we'll do raffle off some things from our heart ministry as a sort of a giveaway. We'll bring a DJ in to have some fun music and a nice fun vibe to the event, have some people do some dancing and that kind of thing. And we, you know, we weren't going to put up any signage about Hosanna, our church at all in any way, or just wasn't about the church. It was really about, how can we bring the community together, the beautiful diversity that lives in this community. How can we all come together and just hang out with the police and have a picnic together? And we had no idea what to expect in that year, the max gatherings for outdoor gatherings was capped at 250 and we had 700 people show up, which was good to know that we were doing this event in partnership with the police, but they were, they were shocked at the turnout the police department and our city administrator. They were totally shocked and really pleasantly surprised. And I know some of our police were officers were in tears, because so many different children of color would come up to them and say, I'm going to be a police officer someday. Can I get a picture with you? And it was, it was just a really,
Dylan Olson 19:29
I mean, they were dancing like breakdance. Oh yeah. They were just doing the what, the Macarena, or whatever. All the kids just wanted to do what they were doing. It was awesome.
Jon Russell 19:39
So, Aaron, can ask you the same question as when we were talking about the school district. So go back five years, and then that's where we're to now, yeah, like now, what does that relationship look like? Yeah, yeah, over those five years, maybe even if you could even describe a recent
Aaron Davitch 19:58
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the the event itself has grown. We're going to do our fifth annual here in just a few weeks. Our fourth annual last year, we had about 2000 people show up. And again, what was amazing is it's about a third of the crowd was white, and the rest of crowd is just this wonderful diversity. But really, there's a unity there. And we're all together, dancing together, playing together, eating together. It's just a beautiful event. And so we're excited to do our fifth annual here in just a few weeks, and it's in partnership with Shakti Parks and Rec shakpi, PD, mi casa, which is a beautiful non profit Hispanic in our country, I mean, in our city and and we, we do get involved in some other things. So like, let's say one of our captains reached out and just said, Hey, we're working with the domestic abuse situation in partnership with child protection services and Scott County and this family, these kids don't have any bikes, and the mom's not really in a position to be able to, oh, yeah, that's right, provide that for them right now, and it's summertime, it'd be great if they could just be kids and play. And could you, could you help with that? And so that was easy. So I think we ended up bringing a total of five bikes to this family. But then we also discovered that one of the windows in her mobile home was completely broken and had a huge hole through it, and so we're working on getting that replaced. Multiple Yeah, yeah. Heart team in there, yeah, yeah. And so just, just the fact that the PD thinks to reach out to us, and then maybe a few weeks later, they reach out again about another situation, and with in partnership with child protection services, and they just asked we could help this grandma who's now taking care of her children or grandchildren, and we were able to just help her and support her as well. They think of us now when there's a need, and we just appreciate that that partnership and they they view us as vital partners to keeping the city safe, and we're able to support them financially in some ways as well. So like our our police chief introduced a program called rap. It's recovery assistance program. So if they bust someone for drugs, if that person will commit to a recovery program with the PD as vetted and approves of, then the PD has a scholarship that will help pay for living expenses for them to be able to turn their life around. And it's a very, very effective program. We've some guys at our church who have been their lives have been drastically turned around because, in part, because of that wrap assistance that they received. And so I know it works, and we're happy to support that, but we're able to write, like, $10,000 checks for this, $20,000 checks for that, because we, we've been blessed with some some resources here, and so, but I just, I just love that our PD thinks to ask us if you'd like to help with things like that.
Dylan Olson 23:05
Totally, I feel like we share the same heart. I mean, it's everything from the in like viewing the individual, right? Like it's that leaving the 99 for the one. I mean, the Shakopee PD and us, we have that same kind of Kingdom mindset. We're, we're definitely paying attention to the individual, but then we still want to see that work in a greater even at a greater level, like big Kingdom vision stuff, where Jeff Tate and the department, they, they, they meet the needs of individuals. But then these, right, we got an invitation to this huge chiefs there's a large Minnesota chiefs foundation, you know, a fundraiser. And we were, you should share that. Aaron, like, we like, that was another thing that we that that led to something being possible because of heart, and I was on it.
Aaron Davitch 23:47
Yeah, so a few years ago, they were revamping and kind of rebranding this Minnesota chiefs Foundation, which is to support all the agencies across the state, and they do an incredible job, but they're sort of revamping it to have been stale for a little while there, from what I understand, and they're rebranding it, and they had asked if we want to contribute to it, because they their heart was to be able to see some of these other agencies and smaller towns in particular that may not have the resources to do A big picking with police type of event, that community policing, that outreach type of event, because a lot of these, I didn't realize how lean some of these police departments run financially, but so they said they created a scholarship to help other communities be able to be able to do that. And so they asked, we want to contribute to it. We contributed 20,000 that first year, and and we found out that, you know, I think this past year, like 30 agencies around the state have all received funds from that scholarship most recently so they can do some of these outreach, community policing events in their community. And. And according to please to our police chief, he said that those community outreach events are really the key driver in driving down the crime, at least as we've seen in Shakopee to record lows.
Dylan Olson 25:11
Nice. That's good.
Jon Russell 25:13
I think it's amazing. You know, going back to what we were talking about the beginning of this podcast, was serving the city, and it's amazing what has happened in our with our relationship with the police department, how it spread to other police departments. You know, our police chief is starting to talk about what's happening in shockbeat to other police chiefs that he's associated with, and they're starting to do the same things. Now there's money, and there's funds available for that, so this thing is starting to spread, yeah? But, you know, again, it all started with just the Lord opened up the door to serve. That's all. How can we serve you? There was a need in the community during covid Because they'd shut everything down, right, right, yeah, or we could use some kind of a community back to bring people together, yeah, didn't cost much money. Was a simple thing. A picnic. Started serving, then another door opens and another door opens, and then another door opens. Yeah, it's beautiful. How God does that? So I think anybody who's listening this podcast going, you know, I want to, I want to jump into something like that in my city. Yup, don't get so overwhelmed with right? You know your vision for it. The vision is good. Let's just start with taking that first step. Right? How can I serve you? It can be the simplest of things.
Dylan Olson 26:30
Exactly. It's good. Just look at your city. Yeah, it's not like, how do I get hundreds and 1000s of people to this event? It's not. How do I write a $20,000 check? It's not. It's not any of that stuff. It's just go and talk to your neighbor, your city, your other business owner, and say, What do you need today, next week? I mean, like, even like the PD, we would like in the marketplace, that's kind of like what we began with talking about the marketplace. That is one of the bigger employers, too, right? They have 50 sworn officers with how many other paid staff? Like, same thing with the school district. They're, they're, they're a large employer. So I think when we thought it, asked people, yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
Aaron Davitch 27:05
And I would just like give credit to Tony, who leads our team. He I just remember him, you know, years ago, saying to me, probably three, four years ago, you know, to he just suggested that you will reach out to the superintendent, reach out to this police chief, reach out to the city administrator, reach out to this county commissioner, you know. And and as a pastor, you know, my seminary training had nothing to do with any of this. And so I, you know, I this is all new to me. I didn't really know what this looked like. And as a pastor like who, I wouldn't necessarily think that any of these folks, these leaders in the community, would view a pastor as some somebody that they'd even want to meet with, let alone, you know, really partner with in these ways, but it's what it's turned into. And so even just making that phone call or sending that email or reaching out, you know, just just step out and see what the Lord wants to bless. But if your heart, I think, is in the right place, in the sense that you want to serve the city, and you're not making it about your church, yeah, I think the Lord will, he's able to open up doors that you might not think are going to be open.
Jon Russell 28:12
We gotta get Tony, yeah. And one of these, oh, he's on the next one. He is a dreamer. He is a doer. Come on Tony. And if Tony ever has an idea, says you should try this? Like, okay, yeah, no question, yeah. We'll jump into that, because he's just an amazing guy. Yeah, um, Aaron, I just want to bring up a question here so people listening this will maybe ask this question, because we do get it quite often. It's like, all of this stuff you're doing in the community. It's wonderful. It's awesome. Please keep doing it. But how are you promoting and spreading and sharing the gospel through these events? Yeah? Because we don't necessarily get a platform. Yeah? And, you know, do the classic altar call or, yeah, that's a great question. That's true, yeah? Because that's ultimately, this is why we're doing it. We want people to come to Jesus. Yeah, you know, we want people to learn and to understand experience that he really is the only answer for these things we're going after. Yeah, yep,
Aaron Davitch 29:15
yeah. I think, you know, we going back to the ministry of Jesus, going back to the early church, in the book of Acts. There's this pattern of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and demonstrating the good news of the kingdom. So again, proclamation, telling the gospel, but then demonstration, showing Jesus, showing the the power of the kingdom. And so we, we believe in both, or another way to say it would be maybe word and deed ministry. So what does word ministry look like? And again, for us, we do that weekly, where we go out for two three hours every week, to on Thursdays generally, to to talk to people. People to pray with people, and with many of them, probably one out of every three or so we, in some way share the gospel with them as well. And so we there is that weekly, consistent one on one, sharing of the gospel, there's and so we don't necessarily feel like we need to use an event to that's actually, in some cases, the city's event. Some of the other events we'll talk about in a future podcast are this event belongs to the city, and we're helping serve that event. So we're not going to turn that into a grandstand to preach the gospel from a microphone or something, but we do want to serve the city's events so but we believe that, you know, we are faithfully sharing the word each week, and we're also building relationships with city leaders and having some spiritual conversations with people that I can't necessarily share here, but we've had three instances in the past year or so where city leaders or county leaders have reached out to us when they've been going through a crisis or they've are making a big decision in life, and so they reach out to us because they're like, We know you guys, we trust you. I've only told my wife about this or that, but can you pray for me, or can you give me some counsel or some guidance on this or that? Or one of these leaders told me he was reading a book about Jesus and the Church, and he'd like to talk with me about it. And so just some of these relationships that we're building do lead to those conversations where the gospel is communicated, but we generally don't use the event itself to preach the gospel
Jon Russell 30:08
And at the events themselves. You know, we're out, roaming around, talking to people, getting to meet people, yeah, having conversations with people, praying with people, praying with people, make them cry tears of joy. Yeah? But that's, that's, I think we've decided that our approach is going to be, well, let's, let's meet people one on one. Come on, not the getting in front of a large crowd. Yeah, and proclaiming the gospel is bad. I mean, that's wonderful. I mean, y'all heard of Reinhardt Bonnke, come on, when he was alive, he'd get up in front of millions, millions, and, you know, hundreds of 1000s would come to Jesus, praise the Lord. Yeah. Billy Graham, yeah. But this is just a model that we've chosen, the one on one that Jesus, I think, demonstrated this beautifully in John chapter four with the woman at the well, he's just walking through Samaria. It was thirsty. Stopped at a well, started the conversation. Yeah. We don't necessarily know how long that conversation was, but let's say it was like our typical conversation with someone maybe 10 or 10 or 15 minutes. Yeah. Changed your life. Yeah, right, yeah. Not only did it change her life, but it changed the lives of everyone, yeah, in her city. So we can't underestimate the power of just the one on one conversation with somebody, the one on one simple prayer with somebody, even if they asked you to pray for their dog, right? You pray for their dog. Yep, you know, pray for well
Aaron Davitch 32:55
With that, should we I was just going to say, Should we share? Well, yeah. Should we wrap it up with the recent story you just shared with us?
Jon Russell 32:56
Certainly we can do that.
Dylan Olson 32:56
So I think, I think, I think with every time we do an episode, I think we should definitely like, We don't ever want old mana. I maybe even said that last time, we all want new mana, right? I want new, new, fresh testimony. What's, what's, what's happening? Don't give me something from 5- 10 years ago.
Jon Russell 33:20
What's manna?
Dylan Olson 33:20
Yeah we'll do that in podcast three or episode three. But what Manna is yeah, you hang it. Oh, man, dispense nope, nope. You got to come back. Okay, hit that subscribe button. Do all those things, whatever. But John, tell us about, yeah, tell us like, what you heard the feedback from, however long ago it was, but you heard the recent feedback from the from the outreach.
Jon Russell 33:41
Okay, so back in September, I was on my way back to church from an errand, and drove by this lady sitting out in her lawn, the bathrobe, smoking a cigarette. Middle of the day, her dog was next to her nice. They just kind of felt prompting from the Spirit just to stop, pull over and just engage her in conversation. So I did, went, started chatting with her and and eventually felt like the Lord opened up the door for me to ask if I could pray for her. And she said, Well, I'm, you know, I'm not really religious and into that sort of thing, but my dog is sick. Did you pray for my dog? Said, Sure, love to pray for your dog. So hand on his head, pray for your dog. But that touched her deeply. She She began to cry, yeah, and which led into a probably another hour long conversation about life and her life was not it was in a it was her life was a mess
Dylan Olson 34:45
That's rough.
Jon Russell 34:46
Let me just put it that way, pretty much every aspect of it, you know. And towards the end, you know, I just told her, sounds like you're have some questions about God, um. Know your history with God is very limited, and yeah, and all that. And I just asked her, but in all of that, would you be willing to just trust him with this? Trust Him with your life, trust Him with your challenges. Yeah, that's good. And she said she would, oh. And so we prayed again, nice, and she just put her in that prayer, put her trust in God. So over the next few months, I I texted her back and forth and and with some encouraging Bible verses, and she's always very quick to respond and thank you and whatever. On Thanksgiving Day, I sent her text wishing her Happy Thanksgiving, and then I never heard from after that. Last week I got a email from our person at the Welcome Center, and she just gotten off the phone with this lady's daughter. And apparently, this lady that I'm talking about that had this encounter with she passed away on Thanksgiving day. Wow, that last text that I made, yeah, and in her conversation with her daughter, her daughter was saying that her mom, for the last few months, just couldn't stop talking about this pastor, John guy, right?
Dylan Olson 36:14
That's awesome.
Jon Russell 36:15
And in fact, I had coffee with her today. Oh, nice, her daughter.
Dylan Olson 36:22
Oh, nice.
Jon Russell 36:23
And she just talked about how her mom just started on a journey of seeking God, reading the Bible more, talking more about God with her therapist, and things of that nature. Yeah, here's kind of the funny. Well, it's not really funny, but it's very interesting. This lady that I'm describing that I had the encounter with, you know, apparently she's diagnosed schizophrenic. I think it was fairly managed with medication. But her daughter told me these last several months they they thought that Pastor John was someone made up. Oh, no, in her mind, because they were schizophrenia, yeah, sure, until they went through her mom's stuff and they found my car Nice. That's awesome. It's a real person. No, yeah. And so we got together today, and the family is a similar situation, described themselves as non religious and don't really have an affiliation or faith in God, but they've asked me to come and help with the yes memorial service. Yeah, wow. And so we'll be in conversation about that. But you know, what an opportunity and yes, yeah, in the it See, there's the power. Come on, just the encounter with the one in front of you. Yeah. I mean, real simple is praying for the dog,
Dylan Olson 37:39
yeah. How many times, really quick, how many times do you think a rough guess? How many how many times you think that's happened, like, you met someone, stranger on the streets, pray from change their life, and then something in their life happened, and, you know, they were asked, they asked you, either both of you, to come in and do that wedding, do that funeral, you know, like, I feel
Jon Russell 37:56
like it's okay, you know, handful, yeah, for sure, we don't. We don't necessarily,
Dylan Olson 38:00
no, but it's just like a list, right? Like, this is, like, it's not a one off. It happens try, like, a handful or two, you know, times, and so it's good. So
Aaron Davitch 38:11
Maybe just to wrap it up, I think that we talked about the boots on the ground, the one on one every single week, consistently getting out there, engaging the city, one person at a time, but then also these ID this approach to also somehow engage the institutions of the city. I think the both and approach is a beautiful thing. And, yeah, and I think God can he can do that. He can open up doors and give you favor. And, and I think probably in a lot of cases, it begins with the one on one. Just get out there, start engaging one person at a time, pray with them, share the Gospel, love them, serve them. And a lot of times, that will lead to more open doors as you steward that opportunity, the Lord is attracted to that, and I think he'll open up more opportunities with the institution to the city as well.
Dylan Olson 39:01
So that's good, yeah, yeah. So tune in next time. And if you got this far way to go, you did a good job listening. And also, forgive me, I didn't feel like it didn't really do a good job of justice, of like introducing Aaron. So that third voice you heard was pastor Aaron. It's been a pastor for Hosanna for Since 2019 right, I think. And, and here's what I this is how I introduce him, is that he's the real deal, I guess, if I've ever, if I've ever talked to you about him before, like he's the real deal, like he's, he's, he's, he's just got a man. He's a man after God's own heart. And it's, it's fun to it's fun around to do Kingdom work with him. And, and just all the perspectives he has in the biblical just the the biblical mindset that he has. He's a great leader and developer of of disciples. And so, yeah, thanks, Aaron. This is good stuff. And thank you all for listening the second episode of outside the walls. And thanks, John, right.
Jon Russell 39:53
More stories coming from the street. Come on. Stories from the street.
Dylan Olson 39:56
That's right. Let's go. Alright, we'll see you guys.