Little Things with Great Love: How Grace Transforms the Ordinary

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His Kingdom.

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0:00:22.6 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome back to Grace at the Fray. Hey, I’ve got a big announcement and it’s a fun one, but you’re gonna have to wait till the very end of today’s episode. Hey, look, I’m just trying to compete with everything else that’s vying for your attention. Look, there’s a lot of really big things happening in our world, and every day we are bombarded with issues that seem to be life-altering and it’s just so overwhelming. My newsfeed is a constant stream of things around the globe that I can’t unknow and I can’t do anything about. It’s overwhelming because these things are just too big. Meanwhile, not in the news, the Lord is doing lots of little things. The work of God’s Kingdom is flying under our normal big things radar, like leaven in the dough or the smallest of seeds that slowly and silently grows into something glorious. I filmed today’s conversation last autumn when I was in Spain for the Serge Business for Transformation retreat where all of our field workers who run businesses in other countries gathered to talk shop, encourage one another, and submit their work to the Lord via corporate prayer and worship. One takeaway I had was that our field workers are doing all sorts of really amazing things. Amazing little things. Little things done with great love, as Mother Teresa said. And today’s another example of that. My guest is Parker and he is one of our field workers doing little things with great love. And I would add, little things with great love through a lifestyle of repentance. This episode is a story of a guy who has a growing vision for just how much more God wants to do. Every step of the way is an opportunity for more growth through fellowship with Jesus. Every moment gives opportunity for God to show how He has a bigger vision for us and the world and our life in it. Okay, there are a couple things going on in this episode that I wanna bring to your attention. First, I wanna see how wonderful it is the way the Lord prepares us now for the ministry calling He has for us in the future. It reminds me of Ephesians 2:10. “For we are what He has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.” Parker and his wife serve in London and it is a lot of fun to see how the Lord was preparing them well in advance. God was working leaven into the dough of their life, and it prepared them for the way God was calling them to serve in London today. I found this reminder very encouraging, and I hope that you do, too, especially if you are wondering if your present situation seems to be going nowhere. I think when you hear Parker’s story, you’re gonna see that the Lord has plans for His people, plans for you, and He’s inviting us all to participate now, trusting that it’s preparing us for something really wonderful. And second, this conversation with Parker offers a great opportunity to teach you an intentional prayer practice that we at Serge’s Renewal team call the five-minute drill. It’s an exercise to help you learn to listen to God and depend on him through prayer and a lifestyle of repentance. And it’s a practice that you can do anytime, anywhere. And Parker incorporates these ideas in his ministry, specifically in the story that he shares of a disagreement that he had with a colleague in a little thing that actually invited him to practice great love. Now, as we jump into this conversation with Parker, pay attention to how God prepares us in advance for the good work He has set in store for us. And before the second half of this conversation, I’m gonna outline the five-minute drill in more detail so that you can hear Parker’s story in light of that. And keep an eye out for how God is preparing you by inviting you into a lifestyle of repentance as you learn to depend on him for the little things that are done with great love. 

 

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0:04:51.6 Jim Lovelady Well, Parker, welcome to Grace at the Fray.

 

0:04:55.8 Parker M: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

 

0:04:56.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Welcome to Spain. We are in Malaga, well, we’re on the Costa del Sol. We are at a… It’s like a resort, I guess.

 

0:05:04.8 Parker M: Yeah, it is. It’s been really nice. We’ve actually been able to chill and relax and have people give food to us. It’s great.

 

0:05:10.7 Jim Lovelady: Oh, so my daughter’s in college, and so we went out and visited her, and we ate lunch at the food court in her university. And so then I’m walking around the food court downstairs, and I’m like, oh, this, this is how it should be. If this is what I had, I would definitely have the freshman 15. 

 

0:05:30.9 Parker M: Yes. Yes.

 

0:05:32.0 Jim Lovelady: So we’re here for a retreat with some of our folks, some of the folks in our company that are doing business in various countries, like have businesses in various countries, and you’re here hanging out. I’m here hanging out with these folks. These folks are awesome. But I wanna hear your story. Who are you? What are you doing here? 

 

0:05:55.2 Parker M: Yeah, yeah. I’m here this week especially just kind of as a learner, which has been really cool just to kind of see what it is that our company’s doing across all the different countries that maybe we don’t hear as much about. And we were doing a little bit of trying to get some business going in West London. But, yeah, it’s just been cool to be with people, be encouraged by what they’re doing and how the Lord’s using them in their different businesses and in different avenues of sharing the gospel. But so I’m married to Natalie. We’ve been married for coming on six years in December. We just had a little girl named Ruth.

 

0:06:29.6 Jim Lovelady: 10 months old.

 

0:06:30.4 Parker M: Yeah, 10 months old.

 

0:06:31.1 Jim Lovelady: At the recording of this.

 

0:06:33.2 Parker M: Yeah. And so she’s like, she’s learning how to stand up, and she’s starting to crawl around where we have to actually watch what she’s doing all the time. It’s been good fun. We’ve entered that phase where it’s easy when they’re laying down, and now we gotta keep paying more attention, which is fun.

 

0:06:46.6 Jim Lovelady: Is she like a vicious crawler? You have to start picking stuff up because…

 

0:06:51.0 Parker M: Oh, yeah. She’s all over the place. She loves a cable. She loves some dirty shoes. She loves anything except for the nice, clean toys that we give her.

 

0:06:59.3 Jim Lovelady: Right. “Hey, you can put that in your mouth. It’s okay.”

 

0:07:01.2 Parker M: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:07:01.8 Jim Lovelady: All the other stuff.

 

0:07:03.0 Parker M: I can relate to that, to be fair. So, yeah, it’s been really good. She’s really sweet, and we’ve just been really enjoying the last 10 months with her, which has been really awesome.

 

0:07:12.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s awesome. And you’re sleeping at night?

 

0:07:14.4 Parker M: Sleeping for the most part, yeah. We have teeth coming in, so there are some restless nights, but it’s been really good. We have constantly been saying Ruth’s very patient with us, trying to figure out how to be parents and dragging her around London and taking her to different places she doesn’t wanna go. She’s very, very patient with us.

 

0:07:33.7 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So how did y’all end up in London?

 

0:07:37.8 Parker M: Yeah, so back in 2017, I interned with the company, and I was over in a really similar area in West London that we are in now. And I got to spend some really great time with Barry and Lindsay and Amy. Barry and Lindsay have both been on the podcast before. You should watch their episodes too.

 

0:07:55.6 Jim Lovelady: Fantastic episodes.

 

0:07:57.2 Parker M: And I was like, man, I love what these guys are doing. I love what Serge is doing. And I was like, this was a really great internship. And it took a little while, but through some DMs on Instagram and Lindsay inviting us out for a site visit and the prospect of a new team, Natalie and I have come back, which has been really cool. And so we spent some time right after we got married trying to figure out where is it that the Lord has us. And for us, we’re looking for marginalized people groups, unreached people groups that we can work with. And had different things come across our plate that we’re like, “Ah, that’s not quite the right fit.” And what Lindsay pitched to us about what West London is up to is like, “Okay, I think that that could slot in with where we’re at.” The prospect of trying to do some coffee business, the prospect of doing some teaching for Natalie, like, this is something we can do together. And yeah, it really felt like our time in Nashville had prepared us for our time in West London.

 

0:08:59.3 Jim Lovelady: So what was the time in Nashville?

 

0:09:00.8 Parker M: So I spent some time in a coffee shop there and was working…

 

0:09:04.3 Jim Lovelady: Learning the ropes.

 

0:09:05.1 Parker M: Yeah, learning the ropes. I was managing a cafe, helped them open another location, which was good fun. Got to manage a cafe full of a bunch of high school students all during COVID, which was a really fun blast. It was really good. Very learning, yeah, and very learning, very stretching. But I’m really grateful for that time. And then Natalie was teaching middle school math, which is a whole different calling in and of itself, to teach middle schoolers how to add numbers together, how to teach boys to be adults, and… 

 

0:09:41.4 Jim Lovelady: So during COVID?

 

0:09:44.1 Parker M: Yeah. Yeah.

 

0:10:04.1 Jim Lovelady: Oh, man.

 

0:10:09.7 Parker M: And so we got married just before COVID. We both had pretty demanding jobs during COVID. And yeah, it felt like that time really prepped us for what life overseas could look like.

 

0:10:15.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So the idea in London was like, “Oh, hey, this passion that I have for coffee and for managing people.” I mean, really, the fact that all the things that you could have said about running or working at a coffee shop and you said managing people is like that’s a gift in and of itself, right? Because I don’t know, that’s not… I’ve worked at a coffee shop before, and I’ve been a manager of a coffee shop where I’m like, “This is a dumb job. I don’t want to do this.” 

 

0:10:20.8 Parker M: There are definitely parts of it that are not fun. Even the people part sometimes can be not fun because you have to get in on the grittiness of people’s lives. But the pieces that are really fun, like the latte art or having a natural anaerobic yirgacheffe Ethiopian, like all of those kind of the really nitty-gritty fun pieces.

 

0:10:40.3 Jim Lovelady: Wait, say it again. A natural anaerobic…

 

0:10:43.2 Parker M: Anaerobic Yeah.

 

0:10:43.9 Jim Lovelady: What’s an anaerobic coffee?

 

0:10:45.2 Parker M: Fermented coffee. And so coffee is a cherry, and then inside of that is the pit, which is the coffee bean. And so if you put all of that, the berry and the bean, into a bag and let it ferment just a little bit, it makes it 10 times sweeter, but in a nice, boozy, sweet kind of way. It’s good.

 

0:11:06.9 Jim Lovelady: Really?

 

0:11:07.4 Parker M: Yeah. And so…

 

0:11:08.9 Jim Lovelady: I need you to open up a coffee shop so that I can try that.

 

0:11:11.9 Parker M: Yes. Well, hopefully we’ll have one soon.

 

0:11:14.2 Jim Lovelady: Okay. Natural anaerobic Ethiopian yirgacheffe.

 

0:11:17.5 Parker M: Yirgacheffe, yeah.

 

0:11:18.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. The yirgacheffe is the tree, the type of coffee tree?

 

0:11:21.8 Parker M: That one is specifically the region that it’s grown in.

 

0:11:24.2 Jim Lovelady: Oh, okay, gotcha.

 

0:11:25.4 Parker M: And so arabica would be…

 

0:11:26.9 Jim Lovelady: Robusta or arabica, right?

 

0:11:28.9 Parker M: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

 

0:11:29.6 Jim Lovelady: There you go.

 

0:11:30.3 Parker M: Yeah. And so you can get into the nitty-gritty of learning coffee, or you can get into latte art. You can get into the people, which was mine. And so getting to watch a bunch of high school students learn how to pour latte art or to see them… Like we had a kid who started off and I think every week, at least twice a week, he would call me and be like, “Hey, I can’t come in today. My mom didn’t wake me up on time.” That kind of thing.

 

0:11:54.3 Jim Lovelady: Oh okay. Yeah.

 

0:11:55.4 Parker M: Learning how to be your first job. And then to watch him grow into then becoming our lead barista and managing the cafe, that for me did it.

 

0:12:05.1 Jim Lovelady: Good for him.

 

0:12:05.7 Parker M: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really cool.

 

0:12:07.3 Jim Lovelady: “My mom didn’t wake me up.” Oh, boy.

 

0:12:09.2 Parker M: Yeah. I didn’t hire your mom. I hired you. And you have a phone, it has an alarm. We can fix this.

 

0:12:15.1 Jim Lovelady: We can be adults here.

 

0:12:15.6 Parker M: Yeah. Yeah.

 

0:12:16.4 Jim Lovelady: And now he’s running stuff.

 

0:12:17.9 Parker M: And then he’s, yeah, he’s managing the cafe. That’s awesome. He was winning latte art throwdowns, stuff like that. It was awesome.

 

0:12:25.0 Jim Lovelady: Latte art throwdowns. This is a whole… I love coffee. I have a Gaggia classic. Did I tell you about this?

 

0:12:30.9 Parker M: No.

 

0:12:31.0 Jim Lovelady: I have a Gaggia classic in my house. Lori and I, it’s our morning ritual is to grab our coffee and then listen to our prayer thing. And I’ve got it all dialed in and everything. But latte art throwdowns.

 

0:12:42.6 Parker M: Oh, yeah. You get a little competition going. You make a bracket.

 

0:12:46.0 Jim Lovelady: Epic battles.

 

0:12:47.6 Parker M: Yeah, you make a bracket, you go off two by two and see who can pour the best rosetta, pour the best swan, things like that. And then you work it all the way down to who wins.

 

0:12:57.5 Jim Lovelady: My brother’s a total coffee geek and he’s really good at latte art. So maybe I need to put him in the bracket sometime.

 

0:13:04.7 Parker M: They’re really fun.

 

0:13:04.8 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s awesome.

 

0:13:05.4 Parker M: Yeah. They can be really competitive, but they can also just be a good hangout.

 

0:13:09.7 Jim Lovelady: It’s like what’s the popular… Pickleball! Pickleball.

 

0:13:16.6 Parker M: Yes. It’s pickleball for baristas. 

 

0:13:22.6 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. But every once in a while you get a really vicious barista that’s ready to go.

 

0:13:25.2 Parker M: Oh, yeah. We had one of those in Nashville. We had a really intense… He was like a national competitor. And I was like, “Brother, we’re just here to hang out. It’s gonna be okay.” He always beat me, though, to be fair. So I never beat him. So he was in it to win.

 

0:13:42.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, right. Oh, I love that. He came with his game face. His barista game face. Oh, man. What is the swan? All right, we’ll talk about that. I’ll take lessons. I want to enter the competition.

 

0:13:59.0 Parker M: Yes. We’ll get you squared away.

 

0:14:00.9 Jim Lovelady: That’s awesome. So okay, so that was prepping you, and Natalie was doing education and that was prepping her. So what has it been like? You’ve been there for three years?

 

0:14:11.8 Parker M: Yeah, yeah. Coming up on three years. Been there for like two and a half or so. And yeah, it’s been really good. I feel like where we were living in Nashville, what we were doing, the kind of people we were interacting with, definitely not a one-to-one switch over by any means, but it did feel like we were prepping to be in a spot where it’s like, yeah, how can we love our neighbors really well? And a big piece of our calling is we were looking for what this calling was gonna be and we were just waiting for it in Nashville. And so we were like, “Let’s figure out what Nashville has for us.” And so we were trying to do the best to love our neighbors there and then we just kind of took that and moved it over to West London. And so a big piece of our calling was kind of waiting for what overseas work was gonna look like for us. And so we were hanging out in Nashville just kind of waiting for whatever the Lord would put in front of us. We were there for several years before we actually…

 

0:15:06.9 Jim Lovelady: But still thinking strategically, it sounds like. Intent on, “We’re ready for whatever the Lord has for us. We’re not sure what that is.”

 

0:15:15.1 Parker M: Yeah. It was like, “Yeah, let’s just love our neighbors really well. Let’s get in here and be a part of the community.” And this community doesn’t necessarily look exactly like us or come from the places that we come from, but how can we be in this together and love each other well? And I mean, that’s really what being in West London is about, too. It’s a bunch of people who have… None of us are from West London. I can’t think of very many people in our church or in our community that are actually from West London. But we’re all together and we’re just figuring out how to be West Londoners together.

 

0:15:46.0 Jim Lovelady: Nice.

 

0:15:46.4 Parker M: Yeah.

 

0:15:46.5 Jim Lovelady: So what’s it been like to be West Londoners?

 

0:15:48.5 Parker M: It’s been good. I am really thankful for where we are at as a team and as a church and with all of our different programs. Our church has been different than we anticipated when the whole thing was first kicking off. We live in a highly South Asian community. A lot of people from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, those kind of places. And that is certainly represented in our church. But we also have this huge contingency of people from the Middle East who are refugees and asylum seekers. And so we have a lot of people from places like Iran, South America, anywhere that there’s conflict, we have met people from those places because they’re coming to the UK for asylum. And so we have this huge contingency in our church of people looking for safety. And then we have another large swath of people who are coming because they’re looking for economic growth and got a visa and came over here to work and those kind of things, which is really great. And so it’s been this really cool extra blend of people groups that we weren’t really anticipating. And so that kind of changed our team dynamic, our team vision just a little bit. Where originally when we were talking about education for Natalie, it’s like, “Oh, maybe this could be tutoring classes or something after school.” It kind of developed into, “What if it was actually English classes for people who are looking to learn English and are new to the country and didn’t come here on a visa, they came here on asylum?” And that was led by Sarah on our team. She’s done an incredible job with our English classes.

They’ve grown huge. And then Natalie got to slot right into that and help her with that, which has been really cool. We have space for 35 people or so and 50 people show up. So it’s been massive and something we weren’t anticipating, but really fun. And then we have the coffee stuff coming up and trying to figure out how we can do something to sustain the English classes that cost money and also give opportunities for these people who are coming on asylum and looking for jobs and looking for in-country experience. And so we’ve started to begin a coffee roasting program that we can use to hire them and then not be in a cafe space where they would have to take orders in English and really be on top of their English, but we can be in a roasting space where we’re in a closed room. It’s just me and them, and I can be a little bit more forgiving in my English than maybe a customer would be about their latte. And it’s like, “All right, let’s get some work experience for you and hopefully help you get whatever the next best career option is for you.” And we have our apprentice, Sav is helping me with that. Our coffee bags look really cool because of the work that she’s doing.

 

0:18:30.6 Jim Lovelady: Oh, like, she’s designed…

 

0:18:32.1 Parker M: Oh, yeah. And she’s crushing the design. And we have a young lady from Iran who’s been helping us out and roasting with us, and those two are helping me try to figure out how to make this whole thing work and actually get it off the ground.

 

0:18:43.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s awesome. So we’re at this conference where all of our folks who have businesses in various countries where it’s difficult to have a Christian presence—difficult toward impossible. Nothing’s impossible, but, I mean, there are some stories. We’ve already been here…

 

0:19:02.2 Parker M: There’s a couple extra barriers for them.

 

0:19:04.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. That these stories are… I mean, one of the things that hurts about being here is that these are stories that can’t go out on the podcast platform. And so I’m like, “Oh, there’s so many amazing things going on.” So just know, just take our word for it, the Lord is doing amazing things all over the world. But what have you learned so far in terms of what you wanna be doing in West London and what you’re seeing some of the other folks? We’re only half a day into this, but what are some of the things that you’ve observed that are like, “Oh, I wanna see if I can incorporate that,” or, “Oh, I can really resonate with that experience or that difficulty,” or all the SWOT analysis stuff?

 

0:19:47.8 Parker M: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We love a good SWOT analysis.

 

0:19:49.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:19:50.8 Parker M: I think it’s cool to see what people are struggling with categorically are all kind of the same, of the amount of work it takes to get something off the ground or how to leverage that into an actual ministry for people. Or what we were talking about today, we have kind of a three-bottom-line strategy of something that has social impact, something that has missional impact, and then something that actually turns a profit.

 

0:20:18.2 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:20:19.0 Parker M: And it’s like those are the same three things that I’m struggling with.

 

0:20:40.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Fantastic.

 

0:20:41.2 Parker M: We get to be in the room and encourage each other in those things and point each other to Christ and be like, “Hey, God’s not surprised that this is a lot bigger or a lot smaller than you thought it was gonna be, or the hiccups that were coming along the way.” He knew about those things, and so you can relax and trust Him in that.

 

0:20:42.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, it’s been really good. I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the reports from the teams. But I think you’re right. It’s the three-bottom-line. What was it? It’s gonna make a profit, it’s gonna be fruitful, and it’s gonna have an impact for the culture. That’s fantastic.

 

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0:21:00.8 Jim Lovelady: I wanna pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week we are praying for our teams in Singapore. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks as they do their work in the love and fellowship of Christ. Grow them in Christlikeness. Grow their sense of complete and utter dependence on you. Give them joy in their work in your Kingdom and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let your grace abound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children, and with the people that they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness, and restore to them the joy of your salvation. Let your Kingdom come and your will be done in these places, just as it is in Heaven. We pray in your name. Amen.

 

0:22:09.5 Jim Lovelady: And now, before we jump back into this conversation with Parker, I wanna teach you the five-minute drill. It’s a prayer practice, and so there are four steps to the five-minute drill, and they follow the rhythm of Psalm 139:23 and 24. “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my thoughts. See if there’s any wicked way in me,” and then “lead me in the way everlasting.” All right, so step one. Notice when you’re feeling out of sorts. Now, this may take a minute. Pay attention to any time you’re feeling overwhelmed, out of control, anxious, frustrated, scared, like you’re all alone. These are usually good signs that something isn’t right in our hearts and that God’s inviting us to talk with Him about something. In the last day or two, where have you felt out of sorts, emotionally or spiritually? Here’s an example. Maybe I’m going with a team to share my faith door-to-door for the day, and I’m feeling a lot of anxiety about that. All right. Well, step two. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your unbelief. Here’s another minute. Even if you’re keeping calm on the surface, whenever you notice that you’re feeling unsettled, spend a minute or two silently asking the Holy Spirit to reveal what’s going on in your heart. Often it’s being caused by our unbelief. There’s something about the gospel or about Christ that we’re not receiving, trusting, or relying on. So you would pray, “Holy Spirit, what am I not believing is true about God? His love for me, His provision for me?” So, for example, I think the reason I’m so anxious about sharing my faith is that I’m afraid that I’m gonna look foolish or that the people who answer the door will immediately reject me. I don’t like being in situations where I’m not in control, and so I’m feeling a bit like God has left me all alone in this. So step three. Listen for the Holy Spirit to remind you of the gospel. This is like two minutes. Once the Holy Spirit has helped you put your finger on where you may not be believing the gospel, ask Him to help you see how God is able to meet your real, real needs. Scripture, the words of worship songs, or maybe spending time recounting God’s promises or how He has met your real needs in the past are all great ways to be reminded of the truth of the gospel. So you would pray, “Holy Spirit, now that I’m starting to see what I’m not believing about God, remind me what is true based on God’s word.” So, for example, in light of my anxiety, I need to cling to God’s promises. I’m not alone. God is always with me, and He is always in control. God’s power is perfected in my weakness. I’m here to love other people because Jesus has first loved me. And it’s okay if I look foolish because my reputation is established by Christ’s work on the cross and not by what I do or by what I fail to do. So then step four. Re-engage the situation. This is the last minute of the five-minute drill. Now that you have a little gospel sanity restored, it’s time to re-engage the situation. Remember that no matter what the task is, God is right here with you, and He wants to partner with you to accomplish His work. He’s the senior partner, and you’re the junior partner. More than that, He’s your perfect and good Heavenly Father, and you are His child. So you can always look to Him and His leading when you aren’t sure what to do. So you pray, “Father, how do you want me to partner with you so that my trust and dependence on you grows in this situation?” So, for example, okay, I’m gonna go knock on a door, and when I do, I’m gonna trust that my Heavenly Father is in charge and that He loves the people who live there, even if I’m scared of them, and that He wants to work in and through my fear to connect with these people. This process is a helpful way to be sensitive all throughout the day, encouraging us to be continually aware of and dependent on the Holy Spirit. It’s a lifestyle of repentance. It’s more about changing your heart than about adding more to-dos to your list. And because it’s not about measuring up spiritually, but rather about growing in awareness of the needs we already have, it allows our needs to drive us back to Christ. So now let’s rejoin Parker and be on the lookout for these elements that are at play in his story. How the Lord brought him to repentance and how he learns to love the way that Jesus loves. 

 

0:26:58.5 Jim Lovelady: So, okay, so you sent me an email, ’cause I can’t remember exactly how I asked the question. Do you remember what I said?

 

0:27:06.3 Parker M: You said something along the lines of, like, “Where have you seen God’s grace recently?” or something like that. “What of God’s grace is fueling your work this past week?”

 

0:27:15.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Well, I mean, the podcast is called Grace at the Fray. So, like, where are you seeing God’s grace at the frayed edges of life? And you just, like, laid out this gloriously articulate… I mean, it’s probably just because it’s just very real, very present right now. And I love… I told you this earlier, I love it how you just poke our folks and out comes ministry through weakness. And so I appreciated how you just shared in your email, “Yeah, this is what’s going on.” So talk about that, because it was awesome.

 

0:27:44.1 Parker M: Yeah, I think one of the big things I’ve been thinking about, really, just this week, someone on our team was talking about how when she is responding to someone being like, “Hey, how are you doing? How was your week this week?” and she’s like, “Oh, it was busy.” It’s like, what is that communicating to our friends? What is that communicating even to our own hearts of, like, “Oh, I’ve got a lot of really important stuff going on this week, and so be careful what you’re about to ask me about going to dinner,” or something like that.

 

0:28:14.0 Jim Lovelady: It’s a wall, immediately.

 

0:28:32.7 Parker M: Yeah. And it’s probably a wall to ourselves as well. We’re building up, like, “I gotta do all these really important things.” And I was like, that really, for me, this week, really struck a chord of, like, “Ooh, I think I’m doing that.” And I think I’ve been really busy, and I’ve been really, like, locked in, and I’m not seeing people quite as much as I am called to see them. And all these things that we’re doing, like the coffee roasting and English and youth club and church events and even setting up sound and leading worship on Sundays…

 

0:28:51.4 Jim Lovelady: ‘Cause you’re leading worship and running sound.

 

0:28:54.7 Parker M: Oh, yeah. We get to pack it up and put it up every week, which is good fun. But yeah, it’s just all those little programs, all really good things, all things that need to get done and things that need to get done really well.

 

0:29:06.3 Jim Lovelady: It’s always good things. It’s never, like, “Oh, I’m really busy doing these horrible…” Yeah, it’s never that. It’s always, “And if I don’t do it, who’s gonna do it?” and I mean, all those things.

 

0:29:17.0 Parker M: I think even right now, He currently still is pushing me. But I think the thing that I’m constantly realizing is that whole busyness and, I don’t know, sometimes it feels like I’m trying to balance my busyness and ministry, or my busyness and family and ministry and friendships, and trying to hold all these different balls together. And I think the thing that the Lord is really pushing me towards is, like, “Hey, all those things kind of can go together.” And He’s given me very graciously… He’s given our church, really, so many different people to come along and to take responsibilities in our church and in our programs and volunteers for our English class and all of these things, like these relationships where we get to draw people in to do work with us that both take away from a bit of the busyness… A different kind of busy, but take away from the busyness and then also allow us to do work better. And so, like, setting up sound is, like, there were some days where… There would be a Sunday where I would show up and set up sound and tear down sound, lead worship, go home, and I’d be like, “Man, I feel like I just clocked in and out of church. I need to re-listen to that sermon because I was kind of hazing right through it.”

 

0:29:17.8 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:30:38.6 Parker M: And the Lord has very graciously given us a really good tech team. And we’ve got a local guy who is way more competent in sound and tech than I am, who’s helping me do this thing. And also graciously, not even just that, but this guy has a heart for building up a team. And so he’s, like, grabbing some of the younger guys and he’s like, “Okay, let’s learn how to wrap cables and how to turn on the sound and make sure we don’t fry the soundboard,” and all of those kind of good things, gathering a crew. And it’s like, now we’ve got a crew and we can do this as a team. And I don’t have to sit there and do this by myself. We actually get to do it together, and we get to point one another to Christ. We can be like, “Hey, why don’t you take 30 minutes and go sit a row back or two and not sit at the soundboard and listen to the music or something?” and we can be there and support one another, which has been really cool. And we’ve had that with our English classes and our youth clubs and things like that, like volunteers coming along that we get to actually do ministry with.

 

0:31:45.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:31:46.1 Parker M: That’s fulfilling our mission as a church.

 

0:31:48.9 Jim Lovelady: Right. It’s not this separate thing. “I got this stuff that I got to do, and I’ve got people to minister to.” Well, it just so happens that the overlap of those is…

 

0:31:57.8 Parker M: Yeah. That’s such a mercy of the Lord that that happens, ’cause there are certainly churches all across the world that are desperate for volunteers and desperate for people to come along and help them. And the fact that we have a really strong, healthy team, the fact that we have a really strong and healthy church… This is, we’re in a season of growth and really gracious growth. That’s really been exciting me and fueling me the last couple weeks, to see not just the soundboard in front of me, but to look around and see the sound team with me has been something that has really pushed me to the Lord this week.

 

0:32:32.4 Jim Lovelady: I love that. Okay, so the Lord convicts you of your busyness by having people start to speak into your life. It’s cool that the very thing that brought conviction is these people, is actually the Lord’s freedom as well, where, I don’t know how many times you said, “I don’t have to do that. I no longer have to do fill in the blank.” Talk to me more about how that’s freeing you, that what is that, “You don’t have to do that anymore.”

 

0:33:00.8 Parker M: Yeah, I think it’s even freeing me in the sense of wanting it a certain way or in a certain time frame or in a certain style of like, am I okay with the way things are set up if it’s not meticulously, like, the exact same…

 

0:33:21.5 Jim Lovelady: Done the way you want it to be done. Yeah.

 

0:33:23.0 Parker M: Yeah, because of course, my way’s the perfect way that we were gonna do it, you know? And that’s been freeing too, to see someone take ownership and to be like, “I’m gonna own this and I’m gonna do it my way.”

 

0:33:34.7 Jim Lovelady: Okay, but it had to have been hard the first time.

 

0:33:36.3 Parker M: Oh, yeah. 100%.

 

0:33:37.7 Jim Lovelady: What was the first time like? Don’t name names. 

 

0:33:40.6 Parker M: Yes, the first time recently, let me think. The first time recently, I think probably about six, seven months ago, when my buddy’s helping me set up sound. And he comes from… There’s just a different style of setting up sound that he does. It’s kinda like a, “Are you a Ford or Toyota guy?”

 

0:33:49.5 Jim Lovelady: Okay.

 

0:34:05.6 Parker M: It’s like both of them are fine. They’ll both get you where you need to go. But are you gonna do it this way? Are you gonna do it that way? And he’s one way and I’m the other, which is fine. But I kept looking at him and being like, “What are you doing? You’re using the wrong kind of cable. I wanna do it this way.” And I was getting really… I was honestly, I was getting really frustrated.

 

0:34:23.1 Jim Lovelady: Right…

 

0:34:23.5 Parker M: Of just like…

 

0:34:23.6 Jim Lovelady: Right. Before you were about to lead worship.

 

0:34:24.6 Parker M: Yeah. 

 

0:35:31.3 Jim Lovelady: I love it. Yep.

 

0:35:58.3 Parker M: Yeah, I’m just like, “What are we doing?” And yeah, it can be really frustrating to sit there and watch someone do the thing that you really love, ’cause I do love setting up sound. I do love leading worship at church. And to see it be done differently is like, “Oh, come on, dude.” And yeah, it took me a long time to get out of that headspace, I think. I think this is where it was helpful working at a coffee shop full of high schoolers who were not doing things the way that I wanted them to be done.

 

0:36:25.3 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:36:39.1 Parker M: That was very much a preparation for what this is now, because this is so much lower stakes in terms of the amount of work. It’s much more important work because it’s church work. But yeah, I think watching high schoolers sit there and try to figure out how to make lattes is great preparation for letting people in and just being like, “Yeah, this is okay.”

 

0:36:52.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, learning how to delegate and learning how to let it not be the way you think it needs to be, all for the sake of… And I think you said this earlier, all for the sake of the relationships that are being built, where I love it that the Spirit goes, “Hey, you’re forgetting about people.” So where have you seen the freedom of that? The story of the guy doing Toyota sound versus Ford sound or whatever is this convicting moment. But where have you seen the fruit of that kind of repentance where Jesus goes, “See, I told you it was liberating”?

 

0:37:20.4 Parker M: Yeah.

 

0:38:14.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, what is that?

 

0:38:14.9 Parker M: Yeah, I think that has turned into just a really sweet friendship. That’s kind of the first piece. We already had this friendship kind of developing as he joined the sound team. And yeah, he is one of my closest friends in West London. And we have different ways of doing things, but we are able to do it in a way that is like, “Oh, look, we’re just trying to make sure people can hear the pastor. We’re just trying to make sure people can hear the music.” And everything else… My grandfather says this all the time, everything else is gravy, you know? And if it looks clean, that’s great, perfect. If it doesn’t, people can still hear the pastor. And I think coming in with that mentality has been really helpful. And that is of God, that both of us have been coming in with that. Because there are certainly times where he’s looked at me setting up sound and been like, “That’s not how I would do that.”

 

0:38:15.5 Jim Lovelady: Right, totally. 

 

0:38:15.8 Parker M: But we both can call one another on that and be like, “Hey, we’re just here to make the pastor be heard.” And look, we got these two, three young guys that are helping us. Let’s just show them how we can do this together and just have fun with it. And so we get to have fun on a Sunday setting up and talk about what our weeks were like. And we’re on the same page. We know what we’re doing now. And yeah, everything else from there is just gravy.

 

0:38:16.1 Jim Lovelady: It’s just gravy.

 

0:38:16.3 Parker M: Yeah.

 

0:38:21.1 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s so good. You’ve begun this journey of repenting of busyness and how your busyness is shielding you from difficult relationships. I mean, it really is easier to just get a job done than it is to bring people with you and to love people while you’re doing that thing. But if you have not love, you’re a sounding gong.

 

0:38:25.8 Parker M: Yeah.

 

0:38:28.5 Jim Lovelady: You know? And so you’ve begun this journey. What do you say to people who are like me, who are like… This conviction of being super busy, having no margin, and but also the wake-up call to investigate what exactly is it that I have to be doing that makes my life so busy? All the way down to the nitty-gritty of what exactly is it that I have to be doing that the cable has to be rolled this way? Anyway, so what do you say to people who are starting to realize just how busy they are and how idolatrous that is?

 

0:38:30.3 Parker M: Yeah, I think what I would say is I’m still trying to figure it out, and I think I probably will be for a long time. And the thing that we need to remember is Christ, right? And the Christ who went after the one instead of the 99. There’s always a lot of things to do, but what are we called to do? And sometimes we’re already doing those things too. Sometimes there’s just… We’re doing a lot of work and we’ve been called to all that work. But then also, how can we invite people into that? And so I think that that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out this week is, I’m feeling busy right now, this week, this month. How can I invite people along into that? It might be more strenuous work for a little bit to train someone on how to do something, but how can I share that, which would actually bring us together? It wouldn’t take away from things. It wouldn’t make me more busy. It would actually offload some of my work and it would bring us together, which are both of the things that I’m trying to do right now. And I think that that’s the kind of thing that we need to remember, that Christ is at work in all of these things. And if we think that we’re powerful enough to either cause it to fall apart or make it better than Christ has planned, we’re not that powerful. We’re not powerful enough to do either of those things.

 

0:39:58.0 Jim Lovelady: I mean, really, that is kind of the fundamental idolatry, the “Jesus, I don’t trust you to sufficiently get the job done, so I gotta do it myself” in all of these areas. I have to maintain control in all of these areas. That’s why I’m so busy, is that I have to have a say about all of this stuff. And Jesus goes, “Hey, you know, I actually am sovereign. Hey, I actually am good. I actually am wise. Just trust me. Do you trust me?” And I go, “No, that’s why I’m super busy.” And He goes, “We’re gonna learn. I love you so much. I’m gonna teach you how to trust me.” Yeah. “Okay. Show me. Guide me.” And I love that when you pray that prayer, it ends up being something like the guy’s wrapping the cable incorrectly. That’s where the Lord goes, “This is where we’re moving. This is how we’re gonna do this.”

 

0:40:53.2 Parker M: Yes. And like, “Are you okay with that?”

 

0:40:55.7 Jim Lovelady: “No, I’m not okay. But okay, help me to be okay.”

 

0:40:59.3 Parker M: But it will be okay.

 

0:41:01.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah. Everything is gonna be okay.

  

0:41:07.7 Jim Lovelady: That’s really good. Well, okay, in light of that, we are at a resort hotel in southern Spain. You should go swim in the Mediterranean.

 

0:41:17.6 Parker M: Oh, I’m gonna go take a dip.

 

0:41:17.8 Jim Lovelady: Take a dip.

 

0:41:19.6 Parker M: We’re in gloomy season in London, and we’ve got sunshine and warm water outside. We don’t get that a whole lot. 

 

0:41:28.1 Jim Lovelady: Okay. Yeah. So that will be your rest.

 

0:41:29.8 Parker M: Yes.

 

0:41:30.2 Jim Lovelady: You can be busy swimming in the… I dipped my feet in, and the water’s just fine. So, well, thanks, man. Thanks for hanging out.

 

0:41:38.4 Parker M: Thanks for having me.

 

[music]

 

0:41:45.8 Jim Lovelady: Did you see the elements of the five-minute drill at play in real-life situations? This is God’s grace showing up at the frayed edges of life. Parker tells a story of how he started repenting of his busyness and how the Lord brought him through repentance into fellowship with Himself. And the catalyst was his frustration. But the fruit of repentance was a sweetness of reconciliation and fellowship with his friend. So let’s review. Step one: notice when you’re feeling out of sorts. This happened when Parker realized his frustration about a little thing, wrapping cables, and how it brought conviction about his busyness. Step two: ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your unbelief. This is where Parker realized his busyness was preventing him from loving other people the way Jesus loves. And then step three: listen for the Holy Spirit to remind you of the gospel.This is where he remembered that Christ is the one who is chasing after us, chasing after him. He’s at work in all of these things, and He is good. And then step four: re-engage the situation. Remember how he re-engaged the situation with patience and kindness for the people that he loves and the people that he serves with. The fruit of fellowship with God isn’t a bigger to-do list. It’s a greater love for the Lord and for the people that you serve. And I’m always amazed at how it shows up in the little things. My conversation with Parker was humbling because I saw a guy doing little things in faith and how those little things build over a lifetime into great love because he was walking with the God who is so gracious as He works His great love into the minutia of life. If you wanna begin incorporating the five-minute drill into your prayer life, follow the link in the show notes for that and begin to see how little steps of repentance begin to transform your life as the Lord prepares you for greater and greater opportunities to love like Him. Now, before I go, I have that big announcement, right? All right, so I got two words for you. Serge merch. Yeah, we’re launching a Serge storefront soon, and to celebrate, we’re doing a giveaway contest, and I want to give you early access. You can enter this contest at serge.org/giveaway. It’s quick and easy, and I’ll leave a link for all that in the show notes. And now, as the Lord sends you into His glorious life in the Kingdom of God to do the little things with great love, remember that He’s with you and His blessing surrounds you. So may the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you, turn His bright eyes to you and give you His peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

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