In this episode (our 200th!), Nate has a chance to talk with Jason Dunn, NewCity's Executive Director of Congregational Care, and soon to be Associate Pastor. Jason has been at NewCity since 2009, became a Ruling Elder several years ago, and is now accepting a call to the Associate Pastor position. He currently splits his time between overseeing Family Ministries, Congregational Care, and Kingdom Partnerships.
In this episode (our 200th!), Nate has a chance to talk with Jason Dunn, NewCity's Executive Director of Congregational Care, and soon to be Associate Pastor. Jason has been at NewCity since 2009, became a Ruling Elder several years ago, and is now accepting a call to the Associate Pastor position. He currently splits his time between overseeing Family Ministries, Congregational Care, and Kingdom Partnerships.
Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, nate Claybourne, and today we have Jason Dunn with us. How are we doing, jason? Doing really great. Glad to be here, glad to talk with you, I knew you would be, so we brought you on for a variety of reasons. I'm going to list them right now, just in order. The first reason is this is our 200th episode and you have not been a solo guest on a podcast, so this seemed like the time to do it.
Speaker 2:Awesome, I can't wait. This is quite an honor. I'm glad I am the 200th. The 200th.
Speaker 1:yeah, it's a special day. The other reason, which is probably more germane to what we're going to talk about, is that Damien announced yesterday that we're holding a congregational vote on your behalf, I guess we would say for you this coming Sunday.
Speaker 2:It would be the only agenda item in the congregational meeting which would be a vote related to my call as associate pastor here at New City.
Speaker 1:That's right. So that's really why we're here today. We're not here to reminisce about previous, all of Life episodes. We're here to talk about this upcoming, not the vote per se, but some of your journey to get to this point, some of what the road ahead looks like. So let's look back a little bit. So, back in, I want to say it was November. Well, you started November 22.
Speaker 2:Yeah, november 22. That's right In the middle of the month, pretty much closer to December, but yeah, by the start of then.
Speaker 1:And then we did like little little intro podcast with a whole bunch of us. That staff started full time then. So people can, we can throw that in the show notes and people can go back and listen to that if they want to. But since that point in time, just give us a little bit of a rundown on what you've been involved in, what you've been doing here at New City. We can talk about the ins and the outs of the ordination process. I'm sure everyone wants to know all those nitty gritty details.
Speaker 2:Well, since I started here over a little bit over a year ago now maybe a year and four months is yeah I've been doing a lot of different things. One, as I discussed in the previous episode, I have three big buckets underneath kind of my responsibility, and one of them is over our children and young not young adult, but student ministry here, at New City and so I've been doing a lot of leaning in there.
Speaker 2:We've hired some interns ministry interns, a couple of our pastoral interns from RTS, another one is a UCF college student and they've been helping out in different ways both with city kids but also with our student ministry. So it's been a big bucket of focus for me and we are currently still looking for a city kids director.
Speaker 1:That's a good plug right now.
Speaker 2:Katie Anderson has stepped away and she did a great job, but we need somebody to fill her shoes still, so if you know of anybody out there, it's a tall task, it is a tall task. We have lots of kids over 120 kids every Sunday, and not only the kids. We're relating to the parents, we're trying to partner with our parents in that ministry, and so there's just a lot of work there, a lot of good work for the church to do.
Speaker 1:Very important work, right? Yes, very important work.
Speaker 2:The second big bucket for me has been working with Sarah over the last year just kind of refining our shepherding process and some words we use, some around. That is restorative discipleship and just the way we're going to equip our people to care for others. We did a soul care learning community in, I think, in 23, right.
Speaker 2:It was about this time last year, yeah, this time last year and part of that was one of the quotes that Ben had said there and Sarah helped lead. That was we want to have the ears of God so we can speak the words of God. I think that was Bonhoeffer, and so that's been a big focus for me and Sarah, kind of working through the way we want to equip our people, the way we want to resource our people and the way we want to just sit with our people who are experiencing some sins, sorrow and suffering. So that's been a big bucket. The last bucket that I've been working through and not as much focus has been. But this is we can turn to this maybe about my hopes and future in a couple of minutes here.
Speaker 2:It's a good pivot it's a good pivot is the Kingdom partnerships and the way that New City thinks about and longs to not only be here in existence for our own members and their equipping to fulfill the law of Christ, as I said in my previous little podcast with Damien, but also for our members to be sent into the world to be laborers among those who are in the harvest and so in their vocational call ins, whatever that might be. So that Kingdom partnership plays alongside of that, because we have different ways that we partner in, both with our neighbors here in the city but also in the nations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I mean that's helpful at the end. There, I think when people hear Kingdom partnerships, it's not just missions, but it's tied in with missions. It's more than that. I think that's our, it's a missional impulse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we say our mission here at New Cities to call, form and send disciple makers. So we lean real heavy into Ephesians 4 where the pastoral team, the staff of the church, lean into equip our saints for the work of ministry and part of that is sending our members and family of Christ into their workplaces, into their families and into the world, and right into the world. Maybe is the traditional way you could say missions with an S is, but all of it's a part of the missio day the mission of God to be sent. You know we gather together so that we can be scattered out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as our signs say, as you're, as you're leaving on Sunday morning. Now you are sent, or I mean, we say it in the benediction as well, but it's a. You live on mission. It's not just a compartmentalized thing that happens over the summer for a week and some some traditions maybe. Yeah, exactly so you're. You've got you outlined your three big buckets. People can I mean they've probably, if they have kids, they've experienced some of that with city kids G45 student community.
Speaker 1:That's been completely reformed, re re, not rebranded but you know I was. I did student ministry here for a while and it's totally different now than it was when I was involved. You've just done a lot of good work there. Yeah, I appreciate that and you know, go ahead. No, I was just going to say part of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're trying to find a word to talk about it. In some ways we have completely changed the view, and other ways I think what you did in student ministry is still in alignment with what we're doing is trying to use the language before. Our mission statement was called for and disciple makers was to make whole life disciples, and that's what we've been doing. The big advantage now, I think, for us whereas maybe you didn't have quite this level of support, but we're pulling in we have another like 25, 22, 22, 22 to 25 parents, but also young adults who are kind of leaning in, helping us to work through both what it looks like in our community space as student community, but also in our circle space, and living, living that out in alignment with the larger church's vision.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and that was circles were even before my time, I think it was. They were getting developed while I was still involved and then stepped out and then it's kind of remarkable if you think about it We've formed student community into circles. Like I'm sure that was a huge project to actually get off the ground, get all of those other adult leaders involved, get them all synced up and on the same page with that. But now it's almost more of a. There was a small team that was leading student community and others like a family type team because there's so many more people involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and you're right, it was a lot of work and it still continues to be, and we're still trying to, you know, always reforming, always learning, trying to make that space better for both in terms of making whole life disciples or disciple makers among our students, but also equipping parents to disciple their children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and it's all in alignment too with everything going on with city kids as well, where you look at how big city kids is and you think well, you know, student community is just going to keep growing and growing, and growing.
Speaker 2:So we got to be ready for it.
Speaker 1:Exactly the second bucket you mentioned. I know we did a podcast with Sarah probably at the end of last year. Maybe that people can go back and listen and find the resource page in the app to kind of see some of the things that have been built out there. So I figured today, maybe the thing that we could talk about now is more about this vision you have for Kingdom partnerships and just sort of looking ahead. We're assuming everything's going to go well on Sunday.
Speaker 1:You're going to get voted in, and then we're going to have an installation ceremony and then Great. You're going to keep doing the same things you've been doing, but in a more official capacity.
Speaker 2:To speak to that, just so. Everybody's kind of aware of the process and maybe you know some people. I don't think I'm known by everybody. I'm not the main communicator on our staff that's obviously both Damien but also Ben but my you know my 10 year. I've been here in New City since 2009. And that's back when we were planted Damien and our staff we use this language that our church has been planted and then rooted, rooted.
Speaker 1:Planted and rooted yeah.
Speaker 2:And then now we're reproducing so planted, rooted and reproducing, and so I've been around for all of those phases and I'm super excited. We can we can talk about what you just mentioned in the futures phase, but just in terms of the history that I have here with this church, it's been amazing to, kind of myself, be formed and transformed into the image of the glory of God, into Christ, as I behold and view him and spend a remarkable journey for me as a single guy, and then getting married and now having a family. I think in 2016 I became an elder here at this church, so that was part of the process for me. I graduated from seminary in 2010 and completed an internship with Central Florida Presbyteria, here at this church, and then I've been in the season of needing a call, and that's part of what we're coming to vote together on February 25th next week, or is that next week?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's been just a long process for me, graduating with a Master's of Divinity and then working outside.
Speaker 2:I worked in ministry at the EPC for the last eight years before coming here and, as I said, I was a ruling elder concurrent with that work at the EPC. But I'm super excited. Just real quick, for those of you who want to understand the nuances of what it'll take to kind of become ordained in our Central Florida Presbyteria, it's a long process, maybe five or six different steps but part of it was submitting a lot of written papers, submitting questionnaires. My wife submitted the questionnaire and also spoke to an attestament to my character. I had about 30 hours of written exams and then I sat before a board of teaching elders and ruling elders for about five hours where they drilled me with questions and then I eventually got invited to come to the floor of Presbyteria, which is about 100 pastors here in Central Florida who get to ask you questions for about 10 to 20 minutes. But that was the process and that's what I sustained and that's why we're kind of coming up to this congregational vote.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you started that not too long after you started working here. Right, because there is so many steps and stages, you can't just, oh it's, you know, 90 days, we'll get it done. So it's done. Quite work like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually took advantage. You're right, I did have it in my mind as an objective or a quarterly goal to kind of work on that. I didn't really hit go until this last holiday season and that's when I said I just got to get this done and use some of my holiday time to actually study for those exams. And over the last four months I would say I really four or five months, are really pressed hard to get that done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say most people don't realize that. Well, I get it. Most people probably don't care that we were office study buddies there for a while. You were working on ordination stuff, I was working on PhD stuff. We were sometimes only people here on Fridays just trying to, you know, get our various things done but also kind of encourage each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really helpful actually to have coming to the office and still have someone here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it gets lonely when you're in study mode and nobody else is. But I was glad to share that with you and glad everything worked out with all the all the rites of passage that they have and it is a very significant vetting process that we have in the PCA. You can't just sort of slide in, you know it's, there's the degree, you already have the degree, but then you still had to go through all of these other both personal and intellectual and spiritual checkpoints before we could get to where we are right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just one quick note on that, in terms of the way I've you know some some could say it's very cerebral, I don't know if that makes sense, but very intellectual, and but for me it was that, but it's also. I got an opportunity just to see just the powerful ways that God works towards those he loves, and for me it was really an opportunity for me to be seen by him, by our true and living God, and his mercies were new each time I woke up to take a new exam and it was amazing to see how he, he, was faithful to me in that process, but, yeah, sustaining you along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So now you want to pivot back to kind of where we're heading. So the last bucket that I haven't really got to work on as much is this area of kingdom partnerships, and primarily for me, some of our kingdom partnerships is really spelled out well with Crosstown and the partnership there and their planting seeds of the gospel, trying to make an environment for doing the same thing that we're trying to do it in our local bodies, to make whole life disciples or make disciple makers. Part of that is through education, part of that is living in the community and pressing in in so many different ways. So that's a beautiful partnership. I want to see that grown in different ways In this next year, working with Eric and just not having it as a sidecar thing, but actually having it as one of the mainstays of how we interact and are formed in our own congregation.
Speaker 2:That is also could be true of neighbors, is what I'm referring to with Crosstown, but also our nations, and New City doesn't have much of a global vision right now. That's part of the reason why Damien hired me was to have more of a global vision and I'm excited to think through that, to pull that in. It's really not outside of our DNA. We are a great commission church, I think. In so many different ways we long to make call form, send disciple makers, and part of that is Christ's call to the ends of the earth. And so how we as a local expression in Orlando, how are we gonna be connected in the kingdom, partnerships through the world? And something I have a strong heart for? I wake up every morning and think about these things. I joked in my last time when I preached about having all nations glasses and obedience of faith for nations, for the hat that I kinda look at the Bible through and I want that kind of vision and passion for our congregation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that is something that it's been in the background and so you're bringing it into the foreground for us to get us thinking about these things more, get us energized about these things. I really like the language of kingdom partnerships because it's working together with other organizations. It's not just here's things we're throwing money at and hoping it succeeds. We're actually partnering with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, exactly right. So the way that we've partnered with Crosstown, we're looking to do the similar way in our global effort in terms of the nations and what and how we wanna do that. Actually, I was reading in the McShane plan today. In Luke, chapter five, there's this great interchange between Jesus and the disciples. As he calls the disciples, I think Simon and maybe Andrew. They're out there fishing and they fished all night, but they didn't catch anything. And Jesus comes up to them and says put into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon Peter answered and said master, we twirled all night and took nothing. But here are, like these amazing words, he says but at your word, I will let down the nets.
Speaker 2:And so there's this beautiful picture that actually an apostle they call him the apostle to Islam, but he was a missionary, samuel Zwaymer, at the turn of the 20th century. He worked in the Arab world and he actually gave this speech at a convention where he pointed to this specific verse and he said that we, even though we toil in the Muslim world and we toil for missions, for the obedience and faith from all nations, as Paul says in Romans, there's not, sometimes there's just nothing to show for our work. But Peter says so accurately, so rightly, here, that at your word I will put down the nets, because Jesus says elsewhere that there are sheep that are not part of the fold yet that he wants to bring in. There are, the harvest is ripe, but the labors are few. And so there's this idea that, yes, sometimes our labors are toilsome, our labors don't yield much fruit, but Christ is commanding us to continue to, at his word, to do what he asks is to make disciples of all nations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can just imagine Peter in this situation, like, literally, when they're saying we toiled all night like hours and hours and hours of unfruitful labor and toil, and Jesus wants them to throw their nets back in for a catch. It's like this isn't going to work, but because of their faith and because of his command, they do it anyways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what happened? They were able to. They are, it says here. Let's see, they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, because you know the boats, the nets were so full that it was sinking their boat and they needed others to come help them with that. And that's the amazing thing that's why I'm so excited about our kingdom partnerships, especially the global aspect is that none other time in history have more people come to faith in the Muslim world and I keep on referencing the Muslim world because that's an emphasis for me in terms of justice issues, which is the value that I think we hold here at New City. There's very little access and there's a lot of Arabs in the world who need to hear the gospel, and so God is doing something there, and I can't wait for New City to kind of step in and be a larger part of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when it even just tied into what you were talking about with ordination and this passage and everything it's. If we're doing it in our own strength, doing it on our own, it's not going to work. But to see where God might be leading us to be involved. He is the one that's going to make a difference between whether it's unfruitful toil or bears much fruit for the kingdom right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly right. So it's exciting time for me to be a part of, you know. As we said, planted, rooted and now we're reproducing. And how are we going to reproduce the DNA of the nations within our congregation? That's a privilege, it's an honor, it's a gift for me to get to think through that and kind of explore that and, with the sessions aid and even the members, you know, because we are our governance in such that we help voice the opinions and the desires of how our congregation wants to be led and, of course, in concert with the triune, God, to kind of lead out in that and to think through that and can see us explore that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's a lot of exciting things on the horizon and you're sitting at the intersection of, you know, three really important works going on in our church with the children, the youth ministry, the care communities and even the kingdom partnerships. Just the way those all kind of come together, it's very pivotal, and so it's a privilege and an honor to be able to call you to associate pastor and vote on that this coming Sunday, and so we're hoping all goes well with that. You know, not even really fingers crossed, because I think it's. You know it's not a foregone conclusion, but it is kind of you know yeah, I'm ready to see the Lord work in that.
Speaker 2:it'll be really, really fun this coming weekend to do that little quick meeting and have that vote and then super excited about my service in terms of installation. And I think we're going to tie that with some vision casting also for our church, so it'd be really good, it's going to be a big night.
Speaker 1:That's right. We'll have more information on that once, probably next week, but not on this podcast. But people will hear from the stage. But, jason, it was a pleasure to talk with you today and I enjoyed hearing a little bit more about your heart. For what?
Speaker 2:you're doing. Thanks, nate, really good to be here. I'm glad I'm the 200th person on the panel.
Speaker 1:And I wanted you to have the honor. Thank you so much.