CPG_Ep06 ===

[00:00:00] Hugh Brandt: This is the Intersection Faith Work and Life podcast hosted by Bob Varney and Hugh Brandt. The intersection is committed to helping people see that discipleship means we live by faith and God and all arenas of our lives all the time. If you want to hear more discipleship stories of people living by faith in every sphere of their lives, please invite others to listen to the Inter Intersection Podcast.

[00:00:26] Hugh Brandt: Welcome and thanks for listening today to learn how Sean Shiro has engaged the great divide between the sacred and the secular. Sean is originally from the Middle East. His family moved to the United States when he was in his teens. Sean holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, a master of Divinity and Theology, and a PhD in World Christian Studies.

[00:00:49] Hugh Brandt: He's been dedicated to ministry for four decades with 30 years spent serving in the Arab world. For the past five years, he's been the pastor of a local church. [00:01:00] Sean is happily married to his wonderful wife for 40 years, and together they have a son who recently graduated from university. Today, Bob will interview Sean.

[00:01:10] Hugh Brandt: Welcome, Sean.

[00:01:11] Shaun Shorrosh: Thank you,

[00:01:14] Bob Varney: Sean. It's terrific to have you here today. We've not known one another all that long and I'm excited to continue to get to know you better. And I was particularly struck when I heard about your PhD dissertation and looking at this sacred secular divide. As we look at this one of the first things is.

[00:01:35] Bob Varney: Just a question of how did you notice that this was happening in general or in life somehow that got you interested in going down this research path.

[00:01:47] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes. As Hugh mentioned, I have spent the last 30 years serving in the Arab world and working alongside pastors and leaders and did a lot of training for young people, for [00:02:00] professionals workers, and trying to encourage them and equipped them to achieve what we all trying to do is to fulfill the great commission.

[00:02:09] Shaun Shorrosh: And we've had successes, and yet it seems like always, things would fizzle out after just a short while. And it seems like they were hitting an invisible wall that did not allow them to go further. In 2018, I was invited and I attended a conference put together by isat, which is the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education.

[00:02:35] Shaun Shorrosh: And what intrigued me about that conference was the topic, bridging the sacred secular divide. And I attended that conference and not knowing that God's gonna use that to, to get my attention. Which caused me to go back to school and I did my PhD specifically on that topic.

[00:02:57] Bob Varney: So how would you define that [00:03:00] divide so that all of us can understand what you're actually talking about?

[00:03:04] Shaun Shorrosh: I like the definition that Mark Green in his booklet the Great Divide, the way he puts it, and basically he says it is the all too common belief that some parts of our life are sacred and they are really important to God, yet the other parts of our life are secular and they are irrelevant to God.

[00:03:30] Shaun Shorrosh: And so the sacred ones is the church activities Prayer. Worship services attending church, yet the secular is everything else. So our work, our home, our, everything we do in life, sleeping, hobbies, et cetera, all of these are irrelevant to God. And actually I've used in also since then, I've used other ways to define this as these sacred secular divide.

[00:03:56] Shaun Shorrosh: It could be the divide between the pulpit and the [00:04:00] pew. It's the divide between Sunday and the rest of the week. All that is a way to explain what we're talking about here

[00:04:10] Bob Varney: And what is the impact of that on people? It's a, it's an existing as Mark talked about it here, a common belief.

[00:04:19] Bob Varney: I think that. Most of us in Christianity seem to have absorbed, and what, what happens when that happens and what have you noticed that

[00:04:34] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah, I think, yeah, it, the, when the church doesn't recognize it, everyone suffers.

[00:04:40] Shaun Shorrosh: It's a loose situation. And if you look at it from the its impact on the pastors.

[00:04:48] Shaun Shorrosh: They end up with the whole responsibility. They have to do the preaching, the teaching the evangelizing, the counseling. So it seems like all the ministry [00:05:00] is put on one person.

[00:05:01] Hugh Brandt: Yeah.

[00:05:02] Shaun Shorrosh: And the church. And so that's one area that it's impacted the church. The other way it really has done three things to delay people.

[00:05:13] Shaun Shorrosh: One of them, it's, it placed the guilt on them. Ah, because they are not able to participate in church ministry. Yeah. They're working. They got so many other responsibilities, and when they're not able to put more into ministry they're eaten by guilt. I've seen many Christians in the Arab world that had expressed to me that I can't wait.

[00:05:37] Shaun Shorrosh: I wanna re retire early for my work so I can go to seminary so I can serve the Lord. I.

[00:05:43] Hugh Brandt: Yeah, so

[00:05:44] Shaun Shorrosh: That's one area I believe it it really has hurt the lay people and impacted the lay people another way it robbed the believer from using their daily work to fulfill the great commission.

[00:05:57] Shaun Shorrosh: And they're gifted. They're using these [00:06:00] gifts, but yet they don't see that as part of what they're supposed to be doing. So it robbed them from using that 40 hours a week, if not more to fulfill the great Commission. And a third way, it prevented the believers from reaping the fruit of their labor.

[00:06:21] Shaun Shorrosh: And I know even though many people do not see work as ministry, but they as Christians, they know their salt and light and so their life is different. And when people recognize that. So they sometimes ask them, why are you like that? But because they're not in the ministry mode, they don't see their work as ministry.

[00:06:42] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. They don't give, they don't glorify their father in heaven by giving credit to why they are that way. Yeah. And say, oh, thank you. You're so kind. You're so nice. But never really capturing that, Hey, I've been faithful for the last 10 years at work. Here's the fruit. Or the [00:07:00] last two years. Or whatever. So that's another way that it had prevented the lay people from reaping what they automatically should be reaping because of them being faithful Christians.

[00:07:12] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah. And that's it's really very sad and quite amazing, with the impact on the pastors. What an extreme burden that they have to do the whole thing. We had Barna do a study for us, and we looked at all the seven spheres of society and wanted to know where did people spend most of their time.

[00:07:31] Bob Varney: Where did they actually work? Because all of us have been working and we work somewhere. Okay. And only 1% actually work in the religion sphere as pastors, assistant pastors, youth pastors missionaries, the whole crowd. Okay? Only 1%. And when you think about. Taking the burden of the great commission, the burden of God's big kingdom that he wants to build here on earth.

[00:07:58] Bob Varney: And it's put on 1% of the [00:08:00] people. That's crazy.

[00:08:01] Shaun Shorrosh: Yep.

[00:08:02] Bob Varney: Yep. And when you when you think about it that way, you think, oh wow, those guys have a horrible time.

[00:08:08] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes.

[00:08:10] Bob Varney: And then on the other side, of course you've got the other 99% that are fully equipped to do all they're supposed to do, designed to do in the Kingdom of God.

[00:08:22] Bob Varney: And I think, my guess is only 10% actually do that. And the other 90 are, as you said, they're constrained. Yeah, they don't know that they can, they don't know that they should. Everything they do, they think doesn't count. And it's just, it's a very sad thing. And it's, when you think about what Satan has done as a lie, is to separate these two things and and actually, it's.

[00:08:51] Bob Varney: When you think about being in, in a protective state and you want to have an army to protect your country, but you can't, [00:09:00] you can only hire the generals. And all the rest of the people don't get to go into the army or the airports or the navy, just the generals, just the admirals, it's what? Crazy.

[00:09:12] Shaun Shorrosh: Yep.

[00:09:13] Bob Varney: That's

[00:09:13] Shaun Shorrosh: right.

[00:09:14] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:15] Hugh Brandt: So how do you. I have to say, Sean, I have not necessarily considered the negative impact on religious leaders since they're having to do everything and the o all the other people don't have to. I haven't really considered the negative impact on their lives in a sense I've always blamed them, not considered the negative impact in their lives.

[00:09:37] Hugh Brandt: So you're bringing that up and thank you for bringing that. It's it's a new revelation for me.

[00:09:42] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. Yeah. Since I've learned this and I've been teaching it, the, I, you cannot believe the positive feedback that I'm hearing from lay people knowing that this weight has been taken off their shoulder, the guilt and all these things, and the excitement in their eyes, [00:10:00] to say Hey, there's a mother that is taken a course with me.

[00:10:03] Shaun Shorrosh: She said I had five, or I have five children. I had to Ms. Church so many times because of their sick or studying. And you are telling me that I was serving the Lord as I'm raising my children and I'm glorifying God through doing that. So it's really, it's a huge thing that has been taken away from our people the way that we have done church,

[00:10:27] Bob Varney: now, have you heard anything from pastors? By having their burden drop? When they began to realize that they had more people who could help in this great commission.

[00:10:36] Shaun Shorrosh: Exactly. When you start sharing with them also at it from a positive point of view it does make sense. Because they don't have to do the, all the work themselves, and the fruit of their work could be so much multiplied.

[00:10:50] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah. So how did we get here? How did this divide? End up in our lives.

[00:10:59] Shaun Shorrosh: You mean, whose [00:11:00] fault is it?

[00:11:00] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. I think, it's hard to blame, depend who you are. If you, I'm a pastor, so I can blame myself, through throughout history the church. Has allowed for this divide to happen between the clergy and the members, at which, like we said, it prevented the church from achieving its full potential and influencing or in of influence in the society.

[00:11:25] Shaun Shorrosh: And, I do personally think that we as pastors, as seminaries we should take the blame. We might not have started it.

[00:11:33] Shaun Shorrosh: But we are in these roles and we have to take responsibility for it. We were trained this way and so we are training others. The same way we were trained. And just, I'm gonna share from my experience, many of these years that I've spent in training and equipping lay people, I've done this mistake, and now I'm having to eat my wor eat my words.

[00:11:55] Shaun Shorrosh: I go back and I say, look, I am sorry. And just wanna give you an example. I use a [00:12:00] chart that would say like, how many hours do you sleep a day? Six hours, eight hours time, seven, how many hours you work, how many hours do you eat, how many hours do you watch tv?

[00:12:13] Hugh Brandt: Yeah.

[00:12:13] Shaun Shorrosh: All these different things that people do in their life.

[00:12:15] Shaun Shorrosh: And the last question I would ask them, how many hours you spend in ministry and you have all these tallies for so you know, half your, like one third of your life, you spend it sleeping, blah, blah, blah. And the whole idea was to make them feel guilty. I. You know that you are not really doing what you should be.

[00:12:35] Shaun Shorrosh: You should do more for the Lord.

[00:12:37] Shaun Shorrosh: And basically I discovered that we were looking at it wrong. A another thing that I like that Mark Green shared this an example of us looking at life as an orange. Okay.

[00:12:50] Hugh Brandt: He says, our

[00:12:50] Shaun Shorrosh: problem has been, we looked at a life as an orange. It has slices.

[00:12:55] Shaun Shorrosh: This slice is my home. This slice is my work. The slice is my church, [00:13:00] my community. And so each one has its own thing. And he says, we discovered, and that's why we have this divide, but he says, we discovered that life is a peach. Not an orange, you know the whole thing right? Is one. So work and church and community and home and family.

[00:13:21] Shaun Shorrosh: All of that is my life.

[00:13:24] Bob Varney: Yeah.

[00:13:24] Shaun Shorrosh: So all of that is my ministry.

[00:13:27] Bob Varney: Yes. Yes.

[00:13:28] Shaun Shorrosh: And so now that's why we're having to go back and say, wait a minute, I'm sorry. So basically right now, anytime I do training, I start with a confession. I say, I confess on behalf of all pastors that we have sinned against you. The way we looked at church and leadership and ministry and so forth, and when you look at, I think one of the most neglected verse in the Bible is Ephesians four 12.

[00:13:53] Bob Varney: Okay.

[00:13:55] Shaun Shorrosh: Lemme start with first Ephesians four 11 and tell you why.

[00:13:59] Bob Varney: Okay.

[00:13:59] Shaun Shorrosh: [00:14:00] Ephesians four 11 says Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers.

[00:14:08] Shaun Shorrosh: I. And that's where we all are camping. Yes. Whether it's seminaries or churches. We are about equipping leaders and teachers and we. This is what we do and everybody's dreams to get to do that.

[00:14:20] Bob Varney: Yes. Yes. And

[00:14:21] Shaun Shorrosh: we neglect diverse that gives the reason for verse 11 which is verse 12. It continues.

[00:14:27] Shaun Shorrosh: It says, the reason is to equip his people for works of service. So this is the big deal.

[00:14:35] Hugh Brandt: Yeah.

[00:14:35] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. The main, it just like the, your example of the generals and the army, yeah. The whole thing. The Army is gonna do the fighting, the generals, and so we missed it by focusing on Ephesians 11 and ignoring Ephesians 12.

[00:14:51] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. Another thing I think that caused, I like this observation about the secular divide. It might be a secondary [00:15:00] reason, but Tim shepherd in his book, God on Campus, shares this. He says, A critical moment happened at Princeton College in 1812 when they built the theological seminary next to the college.

[00:15:15] Shaun Shorrosh: And they said he did. They did that because the college had strayed away from its roots. Roots, which was to train ministers. And basically what he implies is just as they build these two different buildings Yep. It was a start of a divide. In this building you study about God. And this other building you study about everything else.

[00:15:34] Shaun Shorrosh: And in the in time this transferred to the church where basically in churches where ministry happens. And outside the church is what the secular stuff happens.

[00:15:45] Bob Varney: Yeah. And we do miss so much. My, some of my favorite places is Ephesians two 10. We talk about two, eight and nine being saved.

[00:15:54] Bob Varney: And it's not of our works or anything like that. But in verse 10 it, in chapter two, verse [00:16:00] 10, it then talks about all of the things that God has prepared for us to be doing. And sometimes it's easy to take the, all of those things to put them in the same sacred bucket, all of those kinds of things, okay?

[00:16:13] Bob Varney: But if you take I was struck back in Genesis a decade or so ago, reading it. And it says good. Every once in a while. God says, this is good and this is good and this is good. And then he gets to verse 31 in chapter one and he says, it's very good. And the natural thing. And the thing I've heard from pastors a number of times is that's 'cause he made us that day.

[00:16:38] Bob Varney: That's the good day. Okay? The very good day. If you take a real look at the text. It says, and God looked around at all that he had made, and behold it was very good. Now, that's a tiny little word, but it does mean the sun and the stars and the animals and the fish and that, you know all Yes.

[00:16:59] Bob Varney: And then [00:17:00] of course he puts us in charge of the all right. Yeah. We have responsibility and all of that is to his glory as we fulfill what he has put out for us to do.

[00:17:12] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes.

[00:17:12] Bob Varney: Yeah. And it's, I found it myself an awakening. One time when God I was doing some real estate and we had a downturn in the economics and I wasn't able to sell office condos.

[00:17:28] Bob Varney: So I'm looking at my e nearly empty buildings. Been a Christian for 10 years. I heard God, I didn't think it could happen. I didn't think anything happened to anybody. My theology had it not happening. Okay. And I heard God saying, Bob, did you ask me before you started that project? And I remember thinking, of course not.

[00:17:46] Bob Varney: Why would I do that? And it was my wake up call to say, okay, I guess I have to go down that path. And I began in my life back in 1980, going down that path. And it has been such a joy. To [00:18:00] be able to go to work in my regular high tech stuff that I've been doing for years and come home at night and say, thank you, Lord.

[00:18:08] Bob Varney: This has been a good day. I enjoyed being with you and working with you, and working for you. Yes. And it's what you said earlier that we rob people from just enjoying their life with God as something productive in the kingdom. Not all productive things are saving souls, god intended this earth to actually function, to support life, to the word abundant life.

[00:18:34] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah.

[00:18:35] Bob Varney: Yeah. Have you been frustrated? Obviously you have, with that same thing, right?

[00:18:39] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah, you're right.

[00:18:41] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah. So the damages that are caused I think it clearly. In terms of the entire kingdom we have less people working with God in the, in his kingdom.

[00:18:59] Bob Varney: We've got [00:19:00] citizens of kingdom, all of his kingdom all over the world, and a huge percentage of them are actually not productive for his kingdom. And that just sounds like a very sad. The damaging result of the sacred secular divide. Are there other thoughts that you have about that or about related damage?

[00:19:26] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. I think this is the biggest thing is that you have this huge force that is not really being utilized, for the for the kingdom and for the accomplishing the test that we have been interested with.

[00:19:40] Bob Varney: Yeah. So what do you think we need to do to change this?

[00:19:44] Bob Varney: What are your thoughts on things that, things that actually have worked. I know it's a large problem. Okay. And we gotta probably start in small places, but what things should we be doing?

[00:19:57] Shaun Shorrosh: I think trying to fix these damage we [00:20:00] need to help people see the reality of this damage to see that you mentioned earlier that it's, Satan's lie, I os Hellman's shares that Satan has deceived many believers about their calling and the, their vi and vision for work in a spiritual way.

[00:20:16] Shaun Shorrosh: And the idea first that our jobs are not spiritual. That, we just work so we can make money. So we can put in church and support the ministry, yeah. And another lie is that we are not supposed to mix spiritual things with secular things. You do work in, at, in the secular field.

[00:20:36] Shaun Shorrosh: And when you come to church, and that leads to the third thing basically that ministry only happens within the walls of the church, and and I, I think, i've used this illustration just to show you a picture of the damage that and the things that the church is that's dealing with, depending on how they look at ministry.

[00:20:54] Shaun Shorrosh: They, if you look at a pastor with their normal way of the way [00:21:00] they look at their church and their members, if you have a small church of 50 members and where you have the pastor leading that church, I. If they look at it the normal way a pastor serves on Sunday, 50 people have been ministered to at the end of the week.

[00:21:18] Shaun Shorrosh: But if they look at it after erasing the divide they say in, in the states here, a while back, a study was done. That shows that every one of us encounters 70 people during the week.

[00:21:33] Bob Varney: Wow.

[00:21:35] Shaun Shorrosh: The idea is that if the pastors if the pastor looks at the members as equal ministers with him,

[00:21:42] Bob Varney: yeah.

[00:21:43] Shaun Shorrosh: Then when he comes and his role is to equip the other ministers for ministry, right? Then you multiply one times 50 times 70. Then at the end of the week, 3,500 people have been impacted. Yeah. So imagine, you could, I tell pastors, as a way of, if you [00:22:00] really want to multiply your impact 70 fold

[00:22:04] Bob Varney: Yeah.

[00:22:05] Shaun Shorrosh: You need to help erase the divide.

[00:22:07] Shaun Shorrosh: Imagine from 50 to 3,500.

[00:22:10] Bob Varney: Just

[00:22:10] Shaun Shorrosh: the way we look at it.

[00:22:12] Bob Varney: Yeah. That's an incre that's a very visual or guttural kind of, example to, to understand how severe the impact is and what we're missing.

[00:22:22] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah.

[00:22:22] Bob Varney: The mobilization of the people that were not mobilizing.

[00:22:26] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes, sir.

[00:22:26] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. It's one of the things that, that I think is a significant impediment here is that. When we become Christians and we get taught about things, those beliefs get to be firm in us.

[00:22:49] Bob Varney: At some point, we call them convictions.

[00:22:51] Bob Varney: And. And when you live under a lie, you actually get convicted of some of those pieces. So the [00:23:00] change is particularly hard because you're actually settled on this is how I ought to be living as opposed to opening up. You know what, part of what we're trying to do in Cities Project is awakened people to this, but it's a challenge to have people.

[00:23:18] Bob Varney: Listen and change their minds, which will then help change their hearts, and it's it's a little bit like trying to bring somebody to Christ who doesn't want to come, who thinks that there's no God or thinks that this is all that fantasy. You, you can't argue with people and get them there.

[00:23:34] Bob Varney: Yeah, we got the same problem. You can't argue with the Christians and get them to get rid of this divide. So I keep searching for ways. I think your example of 70 fold increase is a great example. I think your mark's example of the peach and the orange, pictures that allow people to say, okay, this is.

[00:23:54] Bob Varney: Can I look at it this way? Other way? Yeah. One of the, one of the quotes we use often is CS [00:24:00] Lewis as he, he talks about how do we view something, when I'm looking at something, okay what does it look like? What happens when I move to the other side of the room and look at the same object?

[00:24:14] Bob Varney: I see different things. 'cause I'm seeing another side of this thing that I saw. And as he also points out, you have to be a right kind of person because you have to see that the truth that you just experienced, it does look different from over here.

[00:24:30] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah.

[00:24:30] Bob Varney: That, that has to come into your soul before you then say, okay, I'm willing to entertain.

[00:24:35] Bob Varney: What does that mean?

[00:24:37] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. We need to help them shift their paradigm,

[00:24:39] Bob Varney: yep. It's a it's, it is a real challenge and our language is challenging.

[00:24:43] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah.

[00:24:44] Bob Varney: Clergy and lay. We, yeah we don't have, when we think about the word minister and ministers, it, technically minister means to, to serve, right?

[00:24:55] Bob Varney: Yeah. And we all know that, except we don't think [00:25:00] that way when somebody says, how did you minister this week? And I think it's. It's challenging when you look at governments, they have ministers of different things typically. Yep. And that's typically the word serve.

[00:25:15] Bob Varney: It's not con, it's not confused with religion. And yet, as a Christian and you put it into the sacred context and all of a sudden it just confines the word. Yeah. So it's it's a real challenge. So do you have any specific advice for individuals on how one can open up their minds?

[00:25:35] Bob Varney: I.

[00:25:36] Shaun Shorrosh: I think that you talk about, changing the language that we use in church concerning the clergy and the lay people and so forth. I think it is it takes time. It took years and years to get where we're at, and so it's gonna take time. But I think the first thing is that we need to start referring to people in the church.

[00:25:58] Shaun Shorrosh: All the believers are [00:26:00] full-time ministers.

[00:26:02] Bob Varney: Yeah.

[00:26:03] Shaun Shorrosh: And some of them are set apart for ministry in the church as pastors, missionaries and other workers. But everybody else is set apart for ministry in the marketplace through their daily living, carrying the gospel anywhere and everywhere they go.

[00:26:18] Shaun Shorrosh: And even when we talk about that, I think a picture comes to mind, taking the gospel, that, we, we think of taking the gospel as sharing a bible or a film or something, an action, right? And. And I can't do that at work. I can't do, I can't, I'm not allowed to do this anymore here and there.

[00:26:35] Shaun Shorrosh: But, so even that, we have to change the way we think about that. Leslie Eugen he he shares a definition about about the church. He says it is the whole church. Which is called to be in Christ, a royal priesthood, and I like the way he differentiates. We are all priests.

[00:26:54] Shaun Shorrosh: We not supposed to exercise our priesthood in our daily lives, and [00:27:00] he refers to the pastors as the ministerial priesthood. So we are all priests and we have a priest hood responsibility, but the ministerial priesthood is the one that equips, encourages, guides the other priests to fulfill their task.

[00:27:17] Shaun Shorrosh: So we're all priests. So I think again, the idea of letting people understand that we are all full-time ministers. And just kinda give you an example of what happened with me. When I start studying this, I start working on my PhD.

[00:27:35] Shaun Shorrosh: It happens while I was pastoring the church. So every time I learned a lesson, I preached it from the pulpit.

[00:27:44] Shaun Shorrosh: So at the end of my three years, or three years and a half of study. I thought the whole church was graduating with me. Because I really spoke about all these topics.

[00:27:55] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:56] Shaun Shorrosh: To my surprise, one, one night we had a church [00:28:00] fellowship and one of the members was sitting next to me and he says, oh, by the way, what was your dissertation about?

[00:28:06] Shaun Shorrosh: So I explained to to him what my dissertation topic was and everything. He said, oh man, this is awesome. This is nice. And I'm thinking, what do you mean? He just heard it for the first time? I've been preaching for three years. And the Lord brought to my mind that, first of all, that people as much as we would like to think otherwise as pastors, but a good sermon is good for 72 hours.

[00:28:34] Bob Varney: Yes.

[00:28:34] Shaun Shorrosh: At the most, yeah. Yeah. Unless they watch it again on YouTube or something. But so I decided, okay, we're gonna do a training. And we're gonna use all the tools of education. And so we did fill in the blanks. We did the PowerPoint, we did discussion groups.

[00:28:52] Shaun Shorrosh: We did all these different things, just so that they can see true on the idea. Try to understand, that [00:29:00] all these things we looked at, four, four areas in my life, the, the church, the home, the community and my work. And actually I have to one now.

[00:29:09] Shaun Shorrosh: Is

[00:29:10] Bob Varney: that, was that in the context of a, of small groups in the middle of the week? In what context? No.

[00:29:13] Shaun Shorrosh: We brought we invited, we had about 90 people from the church that attended. It was on, on, on the weekend. And we spent a half a day we had a sermon we had a pres, a PowerPoint presentation.

[00:29:28] Shaun Shorrosh: Then we broke out into groups and I basically had four groups, the church, the home, the community and I had them rotate to go into all these four groups and to think and so they, so it can get into their mind is if I glorify God in these four areas, what roles do I have in the family, father, uncle, son, et cetera.

[00:29:51] Shaun Shorrosh: How can I be ministering? How can I glorify God through this part? And so really just allow it to soak in. And just like [00:30:00] when I'm disciplining my child, am I glorifying God when I go on vacation? Do I glorify God when I'm playing golf? To show them that the things, the different things we do.

[00:30:11] Bob Varney: Yep.

[00:30:11] Shaun Shorrosh: When stay at home mom, when I'm retired. And and the thing is, the two interesting things happened as after I shared my presentation during the break, somebody came to me and says, you know what? I think you are shooting yourself on the foot here as a pastor. And I said, what are you talking about?

[00:30:30] Shaun Shorrosh: She said, they said you said here's four, four areas.

[00:30:33] Shaun Shorrosh: If I'm serving the Lord and glorifying God at work in the community and at home, why do I need to come to church? I get 75%, without coming. So I thought about it for a minute and I made a quick edit editing. During the break I went back to my PowerPoint and I added a phone charger where the, in the church section.

[00:30:56] Shaun Shorrosh: Ah. And I said, look, my phone. I [00:31:00] charge it at night and I can still use my phone while it's being charged, but I need to do that so it will last me the whole day.

[00:31:07] Shaun Shorrosh: And I said, church is very important because this is the place where we come for fellowship to worship and to to grow together,

[00:31:18] Hugh Brandt: right?

[00:31:18] Hugh Brandt: So

[00:31:18] Shaun Shorrosh: when we go out, we can fulfill the task that we're supposed to do. So they're all important, but there is a special. Segment in the church because it allows us to be the church in everything that we do, including growing and fellowshipping and worshiping. Another interesting thing that happened also is that they say okay, I'm gonna divide my time 25%.

[00:31:41] Shaun Shorrosh: 25%, 25%. And I said, no, that does, it doesn't work that way. I says, you could be a young couple with a, with two babies. Yeah. And it might be that you have to give 80% of your time outside the, like in the at home and at work, and. [00:32:00] And then as the children grow up and leave the house, the times change as you retire from your job.

[00:32:06] Shaun Shorrosh: The percentage change, yeah. So it's fluid and flexible, but the whole thing is my life and all of it glorifies God no matter how much time I'm spending in this different areas. So that was one way to try to really help. This become real for this to change in the minds. And I wish I could tell you that now we are a hundred percent on track.

[00:32:32] Shaun Shorrosh: It was a step in the right direction. And another interesting thing that I thought was, was helpful is that we gave certificates and the, in, in the Arab world there, there's the way they say full-time minister, they use. A term that says, basically I have emptied myself to full-time ministry.

[00:32:55] Shaun Shorrosh: Okay. Wow. So I abandoned everything else so I can serve the Lord. And basically we gave [00:33:00] certificates of abandoning everything or becoming full-time ministers through my daily living.

[00:33:09] Bob Varney: Yes,

[00:33:09] Shaun Shorrosh: and we gave a certificate for every member that attended, which was the majority. We had 90, 90 people or 92 people that attended.

[00:33:17] Shaun Shorrosh: So that's another way to, to confirm as a clergy that I see the members of the church as equal servants, equal priests in their own way serving the Lord. In, in, in places that I cannot be myself anyway, and so that's another way that we can work and we're trying to change the way, the paradigm of how we look at things and how we define things.

[00:33:44] Bob Varney: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Now, is that still ongoing? That kind of yeah.

[00:33:48] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah.

[00:33:49] Bob Varney: One day I had to

[00:33:49] Shaun Shorrosh: speak like a couple of weeks after that. I was invited to speak at the Women's Bible study and Uhhuh and I, first thing I did, I says how is my fellow ministers doing? [00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Bob Varney: Yes. And

[00:34:01] Shaun Shorrosh: they told me we buried the divide or we closed the divide.

[00:34:06] Hugh Brandt: That's. That's great. That's great. I know Sean, growing up in church, I remember on Sunday mornings they would talk about international ministries and, excuse me, international missionaries and there would be a prayer for them and there would be a little, they'd be able to share a story about them in the Sunday morning bulletin.

[00:34:27] Hugh Brandt: What I noticed was. We didn't pray for the school teachers that were in the congregation. We didn't pray for the lawyers. We didn't pray for the doctors. We didn't pray for anyone other than the missionaries. And again, that seemed for me, contributed to the idea that being a missionary is what's most important to God.

[00:34:47] Hugh Brandt: But again, the church was not even on Sunday morning, was not recognizing that everybody, as you said is part of the priesthood of all believers and the work they do matters.

[00:34:57] Hugh Brandt: Yeah.

[00:34:57] Shaun Shorrosh: John Scott, the English theologian [00:35:00] stated along the same side of what you're saying. He says, it is wonderful privilege to be a missionary or a pastor if God calls us to, but it's equally wonderful to be a Christian lawyer

[00:35:12] Hugh Brandt: or a

[00:35:13] Shaun Shorrosh: teacher or manager, social worker if God calls us to it.

[00:35:18] Shaun Shorrosh: So pastors. Are greatly needed to teach the word of God, but at the same time, there is a crying need for Christians who see their daily work as their primary Christian ministry. And again, this is the whole thing, is that we need to help people and encourage people to remember this truth that all types of work.

[00:35:40] Shaun Shorrosh: It can be glorified to God, not only the Christian vocations, not only the foreign missionaries or the pastors.

[00:35:49] Bob Varney: Yeah. No, absolutely yeah. I've had numbers of conversations with, Christians over the years, especially Christian leaders and. I talked about vocational calling and I was not quite [00:36:00] reprimanded, but asked, you shouldn't use the word calling.

[00:36:02] Bob Varney: It has a religious context. And I said, absolutely. That's the point. This is about serving God, and so therefore it's a calling and we're designed to do that. So we, we have to work with our language. I think another thing which you're working on with the congregation.

[00:36:20] Bob Varney: It's a continual walk, you're absolutely right about sermons. We, I go to a church these days that has many wonderful, absolutely wonderful sermons. And if I dig into them and go afterwards and re, look at them again and study them and, it's all valuable.

[00:36:36] Bob Varney: But what I need really. And I think most of us need is a way to walk this out on a nearly daily basis. Okay. It's we, in, in our leadership circle, we talk about apprenticeship, and who am I following, if Jesus were here, I'd wanna follow him directly and I ought to figure out.

[00:36:58] Bob Varney: How would an me as an [00:37:00] apprentice of Jesus, what would that look like? And Dallas Willard points out that everybody has a bunch of somebodies that we are following. We follow people at work, we follow people at home. We follow people in the community. We speakers on the tv, we follow books. We, we, and the question is, do we actually, what kind of filter do we put.

[00:37:23] Bob Varney: All of those somebodies because it seems at the end of the day that you'd wanna say I'm only following these eight people, or 10 people, or five people, or even 20 people. Yeah. And they're all leading me towards understanding how to be a better Christian, how to be a better person. What more does God want me to do?

[00:37:43] Bob Varney: And it's because I think. One of the things that we see in the scriptures about Jesus with his disciples is that they hung around together for three years.

[00:37:55] Bob Varney: Three years is not a really long time, but it's long [00:38:00] enough to get things, to be habits, to get things to, to change in the way you run your daily life.

[00:38:08] Bob Varney: It walking with somebody for three years affects your daily life. And it's, so I feel like somehow we have to have more and more of those apprenticeship kind of opportunities that, that repeat over an extended period of time to, to build up the habit of following God.

[00:38:26] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes.

[00:38:27] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah.

[00:38:29] Bob Varney: So I, we're, we keep looking for those. We have a thing called the leadership Circle that we use and we run it for nine months. Now we could get it all done in nine days, it turns out. But if you stretch it out over nine months, you then have the opportunity to wrestle with God about things that are new and different in between each of the topics.

[00:38:51] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes.

[00:38:52] Bob Varney: And it it, it allows better habits to form in the way you're running your Christian life. [00:39:00] We talk about an integrated life, which is like the peach instead of the orange. It's all, it's just, I have one life, it's all me somewhere and I'm put in different places, but it's about me. And if I let the Holy Spirit and figure out who the Holy Spirit is and how I can walk with that, and how I can listen to his voice, there's a lot of little pieces that, that help us actually.

[00:39:23] Bob Varney: Live an integrated life as opposed to a bifurcated life.

[00:39:28] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:29] Bob Varney: But it just all takes so much time. Yeah I'd love to have something that, that you could do. Give somebody a shot wor Yeah. Regular booster. Yes. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Any any closing thoughts that you might have, Sean that you wanna leave with everybody?

[00:39:48] Bob Varney: I.

[00:39:49] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. I think Jesus says that we are the light of the world and we're supposed to let our light shine before others, that they may see our good works [00:40:00] and they, we glorify our father in heaven and and I that. Basically it's, it is for everyone, when you talk about, but I'm not called to full-time ministry.

[00:40:09] Shaun Shorrosh: No, you, we are all called to full-time ministry. And so this is we, this is understanding. We need to know. And the other thing it's, it is interesting to see in, like in Colossians three verse 23, when it says, whatever you do, work it with all your heart as working for the Lord. Not for human masters.

[00:40:30] Shaun Shorrosh: And then in Colossians 10 31, it says What? So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do all to the glory of God. And I think these two, two scriptures, it's just, I think it's especially, place in the Bible to let us know that everything in our life glorifies God. Just to say whatever you eat or drink.

[00:40:52] Shaun Shorrosh: Yeah. Or play golf or go to the beach. That's it. It is just to prove to us that it, our life is to [00:41:00] glorify God and everything that we do. And you, when you're a light, you shine any place you go and so that's why we need to help people to remember. And to buy, not to buy into this, the lie that Satan has deceived us with, for so long.

[00:41:16] Shaun Shorrosh: And that, being a full-time minister doesn't, it's not about doing certain activities. It's about being

[00:41:25] Shaun Shorrosh: Yes. Who Christ changed us to be. Yes. And when we are being what we are now he's gonna use that. And we put a lot of emphasis on activities and numbers and all that kind of stuff.

[00:41:40] Shaun Shorrosh: And it's about obedience.

[00:41:42] Shaun Shorrosh: It's about obedience. And to see that as long as I'm breathing and I'm on this earth, I. I can glorify God. I just wanna share this last thing. I was doing a conference in Egypt and visited a neighbor. We used to live in Egypt for a while, and she's bedridden, and [00:42:00] she was asking me, what are you here for?

[00:42:01] Shaun Shorrosh: So I explained to her, I was there for a conference and we were talking about, and I start sharing with her about this sacred secular divide. And she said, but I cannot do anything. You see I'm bedridden. I says, look, as long as you're breathing. And she's a grandmother. She prays for her children and great-grandchildren.

[00:42:19] Shaun Shorrosh: And I said, you are glorifying God in bed here, as you love God and praise him and encourage others to live for him. And again, so this whole idea of, oh, I'm useless, I'm not a full-time minister. I'm, I cannot because I got a job. All these different lies. I think we need to help people.

[00:42:37] Shaun Shorrosh: To put them away and and remember that we can glorify God. And actually in our church, we changed our logo to a church sent to glorify God anytime, anywhere.

[00:42:49] Bob Varney: Ah, yes. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's great. And I think it's particularly important to reveal the, how, what you just talked about with this lady, this example.

[00:42:58] Bob Varney: It's one thing to [00:43:00] say let your light shine. Then I sit around and I say what does that look like? How am I light? What do you know? What do I, and so your description of how this works I think is the kind of thing that's important to everyone to get some examples of, this is what your light shining looks like.

[00:43:18] Bob Varney: This is what glorifying God looks like. So I really appreciate all of what you said here. It's wonderful. Yeah.

[00:43:22] Shaun Shorrosh: I, just to build on what you said, I really think, because when you talk about a lot of this stuff, people say, oh, what's new? I know I'm ambassador. I know I am salt and light.

[00:43:31] Shaun Shorrosh: And so in, in our head, we know this, we got it memorized, but somehow there, a subtle and invisible world was placed that we cannot see past. Even when I talk to seminary leaders after I went to this conference and I talking about this, oh yeah. We are equipping in the seminaries. We're equipping lay people and how are you doing that?

[00:43:54] Shaun Shorrosh: Oh, we have evening classes.

[00:43:56] Bob Varney: Yeah.

[00:43:56] Shaun Shorrosh: And they think by teaching the same material at night, [00:44:00] you're equipping lay people.

[00:44:01] Bob Varney: Yeah.

[00:44:02] Shaun Shorrosh: And again I think it's not new information for the seminaries or to the churches. The how to explain it is not a, rocket science, it is. It is just a practical every day.

[00:44:14] Shaun Shorrosh: That's why I humorously talk about vacation and these different things because people never think that, Hey I glorify God on my vacation or playing golf. Yes, but we need to start seeing through this lens

[00:44:27] Hugh Brandt: yes.

[00:44:27] Shaun Shorrosh: That everything including eating, is glorifies God when I act and do it based on his teaching.

[00:44:36] Bob Varney: Yes. Yeah. A piece that allowed me to see that was a re a memory that I had 'cause it didn't dawn on me when it happened, but when my kids were around eight and 12 years old, my girls, we went to a beach over here on the Atlantic Ocean. I. And it was October, so it was a little cool. Not quite water, weather, so they were on the beach. And what do kids do with [00:45:00] that? They built sandcastles, right? Yep. So you could imagine and of course we had all day, so they spent a couple hours on this magnificent village, right? Had a wall all the way around it, and had little houses inside, had a little stream that they put in.

[00:45:14] Bob Varney: So it was just all of what they did. But what, what really got to me. When they were done, they called my wife and I over and they described, here's this wonderful village that we built and here's how we did this, and here's how we did that. And here's how I did. And then there was this larger building castle at the end and they said, that's for you and mom.

[00:45:40] Bob Varney: And I thought they're giving glory to me. How simple is it then for me to give glory to my heavenly father? It's not the big deal that you try to make it, it's just the little thing that just lifts them up and you think, wow, I could do that. I could do that.

[00:45:58] Hugh Brandt: Yeah.

[00:45:58] Bob Varney: Thank you Sean. It's been a [00:46:00] delight, really. And I'm so encouraged that. That, you, and there, there are a crowd of us who care about this sacred secular divide. And thank the Lord the crowd is growing.

[00:46:11] Shaun Shorrosh: Amen.

[00:46:12] Bob Varney: We'll we'll wanna see how God uses this and all the other things that, that people are doing to help the citizens of the kingdom of God understand their role in the kingdom.

[00:46:25] Shaun Shorrosh: Thank you for inviting me.

[00:46:27] Bob Varney: Oh, pleasure.

[00:46:29] Hugh Brandt: Q. Thank you to all our listeners today for listening to us on this fifth intersection Faith and Work Life podcast with Sean Roush. We ask you to go to our website. I. Www cities project global.com or to LinkedIn or to Apple, apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and subscribe to our podcasts, and if you have found our podcasts helpful, please let us know through a review.

[00:46:59] Hugh Brandt: [00:47:00] Again, thank you, Sean for joining us today.

[00:47:03] Shaun Shorrosh: You're welcome.

[00:47:03] Thank you.