Welcome to Monday Morning Men

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Okay. Welcome to uh the Monday morning men. My name is Josh Swart. I'm here with Thomas Dillinger, who had the brilliant idea of thinking that the world needs another podcast to listen to. There's just not enough of them out there. There's not enough of them out there. Very original. I know. Thank you. Um, but in all seriousness, I think uh the why behind this is is pretty important. So, Thomas, give us an idea what is Monday Morning Meant and why should people listen to it?

The Question That Changed Everything

The Vision: “More Men Following God on Monday”

Obedience Before Dominion (Genesis Principle)

What Topics to Expect + Weekly Application Model

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah. Um I think like you are right. There's more information than we know what to do with out there. This idea that we need some sort of more podcaster teaching, I get is probably not exactly the most original idea or something that people are constantly seeking. But one thing that I do think is lacking is practical Christianity and what does that look like today? How does this apply? Uh, so for me, this journey kind of started a little over a year ago as I've been processing where I can step and fill in the gap more. You know, as a as a Christian man that's in part of the potty of Christ, we should be asking ourselves, what does that role look like? We should always be asking, where can we fill in? Where can we step in? Where can we grow? Where would can we stretch ourselves? Um, and for me, as I'm processing this, one of the things that I was just kind of questioning is like, where's more information? We have all this information that people are giving to us, and yet I'm not seeing it applied in any sort of context, especially in our Christian faith. Um, and this kind of all came to a head last year. I went to a conference with my son, um, and it was an amazing conference, and the man was speaking. And as I'm praying, just personally from my own heart, the session ends, and we were all sitting around talking, and one of the guys kind of just approached me and he was like, Wasn't that message so good? And I asked a simple question, and I said, Well, how do you apply that message to tomorrow? And you would have thought I asked this man for his social security number. I mean, he looked at me like I was insane. And I thought to myself, that should be a normal question. As someone who was brought up and with amazing men around me and amazing men pouring into me, this idea of asking that question is a normal one. Uh, one of the men that poured into me from a young age always says, you know, your theology must become your biography. This idea of whatever you believe or whatever you're listening to must be transformative in your life. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Um, and for me, that kind of came to a head. I was, I'll never forget, I was probably 17, and I'm a big I love to read, I love old books, I love mysteries, and there's no culmination of that better than Sir Conan Doyle with his original Sherlock Holmes. And there's this, there's this scene though, um, in one of his books where Watson is talking to Sherlock, and you know, Watson can't believe how smart Sherlock is. And he's talking about, and I'm I apologize to all flat earthers out there, but he's talking about how the earth is revolving around the sun. And Sherlock has no idea about it, and he he has no grid for it. And Watson goes, How can you, being one of the smartest men, not even understand what simple elementary school kids understand? I actually wrote this quote down because I think it's so amazing. He says, You say we go around the sun, if we went around the room, it may not make a penny worth of difference to me or to my work. And this idea that the if the information is not changing tomorrow, then it's not helping anybody. So I go to this conference, I ask this question, and I'm driving back with my son, and I'm just praying. And I'm thinking about there's such a disconnect between the pulpit and the pews in a lot of ways. And as someone who grew up with a dad who's been a pastor for 30 plus years and appreciative of what everybody's doing in the ministry and looking for what I can fill as a gap, God just kind of deposited this thought in my head that I want more men following me on Monday. The specific quote that he gave me was less men at the altar on Sunday, more men following me on Monday. Um, had that discussion with a few guys, and your brother being one of them goes, You should just call, do something and call it Monday morning men. It's one of your brother's nice few brilliant ideas. Yeah. He has like two a year, so I'll take the one one of them. But but this became my mantra for this year, and hence why we're doing what we're doing, the idea behind we need practical Christianity of how we're taking the information that's at our disposal that's been given to us. Now we need to practically apply it because unfortunately, um, it's something that's lost in our our Christian faith and our Christian walk right now. Who's the person who'd benefit from this podcast? Um I think, well, hopefully everybody, right? I mean, we're not just speaking to a specific uh demographic of men. Um it is geared towards men. Um, I believe the reason I specifically it helps I have insight into being a man, personal experience for the last 34 years. I think I provide some sort of context for being a man. But I think but specifically, one of the things that kind of just as an idea to kind of give a rounded view on this, um, Genesis 1, we see uh Genesis 126 specifically, it talks about that dominion mandate, right? As men, especially as Christian men, we understand we're to go into all the world, right? We're to preach the gospel, make discipleship, but this dominion mandate of taking over, whether it's the arts or maybe it's a business, somehow we're taking dominion in the sphere that God has given us. But what I find so unique about that mandate is actually there's requirements before we actually follow and able to take dominion in certain avenues is found in Genesis 2.15. That God requires obedience and faithfulness before you take dominion. And uh the second line of Baptist confession on point four under creation, they even say, like, for you to take dominion, the actual quote is that you have to walk in obedience. It's just a requirement. So for who it is, it's for any man that wants to take dominion, which should be our natural God-given instinct, but it should be dominion in a way that walks in obedience and faithfulness. If you want to truly walk out what God wants you to and you want to grow in your maturity, faithfulness and obedience. So this podcast, or you know, whatever you want to call this teaching time is an idea to take you from just what you understand to actually applying it. Spiritual maturity is not based on your actual knowledge or your information, it's based on your actual fruitfulness of your life.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Awesome. What can people look forward to hearing about, like topics in this podcast?

Not Creating Pharisees (Big Disclaimer)

The Mission: Pursuing Jesus, Not Morality

How Each Episode Will Work (Apply It Weekly)

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Topics are gonna range from a myriad of different things that I think as men we either struggle with or process or we do day to day. Um so that it's a it's an open, fluid discussion. I can't, I can't say we're necessarily building on something, maybe even uh that always makes sense on if we're building on last week's topic or not. Ideally, this is just something that you can take and apply it that week. So the goal of this is not to have you in 12 weeks, you're at this. This is not a course. We're not selling anything. This is just for you to be able to grow in your Christian walk. And maybe something, there's gonna be things that you go, I understand this topic. I under, you know, I have knowledge about it. I've heard better sermons on it. I'm sure you will. There's gonna be way more uh information and education on someone well more versed and that understands the topic way better than I do. The goal of this isn't to give you more information, it's to kind of kick you in the butt, essentially, to grow in what God has given to you. I think about like for me personally, we're always growing and we're always being transformed. Romans 12 says we're always being transformed. And when we understand that, that transformation, if we're always growing towards something, that we should realize that the production of that is good fruit. So if for the topics and whatever we're discussing, the ultimate goal is to have that fruit in the life. That is the only requirement for whatever we discuss, is that we take that information and then we apply it. I did want to kind of just like notate this just for people out there. So as you're processing men, why the importance of this conversation? That Greek word means uh in transform means metamorphosis, which means literally changing and moving. You're always changing, you're always growing into something. And I love that men, especially at least I'm surrounded by a lot of guys that want to grow, right? We want to listen to a podcast, we want to grow our business, or we want to go to the gym or whatever it is. Why will we not apply that into our spiritual life? Luke 6, uh, 43 through 45, and this is just ultimately, this is the verse that we all know. For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit, for figs are not gathered from thornbrushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil produces out of his evil treasure produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. We're moving into something, we're growing into something. You want to know where your spiritual life is? It's gonna be walking in the practical Christianity of faithfulness and obedience to what God has asked of us, and that's kind of the goal behind this. Wow. I'm excited. One disclaimer that I kind of want to make as we go into this. Like, I hope men are more motivated now than ever to continue to walk with what God has given them. But the ultimate goal behind this is not to make more moral people more, you know, just checking the boxes. I mean, we're not creating Pharisees, right? You know, we look at scripture. I mean, you see in Proverbs 15 it talks about we should seek knowledge, and then we find out in Corinthians that knowledge puffs off. Which what is the difference? Obviously, the answer I gave a little bit earlier, it's all about the information being transformative in your life. If whatever we're learning is to draw us closer to God, this is ultimately the important message that we could kind of acculminate with all that we're learning here. I want to just understand that we are not pursuing morality. We're not pursuing a better Christian. This is not to simply make yourself better than anybody else. It's because you love Jesus. I'll read this because this is ultimately, if I could give one verse that summarizes all that we're going to be doing kind of in the future, is Colossians 2, 6, and 7. It's this as therefore we have received Christ Jesus in the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. We are chasing Jesus here. Jesus is everything. He is the one that we love, we sit at his feet. And it is because just like Jesus did not do anything outside of the Father, us too, we do not want to do anything outside the Father. We want to practically apply everything that God has given us in the scriptures and walk it out in a biblical way. So if you're sitting there and you're like, well, I want to be a better Christian, wrong mindset. We are rooted in Christ, we're rooted in his word, we're rooted in what he wants us to walk in, and we're doing it in a practical Christian way because this is how he's ultimately orchestrated it within the scriptures. I I always tell this story about my dad, and I'll tell lots of stories about my dad. He, I mean, everybody thinks their dad's amazing. I duly believe my dad is awesome. But one of the things I'll never forget, I was 12 years old, and we had these uh biblical character qualities uh that were listed beside our kind of like our countertop, and he would work. It was back when you had to plug in the internet, so it was the only place the internet was. And he was sitting there and he was working in this sign. It had all of the great, you know, character, obedience, faithfulness, meekness, kindness, right? Lots of fruits of the spirit, but he just had the definitions between each one of them. And it said, character we're building. And my dad was looking at this thing, and he just was staring when I'm sweeping. That was my chore. I was sweeping after uh dinner, and I watched him and he looked at it and he grabbed the sign and he just walked out to the garage with it. And then he came back in and started working again. I was like, What did you do with the sign? And I said, Dad, where'd you go with that? I'm like, I mean, that's mom's poster, by the way. That's not yours. You should be really careful. And he said, uh, I love this part. He goes, I'm not teaching my kids character, I'm teaching my kids Jesus. And when I teach them Jesus, then they will walk in character. And he goes, We're not putting the cart before the horse in this family. And I thought to myself, mom's gonna kill you. That was the first thought. But I I remember being so impacted in that moment that my dad wanted us rooted in Jesus first and then allow the character to be built out. So I don't know where every guy that listens to this is at. And I hope that it's birthed out of a place of I want to follow Jesus more. But again, we're not chasing legalism or knowledge, we're chasing practical Christianity because we want to walk hand in hand with the Father.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

That's awesome. Yeah, in a world where there's so much information and podcasts out there on development and personal development and you know, all the latest crazy stuff that people do, uh, we taking it back to at the core what's gonna produce character in you and it's being more like Christ. Amen.

The Importance of Accountability & Community

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Exactly. So I think how I would like for this to move forward, just so everybody has like an idea. We'll present one topic. Like you said, we're gonna have a plethora of different things. Um, anything from maybe we're discussing humility, what does humility look like? How do we apply it? To something a little bit, you know, maybe it's a little bit more nuanced and kind of uh something that maybe you've thought about, you've not considered practicing. Um, but it's gonna be different topics, but ultimately we present it. It'll be uploaded on Monday morning. I mean, could you imagine if we uploaded a Monday morning men podcast on a Tuesday? Like that would be embarrassing. It'll upload on Monday, you take that information and then you apply it that week. And it's immediate application. This is not something that you'll just be like, oh, that's a cool idea. My heart would be that you would take it and you would apply it that week. Um, in that kind of same disclaimer vein, we cannot uh substitute true discipleship or accountability. That's not unfortunately what this platform is allowing us. I think a lot of people supplement teaching and and podcasts as if that's what it is. Maybe one day in the future uh that there's some sort of form that we could help, you know, yeah uh give that to certain people. But for now, encourage you to find maybe someone, even to walk beside, even if it's just a hey, you're keeping me accountable. This is what I've decided I'm gonna apply this week, and then walk it out, um, or find uh maybe an older man to kind of even keep you accountable or to pour into you. But ultimately just just to know we want this to be a learning and a launching pad, but unfortunately it's not gonna be all encompassing for how God ultimately wants it.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

When it's done in communities, it's a whole lot more fruitful. Exactly, which is what we're going for. So ideally you would walk those things out um if you want the fullness of what I think God wants us to be able to accomplish in this.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Cool. All right. Well, with that, we'll close out and then uh on to the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Monday morning.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Monday morning. I like it.