(As always, the video version of this is much better, but in case you want to just read it, here’s a 30% version.)Imagine there’s an author and podcaster you genuinely admire. You own all her books. You never miss an episode. You’ve held onto every personal detail she’s ever mentioned — her husband’s name is Victor, she has three kids, she loves glamping, glamorous camping in those rolling houses on wheels, with soft beds and real creature comforts. If there were a quiz about her, you’d win it. You know more about this woman than most of her own relatives do.Then one weekend you’re at a distant friend’s wedding, and by some miracle you’re seated right next to her at the reception. You hit it off immediately. On impulse, she and her family invite you to join them in their RV parked outside, right after the wedding. You go. And it changes you. Their wholeness somehow rubs off on you. Their stability becomes something you carry. One day you’ll probably mention that you’d been a fan for years — but by then it won’t matter, because now you’re a friend. Part of the family.Do you see the difference?On the first level, you knew about her. You knew the details. Her words had shaped you and you respected her deeply. But you didn’t know her. Then you met her. You talked, ate, and traveled together. And from that point on, you could be anywhere in a crowded room, and the moment your eyes met, you’d both smile and start making your way toward each other.There’s actually a dedicated region of the brain for remembering the faces of people you truly know. Everyone else functions as background — never really seen, instantly forgotten as you walk away. The people you truly know are different. Specific. Real. Present.I’ve come to believe this is the single most important distinction in the Christian life, and we don’t talk about it nearly enough.There is an enormous difference between the tangible presence of Jesus and a religion about him — even a religion done perfectly. Religion isn’t just a substitute for knowing Christ. It actually stands in the way of knowing him. That’s the most frightening thing about it. You can go extraordinarily deep into a religion about Jesus — become a raving, devoted, lifelong fan, keep every observance, deny yourself everything fun in life — and still never actually know him.I’m not the one who came up with that. Jesus said it himself, and he said it in the most sobering way imaginable:“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me.’” (Matthew 7:21–23)Not “you got the doctrine wrong.” Not “you didn’t work hard enough.” I never knew you. Now, these are people with a résumé — prophecy, deliverance, miracles—all of it in his name. It’s like owning the jersey, the signed photos, and the game ball of a sports hero. You might be completely genuine in your devotion. But that doesn’t make you family.Jesus came to be our King — but also our brother. And brothers know each other.So there’s really only one question underneath all of this. Religion or presence — which one do you actually want? Some people, honestly, want religion. They want to keep God in his place. They’re happy to follow a religion about him and they don’t need a backstage pass to meet him personally. That’s a real choice, and it’s available.But other people aren’t that easily satisfied. They want to know their Maker. They want to know why they’re here. If that’s you, I want you to hear that what you’re after is not only possible — it’s the whole point. Jesus wants to live with you. He wants to animate you from within and do his work for others through you. People who encounter you should encounter him. You’ll find yourself in conversations where strangers open up about the deepest things in their hearts without quite knowing why. That’s not an elite spiritual tier. That’s the normal life with Jesus as Lord.If you’ve never had that experience, the way in is embarrassingly simple. Start talking to Jesus about it. Get hungry for it. Silence your feed. Seek it earnestly. You don’t find true north through a rational analysis of whether Christianity is historically valid. You find it through an encounter with a Being who is both otherworldly and your Creator. He gave you the promise himself: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)We can keep being a fan. Or we can get in the RV.ReJesus Everything is available now on Amazon — a letter to the generation inheriting the Christian movement, about trading a religion about Jesus for the real thing. Grab a copy, and bring a few friends: the free discussion guide on the website is built for exactly this kind of conversation.Every Blessing!Chuck Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

There’s a translation problem at the very beginning of the Bible, and I think it’s been costing us something important for a long time.In Hebrew, the word Ruach means wind. It also means breath. It also means spirit, immaterial intelligence. Not three related concepts — one word, carrying all three at once, whenever it appears.When Genesis 1 says the “Spirit of God” was hovering over the waters — that’s ruach. The Spirit is the breath of God and the wind of God—all three simultaneously. I don’t believe The ancient Hebrew reader had to choose between those meanings; they felt all of them at once.Then in Genesis chapter two, God bends down and breathes ruach into the clay body of the first human. Wind. Breath. Spirit. Entering a body made from the ground, and the man becomes alive. That’s where your life came from. Not just biologically — eternally. The breath of God is the source of human life.And then Jesus comes. He teaches about this wind you cannot control, cannot predict, and cannot contain. He breathes on his disciples and says, receive the Holy Spirit.This is what he came to release. The breath of God. Back into human beings. The way it was always supposed to be.That is your birthright. Not a doctrine about it. Not a religion organized around the memory of it. The actual thing. The ruach of God, alive in you, doing what it has always done — creating, restoring, delivering, bringing life out of death.That is what’s at stake in this conversation. Not church attendance. Not doctrinal correctness. Your birthright. Let’s talk about it.The Oldest Story in the WorldI want to walk you through the biblical thread of ruach, because once you see it, it completely reframes the way you interpret all that Jesus was doing and saying.RUACH begins before day one of creation. Genesis 1:2 — “the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” That word “hovering” in Hebrew is the same word used later for an eagle hovering over its nest, watching over its young. The ruach of God is intelligently hovering over chaos. Waiting. Present. About to move.Then God with his breath speaks and everything comes into being. Light. Sky. Land. Life. All of it called into existence by the breath of God moving over the chaotic void.Chapter two — God forms a body from the ground. Beautiful, detailed, complete. And then he bends down and breathes ruach directly into the man’s nostrils. And the man becomes a living being. The breath of God entering a human being and making him an embodied life, fully alive. Connected. Known. Animated. Fueled.This is the original human experience. Ruach flowing freely between Creator and creature. No barrier. No intermediary. Direct. Intimate. Alive.Then sin enters, and the connection breaks. Not God’s choice — humanity’s. We chose independence from God, and independence from God means separation from his ruach. And the whole rest of the Old Testament is the story of God working to restore what was lost. The breath keeps moving. The wind keeps blowing.It dries the earth after the flood — ruach. It parts the Red Sea — ruach. It falls on the judges and the prophets and the kings when they need power beyond themselves. Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones and God tells him to prophesy to the ruach — to call the breath of God back into what is dead. And the bones come together and stand up and live.The whole Hebrew story is a story about ruach. About the breath of God and what happens when human beings are connected to it — and what happens when they’re not. It is the oldest story in the world.And then John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, and he is burning with urgency, and his whole message is this: someone is coming! Someone who will baptize not with water but with ruach and fire.He is saying: the original thing is returning. The breach is about to be healed. Get ready. God is doing something for you that you cannot do for yourself.Jesus and the WindWhen Jesus arrives, watch how he talks.He doesn’t primarily talk about religion. He doesn’t speak about proper church structure or how to do the rituals properly or how to organize a proper worship service. He talks about the wind.In John 3, a religious leader named Nicodemus comes to him at night — a sincere man, a careful man, someone who has spent his whole life doing religion correctly. And Jesus tells him: you have to be born again. Born of water and ruach. Spirit. Wind. Breath.Nicodemus is confused. How can a man be born again when he is old?And Jesus says: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)He’s not being evasive. He’s being precise. The ruach of God is not something you can systematize. You cannot predict it. You cannot control it. Cannot forbid it. You cannot package it, franchise it, or put it on a ministry calendar. It moves where it wants. It does what it wants. Your job is not to manage it. Your job is to raise your sails and be carried by it.John 7Then in John 7, on the last day of a great festival, Jesus stands up and raises his voice and says: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37-38)Rivers. Out of the hearts of ordinary people. John tells us he was speaking about the ruach — the Spirit — which those who believed in him were about to receive.Not a trickle. Not a substance so rare it has to be sprinkled, not a carefully managed flow through approved institutional channels. Rivers. Wild, life-giving, uncontainable rivers.This is what Jesus is offering you, my friend. This is what he came to restore. The ruach of God flowing freely through human beings the way it was always designed to.Thanks for reading Grounded Podcast! This post is public so feel free to share it.The FireAnd then there is the fire.John the Baptist didn’t just say ruach. He said ruach and fire. Both. Together. And on the day of Pentecost, both arrived simultaneously.Acts 2 — they are all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a rushing violent wind fills the entire house. And what appeared to be tongues of fire rest on each one of them. And they are all filled with the Holy Spirit.Wind and fire. Together. Exactly as John promised.I want you to sit with the image of fire for a moment, because fire does specific things. Fire gives light in darkness. Fire gives warmth in cold. Fire purifies what passes through it. Fire spreads — it doesn’t stay contained in one place unless you smother it. And fire, once it is truly roaring, is very difficult to stop.The disciples who walked out of that upper room were on fire. Not metaphorically — they had flames of holy fire upon them. There is no other explanation for what happened next. Uneducated fishermen stood up and spoke with such authority that thousands of people in a busy crowd, gave them their rapt attention and were cut to the heart. The lame walked. The dead were raised. The message spread across the known world within one generation. No budget. No institution. No marketing strategy. Just ruach and fire in ordinary human beings.This is your birthright. Not the memory of that day. Not a doctrine about that day. The same ruach. The same fire. Still available. Still moving. Still looking for human beings who want it badly enough to receive it.What We Did With It — and Why It MattersThat’s why I do not believe Jesus came to establish a religion of any kind. The thing he brought did not fit in Judaism. It does not fit in Buddhism or Hinduism, and I don’t even think it fits in Christianity. The thing that Jesus brought does not fit into any concept of religion. It is above religion. Religion cannot contain it, although it will always try.Every time ruach moves powerfully through a community of people, the same thing eventually happens. Institution keepers arise. People who are drawn to order and structure begin to build structure around it. They name it. Organize it. Incorporate it. Create guidelines for it. Establish who is authorized to handle it and who is not.And slowly, without anyone intending it, the structure begins to replace the thing it claims to protect. The hurricane becomes a ceiling fan. The fearful blast becomes managed by a fireplace.I have watched this happen in movements in my own lifetime. A community gets genuinely alive — ruach is moving, people are being transformed, there is an unmistakable presence in the room. And within a generation it is an institution. The structure remains. That superhuman energy is gone.I am not saying structure is the enemy. Jesus himself had structure — he had twelve disciples, he had a clear mission, he moved with intention and purpose. The early church had elders and deacons and real accountability. Structure is not the problem.The problem is when structure stops serving the ruach and starts regulating it.And the reason this matters for your generation specifically is this: you are the ones who get to decide what you build. You are the ones who will lead the next movements. You are the ones who will choose, when the ruach moves, whether to follow it freely or immediately begin building a box around it.Choose the wind. Always choose the wind.Your Birthright — How to Claim ItSo what does this mean practically? How do you actually claim this birthright?Jesus gave Nicodemus the answer: you have to be born of the ruach. You have to receive it. And receiving it requires wanting it — actually wanting the wind itself, not just the structure built around the memory of it.In his last week, Jesus gathered his disciples in a small room and simply breathed on them. “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22) That’s it. No elaborate ritual. No special qualification required. Just — receive it.The path to ruach has always been the same. It is direct. Personal. It doesn’t run through an institution. It runs through surrender — Lowering your barriers and laying down your independence from God, trusting him like a child, opening yourself to be filled with what he has always wanted to give you.Silence your feed. Get hungry for this. Talk to Jesus about it directly. Ask him to breathe on you the way he breathed on those disciples. He has not changed. He is still in the business of releasing ruach into human beings who want it.And you know from the inside what it is to be carried by that wind — you will never be satisfied with the ceiling fan again.Jesus did not come to give us a religion. Even a perfect one. A religion is too small a thing. Too containable. Too manageable. Too easily turned into a system that runs on human energy instead of divine breath.He came to release the ruach of God back into human beings. The same breath that hovered over the chaos waters at the beginning of everything. The same breath that made the first human alive. The same wind that carried the disciples out of that upper room and into the world.That is what he came to do. That is your birthright. And that is exactly what is at stake.Don’t settle for a ceiling fan. You were made for the hurricane.Next episode we’ll go deeper into one of the most important questions this raises: what is the difference between knowing about Jesus and actually knowing him? Because there is a difference, and once you see it, everything changes.If this episode is stirring something in you, the book ReJesus Everything, go so much deeper. It is available on Amazon. And if you want to sit with these questions in a group, the free discussion guide on the website is built for exactly that.One more thing: if you sense that God is calling you to something bigger with your creativity and your gifts, Medialight was built for exactly that kind of formation. Real training, real community, a whole team investing in you — and I’m there as one of the main instructors. Go take a look at medialight.network.The ruach is still moving. Go find it.See you next time.Chuck Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Hi there! I hope you’re having a great day. This newsletter will be the short version of what I go into much greater depth in the video version. I noticed that there are two kinds of learners on this mailing list: some who just want to read it and others who enjoy the video version. So here we go. In forty+ years of ministry I’ve seen a lot of things go wrong inside churches, organizations, and movements. Leadership failures, church splits, burnout, abuse of authority, financial scandals — most of it up close.And underneath almost all of it is the same root problem. Not bad theology. Not weak leadership. Not a lack of resources or strategy.The number one source of dysfunction in Christianity in my humble opinion is simply the subordination of Jesus.Not his absence. His subordination. He’s still in the building. His name is still on the sign. People are still singing songs about him and praying in his name and carrying Bibles with his words printed in red. But somewhere along the way, Jesus stopped being the actual authority. He became the mascot.He became an advisor we consult when we need wisdom, a therapist we visit when we’re struggling, an emergency contact we call when things fall apart. We rarely treat him as Lord — the one with the final say over everything.Influence and authority are not the same thingInfluence is the ability to affect someone’s thinking and maybe their behavior. Authority is the right to make decisions and expect obedience. You can have one without the other.Jesus has enormous influence in Christianity. In practical terms, he often has minimal authority. People talk about him constantly. They study his teachings. They worship him on Sunday. But they don’t necessarily do what he says. He said it himself: “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?”A secular historian named Michael Hart wrote a book ranking the hundred most influential people in history. He places Jesus third — behind Mohammed and Isaac Newton — despite Christianity being the world’s largest religion. His reasoning: Jesus’ ethical teachings are among the most remarkable and original ever presented. Then he says — Christians don’t feel the need to obey Christ in order to identify as Christian.A secular historian just described the central problem of Christianity in one paragraph. We can never truly align with Jesus until we individually, and corporately, accept his authority over everything.The seminary problemAs someone who worked in seminaries for twenty years, including as a seminary president, I think I’m entitled to an opinion on this one. If I wanted to reinstall the authority of Jesus in Christianity worldwide, I’d start with the seminary — the place training the next generation of pastors and thinkers. You’d assume the primary curriculum in a seminary would be Jesus. You’d spend three years unpacking his words, his practices, his way of training people, his handling of conflict and power and poverty, how he dealt with the rich and the poor, how he made disciples.But if you enroll in seminary expecting that, you’ll be disappointed.In actual seminary, you’ll study a million other things. A dedicated course on Jesus is typically an elective — if offered at all. You get one course called The Gospels, but you’ll spend half the semester on technical arguments about authorship. etc.Jesus is not even the chief theologian of his own movement. Paul is. You’ll spend two years studying every word Paul wrote.Just as John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus, Jesus might as well be the forerunner of Paul if you judge by who gets the spotlight in the institutions built in his name. Let that sink in.The authority he simply commandedI want to talk about the kind of authority we’re actually reinstalling by intentionally placing Jesus not just as the most influential Person in our life, but actually as the central authority in our life.What bothered the temple authorities most about Jesus was the authority he simply commanded. He held thousands of people on a hillside with no amplification — just his voice, while he sat on a stone. In every recorded conversation he speaks as the Master, never searching for words, never uncertain about what he wants to say.The Pharisees kept throwing the same question at him: “Who gave you this authority?”John answers it in the first line of his Gospel. He has it by creation. The Father confirmed it through miracles done by his voice alone — commanding demons, sickness, storms, and death. He now sits at the right hand of God, Lord of Heaven and Earth.That is the authority we are reinstalling. Not a new ministry strategy. Not a doctrinal revision. This.Jesus is higher than all the apostles. Higher than any ancient or modern prophet. Higher than Mary and the Pope. Higher than your pastor. Higher than the most brilliant theologians who have ever lived. He is higher than anyone else within the pages of the Bible. He is not a teacher — he is THE Teacher, THE Prophet, THE Messenger of God to us.See Jesus. Then reJesus everything else.Reinstalling the authority of Jesus starts with one decision: choose to treat Jesus as if he is actually in charge. Not an advisor. Not an emergency contact. The one with the final say.That single decision changes what you read in Scripture, how you handle disagreements, and how you conduct yourself every moment of every day.If you’ve got time to listen to this on video, I think you’ll get a lot more out of the podcast version this time.Every Blessing! ChuckReJesus Everything is available now on Amazon. It’s a letter to the generation inheriting the Christian movement — about how to put Jesus back at the center of a faith that has quietly promoted other things in addition to him. Grab a copy, and if you want to work through it with a group, there’s a free discussion guide coming soon. PS: Please leave a review, even a short one. It’s a powerful way to expand the reach of the book on Amazon, the world’s largest book marketplace. Thanks!!! Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Hi there! I hope you’re having a super good day.Are you good at imagining things? Can you, for example, get an idea about the furnishing of a room so that it comes alive and becomes a place with a purpose? Can you see it before actually dragging furniture into the space? I think we all have this ability, but some people use it more and so it becomes stronger with them. Anyway, we’re always trying to encourage people to release their creativity because creativity is worship. God is our Creator, and He invites us to create things with Him. In this video, I want to invite you into the process that is involved in making a video out of a scripture passage. Today I was reading Psalms 148, and it just read like a script. I could see it in my mind. Read it with me in this video, and I think you’ll see it also. Over the next few months, we want to convert this scripture into a powerful video that lays down the foundation of teaching behind the Old and New Testaments. I hope to have the liberty in the next year to build out some videos that can hopefully gain traction with young audiences online and teach them the big strokes of God’s message in a way that feels the most natural to them. So, without further ado, let’s open up the Bible to Psalms 148 and start envisioning what a video of those few verses might look like. Thanks for standing with us as we raise up a generation of content creators who put God’s words into artistic form so they can impact this digital generation.Every Blessing!Chuck and Sherry Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Hi friend! Sherry and I are back in Thailand, so I’m back in the studio, able to produce again. Thanks for your patience. Let’s dive in. There’s a scene at the very end of the Bible that has always amazed me. It’s my new favorite Bible verse, and you’ll find it in the last chapter of Revelation — God’s final word to the world. You’d expect something tender. Something like, “Please, my children, come back to me. I love you too much to let you go.”That’s not what happens.A glorious angel steps forward to deliver the closing message: “He who is unjust, let him be unjust still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him be righteous still. He who is holy, let him be holy still.”No pleading. No last-minute persuasion campaign. Just…“Hey Humans, Make up your mind.”I’ve come to believe that whole speech is basically a command to decide who you’re going to be and get on with it. Vote already. If you want to be crooked, then lie, cheat, and abuse like a gangster. If you want to be lustful, then go roll in the filth. But if you’re going to follow Jesus — wake up, and do it with everything you’ve got.What strikes me about that passage is that it doesn’t seem to matter to God whether every single person chooses him. He gave us free will. What matters is that everybody votes. He wants us to pick a team.I’m picking Team Jesus.The either-orThis is where I think a lot of churched people skip past too quickly. We think we settled it all when we prayed the sinner’s prayer one day so we wouldn’t have to go to hell. All of us need to intentionally make up our minds about Jesus. Either he is the Creator come in the flesh to save us, or he is not. Either he is the only door to God, or he is not. If he’s none of those things, then he’s just a man — a good teacher, maybe — but not someone you build a life around.But if he is that Savior, then he must also be Lord. If this is true, then we have to live like he’s actually the boss.The early church didn’t have a twelve-point statement of faith. They had one doctrine: Jesus is Lord. That was enough. Everything else fit inside that one conviction. Compare that to what a lot of us grew up with — stacks of doctrinal positions and denominational distinctives layered on top of each other. Somewhere underneath all of it, the actual Lordship of Jesus has often gotten buried instead of being the one thing holding everything else together.Lordship or nothingThe core of the Gospel message is that Jesus offers to be our Lord. The choice to accept this offer belongs entirely to us from that point on. But he won’t lower his position to make it easier on us. It’s Lordship or nothing.That sounds like a hard sell, doesn’t it? Who actually wants a lifetime under the authority of a Supreme Lord? Our experience with power, in this life, is that power tends to end up unpleasant, even abusive. We chafe at the thought of someone else having the final say over us, and that’s a completely normal reaction.But Jesus isn’t like any human leader you’ve ever lived under. The people who actually live under his Lordship discover something that surprises them every time: his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. His authority strengthens and lifts you rather than crushing you. It releases your creativity. It ignites vision instead of shutting you down.This is not religion. Religion takes what you have and always demands more. What Jesus offers is the exact opposite — he’s offering to become your shield, your provider, your healer, your leader, forever. That’s an unbelievable offer, once you sit with it.My own convictionIf Jesus is anything less than what he claims to be in the Gospels, I don’t want to follow him. I don’t need another moral teacher. I need a Savior. There’s no middle road. He’s either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.I spent my early years in the spiritual wilderness working through exactly what I believed about Jesus, and why. I looked at the alternatives. I sat with the doubts. And then I made up my mind.I believe him because of the life he actually lived — he refused to compromise to be popular, wealthy, or to avoid pain. I believe him because five hundred witnesses were willing to face persecution and death to testify that they had personally seen him alive again. But more than any of that, I believe Jesus because I’ve experienced him for myself for fifty years now. He healed my depression as a teenager. He’s answered specific prayers more times than I could count. That’s not theory. That’s my own history with him.Represent Jesus, not ChristianitySherry and I have spent over forty years living in Southeast Asia. We have not spent forty years representing Christianity. We represent Jesus — not our denomination, not a nonprofit. Just him.This Jesus thing has never been doctrine for us. It’s experience. So don’t follow a religion about Jesus, or a creed, or a particular church’s brand of him. Follow him. Know him.Whatever else you do this week — make up your mind about Jesus. Vote.If this question is stirring something in you, this is exactly where the book picks up.ReJesus Everything is built around one conviction: Jesus is the standard, and the Christianities we’ve inherited are just our attempts to represent him — some better than others. This piece you just read is the opening move of a much longer conversation in the book: making up your mind about who Jesus actually is, before we ever get to what’s broken in how the church has tried to follow him, and what it looks like to rebuild from here.It’s not a book about tearing anything down. It’s a letter to the next generation of leaders, written from fifty years of ministry across dozens of cultures, about how to put Jesus back at the center of a faith that’s drifted. If you’ve ever sensed that gap — between the Jesus you grew up believing in and the Jesus actually described in the Gospels — this book was written for you.ReJesus Everything is available now on Amazon. Grab a copy, and if you want to work through it with friends, there’s a free discussion guide on the website too. Click here to order. Please leave us a review on Amazon. It’s more powerful than you could know in causing the algorithm to show the book to other people. Thanks! Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Hi! I hope you’re having a wonderful day. I wanted to share with you this interview which was released this week on the Medialight Substack page. It’s a conversation I had with Ross about where the next generation finds themselves in relationship with the church and the Bible and Christianity globally. One of the concepts we talk about is the need to re-establish the central authority of Jesus and not treat Him just as one voice among many. The Medialight team came up with this diagram, which I share with you now. Because I know Ross so well, I really think the conversation between us is special, and I hope you will check it out. The book is available now on Amazon. Every Blessing!Chuck Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Hey! I have exciting news, the book is finally live! ReJesus Everything is available on Amazon worldwide! We have a Kindle version already up, and we will produce an audiobook within a month or so. This has been a passion project for many years. In some ways, I feel like I’ve been writing this book all my life because I have been thinking the thoughts that I was finally able to release along the journey of ministry that Sherry and I have been in these 45 years. There were so many battles involved in bringing this book to its launch day. There were struggles with artists, struggles with the layout designer, and struggles with Amazon over technical parts of the physical construction of the book. Anyway, we expected some resistance anytime we create a new thing, but this one truly took so much grit to bring across the finish line, so please celebrate with us! The past two years have largely revolved around this project, and now it’s completed. In this video, I talk about what’s inside the book so I won’t go into details on that here. What I am hoping is that this book will become fuel for discussion in local churches and ministries. We are producing a companion leader’s guide for free that can be downloaded from the book’s website. In this guide, we lay out six to eight sessions that a church can have to create a safe discussion where church leaders and young people can process the dissonance many young people feel between the Jesus of the Bible and the organized version of Christianity around them. Like the book, the majority of this discussion centers around rebuilding our current version of Christianity with Jesus, His words, and the example of His life at the center. A whole generation of Christian young people are avoiding any idea of serving in church ministry, even though they love Jesus. They just look at current forms of church and say, “That’s not for me.” We’re missing so much buy-in from this generation, and those of us who are mature in the Lord have to put some energy into making certain the baton relay continues. Over the last two thousand years, if even one generation had failed to pass the baton to the next generation, the Christian movement would have stopped. I don’t want to see things break down in our generation. Sherry and I are spending much energy trying to help this generation pick up the ministry and create their own new version of things so that the powerful Gospel of Jesus continues forward. We believe this book can be an important resource for the global church, and I want to thank you for supporting us up to this point. Thank you for opening my emails and for participating in this podcast. You have allowed me to work out my thoughts and bring them to a place where they could be published. Sherry and I are so grateful for this. Can We Ask Two Things Please? 1. Give the book a try. Here’s the Link to Purchase on Amazon2. Write a 3 sentence review and give the appropriate numbers of stars in your rating.If we could get 50 people to buy the book and give it a review, it will trigger an algorithm on Amazon where the book gets promoted to new viewers. This is the great chance for a breakout, but it needs to happen in the first two weeks, so please buy the book today and give us a review. We will be so grateful to you for that. Thanks again!Chuck and Sherry Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Welcome back to the Grounded Podcast! I hope you are having an incredible week. Sherry and I are out of the country for the next few weeks on an assignment that is part ministry and part Sabbath for the two of us. We run pretty hard on the schedule, some days having six meetings back-to-back, and it’s just important to balance that with some good time of restoration. What’s coming up? Today we get three great questions:* Is it okay to question things you were taught growing up in church?* What do you do when God feels completely silent?* How do you maintain personal faith when you’ve seen so much hypocrisy in the church?* Bonus: and I talk a bit about how God brings revelation to us through others. I wanted to highlight the second question because it’s something I have experienced myself, so I can really sympathize with others who are going through it. Life Can Wear You OutWe all get worn out, sometimes. The most important things in life need sustained effort on our part. It even seems that the more important something is, the harder it is to do because it gets resisted by the darkness. I mean, nobody stumbles into a great lifetime marriage or launching a bunch of happy, healthy, solid kids. Or building a God-honoring business that balances making profits with being a blessing to people. These things are so resisted in the world that we have to push harder in our efforts to achieve them.We Meet a Tired ManSherry and I just returned from the Pastors Coalition meeting in Tennessee this past weekend. This is a group of excellent pastors who want to go the extra mile and not only run a healthy church but also influence that church to do something powerful in global missions and humanitarian work around the world. In this group, there was one notable leader, a man I truly admire. A year ago, I felt compelled to drive to his city and have a meeting with him although I did not know why. When I called to set it up, he didn’t seem too excited about the prospect of me coming to have a talk with him. After I got there it was a little awkward but eventually we got to an amazing fish house, where we ate a lot of shrimp and ended up having a long talk about dryness and the need to take a sabbath rest. The essence of our conversation was that maybe he wasn’t really burned out, nor was he finished in his calling. He was just tired and exhausted, and he needed to let things idle for a year. At this week’s meeting, he told me that our conversation probably saved his ministry, because he was, in fact, resisting meeting with me out of the secret knowledge that he was about to leave it all behind. His wife said, “We were depleted, but our ground was depleted too. We needed to let the land rest.”Putting Things into Sabbath ModeHe quietly put everything in this big dynamic church into maintenance mode without announcing it to anyone. Every time someone had a great idea, he said, “That’s a great idea. Write it up and email it to me!” but he never did anything new the whole year. He slowed the busy-ness of his church and focused on health in the church. Sabbath year. Just let the land rest. He spent more time on his personal health, and he and his wife logged a lot of missing hours together and renewed their strength and rebuilt themselves on the inside for twelve whole months. The core leaders from the church got a rest too as things got simplified for a whole year.The end of the story is that they’re both revived and the church with them. This year they’re actually going to start eight micro churches under other leaders. This will have minimal drain on them or the church but will ignite eight new people in their circle to do something visionary with God in a house group or small-sized church setting. That’s usually the fruit of truly unplugging for a season. Maybe you need that, and if you do, I hope you will not argue yourself out of it, but just start pulling plugs out and making space in your calendar for a season of doing nothing. But that’s not even what this episode is about That part is for free, folks! What I talk about in the video is something totally different. It’s about the reality of a place called the wilderness—a dry, arid, vacant place you end up somehow wandering into even as you faithfully follow Jesus. You don’t intend to go there.It just happens. Things get quiet and you sense that you’re just alone in a desert place, and no matter how loud you cry out to God, you don’t hear anything in response. Maybe this lasts a week or a month. I felt nothing. It lasted for three years.Journeying Through a Spiritual DesertIn Manila, I preached each week, and we had great harvest. Typically, 25 people every Sunday came to Christ over an 8-10-year period. For a long while, I could sing. I could pray. But inside I just felt silence. (I talk more about it in the video.) Thank God, the thing about all deserts is that they don’t go on forever. I got out of mine eventually, so I can fully understand what this experience feels like to other people and can assure you that it is not a permanent state. Actually, this phenomenon is well recorded in Christian history. Many of the people considered spiritual heroes in Christian history report a season in their life where a similar thing took place. So if you’re in that condition right now, please take heart. Yes, it’s a time to ask God if you’ve done something to cause it, and if you have, you need to fix it, but it’s also very possible that you didn’t do a thing. It’s just a process, and somehow we need it—for reasons we can clearly see and for some reasons that we may not understand in this lifetime.Life with Jesus is so amazing, whether it’s in a desert or on a mountaintop. As long as he’s there, it’s a precious experience. I think one of the main things Jesus came to teach us was how to be fully human—how to live a life that is fully engaged with God and others in this physical world. I want to taste my food, feel the wind on my face, and enjoy every slobbery kiss from babies. Sherry and I love our days, and we pray God will help you to love yours also. ReJesus Everything! Love,Chuck and SherryGrounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Okay. In today’s quick podcast, I answer a single question that is being posed by some young people, which is: “Since all organized religion is problematic in one way or another, should we just walk away from it and have a private religion?” What is Private Religion?Private religion is sort of removing ourselves from a communal basis in our faith journey and choosing just to have what we might call privatism—me keeping my personal ideas about faith and religion private. This is one option, and many people are suggesting it. In this quick video. I give my reasons why I don’t think that’s the best path forward and why I believe it is very much possible to re-JESUS everything on a small and larger level. This past weekend, I was at the Emerging Leaders Gathering at Lee university, it was really exciting to see young people who were passionate about serving Jesus and wanting to do it in a communal way. Hats off to Mark Swank and others at Church of God World Missions, who have been leading this charge to raise up a new generation of missional young adults in a denomination that is over 100 years old. Time really is a factor in any organization, whether it’s a family or a faith-based mission. Time allows lots of cultural currents and trends and strong personalities to emerge and change the course of the original group. Sometimes this is healthy evolution and sometimes not so healthy, but what it always is is entropy, because age slows things down, makes them more institutional, and much less likely to bear fruit. That’s why the story of Abraham is such a miracle: an old man and woman had a baby. It’s just as remarkable for an old church to have a youth movement. In both cases, this was only accomplished with great intentionality. God wanted this baby, and Abraham and Sarah had to want this baby and bend their life around having future generations flow from them. We have to care about things like this, or they’ll never happen. I really appreciate the work of Dr. Propes, Mark Swank, and many others in generating some momentum among young people regarding global missions. Hope you enjoy the video. i’d love to hear your ideas too.Let’s keep this discussion going. Let’s read Jesus everything in our lives. There’s so much life in Jesus, and we can all have it, and we can all continue to bear fruit even in our mature years. Every blessing! ChuckGrounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe

Writers Note: This is a question with the power to set you free — or make you deeply uncomfortable. Maybe both at once, Please stick with us till the end. It’s a crucial discussion. Thanks for helping us spread this conversation widely so we can help others ground their faith.Did Jesus Found Christianity?Most people assume the answer is obvious. Of course he did. His name is in the title. But at the risk of being misunderstood, I still want to make the case that the answer is no — and that this is one of the most liberating thoughts you will ever consider as a devoted follower of Christ.I say this as a lifetime insider. I believe with everything in me that the life and teaching of Jesus is the most extraordinary gift ever given to this humanity. The principles he embodied are the very foundations of the civilization we inhabit today. The chaos we see in the world now is not caused by those principles. It is caused by our abandonment of them.But whether Jesus founded a religion called Christianity? That is a different question. Here are three reasons I believe he did not.Reason #1: History Simply Doesn’t Support ItThere is no historical evidence that Jesus founded any form of external religion. What the records show, consistently, is a man pushing against almost every institution of his day — family structures, Roman political arrangements, and most dramatically, the Temple of Judaism itself.He did not model how to build the best religion. He modeled a new way of living. Everything he said and did was about humans living in a direct, unmediated, loyal relationship with their Creator. His conclusion, demonstrated over and over, was that religion can actually become a barrier to the very God it claims to represent. When pious performance, priestly clothing, and theological gatekeeping replace direct encounter — Jesus doesn’t just disagree. He despises it.He was not anti-structure as an ideological position. He was anti-anything-that-comes-between-humans-and-God. That is not the posture of a man building a new religion. That is the posture of a man tearing down the walls that keep people from the presence they were made for.Reason #2: His Mission Was a War of Liberation, Not Institutional FormationJesus was not building an institution. He was fighting a war.He believed this planet had come under the influence of an intelligent, malevolent heavenly being whose strategy was hateful and relentless: push the leaders of every major pillar of society toward the accumulation of wealth, the abuse of power, and a fascination with physical pleasure at the expense of everything higher. The result is what we know well: disease, broken relationships, injustice, cruelty, death.Jesus spent his public ministry tearing down that kingdom piece by piece. He cast out demons. He healed people in the streets. He raised the dead. Every act of human restoration was a declaration of war.Does that sound like someone primarily concerned with founding a religion with creeds, hymns, ceremonies, temples, rituals, and liturgical practices?He didn’t build a religion. He didn’t teach his followers how to build one either.What he did build was people. An inner circle of three. Twelve. An outer network of five hundred. Community? Absolutely essential. A ceremonial structure of institution? Probably not. In his own words, those systems in Judaism had become tools of the enemy. He said the Pharisees’ determined religious efforts actually produced people who were twice the children of hell they were.Structure is never satisfied. It always wants more structure. Over time, the life gets squeezed out by the effort to control. That is why Spirit movements keep arising — hermits in the desert, prophets in the wilderness, reformers nailing documents to cathedral doors. Jesus himself regularly walked away from civilization into uninhabited places to be alone with God. That is not the behavior of an institution builder.Reason #3: “Christianity” Doesn’t Exist as One OrganizationThere simply isn’t one central thing called Christianity. There are more than 47,000 separated Christian groups — each with their own doctrines, mandatory practices, and expectations. Some believe Jesus is the only way. Others that he’s a noble example but that any sincere path will lead equally to God.Some believe Jesus was virgin born and raised from the dead. Others believe neither. Some believe in salvation based on works. Others through faith only. Others that it’s through mystical grace flowing through the sacraments. Some look for an eternity in the clouds. Others doubt there is an afterlife at all.Which of these did Jesus found? The answer, I believe, is none of them.Here is the formulation I keep returning to: Jesus is the standard. The Christianities are the attempts.The way of Jesus is not something you do alone — it demands community. To follow Jesus we have to build communities that align with his values and mission. The problem is in the cycle that usually attends movements. Every movement begins with hope, fire, fresh wine in fresh wineskins. But movements are messy and, eventually, have to be organized. Some become so rigid that no life remains. Others stagnate into comfortable fellowship that has forgotten the mission.The task of disciples is to build our Christian communities in alignment with his value system and for his purposes. The Kingdom belongs to Him. Building Christianities belongs to us.Jesus is the standard. Christianities are the attempts.Why This MattersThis is not an attack on institutional Christianity. It is a safety measure.Most of the truly toxic things that happen in religious communities — the abuse of power, the manipulation, the cultic control, the cruelty done in the name of God — most of it begins with grandiose thinking. When a leader starts to believe their church was founded by Jesus himself, they become significantly less accountable. They can come to believe themselves as the special “anointed ones” largely above question.The downward slide of is not a rare fringe case. It is the almost inevitable trajectory of all religious institutions that confuse themselves with the Kingdom of God.But when we accept — truly accept, in our bones — that our churches are our feeble human attempts to imitate Jesus in an organized way, something shifts in a vital way. We become accountable.We hold our structures humbly, knowing they are ours, not his, and that we will constantly need to revisit and correct them. The church is not the kingdom. The minute we confuse the two, we are on dangerous ground.I know that I’ve opened up a can of worms with this, and that touching this topic can seem like an attack on the entire Christian world. I really hope this can lead to some discussion. I do not offer this as doctrine, but as my reasoned opinion on this matter. I am NOT saying that we should abandon all organized forms of Christian religion. You cannot walk as a disciple without binding yourself to the community of disciples. I AM saying that every one of our forms of Christianity is a minority position, and that each of us treating them like ours is the correct one, the only one truly established by Jesus and that all the others are false Christians is one of the most toxic aspects of global Christianity. Three Things I’m Asking You to Consider DoingFirst: Stop defending your version Christianity as if Jesus founded it. Humans launched yours and we generally know their names whether it’s Wesleyan, Lutheran, Moravians, etc. Sincere humans founded our tribes, not Jesus himself. Just own that. It will make all of us more humble, more open, and consequently more dangerous to the enemy.Second: Ask honestly whether your Christianity is actually producing disciples — people growing in loyalty to God in how they handle money and power, how they treat others, and how quickly they apologize when they are wrong. That is the fruit Jesus was after. Healthy churches produce it.Third: If you have allowed any institution to stand between you and direct access to your Creator — if you have outsourced your relationship with God to a pastor, a doctrine, a ritual, or a sacred building — today is the day to walk back toward the wilderness a bit to find the quiet place. Go there and speak to your Father without an intermediary.Because that is what Jesus came to give you.Not a religion. A relationship. Not a Christianity. Himself — leading you into deep, direct communion with the God who made you.Let’s pursue that together and build faithful communities in the process.Every Blessing!ChuckPS: I’m not trying to give answers, and I’m really not trying to destabilize anyone’s faith. I just hope that we can have an honest, respectful conversation about the nature of the thing we’ve built all over this planet. That is called collectively Christianity. My solution to everything is a ruthless return to Jesus over every form of institutional religion, so that we can rebuild communities that reflect him more perfectly. I hope you feel my heart in this. I would love to hear what you have to say. Chuck Quinley is President of Emerge Missions and author of ReJesus Everything.Grounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe