John Carroll: Discipleship & Relationship

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Overview

Today on the podcast, I got to talk to John Carroll. John is an Asbury Seminary alum and has served in the local church for over ten years in many areas including youth ministry, spiritual formation and teaching pastor. Currently, John is the Director of the School of Kingdom Living for Dallas Willard Ministries. His heartbeat includes the two “ships” in life: Discipleship and Relationship. In today’s conversation, we talk about John’s calling, how that calling grew his faith as each step built new knowledge, what it means to be an apprentice of Jesus and how we can incorporate some of these practices into our own lives.

Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

John Carroll, Director of the School of Kingdom Living for Dallas Willard Ministries

John holds a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary (2103). He has served in the local church for over ten years in many areas including youth ministry, spiritual formation and teaching pastor. Currently, John is the Director of the School of Kingdom Living for Dallas Willard Ministries. His heartbeat includes the two “ships” in life: Discipleship and Relationship. John is ordained in the Evangelical Covenant Church. John and his wife, Amber, have been married or 20 years. They have two wonderful teenage kids and currently live in Melbourne, Florida.

 

Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders and people just like you, who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need. Today on the podcast, I got to talk to John Carroll. John is an Asbury seminary alum, and has served in local churches for over 10 years in many areas, including youth ministry, spiritual formation, and as a teaching pastor.

Heidi Wilcox:
Currently, John is the Director of the School of Kingdom Living for Dallas Willard Ministry. His heartbeat includes what he calls the two ships in life, discipleship and relationship. In today’s conversation, we talk about John’s calling, how that calling built his faith as an extension of knowledge, based upon previous knowledge of what he knew about God, and what it means to be an apprentice of Jesus and how we can incorporate some of these practices into our own lives. Let’s listen.

Heidi Wilcox:
John it’s so good to see you today, even though we’re virtually recording this podcast. Thank you so much for being a part of the Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast.

John Carroll:
Thank you, Heidi. It’s so good to be with you and to connect with your audience.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah. It’s good to catch up with you. We talked, your voice his story is very past tense now, because a lot of things have changed and that’s why we’re talking today, but a few years ago. So it’s really good to catch up with you today. I know you just got off of vacation. Where did you guys go?

John Carroll:
We went to The Bahamas, which is always where we go on vacation. We were celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary, which was back in April. And so this was our opportunity to get away without the kids and to just spend a week in The Bahamas. And it was every bit as good as you could possibly imagine.

Heidi Wilcox:
Nice. I’ve looked up, because you’re back in Florida now, and I looked up Melbourne, Florida, and I was like, “Wow, you live in paradise all the time.” So like going to The Bahamas, I don’t even know how you deal with all of that.

John Carroll:
I know it’s kind of weird. It’s like you live by the beach and then you take a beachy vacation. But we learned years ago… we did a ski trip in Colorado for vacation, when we got back and I said, “I’m exhausted. This was a lot of work. I mean the boots and the skiing up and down the mountain and stuff.” And so our jam is really to just relax on the beach and swim in beautiful waters. And so that’s what we did a couple of weeks ago.

Heidi Wilcox:
And I’m guessing living by the beach, you might not get to the beach as often as people who don’t live on the beach, think that you would.

John Carroll:
Yeah, it’s kind of tough because we’re working full time and we’ve got two teenagers. And so yeah, your schedule sort of gets in the way. We don’t go to the beach as much. And we really took it for granted before we moved to Kansas. And then once we got to Kansas, we thought, “What do we do? There is no beach.” And so now that we’re back, we get to the beach a lot more now than we did when we lived here previously.

Heidi Wilcox:
But 20 years, that’s really awesome. Congratulations.

John Carroll:
Thank you. I totally, as my friends, so politely remind me that I totally out kicked my coverage when it came to marrying my wife, Amber. She is a Saint and just a beautiful person inside and out. And so God really was good to me.

Heidi Wilcox:
How did you two meet?

John Carroll:
We met in college at UCF through some mutual friends and we just clicked right from the get-go and we started dating shortly after we met and we’ve been together ever since. That was September of 1998, is when we met.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, wow. What’s your secret been? Because I’ve been married four years. 20 years seems like a really long time, and a lot of people don’t make it for the long haul. My parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. So that was really cool. But what’s your secret to making it last?

John Carroll:
Well, in a joking sort of way, for any guy out there listening, any husband, it’s just say yes. “Yes, dear,” are like the two most important words that you could possibly say, but seriously, I mean, it’s really just operating in humility and really not seeing each other above the other person and honoring that person with your time and attention. Amber and I, we’re best friends. I mean we do things together not just vacations, but we just do life together and we both bless each other.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You make it sound easy, and it is easy sometimes, but after doing it even just four years, I’m like it takes work and commitment and intentionality.

John Carroll:
Oh yeah. The side that doesn’t often get talked about, but still important, is that over the years we’ve had a really good counselor. I think everybody needs to be in counseling. And there were things that I discovered about myself that I needed to work on. And there were things that she discovered about herself that she needed to work on. And we were serious about our relationship enough to put in the time and the effort to work on that stuff. And it’s still a work in progress. I mean, it’s not perfect, but we love each other in such a way that we, we want to make those steps.

Heidi Wilcox:
I love that. I think it’s beautiful watching two lives get woven together in that way, because we have neighbors across the street, who’ve been married like 60, 70 years, they’re in their 90s now. It’s been a real encouragement to me just to watch them. And you can’t tell exactly where one ends and the other begins, they’ve just are in that perpetual give and take kind of thing.

John Carroll:
Yes. And the give and take is so important because you’re not going to get it a 100% of the time, and to just do things equally.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That’s awesome. So 2020 has been a year for all of us, and I know we were talking before the podcast, you’ve had some things happen, as we all have this year. What has this year been like for you and your family?

John Carroll:
Well, challenging, for sure. There was a lot of uncertainty that we experienced. I was working full time for a Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and specifically for a program there called The Apprentice Institute. And I was serving as the Director of Operations. I oversaw the finances and operations for the institute. I’ve been there for six and a half years. I was primarily leading a program called The Apprentice Experience. It’s a certificate program in spiritual formation, and so the pandemic started in March. And then at the end of May, I was told that the university decided they wanted to go in a different direction. They wanted to focus on academics strictly, and The Apprentice Experience was more ministry than anything else. And so they decided that they wanted to reroute funding and energies into undergraduate education.

John Carroll:
And so they eliminated The Apprentice Experience and eliminated my job. And so that was a total blind side. I did not expect that to happen. And it really caused us to take a step back and think about really what our next steps were. And in fact, I called Amber after the meeting where I was told about what was going on, I went back into the office and I said, “Hey I was let go. They canceled the program and let me go.” We talked about it for a minute and then there was some silence and then we just started cracking up laughing.

John Carroll:
We said, “Okay, what now God?” And really, the real beautiful thing out of all that is I mean, God demonstrated yet again, His faithfulness to us and leading us out of a time of uncertainty and turmoil, into really good and beautiful things. We were serving as co-pastors of a church in Kansas. And we had been at that church for four years. And so part of our discernment process was, “What do we do about our leadership in the church?” And it felt like it was time for us to move back home to Florida, to Melbourne, where we had spent 13 years prior to Kansas.

John Carroll:
And so we made the tough decision to resign from the church. And that was a very hard thing for us and for the church to go through, particularly because it was still in the middle of COVID. But we worked with the church in order to set up a transition plan that was going to work, and they have a lead pastor. And from everything that I’ve been hearing, he’s been doing an incredible job of leading through this tough time. And so we felt good about the church being in his hands and in God’s hands. And then we made the transition back home to Florida in August, last year.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Moving during a pandemic.

John Carroll:
Yes. I don’t recommend it.

Heidi Wilcox:
But you made it.

John Carroll:
We made it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I just really admire your… well, what struck me about that story was your laughter in the middle. I think I would be crying, but you’re just like, “What next God?” So I want to back up for just a minute. You must have a very trusting relationship with God. So I want to back up before we move forward, how did you experience your call to ministry, that when things aren’t going as you thought they were, like in a day, that you could be like, “Okay, this is going to be okay.”

John Carroll:
Yeah. That’s a great question. I’ll start by talking a little bit about faith. The way that one of my mentors explains faith, is that it’s an extension of knowledge based on knowledge. You really have to sort of sit with that thought for a while. The way that we can unpack faith through that definition is that, “If we’ve experienced God working in a particular way in the past, or maybe we’ve witnessed God working through the life of another individual, whether it’s presently, or maybe even through a biblical character that we read about in scripture, if we can understand how God has worked in the past, then we can have faith that God will do that again.”

John Carroll:
And in our move from Florida to Kansas in 2014, was tough. There was a lot of transition that was happening there, but God was faithful in that process. So when we were planning to move back to Florida, we could really move with faith to know that God can do this again. That that wasn’t a one-time thing, that God will find a way. And so that really helped support our confidence in moving back to Florida. But in terms of my call story, how I was called to ministry, I mean, this probably was one of the more formational experiences that I’ve had in my life because we were not really living the right way when I was experiencing my call to ministry; we were struggling.

John Carroll:
So I was working in corporate America. This was back in 2006. I was working in corporate = healthcare. Amber was working in the church full time. But we thought we were living the American dream. I mean, we had a three bedroom, two bath house. We had the white picket fence. We had two kids, two dogs, two cars, two mortgages. And the author, Shane Claiborne, he says that most people, like the world, can’t afford the American dream, but I’d argue that most Americans can’t afford it either. And we certainly couldn’t afford it because we were living well beyond our means, despite making a good income and so we had debt. And we started to notice this discrepancy, this disconnect between our apprenticeship to Jesus and the way that we were living our lives. And so we decided that we were going to take some radical steps in order to get out of debt.

John Carroll:
So the first thing we said is like, we’re going to stop paying for cable. It’s too expensive. so we’re going to cut the cord. We cut the cord before cutting the cord was cool. There were no streaming services that you could subscribe to at that time. Netflix really wasn’t much of a thing. Certainly not on an online platform, but so we cut the cord. I stopped getting my hair cut, back when I had hair, and Amber said, “I’m not going to get my hair styled,” like the color and the style and the whole thing. And so we’re going to save money there.

John Carroll:
And then we also said, “We’re not going to eat out at restaurants anymore. No more restaurants.” But that was like trying to drain a pool with a turkey baster, I mean, it was going to take a long time to really get the kind of debt that we had. But in November, 2007, so fast forward about a year or so, we went to a national youth workers convention in Atlanta, and it was the first time I had been to anything like that.

John Carroll:
I mean, my eyes were really opened. 7,000 youth workers that are there, and they had all these different authors and speakers who would come up on stage and give a talk. The talk that really made the biggest impression on us was this guy, he is this lanky white dude with dreadlocks and a durag and he gets on stage and he does this little trick with fire. And then he does a back flip and says, “Well, maybe that’ll win somebody for Jesus.” And I’m like, “This guy is bizarre.” And then he says, “I’m going to tell you the greatest sermon you’ve ever heard.” And I’m like, “Okay, so you got my attention.” And so he just simply opens the Bible, reads the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety. And then he closes the Bible, sets it on the podium and walks off the stage.

John Carroll:
And we’re like, “Who is this guy?” We knew when he was giving the talk, but I mean, it turns out it was Shane Claiborne. He’d just written his book, Irresistible Revolution. So Amber is like, “I’ve got to get his book.” And so we’re at this bookstore at the youth worker convention, and it’s kind of this open air. Everybody’s just kind of walking around, and the line to buy things was a mile long. And Amber said, “Will you stand in line to buy the book while I continue to shop?” And I’m like, “Sure.” So I’m standing in line reading the back of the book, and I’m trying to learn a little bit about this guy and reading the endorsements and all that stuff. And so the face of the book is pointed out, and some guy I’d never met, just starts walking by, and he points at the book and he says, “That book is going to change your life.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.

John Carroll:
Yeah. So I was like going, “Oh, I’m really interested now to read this book.” And so we get home from the conference and we started reading the book right away. Some of the lessons that Shane included in the book was like how to be an ordinary radical in your everyday life. And then also, how to love your enemy. And we had no idea how quickly that we’d have to apply what we learned in this book. And so, because we weren’t going out to restaurants for dinners and stuff, Amber’s parents are feeling kind of bad for us. And so her mom slipped this 20 bucks and she said, “Go out to dinner.” So we’re thinking, “Well, where can we take the kids to dinner?” Because at this time, they were three and one years old, so where can we take the kids to go get something cheap for 20 bucks?”

John Carroll:
And so there’s this great little Mexican restaurant that was around the corner from our house. And they had great food and it was pretty inexpensive. And usually we can get in and get out real quick. But the night that we ended up going is a Saturday night, it was packed, super busy. And once we got seated, it took 45 minutes in order for our food to come. But like towards the end of that time, while we’re waiting, the kids are getting really restless.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, of course.

John Carroll:
Yeah. I mean they’re three and they’re, and they’re hungry and there’s only so many little Cheerios and things that you can give them, chips and salsa. And so they started to get noisy. There was a table of three 60 something year olds that were sitting right next to us and there’s woman at that table, just stands up and she screams at the top of her lungs, “Will you shut those kids up!”

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh my goodness.

John Carroll:
And we’re shocked. We’re like, “Are you serious?” And she says, “I’m absolutely serious. I’m just saying what everybody in this restaurant is thinking, you’re bad parents!”

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh my gosh.

John Carroll:
Yeah. And now everybody is turned around and they start applauding. They don’t even know what they’re really applauding for, but they’re just like this mob mentality of, “Hey, yeah, let’s jump in on what this lady is doing,” and so they start applauding. I’m trying to get this lady to calm down and she’s standing between me and my three-year-old son and she’s threatening to hit me. In a previous life, I would have stood up and punched that lady in the face. Like the Spirits hands were on my shoulders, “Just stay in your seat. It’s going to be okay.”

John Carroll:
And so I finally get her to sit down and Amber and I, we’re looking at each other, like, “I can’t believe that just happened.” And so a woman from another table who is eating dinner with her family, she comes over and she says, “I am so sorry that happened. Nobody should ever go through anything like that. We want you to have our $30 gift certificate to the restaurant.” And I said, “No, no, you don’t need to do that.” And she’s like, “No, we insist. We really want you to have that.” And so I’m finally like, “Okay, we’ll take it.”

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s very kind.

John Carroll:
Oh yeah. I mean, it was so sweet. And so we’ve got this $30 gift certificate plus the $20 that we had. And so Amber says, you know what we should do? We should buy the mean people’s dinner and write on the receipt, “Because you need more love in your life.””

Heidi Wilcox:
I like Amber.

John Carroll:
I know, right? And I said, “You know, that’s a great idea, but if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right.” And so I called the waiter over and I said, “Would you bring us their receipt, but also bring ours? Because we’re out of here. We’ve had enough.” And so we boxed up our stuff and the waiter said, “No.”

John Carroll:
He actually refused to bring us the other table’s ticket. And I said, “No, I’m serious. We’re going to buy their dinner.” And he said, “Why would you do that?” Because he knew. He knew how they treated us. He knew that we were embarrassed. And he said, “Why would you do that?” And I said, “It’s because it’s what we should do.”

John Carroll:
So then I go over to the table of the nice people and I said, “Hey, thanks again for the gift certificate. We’re going to use that to buy our dinner, but I just want you to know that we’re also going to buy their dinner too.” And the wife was like, “Why would you do that?” Second time that question-

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, yeah.

John Carroll:
And so I said, “Well, it’s because it’s what we feel like we should do.” So we pay for both dinners and we’re walking out the door and this lady comes running out of the restaurant screaming, “Stop. Wait.” And I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, can we just get out of here?” And it was the manager on duty. And she gets up-close, because it’s dark outside. It’s about nine o’clock at night at this time.

John Carroll:
And so she comes up to us and I could see she has tears coming down her face. And she said, “I just heard about what happened. I am so sorry. But I heard you bought there dinner. Why would you do that?” Third time Heidi.

Heidi Wilcox:
Third time, yeah.

John Carroll:
Third time that question comes up. And this time I said, “It’s because it’s what Jesus would do.” And she said, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” And so we get into the car and we’re kind of catatonic. And Amber goes, “That was so humiliating.” And I said, “It’s nothing compared to what Jesus went through.” And I don’t know if God really tests us, but I do think that God wants to know if we can be trusted with ministry.

John Carroll:
I think at that time, God wanted to know if we could be trusted with ministry. Particularly me, because that was really the beginning of moving from corporate America into ministry. But after that, our faith was ignited, something went on here. There’s something to loving your enemy and blessing those who persecute you.

John Carroll:
And so we started digging into more books. We started reading more scripture and then one day about 9 or 10 months after that event happened, in my office, I’m still working in healthcare and I’m the first one there. I’ve got my cup of coffee poured and I’m looking around my office at all of the awards that are hanging on my walls. And I just said out loud, “This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.” So I called Amber on the way home from work. And she said, “well, what’s going on?” just starting conversation. And I said, “I think I want to quit my job.”

Heidi Wilcox:
And what does she say?

John Carroll:
She goes, “Awesome. What happened?” Because she knew. She knew for months that God was working on me. And I literally had heard from God to say that, “This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.” And so she’s like, “Well, what does that mean?” I said, “I don’t know, but I think it may include seminary.”

John Carroll:
So we start praying about that and we started having conversations with friends at our church about like, “What does this mean?” And then some friends that we were in community with, that we were going to church with, and our friend Jim Bennett came over one day and said, “I talked with my family and we want the Carrolls to sell their house and sell their things and move in with us so that we can pay for John to go to seminary.”

Heidi Wilcox:
No way. That’s crazy.

John Carroll:
Oh yeah. I mean-

Heidi Wilcox:
Had you guys talked about that or did he just kind of come up there out of the blue?”

John Carroll:
Out of the blue. And we talked about it, we prayed about it and we would just go back and forth over a month’s time. From the end of November to the end of December of 2008, we were just like, “This is crazy. This is radical. This is the kind of stuff that Shane talks about in his book.”

John Carroll:
But then the other side of us was like, “This is stupid. We’ve got responsibility, we’ve got kids, we can’t do this.” And then in December, we had gone away and we came back and we said, “No, this is what we feel like God has next for us.” And so the four of us moved in with the five of the Bennet’s and we did community living for 19 months. It was-

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. To pay off your debt so that you could go to seminary?

John Carroll:
Yeah. And because there’s no way that we were going to be able to afford, me quitting my job, and so you need to work in healthcare for that 19 months and we just aggressively paid off debt. We pooled all of our paychecks into one bank account and we just attacked debt Dave Ramsey style. And so we just would do the snowball thing and we paid off all of our debt in 19 months. And so that in the fall of 2010, that’s when I started my first semester at Asbury in Orlando.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. That’s incredible. And what a gift? I’ve never, until you and I talked, I had never heard of anybody offering that to another couple, just out of the blue to help them like that. That’s amazing.

John Carroll:
Yeah. It was extraordinary generosity. And I think that they were feeling equally, like they wanted to do something radical for God as well. And we lost some friendships. People were like, “This is a little too weird,” and so we had some friends bail on us because of what we were doing, but we didn’t let that detour us. We really had a singular focus on getting us into a position where I could quit my job.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So that knowledge upon knowledge led you and Amber to the point where you get laid off from your job very early on in COVID when there aren’t a lot of other jobs out there. If you have one at that point, you really want to keep it. So what did you do or what did God do next?

John Carroll:
Yeah. Well I think God just started opening doors.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. He’s good at that, isn’t he?

John Carroll:
He really is. And we definitely experienced that. I mean, God opened the door for us to move in with the other family, God opened the door for me to go to Asbury. Part of the real beautiful seminary experience is that I received the Kallas scholarship and stewarded that well and was really humbled by the opportunity to have that kind of a scholarship-

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure.

John Carroll:
But then God opened door open doors for us to go to Kansas in 2014 and so I really knew that God would open another door for us in whatever this next season held. And we just felt like it was time to move back to Florida. So after I lost my job with the Apprentice Institute, I got a call from the board chair of Dallas Willard Ministries, woman by the name of Jan Johnson, who is a great friend in ministry. And we had known each other for about seven years and she said, “I’ve got an idea.” And I said, “Okay.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You’re like, “I’m listening.”

John Carroll:
And she said, “Dallas Willard Ministries has always wanted to have some sort of a training program, but we just didn’t have the person to do it. But you’re a free agent now. And you’ve learned from all of your mistakes, you’ve learned from all of your successes. You’re the perfect person to build this thing for us. Would you come to Dallas Willard Ministries and start a new program?” And that was the open door.

Heidi Wilcox:
How long after you’d been laid off, did this phone call happen?

John Carroll:
Four days.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, that’s incredible.

John Carroll:
Yeah. I didn’t have to wait long, but the journey of building it, it took a little and so that’s where some of that extension of knowledge based on knowledge in a really came into play, because it just didn’t happen overnight. Not only did they invite me to build a program, but they invited me to build a program in the middle of a pandemic.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. So you’re moving across country, back to your home state. You’re building something new, even though you have experience doing it. What did you learn about God? What do you know about God now that you didn’t know about him last year?

John Carroll:
Oh, man. I mean, I knew God loved me, but God really loves me. I mean, I almost feel spoiled sometimes in how extravagant God loves me. I think about that passage from Ephesians 3 where it’s like, “Immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” And I feel like God has given me immeasurably more than all I can ask or imagine in this season because I really didn’t expect much.

John Carroll:
I just was hoping to keep things afloat until the pandemic was over, but I mean, it was clear God was in the details. And God worked things out that was super natural. I’m not smart enough. I’m not good enough to figure this stuff out, but God came and God did. And that’s really what blew me away. I mean, I think that’s what I discovered so much about God was that he just worked things out better than I could possibly ask for.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. For sure. I’m blown away by the four days after. I think that’s really incredible. So you obviously knew about Dallas Willard Ministries beforehand. What kind of impact had this ministry or even Dallas Willard himself had on you personally so that you knew, “This is my next right thing.”

John Carroll:
Yeah. That’s a good question. So in 2009 we were doing community living with the other family, but I was still working in the health care. So I knew that I was being called into ministry but I discovered that I didn’t really have a firm understanding of what it means to really live out my faith.

John Carroll:
And Dallas changed that for me because I was listening to a podcast where Dallas was being interviewed at a church and the pastor was fielding questions from the audience. And then he was asking them to Dallas and then Dallas with the answer. And so one of the questions that came in was, “Why is God such a big deal? And if Jesus is a big deal, then how would you advise me to proceed to follow him?”

Heidi Wilcox:
That is a great question.

John Carroll:
Yeah. Right? I mean, big question. That thing is packed. And so Dallas thought about it for a moment. And then he said, “Well, don’t start by doing the big things. Instead, start by putting into practice the things that Jesus taught about, trusting him to be right about it. And then gradually you’ll come to discover what a big deal he is.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.

John Carroll:
So when I heard that, I was on my way into work. I literally pulled my car off into a parking lot of a gas station and I rewound the podcast and I wrote down the question and the answer, verbatim. Because the way that I’d always understood it is that your Christianity is about learning things and doing the right things and being on your best behavior but Dallas changed all that. He really helped me understand that the Christian faith is about putting into practice, the teachings of Jesus, and then watching how your life will be different. How you’re transformed and it’s really from moving from information to transformation.

John Carroll:
And so that was a big part of how I started to really live out my faith is to practice the teachings of Jesus and that really ignited my passion for Christian spiritual formation, which has really, I mean, it’s all about putting into practice, the teachings of Jesus to experience that transformation. So that was a huge moment for me. And then in 2011, in my second year of seminary, I had the opportunity to go see Dallas speak at a conference.

John Carroll:
And I brought the journal that I had written that quote down. And I stayed after Dallas’s workshop because I sat in a workshop and had my mind blown for like an hour and he was [crosstalk 00:33:25] and I’m writing and all these notes down. And then I waited to talk to him. And one of the really beautiful things about Dallas is that when you had an opportunity to meet him in person and talk to him, he was only focused on you. There could be 30 people behind you in line, but he’s looking directly at you and you can tell that he was really listening to what you were saying.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s incredible.

John Carroll:
And I said, “Dallas, what you said here, this answer about putting into practice the teachings of Jesus changed it for me.” And he just snatched my journal because I showed him what I’d written down and snatched my journal out of my hand and he signed his name and he put the passage, Isaiah 64:4 in it. And then I said, “Hey, do you mind if I get my picture with you?’ and so [crosstalk 00:34:18]. And so that was my only opportunity to connect with him and he passed away less than two years later from cancer. And so I was really grateful to have that opportunity.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So in some ways it’s like, not your spiritual home necessarily. I’m kind of searching for words here, but kind of returning to a place that started it all for you in some ways. That seriously changed your trajectory.

John Carroll:
Absolutely. Oh yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
And now you get to do that for other people too, right?

John Carroll:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
So one of the things that you said that you’re passionate about is, you called them the two ships in life, discipleship and relationship. So what does that mean exactly, and how do they go together?

John Carroll:
Well, one of the things that I think about like apprenticeship to Jesus is the greatest opportunity that we’ve ever been offered. To really get underneath the teachings of Jesus, because it’s so transformational. And discipleship in my introduction because a lot of people aren’t familiar with the term apprentice, but really apprentice is a beautiful way to think about it.

John Carroll:
I mean, in some contexts, I think discipleship has lost a little bit of its oomph, a little bit of its emphasis because it’s just a term that we hear quite a bit, but apprenticeship peaks people’s interest and causes them to lean in a little bit more. But they mean the same thing. It’s really sitting at the feet of our master instructor or master, Rabbi, Jesus and putting into practice the things that he taught.

John Carroll:
So I definitely think that our calling as followers of Jesus is to apprentice him or be a disciple and to live out discipleship. And so that’s really where that comes from, but really we’re mental do this in community with other people. Apprenticeship or discipleship isn’t really meant to be done alone. And I love when people connect with one another in relationship. I like to bring people together to learn and to grow. So that’s where that comes from. I want people to follow Jesus in every area of their life and to do it in community with other people. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. What does it mean for you personally, to be a disciple of Jesus? What does that look like?

John Carroll:
I would say that it’s really about examining the different areas of my life and really not compartmentalizing, but allowing everything to be affected or influenced by the teachings of Jesus. So I don’t have my work life that stands alone from my marriage that stands alone from my parenting that stands alone from my friendships and my hobbies and so on and so forth, but it’s like the vines, the veins of Jesus are flowing to every area and nourishing. I think that’s what it means.

Heidi Wilcox:
I think that’s a beautiful picture of integrating it, integrating it all together. And I love how you talked about being an apprentice on Jesus. Because I do think that discipleship has lost, like you said, lost some of its oomph, but being an apprentice, I think you’re following this person around. You’re learning how to do something and you move on. In a construction world, you move on through the steps of being a journeyman and then finally doing on your own, which is not the point of following Jesus, but you grow in your faith.

John Carroll:
Yeah. You definitely grow. And one of the things that Dallas would talk about is that you cannot impart that which you do not possess. So you can’t give away what you don’t have. And so if the great commission is to make disciples, well, how are you going to make disciples if you’re not a disciple yourself? Yeah. So you really need to think intentionally about how are you growing? How are you growing with God? How are you cultivating a relationship with God so that you can be a person who can give this stuff away to other people and help them grow in their life?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. And now you’re the director of the School of Kingdom Living for Dallas Willard and if I understand right, that’s an 18 month immersion into the process of putting on the character of Jesus. Would you tell us a little bit about this process?

John Carroll:
Yes. And this has really been a joy to lead the School of Kingdom Living. And so it’s an 18 month school or a program and we have four week long residencies over the 18 months. So we meet in person four times at five days a piece. And we come together to study, really two things that that Dallas was passionate about and that’s, character formation into Christ-likeness and kingdom living. One of the things that I think is important for the audience to know is that this isn’t for trained theologians. But this is really for anybody. And so, you don’t need a specific degree in order to do the School of Kingdom Living. You just really want to have a heart to apprentice Jesus at a deeper level.

John Carroll:
And in the curriculum that we use is taken from Dallas’s books. But we also augment that with other authors. And so we’re reading from some really gifted people in the field of spiritual formation. And our faculty include people who have trained with Dallas for decades. Jan Johnson; the person who invited me into this crazy thing, she’s one of our faculty and she’s written books with Dallas and she’s taught with Dallas and she’s close friends with the Willard family. And then Keith Matthews, Keith was Dallas’s teaching assistant at Fuller seminary for 18 years. He was learning as he was assisting all that time.

John Carroll:
And so, Jan and Keith are our primary faculty, and it’s amazing because when they teach, I’m listening to it and I feel like I’m hearing from Dallas himself sometimes through their teachings. And you can really here, Dallas’s heart through the stuff that they teach. But really one of the things that makes the School of Kingdom Living so good is our pedagogy, the way that we teach and facilitate our residencies. Because we do have lectures and people will take notes.

John Carroll:
So, the cohort will come together and the students will take notes during the lectures, but then frequently there’ll be a spiritual practice or a soul training exercise that connects to the lecture. And that practice may be 30 minutes, or it might be an hour, it might be longer, but we’re giving people an opportunity to experiment with the stuff that we’re teaching. And then we’ll come back from the practice and either as an entire cohort or we’ll break people into their small groups, or we may just say, “Hey, turn to the person next to you. Give us feedback of Like, what were you experiencing? What was going on in the middle of that practice? Did you hear anything from God?”

John Carroll:
And so, the idea is that you hear it in the lecture and then you do it in the practice and then you’re processing it in community with other people. And that’s what we’ve discovered to be a reliable model of transformation.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. We’ll definitely link all of that in the show notes too, so that if people are interested in contacting you or learning more about the School of Kingdom Living, they can find out more about that. One of the things too, though, that you mentioned the first time we talked and I think definitely connects to the School of Kingdom Living in the discipleship apprenticeship process is, you said that one of the things we need to get straight from the get-go is that God loves you. And then I’m going to abbreviate your quote a little bit, and you ended with, “God’s not up in heaven, eating antacids, because he’s upset with you.”

Heidi Wilcox:
And that just really stood out to me, because for me personally, and I’m guessing for a lot of other people, I know God loves me up here. I just have a hard time sometimes really understanding it in my heart and the deep places of my soul. So, how do we learn this? How does the apprenticeship process help us come to understand this? Not just in our head, but in our hearts too?

John Carroll:
Well, I think it’s talking a lot about the narratives that we hold onto. So, maybe a false narrative would cause you to kind of maybe know it at a head level that God is good and that God is love, but not really except that at the heart level. And so, we do examine the narratives that people hold on to, and in over the years, I’ve had people come up to me in programs that I’ve led in the past and they share that with me.

John Carroll:
And it’s funny because I know I grew up and I went to a private Christian school growing up and I never had any false narratives about God. That God is angry or that God’s out to get us. And so, it was kind of eye-opening to me when I started to get into full-time spiritual formation work that people were carrying around this idea that God was out to get them. And I’d have people come up to me all the time with tears in their eyes saying, “I can’t believe that I’ve gone my entire life thinking that God is angry with me.” And there’ve been pastors who have said, “And what’s worse is that I can’t believe that I’ve been teaching that theology to my congregations.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, well, yeah.

John Carroll:
And so, it’s important to really understand who God is, what the nature and character of God. You can’t really have a healthy, spiritual formation if your views of God are unhealthy. And that’s why it’s really important to get that stuff squared away on the front end, because it allows you to really grow in grace and truth.

Heidi Wilcox:
How do we undo these narratives to know the truth?

John Carroll:
Well, I think it’s really studying Jesus. I think that Jesus said, “I’m the way, the truth and the life,” and in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the father.” There’s a sort of an exercise that I heard about some years ago, where a guy was facilitating a class and they wrote God on one side of a whiteboard and Jesus, on the other and had people write all the attributes about God and people in this class were saying like, angry, judge, mean, vindictive and all this stuff.

John Carroll:
And then they get to Jesus and they’d say loving and graceful and compassionate and all that stuff. So there’s a huge disparity between the attributes of God and the attributes of Jesus. And that’s where the facilitator, the teacher made the connection that like, “No, if your view of God is anything different than Jesus, then you’ve got the wrong view of God.” And so, we really understand God through Jesus.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Definitely. When people finish the School of Kingdom Living and receive a certificate, is that right?

John Carroll:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How do you know that you’ve succeeded in, not you, but that all the pieces have come together to make an apprentice who is grown in his or her faith?

John Carroll:
Well, that’s the real challenge of the church, right? It’s like, how do you measure a disciple? That is hard, we can’t guarantee your results and we have some anticipated outcomes. Like these are the things that you could maybe expect of being a part of the School of Kingdom Living. We say, we want to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. And we also want to connect you with an authentic community with other people.

John Carroll:
And then the third thing is that, we want to give you some tools to stick in your spiritual tool belt, some things to help you along the way, that you’ll use in your journey with God and your walk with Jesus. But then also you’re going to use those tools to help other people. Those are the things that we anticipate for people. And I would say that, you can feel confident that those be some things that will come out of it.

John Carroll:
But the stories that I’ve had people share with me over the years about how much an 18-month program has impacted them, really blows me out of the water. I’ve had couples do this kind of a thing together, married couple, and they’d say, “It saved our marriage.” I’ve had guys say, “I was on the verge of ministry burnout, and just not even sure that I wanted to be in ministry anymore, but I feel renewed, I have a new sense of calling, clarity around what I believe God has called me to do.” So, I do think that those are some things that other people could expect as well, is that they’re going to feel a lot more grounded and connected.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. And have tools for the long haul, the rest of their lives.

John Carroll:
Yes, absolutely. We definitely don’t want what people learn in the School of Kingdom Living to end when the school ends, we want to equip them for the life ahead.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. John, we’ve talked about a lot of things, we have one question, we ask everybody. Before we ask that question, is there anything else you’d like to talk about that we haven’t already talked about?

John Carroll:
Wow. We’ve covered from vacations to vocations.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. We’ve kind of done it all. Yeah. All right. Well, here’s our one question we ask everybody, because the show is called the Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. What is, one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?

John Carroll:
Well, I would say the short answer is silence and solitude. And there’s a little bit of a backstory with it If I may, how I got there. So, after I lost my job at apprentice, and I knew that I was coming down to Florida to build the School of Kingdom Living for Dallas Willard ministries, my wife, Amber was getting ready to pilot a micro church planting movement in Melbourne for our denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church.

John Carroll:
And in COVID some things got hung up and we weren’t exactly sure if that was going to happen. And so, we got connected to a friend who was in the covenant, but he also had a connection with Stadia, the church planting organization. And so, Stadia was like, “Hey, we would love for you to go through our assessments, our church planting assessment. And then begin this church planting movement.” But there was like six weeks of preparation for the assessment that Amber and I had to do together. Some pre-work.

John Carroll:
And so, we were already two weeks into the pre-work phase, but we hadn’t even started it yet. And one morning we were getting ready for work, and Amber is like, “We’re already two weeks behind in our pre-work, when are we going to get to this?” And that’s when I said, “Over the last 11 years, a lot of things have happened. We’ve done community living. I graduated from Asbury with my MDiv. We relocated to Kansas. I started a certificate program in spiritual formation. We replanted a church on the brink of closing and we co pastured into health. I lost my job in the pandemic. We resigned from the church. We moved back to Florida. I launched a new certificate program in spiritual formation. And you graduated with your master’s from Fuller. And now we’re talking about launching a micro church movement.”

John Carroll:
And I said, “Over the last 11 years, we’ve been doing a lot of doing, but we haven’t been doing a lot of being.” And one of the things that I realized when I got back to Florida is that I don’t have any significant male friendships, I feel very lonely and I have no hobbies. And I was actually listening to a podcast a couple of years ago, and Nancy Ortberg was being interviewed on the podcast. And she said that, Azusa Pacific University did some research about the number one key to sustainability for lead pastors.

John Carroll:
And the research that came back said that it wasn’t spiritual practices. And it wasn’t more education. The number one key to sustainability was finding a hobby that when you do it, it causes you to lose track of time. Isn’t that fascinating? And so, I knew I needed to find a hobby. I needed to figure out really who I am in this new season of life before I can really confidently lead others into something new. And so that’s when I discovered this tool, it’s called a Monk Manual. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it.

John Carroll:
And so, what it is, it’s a faith-based 90-day planner that has been instrumental in helping me structure my days and my weeks and my months in a way that makes space for God. And also, for me to discover the things that I need most in this new season of life. And Dallas believed that we have to take a different approach to life. And the key to that is understanding that we must take control of our time so that we can organize our work in such a way that we can do the things we need to do to move from here to there. And Dallas said, “How we choose our time is the biggest test of our faith that we will ever have.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Those are some powerful words right there.

John Carroll:
Yeah. The world is competing for our attention, on social media on TV and just about anywhere else, but the thing is, God doesn’t compete for our attention. And so we have to intentionally give it to him. We have to slow down. And the best way to do that, I have found in this season of life is silence and solitude. And Jesus did this all the time. He was healing and he was teaching, he was in the crowd and then he would withdraw to be with the father. And so I’ve incorporated a rhythm of silence and solitude, and that has been wonderful.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Can I ask what that rhythm looks like for you?

John Carroll:
Yeah, Because I have the benefit of living close to the ocean and literally, from my house, my toes are in sand in 12 minutes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Seriously jealous right now.

John Carroll:
And so, I love to just grab a chair and an umbrella and just sit on the beach and stare out to this vast ocean, the Atlantic, and just really spend time with God. And the hobby that I picked up was surfing which works out well since I’m so close. So, I’ve got back into surfing, I’ve got a surf board and I just love to be out in the ocean too and just by myself and floating. Being on your board in the ocean, there’s just something about it that makes you feel so small yet so, connected to God.

John Carroll:
Just in creation, in nature with God, and I absolutely love it. And just being in silence and solitude really helps you notice. And I think that it’s possible to experience Jesus’ presence just by simply noticing. In this world that competes for our attention, my job is just to learn how Jesus is at work in my life and then talk to him about it through prayer.

Heidi Wilcox:
One thing I’m learning is that prayer doesn’t have to be as formal as I always thought it was. I can just say something and be talking to God. It doesn’t have to be, it can be on my knees, like really structured, but it can just be I’m going about my day too, and be like, “Thank you for this beautiful morning that I’m walking and talking,” or something like that. And I just really love that discovery, so I just resonate with what you’re saying about that too.

John Carroll:
Yeah. And that was one of the things that I picked up while at Asbury. One of the professors there, talked about having an ongoing conversation with God where, if you think about like a phone call, you don’t have to pick up the phone, have a conversation and hang up the phone, but that line can stay open. And that’s something that really helped shape, and for me, while I was in seminary to this day.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah. I love that. That’s beautiful. Well, John, thanks so much for your time. I’ve just really enjoyed this conversation and getting to learn more about you and catch up with you, number one. But hear just how your calling has continued to grow and change as you continue to say yes to God. So, thanks so much for being part of the show today.

John Carroll:
Oh, thank you so much, Heidi. It’s a blessing to be with you and your audience. And I pray that God will continue to work through this podcast and everybody who hears it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah definitely, Hey everyone? Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with John Carroll. I don’t know about you all, but I found what he said about being an apprentice of Jesus and following so closely after him, like an apprentice that we become like him and more like him in every way. We’ll link to John’s information and Dallas Willard School of Kingdom Living in the show notes. If you want to connect with John, be sure to tell him thanks for being on the show. And as always, you can follow us in all the places on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at, @AsburySeminary, until next time I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.