Pastor to Pastor

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Kevin Burrell: The hummingbird's mere presence, it transforms the world around it. It makes the world around it more beautiful. It's carrying the pollen of another kingdom into this world. And that's I think we are called to be. If we can think of ourselves transformatively like that, it means that wherever the Lord puts us, we're placed there for a purpose.

Dave Stone: Hey, everybody, welcome to Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I am your host. We are glad that you're joining us today. There's a lot of things you could be doing right now, but you have chosen and said, "Hey, I'm going to pour into my ministry. I'm going to pour into my Christian life. I'm going to listen to this."

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And finally, if this conversation blesses you, then please share it with another pastor. Pass it along to another ministry leader. And I know that it will be something that encourages them. Well today, our guest is Kevin Burrell. He is the co-lead pastor of Stonebridge Church Community in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Kevin has some unique and fascinating information to share with us. Are you ready for this? He is an avid bird watcher. He's discovered what birds can teach us about the Author of creation. And we're going to get to hear some of that right now. Now, you might be saying, "Well, Dave, I'm not a bird watcher." Well, I'm not either. And I would say this was one of my top 12 episodes.

I loved listening to Kevin because he had so much illustrative material that now I can use in different sermons. So, I know you're going to enjoy listening as we dive into this conversation with Kevin Burrell. Kevin, thank you so much. I have seen this topic and I can't wait to get to delve into it with you.

Kevin Burrell: Grateful to be a part of it with you. Thanks for inviting me.

Dave Stone: And how's everything in North Carolina? You got decent weather today?

Kevin Burrell: Things are good. The summer is upon us. I hope things are good where you are.

Dave Stone: Yeah, we've got the humidity in Louisville, Kentucky, so it's summertime here. We're feeling it, but it's all good. Now you've got a unique hobby. It's unique in that it's so multifaceted, but you enjoy bird watching. You enjoy the study of birds as well. What's that called, ornithology?

Kevin Burrell: That would be ornithology. That's right. It was about six years ago during the pandemic, I've learned this phrase now, "pandemic project." People go, "Oh, this was one of your pandemic projects." I started writing about the birds that I was seeing in my backyard during the shelter in place. As I'm sitting on my porch and doing my quiet times or doing my work or making my phone calls, you see birds a lot more when you're outside than you do when you're in your office or your study.

There were lessons in that. I'm a pastor, I'm always grabbing for sermon illustrations and analogies, metaphors. I started writing just about this hummingbird that I saw or this mockingbird that was doing this and making some faith illustrations out of it. And that became my website, my blog, which is called Ornitheology. So I hope you get the joke there, as you got the word ornithology right. Just add an E, and so it's this mix of birds and faith.

I've been doing that for about six years now, not just the birds in my yard anymore. Bird watching is not an odd pastime anymore. In fact, I think post-pandemic, the stats that were put together by Fish and Wildlife or maybe Audubon Society said that one in four Americans admitted to doing some sort of bird-related activity in the past year. Whether that's buying a bird feeder, putting up a birdhouse, or getting a pair of binoculars.

So birding is really trending right now. And it's pretty funny because I've never been trendy about anything, but I apparently have hit at the right time on something. And so that turned into a book that just released a couple months ago called Considering Sparrows. And it's the same idea. It's ornitheology, but rather than separated blog posts, I tried to write my way through a book of the Bible.

And so it's the book of Philippians. So it's really a study in Philippians, but it's in bird. So think of sermons with feathers, I guess, or just expository bird watching. That's what the book is about. So I hope that answers your question, but takes you to present day and that's what it looks like right now.

Dave Stone: You may have been the one who started this trend. I mean, think about it, Kevin, you might be the person and it is unique, but it is gaining traction. We had an area of our church property that had a lot of birds that were just being attracted, different types. And so there's a person who was a birder that loved watching birds. So he set up a path throughout this and put different places where you can stop and pray and also would talk about the different birds that might be seen from that location.

And I didn't give a whole lot of attention to it because I had not been there before and walked it. But then someone said that someone had made a decision for Christ out there walking around. So I'm like, "Oh, wow, well, it's just amazing when you think about all the scripture that refers to birds and different types of birds." Jesus alluded to them, they're woven throughout the fabric of the Old and New Testament. And so there is something that we can learn from them. I want you to just tell me how it is that you've been able to dovetail beyond just the blog and the book, how have you been able to dovetail birds and bird watching into your own ministry?

Kevin Burrell: Well, first of all, there's got to be an attentiveness in our lives to the things that the Lord has made. And I'm confident scripture pushes us in that direction. The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands, or Psalm 8 where it just talks about, "Man, when I look at the heavens, then it makes me I understand myself better. What is man that you're mindful of him?"

And so I think we're called to an attentiveness. God didn't just give us this creation as something that we would drive through on our way to work, but something that we would be attentive to. And honestly, when you're attentive to something at that level, it makes you more attentive to other things. So as a pastor, yes, I want to know the birds in my backyard, but I also want to know the facial expressions on the person that I'm meeting with.

To be more attentive to that, to be more attentive to that one half a sentence that they said that really is the heart of the problem. I want to be attentive when I'm preaching to see whether the eyes of the people that I'm talking to are catching what I'm trying to say or not. Just to have your antenna up. I can be a pretty dull person and miss that. And I think that, not to be too cheesy about it, but I think bird watching makes me more attentive.

And for people who are listening, it doesn't have to be bird watching, but that exercise of paying attention to the trees in your yard or the stars at night or the weather system that's coming over, just to be attentive to those things. It's a practice in creational attentiveness. God gave it to us. He said it reveals himself. It doesn't reveal everything about himself. We need his word for that to reveal what salvation means.

But Romans 1 says it does remove every excuse on your chessboard. Leaves us just with our jaws on the floor without excuse as to who God is. And so I want to be, if that's his character, I want to be more attentive to that. And I think it's made me a better pastor. I hope it has, to be attentive to the birds in my backyard and the neighbors in my front yard, just to be attentive to all of it.

Dave Stone: That's a great thought for us, Kevin, because you will hear people say that, "Oh, well, I can just worship out in God's creation. I like to look at the birds, I like to see the mountains, I like to hike, I like to do this or that." And yet there needs to be that component of being in God's word and also being with God's people. There's some rallying point that comes with it.

But I think the tendency of most of us as Christians is to struggle with the being still and knowing that He is God and just making certain that we are quietly watching, observing, listening, taking in creation. And that's something that I need to do a better job at doing. And personally, I find that animals help me with that. I love to see God's creation. I love it when a deer comes walking across our backyard.

And it's a rush for us. And my wife has bird feeders, Kevin, and so she will say to me all the time, "Look, look, look, look!" And I'm like, "What, what, what, what?" And there'll be two cardinals there. And cardinals mean a lot to her, or there'll be some other bird, a hummingbird will make his way up. There is beauty in God's creation. But then you also start to see that there's a lot of crossovers.

You use a lot of your hobby as illustrations. We have a lot of people who are listening right now who are Christian leaders who are always on the lookout for some type of an illustration that will relate to their listeners. And since a lot of people do love creation, what are some different examples of ways in the Bible that maybe you'll take a story from the Bible or you'll take something in your backyard with a bird and you tie that in? Can you give us some examples?

Kevin Burrell: I can, yeah. And I think, speaking to leaders who communicate, I know that we all have our wells that we draw from. We had an intern here at our church that we were coaching through, and I remember in his first three sermons his opening illustration was always a World War II story. And I'm like, "Man, I get it, you're a history major, but you've got to draw from other places too."

My sermons do not have a bird count, like I've got to get at least two birds into my sermon every week, although there are some expectations I've created now because of the book. But we're always going to places illustratively. We're trying to find, "Hey, what does this say about..." In fact, we do, as a preaching team here, we do exercises where we just go, "Hey, how does this desk remind you of the Holy Spirit?" Or, "What does this lamp say about discipleship?"

We just practice illustration with each other. So I do a lot of that, and the book has a good portion of it and as you can imagine, it's all birds. And sometimes the idea starts with the passage description, sometimes it starts with the bird and you're trying to connect it to a teaching concept. Right from the very beginning, I'm trying to set up, "Hey, who is Paul, the guy that's writing this letter of Philippi?"

And just knowing that he's writing this whole thing from prison, I wanted to start off with a bird in a cage. And to talk about an experience I had with a bird in a cage and how birders keep lifelists. Birds in captivity do not count on my lifelist. A lifelist would be a list of all the birds that you've seen in your life. You probably figured that out. And so here's this bird I see in Panama. It's a parrot, but it's in a cage and this child has just recently caught it.

So I decided that if I rewound a week to before the boy caught the bird, that it would have been a wild bird, and so I decided to count it. But the idea that a caged bird still counts in God's estimation as well because that's where Paul is. So Paul writing from a prison, in that sense, from a bird's-eye view from heaven. He's not chained to the guards, the guards are really chained to him.

The guards are chained to the gospel and God is using this prison experience to get into Caesar's bedroom, it says, at the end. Like those in Caesar's household send you greetings. That means that there are Christians that have now kind of crept into the center of Rome, that's a place where Paul could have never gotten had he been "free." So just starting off from what does it look like for me to acknowledge the good that a cage can accomplish in my own life?

Dave Stone: It makes great sense because we have people right now who are listening who are in ministry or in the secular marketplace who might feel kind of caged to a cubicle or maybe caged to a job that isn't bearing fruit in their mind. And yet to hear you say that's how God got him into Caesar's household, that's how it is that God did that was by him being chained to somebody and he was a bird that was caged.

So I love that analogy. And when you started that off, Kevin, by sharing about a friend of yours who whenever he talks gives a history illustration. I think we are creatures of habit. My tendency is sports illustrations and travel illustrations. And because those are two passions that I have. I love sports and I'm on the road a whole lot. So my illustrations tend to bubble up from that.

But you hit the nail on the head when you said, "Get out of your comfort zone and tell another genre of illustrations." And whenever I do that, Kevin, the same thing always happens. It will be a different group of people who come up to me afterwards and they'll say, "Oh, you really scratched my itch today. Oh, you spoke directly to me." Well, why was it? It's because I told an illustration that they could relate to.

Just like you would say if you shared about a bird or shared about an animal. All of a sudden there are people who relate to that because their dog is their life or that bird feeder in the backyard has given them countless memories.

Kevin Burrell: Right. Yeah. And see there, now you get back to the place of being very attentive. Because now you're looking for illustrations everywhere and you're not just going to that same well again and again, which may be... I mean, I would say sports and travel, those are two really good ones. They're broad. But if we continue to go to those wells, there's going to be people in the congregation that we continue to very unintentionally avoid or unintentionally not engage.

So if we're attentive to everything, everything speaks the glory of God. Everything around us, we're going to be grabbing ahold of those other illustrative wells. So for all you guys listening, if you say, "You know, I just really need more birds in my sermon," because I've been drawing from other stuff, "I want to speak to the birders in my group." Well, then there you go, there's my book.

But I hope that we would be more broad than that to pay attention to just where the Lord is showing up cross-platform, all sorts of different places.

Dave Stone: And that's what I love about your book, Considering Sparrows, is that it's not really a bird book. It's a book about Philippians and it is a book about life, the Christian life, and you're drawing illustrations from a variety of different places. You mentioned a few minutes ago the lifelist. What bird have you not seen that you hope every day that you might just come across it? And it might not be indigenous to Charlotte, North Carolina, but it might be on your travels. What's one of the birds that you're longing to see?

Kevin Burrell: That's a good question. Yeah, there's... I'm always excited about a new bird, something that you get to add to your list, it's something you've never seen before. I've been in Central America multiple times on mission trips and such and have yet to see a Resplendent Quetzal, which is... google it, your jaw will drop. It's just a beautiful bright green emerald and ruby red bird with a ridiculously long tail.

And I think it's the national bird of a couple of countries in there, Belize and otherwise. And I have not run into one yet, and that would be... I'll say that one, that would be a great one for sure.

Dave Stone: And say how how do you say it again?

Kevin Burrell: It's a Resplendent Quetzal. It's a Q-U-E-T-Z-A-L, I think I got that right. I don't know why they called it Resplendent. If you get to name the bird, you get to use the adjectives you want to use, but it's a pretty good adjective honestly for that bird.

Dave Stone: Well, it's a cool name for it as well. And what's the most fascinating bird that you have seen?

Kevin Burrell: Good question. You know, I will mention one if I could from the book that's just illustrative in some beautiful ways. Last summer I was in England, North England for a bit, and we went out to an island where there's colonies of Atlantic Puffins. And the puffins by themselves, I could talk about them all day. That was... you're on a very tiny island with I think it was 10,000 breeding pairs of Atlantic puffins.

But to get to the puffins you have to run the gauntlet of the terns, the Arctic terns. And I had never seen an Arctic tern before. They're very aggressive. They tell you when you step on the island, you have to wear a hat because they're going to attack your head. And they did. I actually have pictures of terns sitting on my head and pecking at my ear and all the rest. But they're beautiful birds.

But what was so amazing to me, once you can get past the fact that they just pecked a hole in your head... I have some friends who would have never made it to the puffins because they would have never gotten past the terns. It would have been too Hitchcock for them, I think. But it was a surreal moment for me because the tern was really kind of how the book happened.

I had written an article about Arctic terns several years prior, just in awe of the fact that this is the animal on the planet that lives the most of its life in daylight of any other animal on Earth. Because it travels from pole to pole. It will spend life in perpetual sunlight in the summer in the Arctic. And as the sun starts to wane, it will make the flight all the way to the Antarctic to the South Pole.

No other bird travels nearly as much as this bird does, and it's in daylight perpetually in the winter in Antarctica. And I thought, that's the illustration: I want to live as much of my life in the light, gospel speaking, in the light of the gospel as humanly possible as much as this planet allows me. I want to live in the light. Well, fast forward a little bit after that article came out, Joni Eareckson Tada found my blog and read that particular post.

And that created a connection. We started emailing back and forth. And somewhere along the way, she said, "If you're ever working on a bigger project, I'd love to put you in touch with my agent. I'd just love to support anything you're working on." And so that eventually, a year or so later, turned into the book. But so here's this tern was kind of the impetus for that whole thing.

And here I was, I just turned in my final draft of the book and I'm sitting on this island in England with this tern on my head. And I thought, "I've never actually seen one before, this is a lifer for me, and this is how it started." And so that was a really special moment for me. And it's a pretty special bird.

Dave Stone: Oh, that's a great story. And I've never heard about that bird, so I'm going to have to look that up as well. But we have people who are listening right now and there are pieces in their own life, it might be in their parenting, it might be in a ministry that they're questioning and wondering, "Is the time right for me to stay or is it time for me to go?"

I remember when I was about a year out from my transition from a church where I had served for 30 years, Kevin. And I heard a passage from Deuteronomy that someone was sharing about the eagle's wings, how the mother eagle will stir up the nest and make it uncomfortable for the baby eagles so that then they'll realize, "Hey, I need to get out of here. This is uncomfortable, I need to be out on my own."

And I think in the same way God does that in our ministries at times. But also think he does it with discipleship and with parenting as well. What do birds teach us about the goal of disciplining our kids and pouring into them and passing that baton of faith on?

Kevin Burrell: Well, I love your illustration because I think it really is about the nest. That nest is a beautiful image of that. We use it, we talk about parents who have fledged all of their children being in the empty nest stage of their life and all that. So the idea that we have eggs that we are called to raise to adulthood. They're meant to spread their wings and they're meant to fly on their own.

And what does that look like? I think it's at least in my experience, my kids are 19, 16, 13. So we've got one in college. I think every kid is a different story on that. It looks different for each one. But I think that when you apply that to leadership in the church, you think, "Well, what's the goal of my nest as a pastor?" Well, I'm called to see eggs nurtured and hatched and grown to adulthood.

And so what is maturity? What's the goal? What's the outcome? What does a mature disciple look like? And you can learn a lot from birding on this one because there's two approaches in the bird kingdom. One is referred to as altricial. And the idea is when the bird is hatched, it's already able to do all kinds of things on its own. It's hits the ground running. It can swim already, it can feed already.

We see this with ducklings or there's one bird in Australia called the malleefowl that actually has to dig itself out of the dirt as soon as it hatches. It takes about 15 hours to do it. And then when it gets to the surface, the parents aren't even there anymore. So "happy birthday, buddy," and they just have to go and figure it out on their own. They are fully independent from the moment that they're born.

So that's one approach, is to say, "Hey, the goal is let's just get them to sign the commitment card and then they'll figure the rest out on their own. Just go figure it out, buddy. Just feed yourself." I think that we sometimes can do that as pastors. We assume that profession of faith is, "Okay, we've done our job now." But the goal is to nurture and disciple.

The other approach to raising young in the bird kingdom is called precocial. And that's probably what we're used to seeing when we see a bird's nest in our backyard and you look in you see the... they don't even look like birds yet. They look like little rubber erasers or something like that. And it takes several weeks for them to get their feathers, to get the shape of a bird, to get their eyes open and then eventually they, like you said, the eagle will rustle the wings and it will disturb the nest and the birds will be encouraged to fly.

And I think that's an approach that we do too. Sometimes we say, "Okay, this person has now professed faith in Christ. Now what? Before we put them in the game, we really need to... they need to sit on the bench for a long time first. We've got to make sure that they go through these materials and they memorize these verses and they do this catechism" and whatever. And we may forget that there is a race to be run and a new chick can still contribute.

So in other words, I guess what I'm trying to say is there's the balance of recognizing that a new believer in the life of our church has something immediately to offer because the Spirit has given them gifts and a story. And we know that a new believer in the life of our church just stirs up the joy of other people around them because everything's new and they're not taking everything for granted.

So they have something immediate to offer. And yet, we also want to make sure that we're taking the long view with them and we're giving them the... we're not just assuming they're going to figure it out on their own. And so there's this balance, I think. At our church, we've done this with a very missional, life-on-life kind of structure of discipleship. Of coming alongside three or four people and spending a long period of time with them.

Like Jesus did, we spent three years with a small group of people. And so I have four guys in my group and I'm investing three years of my life in them in a life-on-life capacity. It's not just a sermon that they're getting once a week. We're doing life together. We're attending, like Jesus did with his, we're going to weddings and funerals together and eating together and we're learning how to evangelize and do service together. And I'm investing in them so that then at the end of three years, they're investing in others.

Dave Stone: You're stirring up the nest and getting them ready to be able to be out on their own.

Kevin Burrell: That's right. So you go slow and you go deep. And I think that at least as a model of discipleship goes, I see that's what Jesus did with his 12. So that's what we enjoy doing here.

Dave Stone: That's good. Go slow and go deep. You see example after example in the gospels of Jesus teaching, training, and trusting. I love that. He'll teach them and then he'll train them in what it is they're doing. And then he trusts them to say, "Okay, go out and do it on your own without me here." And aren't we grateful that he left the Comforter, the Holy Spirit?

And that really cool line where Jesus says, "It's better for you that I go." Which had to really freak out the disciples to hear that. "How could that be better?" But it is that picture of that bird, "Okay, it's time for you to leave the nest and you're out there." Okay, here's a strange question for you. Totally unrelated, not spiritual whatsoever.

Kevin Burrell: Go ahead.

Dave Stone: Okay, if I see a bird, there's a nest let's say on somebody's front porch and little babies up top, you can see their little mouths like an eraser or whatever. And you see one that's down on the ground. If I pick that dude up and put him back in that nest, is that mom going to still...

Kevin Burrell: Yeah, hopefully so. In fact, I just read this recently that the whole concept that you getting your scent onto the chicks is going to keep the mother from coming back to the nest is actually a myth. You're giving the chick the best chance of success if you can get him back into that nest. And you don't want to unnecessarily disturb the nest, but if it's a salvation move and you're trying to help this dude out, well then...

Dave Stone: This is great news! Because I've probably have done that two or three times in my life and I've always been concerned that the first thing the Lord was going to say to me in heaven was, "Hey, we need to talk about three orphan birds that were eaten by a cat because of you." The mom rejected them or something.

Kevin Burrell: No.

Dave Stone: Can I share my favorite ornithology joke?

Kevin Burrell: Oh, no. Yeah, please go ahead. I'm ready.

Dave Stone: Okay, all right. Well, I don't know how this will translate for those who are listening because I can't really act it out for you. But there's a freshman in college, he's in an ornithology class. And the professor just is going on and on about the details of different birds. Comes time for the final exam. This is a large freshman class. It's an introductory class for those who are going to be pursuing something in biology.

And the actual final exam is that he has 10 birds up there. Their bodies are covered with washcloths. But he says, "You have to identify each bird based upon their little skinny legs and their feet and their claws. And you have to be able to determine what it is." And this one kid just couldn't do it. Thought it was ridiculous. And so he walks up, takes his paper, hands it in, has no name on it, and says, "This is the stupidest class I've ever been in in my life," and starts to walk out the door.

And the ornithology professor says, "Hey, wait a second! What's your name?" And the kid bends down, takes his pants, pulls them up to his knees, and he said, "You tell me!" and walked out. So there is your ornithology humor for today. Not sure that it can transfer, but yeah...

Kevin Burrell: No, it's good. So let me turn it into an ornitheology one now to take that and say, now, here we go. That's what I do. Jesus knew his birds by their feet. He knew his disciples so well over the course of those three years that on the last night, he would wash their feet. And to think even Judas, he knew them so well. He called them his friends and he knew them by their feet.

Dave Stone: That's a nice turn on that. And if a shepherd knows his sheep, then a birder knows his flock. Got to know those feet. Wow. You've talked in your book a little bit about how the church relates to culture. And you end up in that analogy talking about the hummingbird and how it is that that plays into the part, the size and the presence of a hummingbird and how it is that the church is called to influence the world. Would you mind sharing that with us? I think that would be something that people would love to hear.

Kevin Burrell: Sure, sure. In the book, I think this is chapter eight. I kind of reflect on what is the role that the church is called to play in the world? And how might that be pictured in a good bird mascot? Because we all love a good bird mascot. And so I throw out some contenders for some of the wrong ways, at least in my estimation, the ways in which we wrongly understand our role, the role of the church in the world.

And if I could be brief with that, one of those examples is come out and be separate. Just remove yourself from the world entirely. You become the subculture, not a culture shaper, culture changer, or culture transformer, but just a subculture. And I use the penguin for that one because whatever the penguins are doing down in the South Pole, that's great for them, but it really doesn't affect anybody else.

Another scenario that we often fall into is just trying to blend in with the culture. We try and remove those more offensive parts of the Christian message and we try and appease the culture and blend in and try and get the target off of our back. And so we end up making a lot of compromises when we do that. There's a lot of birds that camouflage themselves well and I used a bird in Central America called the potoo that does that so well that it looks like part of a tree stump.

Don't do that either. Don't blend in so much that you don't know where the church starts and the culture stops. And then the third one, and I see this one in play a lot these days, is "Can we just get angry and yell a lot?" And there's plenty of birds that do that. I used the blue jay as an example. It's a beautiful bird, but it's also very aggressive and annoying.

And I ask the question, how can something so beautiful be so annoying and off-putting? And sometimes when we think the goal is to win an argument on a Twitter thread, or an X thread, or Facebook, we're falling into the trap of thinking that the goal is to win an argument instead of to win a soul. That the method should match the message and if the message is one of grace, it should sound that way in the some of the ways we communicate.

So those are three bad examples of a bird mascot for the church. And then I get to the hummingbird. Thanks for letting me set that up. I love the hummingbird because Jesus often he pointed to the smallest things. He said, "The kingdom of God is like it's like a pearl of great price. It's like a little bit of yeast, it's like a mustard seed." He uses these very unassuming things and he says, "This is how the kingdom of God transforms the kingdom of this world."

And that really fits. The hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world. The bee hummingbird is a species that is actually the smallest bird. And yet hummingbirds are pollinators. As they're hovering over a flower, they're kicking up the pollen, they're carrying some of it with them. They're much more effective than most of the bees and butterflies that we think of as pollinators because they travel further and they beat their wings faster.

They really ruffle up that pollen. So needless to say, a pollinator makes its environment more beautiful. The reason that the flowers in my backyard are in bloom is because of the pollinators which include the hummingbird. So the hummingbird's mere presence transforms the world around it. It makes the world around it more beautiful. It's carrying the pollen of another kingdom into this world.

And that's I think we are called to be. If we can think of ourselves transformatively like that, it means that wherever the Lord puts us, we're placed there for a purpose. Wherever the Lord puts us, we've got this role to, as Luther said, "If you make shoes, make the best shoes," because you're making them for Christ.

What does it look like for us to be transformative in every sphere of culture in those small little, not the big moves, but in those small little moves of faithfulness? I think that's what Jesus was getting at when he pointed to a lot of small things. And so that's why I think the hummingbird's a great picture for us. It's very unassuming, but it makes the world more beautiful.

Dave Stone: Yeah, and I love your analogy of we're here to disseminate the kingdom of God information to the kingdom of this world and to have an impact. And not just blend in, but to stand out in your challenge for us to be holy, basically. We are a peculiar people. We have been set apart. "Be holy as I am holy," the Lord says. So that's how we do it. We do want to make a difference.

So thank you for going through those. It dovetails, no pun intended, into the fact that as you're talking about the smaller things and the things that are overlooked, I'm reminded of where Jesus is talking in Matthew and he talks about "Consider the lilies of the field," but then he also talks about the sparrows at that one point.

And he says, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father." What does that teach us about significance and about value and worth? Because if I'm remembering correctly, the sparrow would be kind of a cheaper bird that was around and was prevalent and everywhere. I'm already talking and saying more things than I know, so jump in wherever you want.

Kevin Burrell: You're exactly right. It would have been entirely overlooked. So if you love sparrows then you love that verse because you go, "Sparrows are great." Jesus wasn't saying sparrows are great. Jesus is saying sparrows are over... consider this bird over here that probably up to that point, nobody on the sermon on the mount had been considering. They're just... I call them the vermin on the mount.

That's probably what people are thinking of when they see these birds. And so for Jesus to start at something so low and say, "Look at that, and now understand that my care for that at the molecular level is so immediate. I know the falling of a sparrow. I know the hairs on your head. I know each lily of the field. That is what God's care of this creation looks like. And now how much more is he going to care for you? How much more does he know the details of your life?"

So that's meant to be like Jesus went really low in that illustration. He went to the lowest rung of the ladder and said, "I care about this down here, and how much more am I going to care about you? So don't worry." And I just love what a great thing for Jesus to challenge our own anxieties that he would use birds to do that. He says, "Hey, five sparrows are sold for two pennies" or in Luke, I think he says, "two sparrows are sold for one penny."

I'm not sure what the going rate on a sparrow was at that point, but in those places he's saying something that's worthless to the world has value to me. How much more do you? You're made in my image and through the cross I'm going to buy you and that's how much you mean. So don't worry. It's a great picture of that. Again, looking to the very small things to make his point.

Dave Stone: Yeah, and it ties in with that hummingbird illustration as well, but it is the perfect picture of the gospel. That each of us, what we bring to the table in our sinful nature is so tiny and little and minuscule. And Isaiah says it, our righteousness is like filthy rags compared to the righteousness of God.

And we bring so little to the table and yet He would have died for each of us if we were the only person on the face of the earth. And just to see the upside-down way of Christ, whether it's through his teaching talking about a sparrow or a lily out in the middle of a field, whatever it might be, he's saying, "Man, you're worth so much more than that." And then he backed it up by dying for us and put it into practice.

Kevin Burrell: And so now we get to live in that. The gospel says the only thing that I bring to this is my sin. But by faith in Christ, he brings all the rest. Grace is just that good. Without him I can do nothing.

Dave Stone: I got another question for you, okay? I'm a sports lover, so I have a lot of dreams in my mind of what will be in heaven and football up there. I'll be able to dunk again when I'm in heaven. I'll be able to jump and get off the ground. I have all sorts of different things that I think might play out. So I'm going to ask you as a bird lover, "What do you envision and picture being the coolest room in heaven that God will have ready for you? Is this going to be some exploration that you go on where you're going to get to see that bird that you have not seen yet? Talk me through some things that go through your mind. You've probably never been asked this before.

Kevin Burrell: No, it's a unique question, I appreciate it. But I think that if we truly believe that what God is doing is coming to make all things new, a new heavens and a new earth, then it's not just that he's trashing this one for a new one, but he's come as Romans 8 says creation is groaning eagerly awaiting its redemption. So God is going to make this world what it was meant to be.

That takes us back to the Garden of Eden. It takes us to a garden full of fruit, and I assume full of wildlife and full of birds and full of the creativity of God. He could have made just one bird and called it "bird," but he made 11,000 different species. And I got to imagine in the new heavens and the new earth, maybe we'll see the... I don't know, maybe the dodo will come back, maybe some things that we haven't seen on this planet before or we haven't seen in a while.

We know that whatever it is, however he chooses to do it, it will be beautiful. It will show forth the creativity of a Creator and it will be new. It will be restored. It'll be what it was meant to be. And so when we get there, I think my job as a pastor is going to be pretty well complete. I won't have to describe to people what God looks like anymore.

I'll just say, "You look over there, that's Jesus, go talk to him." I think a lot of us are going to be out of work in heaven. But I don't think we'll ever run out of opportunity to see what he's made. And so maybe I'll still be fitted with a pair of binoculars and an ability to consider the birds. I love the thought of him making all things new, and my best days are the days when I'm imagining that.

Dave Stone: I want to commend your book, Considering Sparrows: What Birds Teach Us about Who We Are, Where We’re Going, and the Joy of Following Jesus. Considering Sparrows is the shortened version of the title. If you put that in with Kevin Burrell's name, I promise you that this will be a book that will be rich in illustrations and also in life experiences as well.

And if I don't get to break bread with you on this side of eternity, Kevin, I envision you and I sitting down in heaven and Atlantic terns right there with us. But since there's no pain or suffering, they're not pecking or attacking our heads. They'll just be chilling with us right there. What do you think?

Kevin Burrell: Sure, sure. I think that the lion will lie down with the lamb and so probably the tern will lie down with the human. That'll be good.

Dave Stone: Amen. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us. How can people connect with you?

Kevin Burrell: Thanks for asking. Yeah, the book is... I think you can find it pretty much anywhere where you like to buy your books, but my website, my blog, is called ornitheology.com. And if you go there, you'll also find out information about the book and I try and post about once a month. So that's where people can find what's more recently going on. But that's me.

Dave Stone: And if people don't know how to spell ornitheology, O-R-N-I-T-H-E-O-L-O-G-Y. Brilliant play on words with your two passions mixed together. So it's a Reese's cup, it's peanut butter and chocolate mixed together. Well done, Kevin. Thanks so much for your time today.

Kevin Burrell: Thanks, Dave. I really enjoyed our conversation. Appreciate you.

Dave Stone: Well, I told you you were going to learn a lot and Kevin gave us so many reminders of different types of birds mentioned throughout the Old and New Testament and all the learnings that we receive from each of those stories. And I loved how he talked about bird watching as being attentive, and that's what we're supposed to be.

We're supposed to be attentive. Jesus was so attentive to people. He could sense and see when something was off, and he always took time for them. And it's important for us to change up the topics and genres of our sermons in our illustrations. I was sharing some of the ones that I kind of can get in that rut of going down the same road of the types of illustrations.

But when I vary from that and deviate from it, all of a sudden I pull in a whole another group of people and it excites them and they're more passionate about listening. And the goal of pastoring is really to nurture and to disciple. And so you disciple them while they're in the nest so that they will be ready to evangelize when it comes time for them to leave the nest.

And that illustration about the hummingbird being the smallest bird and yet making such a difference in the world and in pollinating and multiplying. The Lord puts us exactly where he wants us. And the story that I want to share with you today goes back to one of the very first ones that Kevin told, it was about Paul when he was in jail and he had to feel like he was a caged bird.

And if you've ever visited a prison or if you've ever visited someone who's incarcerated, you walk away when that final clank of that jail cell closes and you go through a series of different doors and you hear that last one and then you walk to your car and it's like, "Okay, I'm glad I get to leave."

And yet your heart goes out to those who are still in there paying their debt to society. A number of years ago, I spoke at a women's prison. And it actually went so well that I went back several other times and actually did comedy and entertainment for them on New Year's Eve for a party that they had.

But on my first visit, I was a little wary and nervous and I come from a very regimented church where everything starts on time and ends on time. I was milling around with some of the female inmates there before we started the service. And I said to one lady, I said, "Hey, how long should I preach? How long does your service normally go?"

And she looked at me with a perplexed glance and she said, "I'm here for another 27 years. You can go as long as you'd like to." I'm like, "Okay!" Well then the next few minutes I'm wondering what in the world did she do that's got her still another 27 years? But I tried to block that out of my mind. I preached, I think things went pretty well.

After I finished preaching, I went out with where the inmates were and stood in the midst of them as another guy from our church closed with a word of prayer. And he said line after line, but every line he said, the woman beside me repeated each line that he said. But then he said this line. He said, "Lord, use us to make a difference."

And I don't think that Kathy, the inmate beside me, even heard another word of the prayer because she locked in on that line and she just kept repeating, "Lord, use us to make a difference. Lord, help me make a difference. Lord, use me to make a difference on my cell block. Lord, use me to make a difference in my cell." And she just went on and on six or seven times until he had finished his prayer.

And I remember talking to the ladies and then heading out to the car and we were in a van, a church van, driving back. I sat all the way in the back row of the van. And all I could think about was when was the last time that I prayed, "Lord, use me to make a difference," and I was as passionate as Kathy was?

So the lesson that I got that night wasn't from anything that I shared. The lesson that I received came from a caged bird who was in there for another 18 months. But our church stayed in touch with Kathy and when Kathy came out, she started going to our church and she started serving in the children's ministry and pretty soon she was just such an active part of church that I didn't think of her as a person who had been in prison.

I just thought of her as a person who God was using to make a difference. Because she made a difference in my life that night and she made a difference in the lives of hundreds of kids for years to come through her service. Well, Kevin opened my eyes to a lot of different things in our conversation with him.

How incredible birds are and how they help people see the wonders of God's creation. If you want to learn more about bird analogies and how you can turn your hobbies into sermon illustrations, grab a copy of Kevin's book, Considering Sparrows: What Birds Teach Us about Who We Are, Where We’re Going, and the Joy of Following Jesus. It's the very large cover of a book, evidently.

You can find the link in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening to Pastor to Pastor. We drop a brand-new episode every Tuesday. It's designed to encourage, to inspire, and to challenge you because we know that leadership can be lonely. And that's why we call this Pastor to Pastor. It's for a reason. It's to remind you: you're not alone. So until next time, I'm Dave Stone saying, "God bless."

Jim Daly: Davana grew up in a dysfunctional family filled with abuse, but we gave her hope. I support Focus on the Family because I hope others will be impacted and grow in Christ just as I have. That they will see healing in their past and what they can do for their future. I'm Jim Daly. Let's transform our nation one family at a time with your monthly pledge at focusonthefamily.com/joy.